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In music, a melody (from Greek μελῳδία - melōidía, "singing, chanting"^[1]), also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity. In its most literal sense a melody is a sequence of pitches and durations, while more figuratively the term has occasionally been extended to include successions of other musical elements such as tone color.

Melodies often consist of one or more musical phrases or motifs, and are usually repeated throughout a song or piece in various forms. Melodies may also be described by their melodic motion or the pitches or the intervals between pitches (predominantly conjuct or disjunct or with further restrictions), pitch range, tension and release, continuity and coherence, cadence, and shape. "Many extant explanations [of melody] confine us to specific stylistic models, and they are too exclusive."^[2]

Elements

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The melodies in most European music written before the 20th century features recurring "events, often periodic, at all structural levels" and, "recurrence of durations and patterns of durations" are also important in 20th century music.^[2]

Earlier music included almost exclusively sounds having "fixed and easily discernible frequency patterns" while in the 20th century composers have "utilized a greater variety of pitch resources than has been the custom in any other historical period of Western music." While materials from the diatonic scale are still used, the twelve-tone scale became "widely employed."^[2] DeLone states, "The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality (timbre), texture, and loudness.^[2]

However, quality is not an essential element of melody, as the same melody is recognizable when played with a wide variety of timbres, textures, and loudness.

Melodies in the 20th century where increasingly reliant "upon the qualitative dimensions" with those dimensions "in pre-twentieth century music were almost exclusively reserved for pitch and rhythm" such as being an "element of linear ordering" rather than a highlight to "the more predominant pitch and rhythmic aspects."^[2]

See Klangfarbenmelodie and Musique concrète.

Examples

Different musical styles use melody in different ways. For example:

• Rock music, melodic music, and other forms of popular music and folk music tend to pick one or two melodies (verse and chorus) and stick with them; much variety may occur in the phrasing and lyrics.

"Pop Goes the Weasel" melody

• In western classical music, composers often introduce an initial melody, or theme, and then create variations. Classical music often has several melodic layers, called polyphony, 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 and classical music of the common practice period 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 concrete, klangfarbenmelodie, Elliott Carter'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 reorchestrated as Andante for string orchestra) in which the melody is created from an unchanging set of pitches through "dissonant dynamics" alone, and György Ligeti's Aventures in which recurring phonetics create the linear form.

Melody from Anton Webern's Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30 (pp. 23-24)

• Jazz musicians use the melody line, called the "lead" or "head", as a starting point for improvisation.
• Indian classical music relies heavily on melody and rhythm, and not so much on harmony as the above forms.
• Balinese gamelan music often uses complicated variations and alterations of a single melody played simultaneously, called heterophony.

See also

• Unified field
• Parsons code, a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic motion—the motion of the pitch up and down.
• Appropriation (music)

Further reading

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Melody

• Apel, Willi. Harvard Dictionary of Music
• Edwards, Arthur C. The Art of Melody, p.xix-xxx. Includes "a catalog of sample definitions." (ibid)
• Holst, Imogen. Tune, Faber and Faber, London, 1962.
• Smits van Waesberghe, J. A Textbook of Melody. Includes "an attempt to formulate a theory of melody." (ibid)

References

External links

• Melodyhound: A Search Engine for Melodies
• Tunespotting: Another Search Engine for Melodies
• DoDoSoSo: Yet another Search Engine for Melodies
• Carry A Tune Week List of Tunes

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