Learning Objective
This course aims to lay a foundation for meaningful discussion of melodies from both structural and creative perspectives. Rather than claiming to dispel every mystery, it will equip participants with concepts for a meaningful exploration of melodies and strategies for their creation.

Course content
It is hard to think of a more important element of music than melody. It is the most salient and surely the most memorable component of a piece, and it exists in almost every culture. For many listeners, melody is virtually synonymous with music itself. Mozart called it ‘the essence of music’, and Haydn considered melody ‘the most difficult thing to produce’. Yet despite its significance, melody hasn’t evolved into a distinct discipline in music education, as harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration have. And perhaps that is for good reason: even for the educated composers there is something deeply intuitive, even enigmatic, in melody writing. As Aaron Copland put it, ‘Why a good melody should have the power to move us has thus far defied all analysis.’

We will begin by asking what is a melody? and survey some analytical frameworks for melodies, mostly inspired by perception and the sense of expectancy. Building on those, we will analyze melodies and discuss what makes each one unique.