meaningful melodies

I came across a beautiful article in the NYTimes today...here is an excerpt:

Melody is its own idea, like sculpture. You don’t look at a piece of sculpture to see what is resting on top of it. A great melody has its own design, a beautiful combination of intervals and rhythms usually expressing the emotion of the song. Somehow a melody is connected, like the sense of smell, to memory, so when you hear a song it connects you in a flood of emotions to the time and place of that song. I am sure there are reasons in the brain for this, but as a songwriter I don’t need to know how the brain does it, only that it does. Here, for example, is one article that puts it succinctly. There are so many articles and books about what music does to the brain that I can’t list them all here.

the rest of the article: http://measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/whats-a-melody-for/

love,
emily