Melody

Play any seven notes on the piano, one after another. There is a succession of sounds, but hardly ever a melody. Now sing the opening of a song you know. That is also a succession of sounds, and nobody doubts it is a melody. The difference between the two is what this topic is about.

What a melody is

Lacerda defines melody as a succession of sounds of different pitches and values that follows a musical logic (Lacerda 1966, ch. XXV). The definition has three parts, and each one matters.

Succession. A melody happens in time, one note after another. It is the horizontal dimension of music, in contrast with chords, which stack sounds at the same moment (Lacerda 1966, ch. XXV).

Pitches and values. The notes are not enough; the durations are part of the melody. Blatter goes further: a melody is a combination of pitches, durations, dynamics and articulation, and it is that combination that gives meaning to words or suggests images and feelings (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9).

Musical logic. The succession has to make sense as music. It is the hardest part to define, and the rest of the topic is about it.

Rhythm is half the melody

These are the same six notes, in the same order, with two different rhythms:

Hear the passage

Hear the passage

Hearing both, nobody recognises the same melody. The first walks in even steps and settles; the second stumbles at the start and stretches out at the end. The pitches say where the melody goes; the rhythm says how it walks, and the ear keeps both together.

Steps and leaps

From one note to the next, a melody can move in two ways. It can go to the neighbouring note of the scale, by conjunct degrees, or skip one or more notes, by disjunct degrees (Med 1996, ch. XV):

Hear the passage

The first bar rises by step; the second comes down in leaps of a third. Steps give continuity, the feeling of a line unrolling; leaps give energy and draw attention. Most singable melodies move mainly by step and use leaps with care, and after a large leap a melody often comes back by step in the opposite direction, as if regaining its balance.

Points of arrival

An important feature of melody, Blatter says, is its tonal goals. A melody is not just a series of pitches: it is a series ordered to lead the ear to certain centres (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9).

Every melody has at least a beginning and an end. Between them there may be one or more stops, temporary goals leading in the end to the final goal (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9). At those points the melody hesitates and its motion pauses for a moment. These points of relative rest are cadences, and the stretch of melody that ends with a cadence is a phrase (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9).

A cadence can sound incomplete, asking to go on, or complete, sounding like an end. The likeliest intermediate goal is the dominant; the final note is almost always the tonic (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9).

A children's song from the inside

Blatter examines a very simple melody, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9). Here it is in C major:

Hear the passage

Hear the passage

Hear the passage

Following his reading:

1. The beginning. The melody starts on the tonic, a place the ear recognises as stable, a home. It need not, but it is clear.
2. The climb. From there it runs up the first notes of the scale, in a rhythm set by the rhythm of the words: the stressed syllables fall on the strong beats.
3. The first goal. The climb stops on G, the dominant, halfway through the song. If the music stopped there it would sound unfinished. It is a half cadence, the end of the first phrase.
4. The return. The melody starts again on the upper tonic and leaps down, through the dominant and the mediant, to the lower tonic.
5. The end. The last phrase comes down by step from the dominant to the tonic, with the stable notes, dominant, mediant and tonic, on the accented beats, and the more active ones, subdominant and supertonic, on the weak ones. It is a full cadence.

The shape, leaving a stable centre, going to a less stable point and coming back, turns up in many melodies, including far more sophisticated ones (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9).

Tendencies are not recipes

Some notes of the scale ask for motion: the leading tone pulls towards the tonic, the supertonic tends to fall to it. Blatter is careful to warn that these tendencies are not a prescription for writing melodies. Successful melodies need not follow the obvious paths (Blatter 2007, part 2, art. 9).

It is precisely when a melody does what the ear expects, but not quite how it expects, that it becomes interesting. A melody that only fulfils the tendencies is predictable; one that ignores them all loses its footing. The good ones live in between.

What comes next

A melody is built from smaller pieces: the motive, the short idea that repeats and changes, and the phrase, which ends in a cadence. And when there are words, the rhythm of the melody and the rhythm of the language have to get along.