The Impossible Beatles Melody

In the 1960s, the modern musical community produced an extraordinary musical group, The Beatles. There was nothing like it before in history, and nothing has materialized like it since; nothing even close.

The shuttle crew late last year awoke to the Beatles tune “Good Day Sunshine”. This event triggered thinking again on the Beatles phenomenon.

There are still many fans today of the music and history of The Beatles. The literal history of The Beatles pales in comparison to the musical legacy of the group though. It is a curious history. Hundreds of years from now, it is estimated that new music will be yet unable to match the quality of The Beatles for a number of reasons. Few can even mimic The Beatles, or dare to make a serious attempt at it mostly because of the unrepeatable quality of voice, which is central to the construction of Beatles music. Then again, one is led to believe recently that some Korean organ cloning laboratory might just see the research endowment welfare possibilities in trying to bio-genetically manufacture a pilfered Beatles vocal cord DNA implant for such a nefarious project as reconstructing a particular sounding voice. Providence would definitely get in the way of the desired cloning result, because another inseparable factor to The Beatles was the chemistry of the group -- the once only poetic gifts and talents that made up that chemistry, the devotion to the mastery of musical instruments from the unique environmental forces involved, and many other such inhibiting factors where part of the whole that exceeded the sum of the parts.

Another unrepeatable aspect of music is the mystery of melody. Once a melody is published, it is unmistakably indelible, even in another key.

Melody is not completely understood, but is generally meant to be characterized as the unfolding in musical time of a principle single line, and is most common in western forms of music. An interesting characteristic of melody is the order and resolution it brings to the sensory world ex nihilo. Typically the melody line of a music score is picked out and quickly memorized in human beings by some communicative design. It is my own understanding that melody causes unity in diversity to occur in the mind. Perfect unity and diversity at the same time occurs in the supernatural only within the trinity, and perhaps there is a connection to be studied as this is acted out in the function of the economic trinity. Additionally, a good melody is learned upon the first hearing, as if it were forever before time.

A good melody sounds familiar, but it is a new creation. There is no scientific explanation why one melody line is universally popular and another is not. In music theory, the particular facet of melody brings joy to the hearer. For this reason, it is a desirable thing to examine as well as being a facet of curiosity and great speculation. Creativity is a human quality that is one evidence of the image of God in man.

The question is, when we hear melody, are we hearing the individual notes more or the whole melody line that generates the positive reaction in us?

Gestalt theory attempts to perform intrinsic determination in its examination of melody, primarily in its psychological analysis, however it shies away from a simple dichotomy of science and life. Instead, Gestalt theory is resolved to penetrate the “problem” of melody itself by examining the fundamental assumptions of science which means breaking up complexes into their component elements. The elements are then isolated, their laws are discovered, then it is all reassembled, and the problem is solved. All wholes are reduced to pieces and piece-wise relations between pieces. This approach makes no presupposition other than the scientific method as it bears down on the question of melody.

Discovery channel carried the Lord Winston series of episodes a couple of years ago that attempted to unravel some of the undiscovered quirks of human nature. Viewing human beings as primarily chemical-mechanical or thermo-chemical systems, the Lord Winston shows did arrive at some findings about human nature that were not seen before because the light had not been cast from such an angle before, but when it came to the subject of love itself, all the potential human subjects of the study refused and departed. Even if it were possible to reveal something from the thermo-chemical detached tone of Lord Winston’s studies on love, the control groups and subjects of his study indicated across the board that they did not want to know even if it were possible to mechanistically explain away the subject of love, and that it was tampering with something that would anger nearly everyone if he proceeded. That is a very interesting response, and should be considered as part of the findings. In essence, I sensed that the test group respondents universally (virtually universal, to be more precise, as certainly someone would come forward, but overwhelmingly hostile would be more of an accurate description of the responses) would find no value in Lord Winston’s findings if he drew any conclusions about the subject of love in his unique approach.

The chemistry of The Beatles was exciting to all sorts of people because the group created original unheard of before musical compositions at a high rate of output; they sounded happy which was infectious, and the early themes of their music were on the difficult subject of love -- a subject only the church has been able to address in any meaningful way that transcends culture, and since the first meeting of the Beatles song writing members occurred providentially at a church fete, it was somewhat picturesque of the cosmic reality. The music of The Beatles was and remains universally appealing. Furthermore, the demand for Beatles music has not diminished long after the group has been disbanded. Lord Winston’s thermo-chemical approach to a study of love was universally rejected, but The Beatles’ approach to the subject of love was found to be acceptable. The “impossible” existence of melody is a big part of the ability to address such a guarded topic.