Elements
Given the many and varied elements and styles of melody "many extant explanations confine us to specific stylistic models, and they are too exclusive." Paul Narveson claimed in 1984 that more than three-quarters of melodic topics had not been explored thoroughly.
The melodies existing in most European music written before the 20th century, and popular music throughout the 20th century, featured "fixed and easily discernible frequency patterns", recurring "events, often periodic, at all structural levels" and "recurrence of durations and patterns of durations".
Melodies in the 20th century "utilized a greater variety of pitch resources than ha been the custom in any other historical period of Western music." While the diatonic scale was still used, the chromatic scale became "widely employed." Composers also allotted a structural role to "the qualitative dimensions" that previously had been "almost exclusively reserved for pitch and rhythm". Kliewer states, "The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality (timbre), texture, and loudness. Though the same melody may be recognizable when played with a wide variety of timbres and dynamics, the latter may still be an "element of linear ordering"
Read more about this topic: Melody
Famous quotes containing the word elements:
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It is through friendships that teenagers learn to take responsibility, provide support, and give their loyalty to non- family members. It is also in teenage friendships that young people find confidants with whom to share thoughts and feelings that they are not comfortable sharing with their parents. Such sharing becomes one of the elements of true intimacy, which will be established later.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has kinetic force, it sets in motion ... [ellipsis in source] elements in the reader that would otherwise be stagnant.”
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“An illustrious individual remarks that Mrs. [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton is the salt, Anna Dickinson the pepper, and Miss [Susan B.] Anthony the vinegar of the Female Suffrage movement. The very elements get the “white male” into a nice pickle.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Revolution (August 19, 1869)