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A melody (from
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a
linear Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship ('' function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear ...
succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and
rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...
, while more figuratively, the term can include other musical elements such as tonal color. It is the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or
part Part, parts or PART may refer to: People *Armi Pärt (born 1991), Estonian handballer * Arvo Pärt (born 1935), Estonian classical composer *Brian Part (born 1962), American child actor *Dealtry Charles Part (1882–1961), sheriff (1926–1927) a ...
need not be a foreground melody. Melodies often consist of one or more musical
phrase In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
s or motifs, and are usually repeated throughout a
composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
in various forms. Melodies may also be described by their
melodic motion Melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise, skipwise or no movement, respectively. See also contrapunta ...
or the pitches or the
intervals Interval may refer to: Mathematics and physics * Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers ** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to arbitrary partially ordered sets * A statistical level of measurement * Interval e ...
between pitches (predominantly conjunct or disjunct or with further restrictions), pitch range,
tension Tension may refer to: Science * Psychological stress * Tension (physics), a force related to the stretching of an object (the opposite of compression) * Tension (geology), a stress which stretches rocks in two opposite directions * Voltage or el ...
and release, continuity and coherence,
cadence In Western musical theory, a cadence (Latin ''cadentia'', "a falling") is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution, especially in music of the 16th century onwards.Don Michael Randel (199 ...
, and shape.


Function and elements

Johann Philipp Kirnberger Johann Philipp Kirnberger (also ''Kernberg''; 24 April 1721, Saalfeld – 27 July 1783, Berlin) was a musician, composer (primarily of fugues), and music theorist. He was a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. According to Ingeborg Allihn, Kirnber ...
argued: The Norwegian composer
Marcus Paus Marcus Nicolay Paus (; born 14 October 1979) is a Norwegian composer and one of the most performed contemporary Scandinavian composers. As a classical contemporary composer he is noted as a representative of a reorientation toward tradition, tonal ...
has argued: Given the many and varied elements and styles of melody "many extant explanations f melodyconfine us to specific stylistic models, and they are too exclusive." Paul Narveson claimed in 1984 that more than three-quarters of melodic topics had not been explored thoroughly.Narveson, Paul (1984). ''Theory of Melody''. . The melodies existing in most European music written before the 20th century, and popular music throughout the 20th century, featured "fixed and easily discernible frequency
patterns A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...
", recurring "events, often periodic, at all structural levels" and "recurrence of durations and patterns of durations". Melodies in the 20th century "utilized a greater variety of pitch resources than ha been the custom in any other historical period of
Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...
music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...
." While the diatonic scale was still used, the
chromatic scale The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce th ...
became "widely employed."Kliewer, Vernon (1975). "Melody: Linear Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music", ''Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music'', pp. 270–301. Wittlich, Gary (ed.). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. . Composers also allotted a structural role to "the qualitative dimensions" that previously had been "almost exclusively reserved for pitch and rhythm". Kliewer states, "The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality (
timbre In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musica ...
), texture, and loudness. Though the same melody may be recognizable when played with a wide variety of timbres and dynamics, the latter may still be an "element of linear ordering."


Examples

Different
musical style Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film and television, a genre of film and television that incorporates into the na ...
s use melody in different ways. For example: *
Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
musicians use the term "lead" or "head" to refer to the main melody, which is used as a starting point for improvisation. *
Rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...
, and other forms of
popular music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fu ...
and
folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
tend to pick one or two melodies ( verse and chorus, sometimes with a third, contrasting melody known as a bridge or middle eight) and stick with them; much variety may occur in the phrasing and
lyrics Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a " libretto" and their writer, ...
. * Indian classical music relies heavily on melody and
rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...
, and not so much on harmony, as the music contains no chord changes. * Balinese
gamelan Gamelan () ( jv, ꦒꦩꦼꦭꦤ꧀, su, ᮌᮙᮨᮜᮔ᮪, ban, ᬕᬫᭂᬮᬦ᭄) is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. T ...
music often uses complicated variations and alterations of a single melody played simultaneously, called
heterophony In music, heterophony is a type of texture characterized by the simultaneous variation of a single melodic line. Such a texture can be regarded as a kind of complex monophony in which there is only one basic melody, but realized at the same time ...
. *In western classical music, composers often introduce an initial melody, or
theme Theme or themes may refer to: * Theme (arts), the unifying subject or idea of the type of visual work * Theme (Byzantine district), an administrative district in the Byzantine Empire governed by a Strategos * Theme (computing), a custom graphical ...
, and then create variations. Classical music often has several melodic layers, called
polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, ...
, such as those in a fugue, a type of counterpoint. Often, melodies are constructed from motifs or short melodic fragments, such as the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Richard Wagner popularized the concept of a '' leitmotif'': a motif or melody associated with a certain idea, person or place. *While in both most
popular music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fu ...
and classical music of the
common practice period In European art music, the common-practice period is the era of the tonal system. Most of its features persisted from the mid-Baroque period through the Classical and Romantic periods, roughly from 1650 to 1900. There was much stylistic evoluti ...
pitch and duration are of primary importance in melodies, the contemporary music of the 20th and 21st centuries pitch and duration have lessened in importance and quality has gained importance, often primary. Examples include musique concrète,
klangfarbenmelodie ''Klangfarbenmelodie'' (German for "sound-color melody") is a musical technique that involves splitting a musical line or melody between several instruments, rather than assigning it to just one instrument (or set of instruments), thereby adding c ...
,
Elliott Carter Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra- ...
's ''Eight Etudes and a Fantasy'' (which contains a movement with only one note), the third movement of Ruth Crawford-Seeger's '' String Quartet 1931'' (later re-orchestrated as ''Andante for string orchestra''), which creates the melody from an unchanging set of pitches through "dissonant dynamics" alone, and
György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century ...
's ''Aventures'', in which recurring
phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
create the linear form.


See also

*
Hocket In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds wh ...
*
Parsons code The Parsons code, formally named the Parsons code for melodic contours, is a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic motion — movements of the pitch up and down. Denys Parsons developed this system for his 1975 book ' ...
, a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through
melodic motion Melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise, skipwise or no movement, respectively. See also contrapunta ...
—the motion of the pitch up and down. *
Sequence (music) In music, a sequence is the restatement of a motif or longer melodic (or harmonic) passage at a higher or lower pitch in the same voice.Benward and Saker (2003). ''Music: In Theory and Practice, Vol. I'', p.111-12. Seventh Edition. . It is o ...
* Unified field


References


Further reading

* Apel, Willi. ''Harvard Dictionary of Music'', 2nd ed., pp. 517–19. *Cole, Simon (2020). just BE here – the guide to musicking mindfulness *Edwards, Arthur C. ''The Art of Melody'', pp. xix–xxx. * Holst, Imogen(1962/2008). ''Tune'', Faber and Faber, London. . * (1955). ''A Textbook of Melody: A course in functional melodic analysis'', American Institute of Musicology. * Szabolcsi, Bence (1965). ''A History of Melody'', Barrie and Rockliff, London. * Trippett, David (2013). ''Wagner's Melodies''. Cambridge University Press. *Trippett, David (2019). "Melody" in ''The Oxford Handbook to Critical Concepts in Music Theory''. Oxford University Press.


External links

* *
Carry A Tune Week, list of tunes

Creating and orchestrating a coherent and balanced melody
{{Authority control Musical texture Harmony Polyphonic form Formal sections in music analysis