MELODIA. – It is the essence of music, its living substance, which organizes itself into discourse and develops a musical thought within II.
Since a horizontal alignment of sounds cannot fail to suggest harmonies, even if these remain implicit, every m. bears the sound relationships inherent in its own complex of sounds (its field). And since each of the sounds forming the m., in the dual order of succession and simultaneity, has its own duration (precise or imprecise), the m. is also necessarily rhythm. But no succession or simultaneity of sounds exists in reality independently of a vibrating body that produces the sounds themselves: the m. is therefore also timbre. It unifies all the elements of musical discourse.
It is universally accepted that the essence of music is vocal; therefore, the character of vocality is fundamental in the m. as well (one should remember, however, that vocal does not coincide with singable, in the ordinary sense of an easy and evident linear symmetry).
The principal forms of the m. are as follows.
1) Strophic form. – The strophic forms of poetry set to music determine (though not always) analogous strophic structures in the music associated with them. This strophic character of music reaches its most elementary symmetrical order in the “square” m., in which the first 2 phrases, of 2 measures each, form the first half-phrase, which, joined to the following one of equal length, forms the phrase of 8 measures: 2 phrases constitute the square period (16 measures). Contractions or expansions of phrases or of complete phrases may produce an irregular squaring. The square type is found in the forms of song, Lied, and hymn, and, independently of a poetic text, in dance forms (instrumental strophic m.). But strophic character does not always mean squaring, just as stanza does not always mean verse. A non-versified text may also have a strophic character, and thus musical discourse is strophic if it proceeds through closed periods, but not for that reason through periods of 16 measures.
2) M. multiple (or thematic). – In polyphony, the discourse is interwoven with themes that attach themselves to one another, are reproduced and modified, generate others, and pass from one voice to another, permeating all the parts with themselves.
3) Infinite m. – Free from cadential symmetries and conclusions of a strophic nature, it does not therefore proceed without its own logic; rather, the latter is reduced to a pure necessity of effusion in continual renewal. The most luminous examples are provided by melismatic chant in the liturgy (Gregorian graduals and alleluias; Ambrosian psalmelli and alleluias).
Edgardo Carducci Agustini