Melody



A melody also tune, voice or line, is a 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, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color.

Quotes

 * Melody is the golden thread running through the maze of tones by which the ear is guided and the heart reached.
 * Anonymous
 * Melody is a series of repeated rising and falling intervals, which are subdivided and given movement by rhythm; containing a latent harmony within itself and giving out a mood feeling; it can and does exist independently of accompanying parts as a form; in its performance the choice of pitch and of the instrument makes no difference to its essence.
 * Ferruccio Busoni, also quoted in An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music, p. 33


 * Composers should write tunes the chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.
 * Thomas Beecham, New York Times, 9 March 1961


 * The heart of a melody can never be put down on paper.
 * Pablo Casals, Conservations with Casals, 1956


 * The melody is generally what the piece is about.
 * Aaron Copland, also quoted in Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music, p. 33


 * Harmony is music does not consist merely in the construction of concordant sounds, but in their mutual relations, their proper succession in what I should call their audible reflex.
 * Eugène Delacroix, quoted in Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music, p. 34


 * The greatest beauties of melody and harmony become faults and imperfections when they are not in their proper place.
 * Christoph Willibald Gluck, quoted in Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music, p. 34


 * A tune is always the same tune, whether it is sung loudly or softly, by a child or a man; whether it is played on a flute or on a trombone.
 * Charles Darwin, The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872


 * A melody is a vocal or instrumental imitation using the sounds of a scale invented by art or inspired by nature, as you prefer; it imitates either physical noises or the accents of passion.
 * Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew, 1762


 * The continuity and diegetic function of almost all vocal melody draw us along the linear thread of the song's syntagmatic structure, producing a 'point of perspective' from which the otherwise disparate parts of the musical texture can be placed within a coherent 'image'.
 * Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music, p. 264. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.


 * You who are sitting before me have the power to change my consciousness into painting, poem, melody or anything else!
 * Suman Pokhrel, Between Rainbows and Melody