Melody

We all imagine we know what a melody is: a tune we can remember and hum along to when we hear it again. But what makes a good tune and how have ideas about what makes a good tune changed over time? Almost all melodies are fundamentally a sequence of pitches. Now pitches can be high or low or indeed anywhere in between but the shapes they make in succession go some way to making a melody into something recognizable. The shapes can be smooth, with one note to the next making small steps. We call this a conjunct melody. Or more angular with bigger leaps in between each note. This is a disjunct melody. Remember pitch alone is probably not going to be enough to make a memorable melody. Other musical elements such as rhythm are probably going to play a part as well.

Through history, styles of melody have changed quite dramatically in the same way that if you tuned into a mystery film on TV you’d know straight away from the styles of dress and acting, and even the way people spoke, when the film was made. There are certain easy-to-spot characteristics in melodies which are going to give us the same ideas about when they were written. Let’s take a look at some now.

Instrumental pieces in the Baroque era often begin with a melody that sets out all the main musical ideas. Let’s listen to this example from Johann Sebastian Bach’s third Brandenburg concerto. Now this tune sounds really long and quite complicated, but it really boils down to just one simple idea. A note, the note one step lower, and then a return to the original note. It sounds like this.

Now this idea is often, but not always, linked to a rhythmic idea of two short notes followed by one longer note – in this case two semiquavers followed by a quaver.

In this way Baroque composers often associated a very small particular rhythm with a whole movement of music to give it a very particular character. Once this and other ideas have been introduced, Bach chops them up and mixes them together to make one long flow of music. It’s almost like listening to someone talking. Also when we play it as an ensemble you’ll hear that the main idea is taken up and copied especially by Gemma. This is called imitation and it’s an important part of the Baroque texture. It also means that the melodic focus isn’t just in one part. You’ll notice that the melody starts and finishes on G, our keynote, which gives it a nice sense of rounding-off.

For composers of the Classical era, melodies needed to be clear, elegant and balanced. Here’s a perfect example by Haydn.

It’s also arranged into four equally sized and balancing sections called phrases. Think of a phrase as a musical sentence or, particularly in the classical era where they’re often all the same length, a line of poetry. The shapes of the phrases tend to balance each other so the first phrase ends with a rising shape. And this is answered or balanced by the next phrase which ends with a falling shape. Each phrase ends with a cadence: a sequence of chords which punctuate the musical flow like commas and full stops. Our second phrase ends with an imperfect cadence like a comma. Listen to how the music sounds unfinished…. …whereas the last phrase ends with a perfect cadence or a full stop. The music definitely sounds finished.

Classical textures were often simpler than Baroque ones, with simpler accompaniments and less imitation. We’ll play the phrase again. Have a listen to how the cadences punctuate the musical flow.

In the Romantic era the comforting regularity of Classical music gave way to more complicated and unpredictable rhythms and harmonies. Here’s an example of a Romantic meldy by the Hungarian composer Dohnányi.

It sounds wild and unpredictable with a huge range and lots of leaps between notes. It’s much more disjunct than the smooth Haydn example and it uses lots of chromatic notes from outside our home key. We can see those in the music because they all have to have their own sharp, natural or flat to adjust the harmony. It’s also much more difficult and flashy to play – virtuosic – because throughout the 19th century composers and audience members demanded more and more technical mastery from musicians. Haydn’s cadences are gone, Bach’s small rhythmic and melodic ideas have gone, so how does this melody hang together? The answer is it’s all in the shape. Each phrase starts with a really jagged quickly ascending idea and then gradually floats back down again. This happens four times to give four phrases and the last one even interrupts almost too early and cuts the previous very short. Unlike Haydn, all the phrases are different lengths and this just adds to the air of unpredictability. Also, confusing things, in the full piece Gemma on the cello plays a countermelody, a secondary tune at the same time as Sophie’s, this makes things even more chaotic and exciting. Have a listen as we all play together.

In the 20th century there was less and less agreement about what made a good melody. Some composers carried on writing in the old Romantic style whereas others began to experiment. Arnold Schoenberg was one of the most famous of these experimenters. He turned his back on the old system of keys and first wrote music in no key at all, which is called atonal music, and then invented a system of composing using all 12 notes of the chromatic scale equally, which he called serialism. Here’s a melody from his serial phase.

Just like the Haydn example this melody breaks down into phrases, but without Haydn’s key and chords we can’t have traditional cadences, so schoenberg separates the phrases with silence. Some of the phrases are very short indeed. The last two are only a bar long. Different instrumental sounds or timbres are used to differentiate phrases, much more so than in other eras. The first of these phrases is played by everyone with the bow but it connects with one where Sophie plucks, or pizzicato, and Gemma and I play with the wood of our bow which we call col legno.

Remember that Schoenberg’s serial system was a way of working with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale equally, so for him it wasn’t possible to start and finish a tune on the same pitch like Haydn and Bach may have done to make a complete and rounded-off satisfying whole. Instead Schoenberg really cleverly starts and ends at the same volume or dynamic. He begins and ends this phrase piano and in between there’s a very satisfying musical shape which gradually gets louder and louder and then tails off towards the end. We’ll play the whole melody again so you can hear this.

Today more different types of tunes are being written using more different elements of music to make great memorable melodies than ever before. Now we’ve explored how it’s been done through the years, try writing your own.