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Like drama, and perhaps even more so, it tries to echo their fundamental rhythms. This process tends to follow one of two general scenarios, which may also combine or overlap or generate mixed or novel types. The first scenario is cyclical. It identifies the fate of melody with a large symmetrical movement of departure and return. The simplest type (the ternary A B A) consists of a melodic statement, a contrastive middle section, and a return of the opening statement. The music traces a single arc, sometimes with a small addition (a coda) at the close.

The melody comes back, all right, but never intact. It is never quite the same. Why? Why does Brahms tie this music so closely to the melancholy of transience? Among the many possible answers, one has to do with a deep strain of melancholy widely felt to pervade modern life, another with the melancholy of mortality. Brahms was over sixty, feeling old and creatively exhausted, when he wrote this music. Both he and his century had only a few years left to live. But another reason may go even deeper, reflecting an awareness of both the beauty and the melancholy inherent in music itself.

If you transpose a piece of tonal music from one key to another, the result is a detailed replica of the original. Listeners without perfect pitch will probably not be able to tell the difference between the two or to say which version is the original and which the simulation. But if you keep only the chord progressions of a piece while replacing the original melodies, rhythms, The Fate of Melody / 45 and textures, the result will be a different piece, and probably an incoherent one (unless what you’re doing is jazz improvisation, which is another story altogether).