Melody

The Canadian poet David Solway takes a stab at defining or describing or at least talking about "The Mystery of Melody" and gives as examples a couple of his own songs. This is an interesting passage:

Melody may have its origin in human nature or in the realm of spirit, but, as we’ve noted, it is inflected differently in different cultures. Tonal systems vary dramatically; yet, though all these systems will qualify as music, not all can be described as melodic. It may well be that the Western imagination is specifically attuned to the reception of melody from its undocumentable source—at any rate, melody in its more elaborate, sophisticated and memorable aspects. The Bible is replete with references to song; the Greeks pioneered a plurality of melodic modes—Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Lydian, Aeolian, whose intervals were based on mathematical ratios discovered by Pythagoras, which came to be known as “the fingerprints of the Gods”; and Church monophony eventually developed into lavishly harmonic and rhythmic polyphony. I am tempted to say that melody as it has been heard, cultivated, refined and transmitted is one of the signatures of Western civilization, an aural distillate of its essence.

I am by no means suggesting that other musical traditions are not valid and authoritative and beautiful in themselves, but I am proposing that melody per se, in its richest and most memorable form, was detected—and perfected—by the Western sensibility. I will surely be accused of ethnocentrism in advancing such an hypothesis but it seems persuasive to me and at least worth considering.

There is a fascinating etymology to the word "melody":

One thinks, too, of the ineffable “sweetness” of melody, what the Greeks called μέλος (mélos) or μέλισμα (mélisma)—song, air tune—derived etymologically from μέλι (méli)—honey. Which brings to mind Aristotle’s maxim in Book VIII of the Politics, quoting the revered poet and musician Musaeus: “Song is to mortals of all things the sweetest.”

One of the greatest composers of melody is undoubtedly Franz Schubert. Here is his "Great" C major Symphony that begins with one of those ineffable melodies, given first to the horns. The Vienna Philharmonic are conducted by John Eliot Gardiner:

Melody

I'm always talking about harmony, but never melody, which is probably what is foremost in most people's minds when they think about or recall music. Melody is a particularly difficult thing to talk about though, because it seems hard to generalize about it. What makes great melodies great? They are memorable and expressive. OK, what makes melodies memorable and expressive? Uh. Hmm.

Take "Yesterday" for example. Possibly the most famous tune of all time and Paul just fell out of bed with it running in his head one morning.

We can talk about it all we want: how it begins with an expressive 2-1 appoggiatura, how the phrase length is irregular, how the harmony falls from I to a minor, not diminished, VII for a Lydian modal effect, how the final cadence is plagal, how the relative minor is tonicized in the second bar and so on. But trust me, a hundred other composers could do the same things (and have) and come up with tunes that are banal, inexpressive and unmemorable. This is where theory fails.

I once got into an argument with a theory professor who was trying to claim some sort of scientific validity for theory. If we study and analyze enough sonatas, then we can come up with a general or typical structure for sonatas and test that model by using it to create new sonatas. If they sound like the old ones, we have a good theory of sonata form. Sounds good in theory... But the truth is that all the really good sonatas are each unique and that is perhaps the crucial element in a great sonata: that it is unique. Take this one for example:

There is no other piano sonata that sounds like that even though Beethoven used a variation on a very old harmonic progression and probably stole the texture from a Mozart opera.

Just so you don't feel completely cheated with this post, where so far I have simply said I have no idea, let me say two things about melody. From the beginnings of notated music in the West, melodies tended to move by step with leaps being far less common. As tonal harmony developed in the 17th and 18th centuries this started to change and by the Classical Period, melodies were typically constructed using the notes of a chord or triad, that is to say, instead of moving by step, they moved by thirds. For example:

 As opposed to the stepwise movement of this:

Now here's an interesting thing: the melody of "Yesterday" moves almost exclusively by step, one scale note to the next. Hmm...