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Melody in music consists in a sequence of single sounds curved to some line of beauty. Whereas rhythm is conceivable without any intellectual quality,—as a purely physical manifestation,—melody implies some sense of design, since it progresses from one point in time to another, and without design would be merely a series of incoherent sounds. In this design rhythm plays a leading part, and the themes having the most perfect balance of rhythms are the most interesting. Examples of diverse but highly coördinated melodies may be found in the slow movement of Beethoven’s pianoforte sonata, Opus 13, and in Brahms’s pianoforte quartette, Opus 60, the synthetic quality of which is like that of a finely constructed sentence. Melody, being design, gives conscious evidence of the personality of its creator. Schubert, for example, is like Keats and represents the type of pure lyric utterance. Bach, on the contrary, is essentially a thinker, and his melodies are full of vigorous and diversified rhythms.