The Evolution of Melody

Extract

I am going to speak to you this afternoon upon a subject of universal interest. Music as a science, as an intellectual power, or as an expression of the indefinite and indefinable forces which dominate the soul of the artist and crave for outlet, may not appeal with any great measure of certainty or directness to the popular mind. So many and various are the claims of more tangible things in this busy world of ours that very few can find time to study the historical development of a complex abstract subject. The scope of my present paper, however, is confined, as far as possible, to melody—and this is not at all a forbidding word ! To the great majority of ordinary listeners, indeed, melody is the one quality in music which really counts; a composition in which melody is obscure, or not of paramount importance, is voted dry and uninteresting. Moreover it is a quality concerning which every listener considers himself competent to express an opinion. And the musician himself, no matter how well-tutored he may be, can never afford to lose sight of those elements in music which strike straight home to everybody—which elicit sympathetic response not only from the musically educated, but from those who, without technical knowledge, are keenly perceptible to the influence of beauty. The development of harmony, of musical forms, of instrumentation, and so forth—these are subjects for the initiated to sit in judgment upon, or squabble about; but melody is “enthroned in the hearts” of men, and I am inclined to think that the composer who fails to recognise its potent power, or proves himself incapable of making a direct appeal by means of its employment, has mistaken his vocation and misunderstood the elementary functions of music.