A CD to show what beautiful tunes and textures are to be had from oboe, bassoon and piano

Has melody always been with us? Will it continue to flourish? Yes, and yes. The practise of creating pitched sounds is a universal human phenomenon, and the pentatonic scale has been found in many cultures all over the world. In the West it was present in some of the earliest examples of notated music, such as Gregorian Chant, and is with us today.

The melodies in Lalliet’s Terzetto, for example, are not universal – they are clearly a product of European culture in the 19th Century. But whatever form it takes, the existence of melody itself is universal. It seems likely that melody was linked to communication long before opera was invented; the pre-verbal vocalising of a baby could be said to be a kind of melody, and right from the start comes the idea that melody not just an abstract thing that we happen to like, but that it is linked with an emotional or physical state, and with the communication of that state. Melody is very fundamental to us, relating to our physiology, not just to our sense of beauty.

The history of melody has had, as it were, its ups and downs. In the classical period, a long melodic line was not considered flexible enough for symphonic development - all you could do was repeat it or make variations of it - and it was often replaced by a short motif that could be worked on. However, by the 19th Century, when the earliest piece on this CD was written (the Lalliet), melody was in its hayday. The scientist Hermann Helmholtz asserted that it was 'the incarnation of motion in music', the critic Eduard Hanslick saw in it 'the archetypal configuration of beauty', and Wagner asserted that there was no reason that a melody need ever end. In practice even Wagner ended his melodies eventually, but this was felt to be a choice and not a necessity. Surprisingly, the best example of an ‘unending’ melody on this CD comes from Wagner’s antithesis, Francis Poulenc, in the slow movement of his Trio.

In the 20th Century, melody suffered an eclipse from the followers of the Second Viennese School. This wasn't their original intention; Webern, for example, said he was looking for 'absolute melody', but this was at the expense of something you could hum, and advances in instrumental techniques, synthesisers and computers encouraged later composers to pursue ends other than melodic ones.

Meanwhile other developments, such as the incorporation of folk music, or the 'Socialist Realism' of composers such as Shostakovitch, as well as the rise of popular music as a separate genre, ensured the survival of melody. On this CD the operatic melodies of Casimir-Théophile Lalliet (circa 1870), the Romantic urges of Francis Poulenc (1928), the heartfelt melancholy of Geoffrey Bush (1952), the chirpy tunes of Richard Stoker (1963), the mediaeval references of Madeleine Dring (1971), and the sinuous lines of Barbara Thompson (2006), demonstrate that melody is alive and well.

It may also be that it is in the nature of the oboe and bassoon to play tunes, to connect to the human voice, and this has encouraged these composers to be more 'melodic' when writing for these instruments. Today's advanced instrumental techniques enable both oboe and bassoon players to make music of extraordinary complexity, but I can't help feeling that when our remote ancestors first punched finger holes in a wooden tube, it was a melody they had in mind.

Copyright Jeremy Polmear, 2006