This lecture discusses melody and aesthetics; Professor Wright raises the question of what makes a melody beautiful, and uses excerpts from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and Mozart's Marriage of Figaro to explore this issue. Throughout the discussion, the foundations of classical phrase-structure and harmonic progressions are used to explain some of the choices these three composers made.

Reading assignment:

Wright, Craig. Listening to Music, pp. 33-38

Credits:

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Special thanks to Naxos, LLC for providing recordings from the Notes - Naxos Music Library for use in connection with the Open Yale Courses publication of Craig Wright's Listening to Music course. For specific credits, see: Naxos Music Credits - Lecture 6 [PDF]