Modality and the Melodic Foreground

Abstract

One of the under-explored features of Western classical music is modality: the use of specific scale-degrees in ways idiosyncratic to a particular style or period. And yet modal considerations are particularly important for any theory of melody attempting to deal with the "coherence of the incipit", the fact that in the opening measure or two of a successful melody or theme, the pitches and the rhythms are simply not to be changed without great damage to its integrity.

A repertory of ca. 6300 themes, in the major mode only, drawn from the work of four Viennese classic composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert) is surveyed for its treatment of the nontonic pitches-2°, 4°, #4°, 6°, and 7°-in melodic situations analogous to traditional dissonance-treatment: the nominal appoggiatura (including the grace-note), the neighbor-tone, and the passing tone, in various rhythmic configurations; to draw out a few well-founded general principles for the treatment, in this style, of individual degrees of the major scale.