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Fashions come and go, but melody continues to be the most important factor in any musical work. We may call it by ugly names such as ‘thematic material’ or ‘subject matter’ or ‘basic ideas’ or ‘tone-row’ or we may, to make it sound more mysterious and esoteric, call it by its Greek name, ‘melos’, but we cannot get away from the fact that in any intelligible piece of music there must be recognizable themes out of which it is built. It is sometimes said that the ideas do not matter, and that the only thing that does matter is what the composer does with them. I wonder what works are quoted in support of this view. I can think of no work of excellence which conforms to it. Surely it is the melodic material or tune-stuff, whether in the shape of short figures or extended lines, that determines the character of a movement and gives it personality and individuality. The germinal melodic ideas form the only part of a piece of music of which the origin is unknown and which is not the result of conscious invention. The mind may work on these germs, as Beethoven’s did, to such an extent that their final form hardly bears relation to the first rough draft, or they may spring to life fully formed, as seems to have happened to Mozart. This is only another way of saying that Beethoven’s pruning and polishing was conscious, whereas Mozart’s was sub-conscious.... Many novelists, it is said, begin by conceiving a principal character who becomes such a real person to them that the plan of the book and all the other characters in it spring from this newly created being, whose behaviour determines the shape of the incidents and dilemmas which go to make up the story and may cause situations unthought of when the novel is begun. It is just the same with a composer. He lives with his idea. Awake or asleep it is always with him. Other ideas spring from it. Unforeseen developments arise from it. It may lead him willy-nilly into all sorts of by-ways. But it is always there, whether in the background or foreground, giving unity and logic to the work in hand. GORDON JACOB, 1955 Opposite: The final page of “Fanfare for the 350th anniversary of the foundation of Dulwich College”, composed by Gordon Jacob in 1968-9.The manuscript is held by the College Archive.
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