MELODY (yeArA(a), in music, is Air or Song—a succession of single diatonic sounds, in measured time.
Melody and Air are synonymous terms in modern music, whatever their difference may have been in that of ancient Greece ; we therefore shall add but little to what we have already said on the subject under the word Am, to which the reader is particularly referred.
The question—which exercises most influence over the mind, melody or harmony ? has often been agitated, Rousseau taking the lead, who certainly has treated it eloquently, but inconsistently, acting the part of advocate on both sides, and on each refutes himself. He seems to admit, and thus to agree with Metastasio, that music is a kind of language, but overlooks the fact, that, like every other language, it can only affect those who understand it by either studying its princi ples, as in the case of the few, or by frequently hearing, and thus becoming empirically acquainted with it, as in the case of the many.
He does not seem to have considered that simple music, that is, melody, like simple language, makes most impression on the unlearned majority, because easily understood ; while complex music, namely, harmony, like high-wrought rhetoric, excites more pleasure in the minds of the instructed minority, who enter into its combinations and per ceive all its relations. Melody and harmony may be said to generate each other, the one being a selection of single sounds from a harmonic source, the other a union of two or more melodies simultaneously heard. Thus both are closely connected ; and Dr. Burney has re marked, that after melody and harmony have been heard together, nothing can compensate for their separation.