[Dixielandjazz] Leonard Meyer Obit - author of "The Meaning of Music"

[Steve Barbone]

Leonard Meyer wrote the definitive work on the meaning of music. While not
specifically OKOM, his work studies the relationships between emotional
responses and musical patterns. Several interesting points about his
conclusions may be found at:

http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music829D/Notes/Meyer1.html

If you go there, they may surprise you. For example Meyer believes that:

Music IS NOT the universal language however there are several universals
within it. In almost all cultures, for example, the octave and the fifth or
fourth are treated as stable, focal tones toward which other terms of the
system tend to move. . . etc., etc.

or his contention that musical Hedonism is one among 3 major errors that
have confused music psychology over the years:

Hedonism: "the confusion of aesthetic experience with the sensuously
pleasing -- that is, the idea that musical beauty simply comes down to
"liking". "[A] Beethoven symphony," says Meyer, "is not a kind of musical
banana split, a matter of purely sensuous enjoyment." . . .

Both the web site and the book are a fun read if you are so inclined.

Obit follows below.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Leonard B. Meyer, Scholar of Music¹s Meaning, Is Dead at 89

NY TIMES - By KATHRYN SHATTUCK - January 2, 2008

Leonard B. Meyer, a pioneering musicologist whose 1956 book, ³Emotion and
Meaning in Music,² remains one of the most significant scholarly works in
the field of music cognition, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He
was 89. 

His death was confirmed by his daughter Carlin Meyer.

³Emotion and Meaning in Music,² adapted from his doctoral dissertation at
the University of Chicago, placed Mr. Meyer at the forefront of the emerging
field that connects music theory and aesthetics to psychology and
neuroscience. In the book, considered his most important, Mr. Meyer sought
links between emotional responses and musical patterns, especially those in
which an expectation is built up and then delayed or diverted ‹ for example,
the ³deceptive cadence,² a chord progression figuring prominently in
Mozart¹s compositions in which the dominant chord (based on the fifth note
of the scale in question) resolves in an unexpected way rather than
returning to the key¹s ³home² chord, or tonic.

Mr. Meyer was among the first scholars to explore the relationship between
game theory and music composition, and suggested that the value of a musical
work was in direct correlation to how well the complexity of the work
engaged the listener. For instance, works in which the audience¹s every
expectation was met were found to be ultimately unsatisfying. So, too, were
works in which no expectations were met.

Fifty years later, ³Emotion and Meaning in Music² remains in print and has
sold more than 60,000 copies. Mr. Meyer expanded on his early ideas in
several books, including ³The Rhythmic Structure of Music² (1960), with
Grosvenor Cooper; ³Music, the Arts and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in
20th-Century Culture² (1967); ³Explaining Music: Essays and Explanations²
(1973); ³Style and Music: Theory, History and Ideology² (1989), in which he
traced a cognitive history of 19th-century music; and ³Spheres of Music: A
Gathering of Essays² (2000).

Born in New York City and reared nearby in Westchester County, Mr. Meyer
learned Shakespeare sonnets from his father at a young age and honed a sense
of theatricality through family readings of plays by George Bernard Shaw and
Oscar Wilde. He studied at Bard College before enlisting in the Army in
World War II, during which he earned a Bronze Star for service in Normandy
and at the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war, he transferred to Columbia University, where he received a
bachelor¹s in philosophy and a master¹s in music. While at Columbia, he
studied composition with Stefan Wolpe, who, as Mr. Meyer liked to recount,
told him he could be ³the Gossec of your era² ‹ referring to a famously
minor 18th-century Belgian composer ‹ and later with Otto Luening and Aaron
Copland. It was Copland, Mr. Meyer said, who, spying his former student in a
deli one day, announced that there might be a job at the University of
Chicago.

In 1946, Mr. Meyer accepted that position in the department of music, where
he earned a Ph.D. in history of culture, taught for 29 years and was a part
of Saul Bellow¹s circle. In 1975, Mr. Meyer was named Benjamin Franklin
professor of music and humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He was
also a fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University,
received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was elected into the American Academy
of Arts and Letters. In October 2006, he was the subject of a symposium
organized at Northwestern University by Robert O. Gjerdingen, a former
student, in honor of the 50th anniversary of ³Emotion and Meaning in Music.²

In addition to his daughter Carlin Meyer of New York, he is survived by his
daughters Muffie Meyer, also of New York, and Erica Meyer of Chicago; two
granddaughters; and his first wife, Lee Meyer of Chicago. His second wife,
Janet Levy, died in 2004.

Mr. Meyer liked to entertain friends and family by singing Gilbert and
Sullivan operettas and quoting Shakespeare. He requested that his tombstone
be engraved with Hamlet¹s dying words: ³The rest is silence.²