iSound

Has melody always been with us? Will it continue to flourish? Yes, and yes. The practise of creating pitched sounds is a universal human phenomenon, and the pentatonic scale has been found in many cultures all over the world. In the West it was present in some of the earliest examples of notated music, such as Gregorian Chant, and is with us today.

The melodies in Lalliet’s Terzetto, for example, are not universal – they are clearly a product of European culture in the 19th Century. But whatever form it takes, the existence of melody itself is universal. It seems likely that melody was linked to communication long before opera was invented; the pre-verbal vocalising of a baby could be said to be a kind of melody, and right from the start comes the idea that melody not just an abstract thing that we happen to like, but that it is linked with an emotional or physical state, and with the communication of that state. Melody is very fundamental to us, relating to our physiology,...