It may be one of music\u2019s fundamental properties, but the art of penning a memorable melody has long proved a notoriously elusive one. Stephen Johnson reveals the story \u2013 and the secrets \u2013 behind the humble tune <\/p>
F<\/span>or Haydn<\/a> it was \u2018the melody\u2019 that was \u2018the charm of music, and that which is most difficult to produce\u2019. For Mozart<\/a>, melody was \u2018the very essence of music. When I think of a good melodist I think of a fine race-horse. A contrapuntist is only a post-horse.\u2019 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n As he edged closer to atonal<\/a><\/strong> serialism, Stravinsky<\/a><\/strong> insisted that \u2018what survives every change of system is melody.\u2019 More poignantly, arch-modernist Schoenberg<\/a><\/strong> confessed that \u2018there is nothing I long for more intensely than to be taken for a better kind of Tchaikovsky<\/a><\/strong>. People should know my tunes and whistle them.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Almost certainly, readers will have firm feelings as to what constitutes \u2018melodious\u2019 and \u2018unmelodious\u2019 music, and indeed what a good melody or \u2018tune\u2019 sounds like \u2013 and it\u2019s safe to say that in most cases it\u2019s likely to be closer to Tchaikovsky than Schoenberg. But if I were to ask you to define \u2018Melody\u2019, or to say what constitutes a \u2018good\u2019 melody\u2026 It seems this is another of those cases where we know what it is when we hear it, but saying exactly what it is we\u2019ve just heard is another matter.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s pause for a moment, however. One thing may have already struck readers raised in non-Western cultures: all those composers quoted above clearly see \u2018melody\u2019 (or, in Schoenberg\u2019s case, \u2018tune\u2019) as a distinct element within the larger framework of \u2018music\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n In fact, such a distinction does seem to be a relatively local phenomenon \u2013 in time as well as place. Go back to the literature of Ancient Greece, routinely described as \u2018the cradle of Western civilisation\u2019, and the root words \u2018melodia\u2019 and \u2018melos\u2019 are normally used to signify \u2018singing\u2019 and \u2018song\u2019, in ways that often suggest they are interchangeable with what we would now call \u2018music\u2019 in general.<\/span><\/p>\n So if the iTunes use of the word \u2018song\u2019 to describe any kind of musical work \u2013 from Schubert\u2019s The Trout <\/i><\/a><\/strong>to a whole act of Wagner\u2019s Parsifal<\/i><\/a><\/strong> \u2013 rouses you to fury, you could try comforting yourself with the thought that, consciously or not, iTunes is merely restoring the term to classical usage.<\/span><\/p>\n Thirty years ago, I remember being captivated by the singing of a young Turkish muezzin, his languorous chant phrases drifting out over the sea from the mosque in what was then a tiny fishing village. Lovely as it was, one felt that it could have stopped or started at the beginning or end of any its phrases \u2013 the length of which were probably determined as much by the singer\u2019s lung capacity as by any purer aesthetic considerations. No criticism intended: that very timelessness was essential to the mesmerising beauty of it all.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Something similar can be sensed in the earliest recorded music of Western Europe, Roman Catholic plainchant, where rhythm, phrase length and tonal rise-and-fall typically follow natural speech patterns of the sung text. But in some cases, something closer to what most of us would call \u2018<\/span>a<\/span> melody\u2019 is starting to emerge.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is a melody?<\/h2>\n
More musical terms explained<\/h4>\n
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When did melodies first start appearing?<\/h2>\n