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Many different kinds of melodies were developed during the 20th century.

Impressionism

Some impressionist music is based on whole tone scales, especially the music of Debussy. Debussy and other impressionist composers, such as Maurice Ravel, also rediscovered modes and used them to create new sound worlds that shocked audiences in the early 20th century.

Minimalism

• The repetition of an original musical cell (or idea).
• The cells are manipulated in a number of ways, including repetition, phase-shifting, augmentation (making the melodies longer), diminution (making the melodies shorter) and inversion (turning melodies upside down).
• A composer may add or take away music from an original cell.

Example

In the third movement of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint the original pattern is shifted a number of times to create a delayed effect.

Expressionism

• Melodies are often angular and disjunct.
• Phrases are irregular and often short.
• Melodies are usually atonal instead of diatonic.
• The focus for the composer was usually the sound and tone quality of the instruments being played, not the overall melodic shapes.

Example

Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces is an excellent example of Expressionism. Peripetie opens with examples of all of the features listed above.

Serialism

Serialism was Schoenberg’s way of changing the tonality of his music. Instead of using major and minor scales, he took each of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale and rearranged them into a new 12 tone scale. This became the tone row for the piece. The original tone scale was called the prime order. Schoenberg manipulated the prime order to make new tone rows for the same piece of music. He would transpose it, and turn it backwards (retrograde) - and upside down - inversion.

Example

The first movement from Anton Webern’s String Quartet Op.22 is an excellent example of Serialism.

Popular and World music

Melodies from different styles and genres came from a number of different scales:

• blues scale - rock ’n’ roll, jazz
• scales from around the world including raga, Arabic scales and pentatonic scales

Melodies were also decorated in alternative ways from the Western Classical tradition:

• pitch bends, often heard in Israeli folk music
• scales from around the world including raga, Arabic scales and pentatonic scales