In part one, we compared a ridiculous number (20) of definitions of the word, melody, and came up with our own, functional-but-flawed definition (a sequence of notes), eventually arriving at the question at the core of these music with no melody blog posts:
Does good music require a strong, singable “tune” in the foreground?In part two, we conclude this discussion and examine a variety of works in which a foreground melody is not a primary organizing principle. There is a description of a composition project relating to this topic for my students at the end.
Discussion of the above question:
"In the foreground," means that the "tune" is front and centre, the musical aspect that most prominently gives the composition its identity. When we think of Yesterday (the Beatles song), Jingle Bells, Mendelssohn's Wedding March, Star Wars (main theme), or Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, we may think of many facets of these pieces (instrumentation, rhythms, our emotional responses to them, etc.), but it is likely that the aspect of these compositions that first pops into our head is the tune.
However, there are, perhaps surprisingly, numerous compositions whose most prominent and memorable aspect is probably not the “tune," and yet we consider them to be "good." Or even great!
Here are some of them; the first two have audio clips beneath the music examples, the remaining ones are all videos, some with scrolling scores:
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| J. S. Bach, Prelude 1, WTC I, BWV 846 |
If audio player not visible, click here to listen
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| L. van Beethoven, Symphony 7, II: Alegretto (pno. reduction) |
Schoenberg — Farben (#3 of Five Pieces for Orchestra, also called "Summer Morning by a Lake: Chord Colours"; 1908)
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| A. Webern, Variations for Piano, op. 27, II |
Glenn Gould's performance of the Webern is above; if you haven't heard it, I strongly recommend having a listen (and watch the hand crossings in the second movement, which starts at 1:31). It's very short, as is the case in all Webern music.
Next is another short one, Ligeti, Etudes for Piano, Book 1, No 2:
Howard Bashaw, Prelude no. 5; watch the pianist's hands:
Next is Messiaen, Petites esquisses d'oiseaux:
And after Messiaen, it makes sense to listen to some Toru Takemitsu music. This is Riverrun:
Morton Feldman, Piano And String Quartet (it's an hour and 20 minutes long, so get comfortable!):
Philip Glass's music very much belongs in this discussion; this is Glassworks:
These are just some of many compositions that don't have a melody, or "tune," as most people understand those words, as a prominent, foreground feature. There's also an entire genre of music in which this is also the case, which is called Spectralism, music that uses sound spectra or tone colour as a fundamental organizing principle. I wrote a blog about spectral music music a few years ago; click here if you wish to learn more about it. That post also has more music videos by other composers to check out.
In spectralism, as well as in all the above examples, composers found ways of drawing our attention to musical aspects other than melody. These aspects included continuous motion broken chords (Bach, Ligeti), repetitive arpeggios (Feldman), a focus on musical colour and/or sound masses (Schoenberg, Messiaen, Takemitsu, spectralism, Feldman), pointillism (Webern), arpeggios with interjected bird call emulations (Messiaen), fast, angular writing with repeated motives (Bashaw), static minimalism (Schoenberg, Feldman), and pulsed minimalism with oscillating figures (Glass).
Composition project: Write three short pieces for piano and one other instrument, in which melody is not a predominant feature. Each piece should approach this challenge in a different way. You can borrow techniques from any of the pieces cited above, or cited in my Spectralism blog, or from any other pieces, or you can come up with your own original solutions to this challenge. The harmonic language cannot be traditional tonality, but this does not exclude the use of traditional sonorities.
UPDATE (2019): Here are more examples, suggested by, and with huge thanks to, Robert Humber:
UPDATE (2019): Here are more examples, suggested by, and with huge thanks to, Robert Humber:
Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7, "Angel of Light"
Another piece by György Ligeti; this one's a modern classic: Lux Aeterna
Check out Symphony No. 1 (1951) by Henri Dutilleux; melodic fragments abound, but they don't really coalesce into what most of us would call a tune:
And here's another Robert Humber suggestion: Chukrum, by Giacinto Scelsi:
And finally, Child, by David Lang, part I: My Very Empty Mouth:
If you have any other suggestions of works that belong to this category, please share them via the "comments" section below!
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15 comments:
I think it is actually pretty important as a musician to familiarize yourself with music without melody. From my experience, music that is lacking in tunefulness is often bubbling with creativity and interest in other areas like rhythm, colour, etc. Personally, after learning about pieces based on colour and harmony by composers like Messiaen, Takemitsu, Dutilleux, Rautavaara and the symphonies of Silvestrov, I went through a long spell of wanting to hear nothing but rich, nonmelodic music.
I think it's interesting that many definitions of 'melody' explain it as a collection of notes/pitches that are pleasing to the ear. Obviously, 'pleasing' is such a vague word. For whatever reason, I've never liked the A minor piano concerto by Grieg. The collection of notes doesn't please my ear. Ligeti's 'Atmospheres' is a collection of notes that pleases my ears (except for the part where two piccolos loudly play a minor second at the top of their range, I don't love that). With that definition, couldn't I argue that in my opinion Ligeti is more melodic than Grieg?!
Of course, I don't actually think this because, well, listen to it. It's obvious Grieg is more melodious, it just... is. It fascinates me that something so difficult to define just 'is'. There's many examples in popular music of a melody being harmonized, either higher or lower. We always seem to know which voice is the melody and which is harmony, even though the melody is not always the highest voice. I don't know how we are able to distinguish this and perhaps there is some scientific explanation but it really amazes me regardless. Music in general is such an abstract concept when you think about it, yet it feels so natural, we just GET it.
Here are some examples of music I like without a melody, at least in the traditional sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDF68eVsUpw
An absolutely beautiful piece by Rautavaara. This movement's main attraction is the rich orchestration and the chords which ooze into each other like shifting colours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVYu5lyX5M
Lux Aeterna by Ligeti is a beautiful example of micropolyphony, a technique he used a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Hd2USKTmc
This one I'm not sure about. Some could argue that 'Fratres', a minimalist piece by the brilliant Arvo Part, has a melody. I would argue that no part really functions like a traditional melody and each section of piece just outlines the repeated chord progression in different ways. Regardless of whether you think it is melodic or not, listen to it. It's great.
Thank you.
Exploring the idea of writing pieces without melody has brought up a couple of different concepts for me: 1) the brain is a pattern-seeking organism, and 2) the definition of melody is fluid.
The more I listen to these pieces, and those from your spectralism blog post, the more I start hearing fragments of melody. Not long, singable tunes but sequences of notes that have a sort of undefinable melodic quality. If Riverrun by Takemitsu had been the first piece of this type that I listened to today, would I have thought that there were beautiful melodic moments, or would I have just thought it was a piece without melody? After about an hour and a half of listening to this type of music, Riverrun is sounding quite melodic. Is that because a melody is a type of pattern, and my brain is looking for sequences of notes it can grasp on to and hear as melody?
Maybe a possible definition of melody would be "a sequence of notes which form a unit recognizable to the listener within his or her experience of music and melody," although that is even clumsier a definition than "an enjoyable sequence of notes." I'm tempted to propose that there isn't one single definition of melody that everybody could accept, because we all have our own concepts of what melody is, and moreover what we think of as melody can change as we are exposed to different soundscapes.
I thought it was interesting to read my own comment on this post from last year. I used Rautavaara (RIP) and Silvestrov as examples of music without melody??? I look back in confusion, as these two neo-romantic composers not only use melody, their work (particularly Silvestrov) begins and ends with the melody. Few contemporary composers stress long, soaring melodies like Silvestrov and it was interesting to see that I did not recognize this just a year ago... It just goes to show that you can "practice" having an analytical ear.
The "no-melody" project is a great exercise, but I don't think it's a good idea to just dive in with no prior knowledge of the literature. I would advise listening to every piece you listed... (all awesome examples of totally engaging music without melody). I might add a few that I have been into lately which solve the problem of no melody in different ways:
David Lang - Child (rhythmic energy and unpredictability with a somewhat diatonic pitch collection... overall very clear and precise music)
Giacinto Scelsi - Chukrum (music that revolves around a single pitch, orchestrated ways that build intensity... to me or gets 'hotter' and 'colder')
Steve Reich - anything (pulsing rhythms, 'phasing' effects, close canonic writing, slowly shifting meters and harmonies)
It's a good idea to really think about what main element will replace the importance of melody, and start from there. It can be harmony, rhythm, texture, even concept (if you are a brilliant thinker like John Cage or Iannis Xenakis). You may be surprised by how good and/or engaging and/or cool your piece starts sounding!
Great post Dr. Ross.
In many of the examples listed in this post, I believe that there are many questions (some questions which apply to all, some to only a few, or even just a singular example) that can help us in determining whether or not a particular piece of music features a melody component in some way. For me, the first question is: is a melody merely just a sequence of notes, as discussed in the 1st post regarding this topic? If so, then yes, all examples listed in this post feature a melody, as they all contain sequences of notes. But, perhaps getting more specific will result in the elimination of some examples in the melody roster. My next question is: does the sequence of notes that makes a melody have to be singable or hummable by the listener to constitute as melody? If so, then perhaps the Bach, Beethoven and Glass examples would prove to have melodic content, whereas the Schoenberg, Webern, Ligeti, Bashaw, Messaien, Takemitsu, and Feldman would fail to do so. Getting more specific yet again, my final question is: does the differentiation between melody and harmony need to be apparent to the listener to actually establish a melodic idea? In this case, perhaps none of the examples feature a melody of some sort, as the differences between ideas that could be heard as melody and/or harmony are for the most part very vague in these musical examples.
I recently completed a composition project using these ideas back in January and February of this year. While I do not know if I was entirely successful in creating three pieces that did not contain a melody, I asked myself questions similar to the ones I have outlined here when I was writing, which I found helpful in my creative process.
After reading this post, and playing around with the idea of "no melody" in my own compositions, I have come to a conclusion about the definiton of melody. I think that the definition that you have suggested, "a sequence of notes" is actually satisfactory for me. In my understanding, the term melody is meant to be broad, and I believe that it may be used to describe any sequence of notes in any composition. I believe that the idea that melodies are pleasing or memorable is just a dated idea, which comes from a time when nearly all western music was written according to rules of tonality. Just because all melodies were pleasing and memorable at one point in time, doesn't mean they are now. In the case of the Bach Prelude in C, I would argue that this piece still does incorporate pleasing and memorable melodies, but that these melodies just aren't in the foreground of the composition. It is likely that Bach was much more focused on harmonic tension and resolution when composing this piece, bringing it's harmonic progression to the foreground and in front of its melodies. By this definition, I would also suggest that a sequence of randomized notes with randomized durations is still considered a melody as it is still a sequence. Though this melody would be unmemorable and difficult to sing, in my opinon the term melody could still be used to describe the sequence of notes.
With regards to the compositional exercise of writing a piece of music with no melody, I think it may make more sense to say we are writing pieces where melody is not in the foreground. With my definiton of melody, I think this makes the spirit of the exercise more clear: we are to compose in such a way that the melodies are difficult to remember or sing back. By writing in this syle, I found myself creating more unique pieces of music that avoid repetitions of melodic motifs. I instead focused much more on rhythmic and harmonic motifs as unifying devices, and found this to be an incredibly effective exercise. To create an interesting piece with a subjectively unappealing melody one must use recognizable rhythms and harmonies to create an enjoyable piece of music. This was an extremely helpful exercise to me as a composer, as it allowed me to develop both my harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary.
I have really enjoyed the collection of pieces used as examples here and have found this project to be a fascinating exercise for me as a composer. I have a huge love for the minimalist movement and would say that it is one of the largest (if not the largest) influence on my own writing. Philip Glass, Gavin Bryars, Steve Reich, Terry Riley and John Adams have all influenced me immensely. Although not all minimalist music is lacking in melodic line I find that it is obviously a genre in which this is a common feature, and while I have often found myself writing in this style or at least partially in this style I had not realized until this project that I used the minimalist texture mainly as a background feature with a prominent melody on top. There have been sections of my pieces where the melody drops out and the minimalist texture is brought to the forefront but they were simply only ever that, small sections. Being forced to utilize this affect of non-melodic writing at the forefront of the music at all times was a challenge. I found myself yearning to write a melody, something to draw in the ear of the listener and guide them. But this challenge has allowed me to fully respect my listener in this aspect and trust that they are obviously smart enough to not need to be led along by some sort of melody and just enjoy the sonic texture and feel of the work as it is. I believe this project has really knocked down a subconscious wall in my writing I never even knew was there previously and I'm quite thankful to have been led here for this project.
I found this post to be really helpful with my first assignment of the year - composing character pieces with no melody.
When you first said in class that we needed to write a piece with no melody, all I could think of were pieces that just sound like a wall of sound (this is often achieved with legato lines, with parts moving at different times to cover any breaks in sound). Some pieces are definitely like that (the Schoenberg, for instance), but not always. I see these as music without defined individual notes or clear individual line.
The Glass piece shifted my view on the music with no melody concept. This piece has very clearly defined, separated notes on the piano. This is not a wash/wall of undefined sound, but a compilation of individual notes (which I guess all music is, but this piece in particular changed my understanding). Instead of being a piece composed of the typical elements of a piece (melody, harmony, etc.), this piece is like a piece of art composed of many brushstrokes.
Think of impressionist visual art. Look closely at any of Monet's work and it just looks like a bunch of brushstrokes that don't really resemble anything. Zoom out and you get a beautiful landscape. I am now able to view music with no melody the same way - look too closely and you just see a bunch of notes. Zoom out and you see the bigger picture.
I love your metaphor of good music without melody, well, at least no melody in the conventional sense, to impressionist painting arts. In fact, a nice memorable melody isn't what we are always looking for when listening to music. In fact, what so called impressionism music by French composers would qualify, I think, as music with no melody, and they are undeniablely amazing music, one of my favorite repertoires actually. Of course, we would think of Clair de lune of Debussy to clearly have a famous and very beautiful tune, but a lot of his other music, as well as those of Fauréand Ravel are more about the state, atmosphere, space, sonority and meander, whatever you would define it. For example, Ravel's Miroirs for solo piano has this amazing second movement called Oiseaux tristes,my favorite out of the 5, which I would classify it as no melody. I often imagine it to be played by a whole orchestra when I hear or play it.Although Ravel orchestrated a lot of his piano work, even several movements of Miroirs, he did not for Oiseaux tristes. But here is the version orchestrated by Collin Matthews.Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCyqZayOQ-s
It is very insteresting to learn that the term for this kind of music would be Spectral music. I often just described it as "water music" or "a cloud of sounds". So thank you for explaining that.
I also very enjoyed the Glass piece. I will be listening to more of Philip Glass. I like to listen to minimalism music from time to time. i.e. When I'm feeling tortured and defeated by a Rachmaninoff prelude while practicing, nothing is more soothing and recalming than playing a bit of Satie :)I'm also considering for writing a minimalism movement for my composition challenge, so thank you for the inspiration.
Listening to these pieces was quite fascinating. I’m not familiar with much music that doesn’t have a melody, so I’m not used to hearing these kinds of pieces. I noticed while listening that I would describe a lot of these pieces as 'unsettling' even though I enjoyed many of them. This is perhaps in part because of my lack of familiarity with this kind of music.
Some of them, like "Chukrum" by Scelsi and perhaps also "Riverrun" by Takemitsu, seemed unsettling enough to give the impression of music suited to a horror movie.
Others made me think of outer space and a sort of drifting sensation. Some, like Philip Glass’s "Glassworks," seemed 'futuristic' like the kind of music that would be used in a sci-fi movie.
Even the pieces that are a bit calmer or are 'pretty,' like "Lux Aeterna" by Ligeti or the Rautavaara Symphony, still have an unsettling quality.
For me, not having a melody seems to give music an existential sort of feeling, like they are untethered or a part of liminal space.
From the basic, yet consistent writing of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Major, to Philip Glass' "Glassworks", it is truly incredible the things that can be done with music when not confined to a melody. I, personally, would have never thought that Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Major would have not had a melody. I always thought the arpeggios were the melody. In the background of many film and TV shows, you may hear arpeggios like the Prelude and Fugue, and they may not be confined to a melody. The next time I pay attention to a score from a film or TV show, I will try and see if I can hear a melody. Sometimes I will, and sometimes I won't.
I think that the approach of not having a foreground tune for this topic is an interesting way to look at it. Because for some of the examples given, I would argue that the piece itself is not entirely without melody it’s just not the most obvious riveting melody that you would ever think of. For example, Philip Glass’ glassworks, has rhythm and chord colour at the forefront of the piece, however, I can still perceive there to be a melody. I hear enough distinction within the changing notes, to hear a slowly moving melody without thinking about it too hard. While I consider there to be a melody there, it’s simply not the most engaging or important part of the piece. Additionally, there are examples here that I had never even thought of in relation to melody, like the Bach prelude in C. I think that due to the pervasiveness of melodies within popular music, I had always just subconsciously considered the piece to be entirely melody without really thinking about it, despite it really only being arpeggios. So now that I’m hearing it with the idea of having no forefront melody in mind, I find it hard to reconcile the lack of obvious melody with the preconceived notion that I didn’t even know I previously had.
This post challenged my ideas of what “music with no melody” could sound like. Prior to listening to these excerpts and studying music with no melody in my own practice in this course, I had a very limiting understanding of how different music without melody could sound. I imagined drone music and static minimalism, but never music with motion. Listening to this music with continuous motion and pointillism (and still no melody) has caused me to rethink how music without melody could sound. I am currently taking a post tonal theory course (MUS 4115) and we are learning about Neo-Riemannian theory. This technique uses a Tonnetz diagram, where chords are slowly changed using transformations while 1-2 pitches are held constant. While the sonorities are slowly moving, there is lots of static motion created through active rhythms and arpeggios outlining the chords. An example we studied in class was “Mad Rush” by Phillip Glass, which I think is another great example of music without melody. The constant triplets against eighth notes creates interest without creating a distinct melodic line
Here is the link: Mad Rush
Regarding the fact that subjective terms such as “satisfying” do not belong to a definition, I think that will be the case if such qualities and the variables that can affect them are vague and indefinite to us. However, if we find some evolutionary reasons behind why humans of a certain background find a succession of notes satisfying, then we might be able to use these terms or some equivalents to define “melody”. There is surely a chaotic system behind our emotional response to a melody, but I think analyzing that system might contribute to our definition. I also think a fundamental term that is necessary to be included in melody’s definition is the fact that it is “horizontally represented” since the time dimension is an inextricable aspect of what we call melody. Among the examples of excerpts in which the melodic line is not the foreground feature, I found the excerpt from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 a bit questionable since I think a non-musician listener can hear the stepwise motions that are exchanged between different parts and remember it as a melody.
Taravat Bafrooni:
Regarding the fact that subjective terms such as “satisfying” do not belong to a definition, I think that will be the case if such qualities and the variables that can affect them are vague and indefinite to us. However, if we find some evolutionary reasons behind why humans of a certain background find a succession of notes satisfying, then we might be able to use these terms or some equivalents to define “melody”. There is surely a chaotic system behind our emotional response to a melody, but I think analyzing that system might contribute to our definition. I also think a fundamental term that is necessary to be included in melody’s definition is the fact that it is “horizontally represented” since the time dimension is an inextricable aspect of what we call melody. Among the examples of excerpts in which the melodic line is not the foreground feature, I found the excerpt from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 a bit questionable since I think a non-musician listener can hear the stepwise motions that are exchanged between different parts and remember it as a melody.
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