Melody Flashcards
What does conjunct mean?
A melody that moves by step.
What does disjunct mean?
A melody that moves in leaps using larger intervals than a second.
What is chromatic harmony?
Chromatic harmony uses notes from outside the key to colour the chords.
What is a diatonic melody?
Diatonic melodies are mainly based on major or minor scales
What is a chromatic melody?
Chromatic melodies include notes outside the key of music.
What is an atonal melody?
Atonal melodies are not based on any key or tonal centre.
What are characteristics of melodies in the medieval / Renaissance period?
Melodies were mainly modal.
Most of the melodies were conjunct with the occasional leap. This is because the majority of compositions were still vocal.
The range of most Renaissance melodies was limited to the vocal range for which the melodies were written. Instrumental melodies have narrow ranges.
Imitation.
Ornamentation.
Word painting.
What is imitation?
When one musical part copies another.
What are characteristics of melodies in the baroque period?
Melodies moved to being based on major or minor scales.
Melodies were longer and based on motifs, which were often repeated and developed.
The ends of phrases merged into the starts of new ones.
Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel
What is a sequence?
A pattern of musical notes that are repeated moving up or down a scale.
What are characteristics of melodies in the Classical Period?
Melodies were diatonic with the occasional chromaticism
Phrase lengths were even - usually four or eight bars long.
Balanced phrases (call/response).
Melodies that evolve and develop out of a short musical ideas.
Appoggiaturas were commonly used in Classical melodies.
Passing notes were frequently used to decorate melodies.
What is an appogiatura?
An ornamental leaning note in which the ornament takes half the value of the note it proceeds.
What is an acciaccatura?
An acciaccatura is played as quickly as possible before the note that follows it. It is sometimes called a crushed note.
What were characteristics of melodies in the romantic period?
The range of the melodies was larger than in earlier periods.
Composers would use extreme ranges of instruments to make their music more expressive. The introduction of extended instruments - eg a piccolo - also encouraged melodies with wider ranges.
Melodies were generally diatonic but chromatic passages became much more frequent than in earlier periods.
Melodies were lyrical and had longer phrases over more advanced harmonies than in the Classical period.
Leitmotif was used in programme music and operas to represent a theme, character or mood.
The rise of the virtuoso encouraged fast and exciting melodies.
What were some key characteristics of melodies in impressionist music?
Who are two important composers of this time?
Some impressionist music is based on whole tone scales.
“Rediscovery” of modes in the early 20th century.
Debussy, Maurice Ravel.
