CarleeCast: Melodic Contour in Angele Dei

In this podcast, Carly Strah discusses melodic contour using Susan LeBar's "Angela Day" as an example. Melodic contour refers to the shape of a melody and can be ascending or descending. LeBar creates a powerful moment in her piece by having voices sing overlapping lines that gradually ascend to the climax. The alto ones start with an ascending line, asking Angela Day to illuminate them. The alto twos then come in, and both voices join together in harmony to ascend into a key change. All eight voices move differently but rise together. The melodic contour creates imagery of light coming down from above. The music was provided by Jeremy Alves and Nature's Eye, and the singing was edited on Audacity. Hello, my name is Carly Strah. In today's podcast I will be discussing melodic contour. The example that I will be referencing is Susan LeBar's Angela Day and how the melodic contour leads up to a powerful moment in the piece, even without any variation in the lyrics. Melodic contour is described as the shape of the melody or the notes that are being played. Notes that are getting higher and higher can be described as ascending contour. For example, Notes that are getting lower and lower can be described as descending contour. For example, Susan LeBar creates such a powerful moment in her piece by having all of the voices sing an overlapping round-like structure, each with their own ascending line, then joined together and continued to sing higher to the climax of the piece, the key change. To lead us into this moment, the alto ones begin by singing an ascending line of Illumina, meaning illuminate, in which the singer is asking Angela Day, or the angel of God, to shed light upon them. The four-note pattern itself is moving higher on every note, but also, as the line is repeated, it ascends even higher every time. As you can tell, the melodic contour for this voice is ascending, meaning the notes are moving higher. The second voice, the alto twos, come in as the alto ones fold out their notes. Listen for both the voices' individual contour as they overlap. Then, the two voices join together, singing Illumina at the same time in harmony. The voices begin separately, sharing the same melodic contour and idea, then become stronger as they join and ascend into the key change together. This is just an example of two of the voices, when in reality, all eight move in different ways, then rise simultaneously. For me, the melodic contour creates the imagery of light coming down from above, like the word Illumina suggests. I would like to thank Susan Labar for composing this beautiful piece. The intro and outro music you heard were provided by Jeremy Alves and Nature's Eye on Pixabay. The editing of the singing was done on the platform Audacity.