Dear Margaret and Vocalisters:
I agree with you. The ability to sing a melody with breath-long phrases and connect these phrases together into a coherent complete song is not common today. Very little of the music heard and bought by the young have melodies of this kind. Most schools in the country have cut their music programs so singing is not taught. And fewer young people can replicate even a short melodic fragment which is the best test of pitch memory. I know of no other cause for this phenomenon than the pops music field with its emphasis on short melodic fragments that seldom cover the range of a melodic fifth and which, by their structural nature place an emphasis on other parameters of music such as rhythm, timbre, and, in some cases texture.
It is a free country. Emphasis can be placed where it is desired. And one can always quote the mantra of the business world: "It must be good, everyone is buying it." But each choice has effects and I believe the lack of melodic consciousness in our young is one of the consequences of the melodic wasteland that is found in a lot of pops music. -- Lloyd W. Hanson
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