Gardener

You are right, I worded this poorly. Yes, melodies depend strongly on harmonies, of course, and therefore on the underlying tonality. The type of your melodies is certainly not independant of the tonality. What I wanted to say is that the question -whether- you write melodies or not, is principally independant of tonality.

For me, melodic composition is primarily thinking in lines and deals with how one note leads to the next to create a coherent flow, in contrast to a blocky, vertical, or pointillistic approach where the individual musical moments "speak for themselves" and are more individual "objects in space", than part of a linear stream.

Of course, in reality it's almost never one or the other, as both aspects are connected. And many composers have even seen it as an ideal to combine both aspects as equally as possible. But somtimes, the audible effect of the music may go strongly in one direction.

As for popularity: I have often experienced that if you truly write the music you want to hear yourself, it is likely that you won't be the only one who enjoys it. Maybe there are some really weird composers out there who have such a unique taste that nobody else shares it to -any- degree, but for most of us this doesn't apply. But even if it -was- that way, I'd still rather write the music I like myself and accept the fact that it won't become popular. The point I've raised before is that there simply isn't something like "the audience". There are larger audiences, smaller audiences up to the audience that consists only of yourself. You will never meet the taste of everyone, but if you at least write music you can enjoy yourself, you at least know you have met the taste of -someone-. There is no writing "for the audience". There's just writing for a larger or a smaller audience.

As I said, the audience of a Boulez sonata is not huge in comparison to the world population, but it -is- significant. Why shouldn't the thousands, ten-thousands, hundred-thousands of people who do like to listen to "atonal" music not also get what they like? There's hardly a lack of traditionally tonal music out there. It's not like the world's population is forced to listen to Boulez every day because it's the only music that exists. (But of course I really -would- like if people wouldn't just listen to one and the same type of music all their lives without any curiousity what else there is out there.)

If your aim is to reach "the largest audience possible" of course, you might be better off forgetting about classical music right away.