The Melody

The Melody of 1904 depicts a young woman in classical dress playing a stringed instrument—probably a lyra or similar Greco-Roman instrument—in the attitude of absorbed musical performance. Music was a recurrent subject in Godward's work, giving him the opportunity to combine the classical figure with the additional human dimension of artistic creation and the spiritual elevation that music traditionally represented. The combination of technical precision in depicting the instrument and the figure's expression of musical absorption was among the most demanding aspects of this category of his work.

The stringed instrument is rendered with the same archaeological precision Godward brought to the architectural and ceramic elements in his paintings, its wooden body and gut strings observed with careful attention to material reality. The figure's posture of musical absorption—body inclined toward the instrument, fingers placed—creates a moment of arrested action that freezes performance into contemplation.