eight) and stick with them; much variety may occur in the phrasing and lyrics. Indian classical music relies heavily on melody and rhythm, and not so much on harmony, as the music contains no chord changes. Balinese gamelan music often uses complicated variations and alterations of a single melody played simultaneously, called heterophony. In western classical music, composers often introduce an initial melody, or theme, and then create variations. Classical music often has several melodic layers, called polyphony, such as those in a fugue, a type of counterpoint. Often, melodies are constructed from motifs or short melodic fragments, such as the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Richard Wagner popularized the concept of a leitmotif: a motif or melody associated with a certain idea, person or place. While in both most popular music and classical music of the common practice period pitch and duration are of primary importance in melodies, the contemporary music of the 20th and 21st centuries pitch and duration have lessened in importance and quality has gained importance, often primary. Examples include musique concrète, klangfarbenmelodie, Elliott Carter's Eight Etudes and a Fantasy (which contains a movement with only one note), the third movement of Ruth Crawford-Seeger's String Quartet 1931 (later re-orchestrated as Andante for string orchestra), which creates the melody from an unchanging set of pitches through "dissonant dynamics" alone, and György Ligeti's Aventures, in which recurring phonetics create the linear form. See also Hocket Parsons code, a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic motion—the motion of the pitch up and down. Sequence (music) Unified field References Further reading Apel, Willi. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed., pp. 517–19. Cole, Simon (2020). just BE here – the guide to musicking mindfulness Edwards, Arthur C. The Art of Melody, pp. xix–xxx. Holst, Imogen(1962/2008). Tune, Faber and Faber, London. . (1955). A Textbook of Melody: A course in functional melodic analysis, American Institute of Musicology. Szabolcsi, Bence (1965). A History of Melody, Barrie and Rockliff, London. Trippett, David (2013). Wagner's Melodies. Cambridge University Press. Trippett, David (2019). "Melody" in The Oxford Handbook to Critical Concepts in Music Theory. Oxford University Press. External links Carry A Tune Week, list of tunes Creating and orchestrating a coherent and balanced melody Musical texture Harmony Polyphonic form Formal sections in music analysis