Crucial solo lines break through, especially a dark, intense melody for viola.
They share gestures and even coloristic touches, and if the Fourth bursts into anguished, dissonant chords more often (and more nakedly) than its successor, it also offers passages of hushed serenity and intense melody.
Although in my youth my grandfather did not sing Hassidic melodies to me, there was an intense melody in the hum of his activity.
It's Coleman's most celebrated composition: a shatteringly intense, keening melody where the rhythm section plays fast while Ornette's alto sax screams, slowly.
A whole field of bands gravitated toward intense polyphony, liturgical melodies and the clank: drummers playing roughed-up rhythm, rushing time and forestalling your pleasure, vexing you on purpose.
David Quantick in The Word commented that "musically, Seduction is awe-inspiring in the way the Maels perfectly meld their current style – intense, repetitive beats and melodies (there's even a bit of squelching techno here) and caustic, snappy lyrics – with the demands of an actual musical".
Never decorative, they reveal both a respect for the melody and an intense desire to alter it"; during his main improvising, he used "interval-filled descending figures charging rhythmic phrases whose accented first notes make the succeeding notes snap, double-time phrases that race ahead to clear the way, and legato phrases that form sauntering rear guards".
"Erwartung" lasts just half an hour, but it is a brutal workout for a singer: intense and exposed, without clear melodies to latch onto.
From a simple, muted beginning, the music became more intense and embellished, as ornate melodies and ornaments unfolded with calligraphic detail above ostinato bass patterns.
"The Transfinite," Mr. Ikeda's piece at the Park Avenue Armory (through June 11), lasts only 9 minutes 20 seconds before it loops, but it's dynamic and intense, almost orchestral, without a single melody.
I tried to commit every note to memory, but ultimately, I was left with shards of lyrics, pieces of melody and a deep intense longing for a song I couldn't name.
