In answer to Jeff Dunn's questions:
>1. Who wrote it, when?
I have no idea.
>2. Which interpretation do you like the best?
The second one, largely because the melody is shaped better and the
accompaniment is given greater prominence.
>3. Why or why not does the melody speak to you?
It seems awfully square, awfully predictable. For me it was only
moderately interesting.
>4. Is melody even that important or necessary nowadays?
Absolutely it is. But the definition of what constitutes a melody has
perhaps undergone changes that some of the great melodists of the past
would not recognize as 'melodic.'
>5. What are your all time favorite melodies?
Impossible to answer. Too many to enumerate. Having listened this
afternoon to Don Giovanni I could list five or six from that opera
alone.
Scott Morrison