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and in the course of shifting from music to psychology. I had been brought up in the tradition of American pragmatism—my father was a high school
teacher steeped in the progressive approach of John
Dewey. A large part of the attraction of psychology
was the promise it held of attacking empirically the
issues I saw in music and, in the broadest sense, in life.
It was clear to me that the problems of how we understand music, and of how music is structured so that
people can understand it, needed to be addressed
through empirical research, and basically involved
problems of psychology. This was also true of the fundamental questions of who we are as humans, how we
understand one another, and how we understand
ourselves. So I was strongly drawn to study psychology, and in particular what my new psychology advisor Donald T. Campbell called “the comparative
psychology of knowledge processes.”
Into this heady and enthusiastic mixture came
Meyer’s book. I became immersed in it. Leafing
through it now, I see the examples that fairly leaped off
the page to grab me in my transitional, receptive state:
the c minor fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier,
Isolde’s Liebestod, Beethoven’s symphonies, Mozart’s
quartets, a dance from Carmen . . . all of these presented in a way that illuminated them with new sense,
and more importantly, connected them to my new
found enthusiasm for empirical investigation of the
mysteries of musical structure. Meyer’s chapters bristled with suggestions of problems to be investigated,
along with a well thought out framework for seeing
musical structure from a psychological perspective.
My advisor had recommended the technique of creating my own index on the back flyleaf as I progressed
through the book, and that and my marginal notations
indicate that an aspect of Meyer’s thought that captivated me in particular back then came under his heading of “The Weakening of Shape.” I had not thought
much at that time about ambiguity in music, and
Meyer’s account opened a whole new vista for me on
what (to judge from the indexical entries I invented)
had previously struck me as meaningless filler material.
The following sentences from page 174 had been
marked for future reference:
The absence of a well-shaped melodic pattern is
important. For were rhythm and melody distinctly
shaped, the attention of the listener would be directed
to these and the feeling of security and control found in
such clearly articulated shapes would considerably
diminish the suspense and uncertainty engendered by
the uniformity of the other aspects of the musical
process.
479
This and innumerable other wise and perceptive
observations by Meyer broadened my understanding of
music immensely. The book’s dilapidated binding and
dog-eared pages indicate the times I’ve returned to it
again and again in my thoughts about music cognition
and musical structure. I am forever indebted to this
great scholar and wise thinker.
Leonard B. Meyer, Referentialist
Z OHAR E ITAN
Tel Aviv University
Leonard Meyer begins his first book with a distinction
between two kinds of musical meaning: “absolute”
meaning, which “lies exclusively . . . in the perception of
the relationships set forth within the musical work of
art,” and “referential” meanings, which “refer to the
extramusical world of concepts, actions, emotional
states, and character” (Meyer, 1956, p. 1). Though
acknowledging the significance of referential meanings,
Emotion and Meaning in Music, and most of Meyer’s later
writings, are devoted to explorations of “absolute”meaning
—of how musical significance, and in particular emotional expression in music, is conveyed “within the closed
context of the musical work itself” (1956, p. 2).
Yet, starting from the last chapter of Emotion and
Meaning (pp. 256-272), and gradually increasing in
later writings, a contrasting strand of ideas emerges in
Meyer’s thought. This “referentialist” thread, rarely
identified with Meyer’s thought (Spitzer, 1997, is a
notable exception), seems to suggest not only that
extramusical connotation is pertinent to musical meaning, but furthermore, that the musical patterns and
processes upon which Meyer’s own absolutist aesthetics
are founded are primarily based outside “music itself,”
in the bodily tensions and somatic responses of listeners
and performers. In this tribute to the person who, more
than anybody else, has shaped my scholarly self, I concentrate on these two related aspects of Meyer’s referentialism: his notions of musical connotation and of
“connotative complexes,” and his view of the embodied
bases of musical patterns, processes, and implications.
Connotations, Connotative Complexes,
and Cross-Domain Mapping
Musical connotations are based on shared similarities
“between our experience of the materials of music and
their organization, on the one hand, and our experience
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of the non-musical world of concepts, images, objects,
qualities and states of mind, on the other” (Meyer, 1956,
p. 260). For Meyer, there are two main sources for such
similarities: kinesthetic and synaesthetic. The first
source consists of analogies between the shape, course,
and quality of musical activity and those of extramusical
processes and objects (Meyer observes that even modes
of experience in which motion is not directly involved—
“spring, revolution, darkness, the pyramids, a circle”—
are associated qualitatively with motion or activity).
Hence, “If connotations are to be aroused at all, there
will be a tendency to associate the musical motion in
question with a referential concept or image that is felt
to exhibit a similar quality of motion” (1956, p. 261).
A second source of musical connotation is based on
what we would call today “cross-domain mapping”
(Lakoff, 1993; Zbikowski, 1997). Meyer proposes that
“in experience, even single musical tones tend to
become associated with qualities generally attributed to
non-aural modes of sense perception” and points out
some such associations, all of which have become, in the
five decades since the book’s publication, subjects of
diverse studies of cross-modal perception (see Marks,
2000, 2004, for recent surveys): “tones are characterized
with respect to size (large or small), color value (light or
dark), position (high or low) and tactile quality (rough
or smooth, piercing or round)” (Meyer, 1956, p. 260).
Through such audiovisual and audiotactile mappings,
musical sound is associated with our experience of the
world, and these associations (e.g., low tones with dark
colors, low position, large size, and slower motion) constrain musical connotation and reference.
Meyer’s most interesting notion concerning musical
connotation is perhaps that of the “connotative complex.” He observes that the qualities associated with
musical objects are themselves perceptually interrelated, for instance “volume is associated with position
(e.g., a large object is generally associated with a low
position), and both of these are associated with color”
(1956, p. 260). Music, due to the flexibility of its connotation, is able to present “that which enables [such qualities]
to become metaphors for one another”—a “connotative
complex.” The interrelations among different perceptual and cognitive domains embodied by such complex,
suggests Meyer, are fundamental to human experience,
and enable music to present, perhaps more than any
other art form, “the disembodied essence of myth, the
essences of experiences which are central and vital to
human existence” (1956, p. 265).
Cross-modal notions of musical connotation go way
back in the history of musical aesthetics (see, e.g.,
Zarlino, 1558/1968, Chapter 8), and Meyer himself
refers to Koffka and other Gestaltists as his precursors
in proposing a unified, cross-modal perceptual space
(Meyer, 1956, p. 292, n. 4). However, what distinguishes
Meyer’s ideas, and may make them particularly appealing to music perception and cognition researchers, are
the intriguing testable hypotheses stemming from
them. Thus, for instance, Meyer proposes that two
related auditory factors affect the power and specificity
of a musical connotation. The first is “the divergence of
a unit of sound from a neutral state” (1956, p. 263); that
is, the use of extreme values, relative to medium range,
of auditory parameters such as tempo, pitch register,
or loudness. Secondly, Meyer observes that auditory
parameters are interdependent, such that values in one
parameter are normally associated with values in
another (e.g., fast tempi, loud dynamics, and high pitch
ranges). Thus, incongruence between auditory parameters (e.g., a fast, high-pitched melody played very softly)
would itself create a second-order “divergence,” which,
as Meyer suggests (1956, pp. 263-64), also enhances
musical connotation.
Such hypotheses, as well as others suggested above,
may stimulate intriguing empirical investigations, both
in music cognition and in empirical musicology (for
instance, do explicitly programmatic or descriptive
musical compositions particularly emphasize the above
divergences?). Meyer thus provides ways to relate even
his loftiest notions to strict empirical research.
The Body in the Musical Mind
With regard to the role of the “body”—motor
responses, somatic empathy, physiological tensions—
in music perception and affect, comparing Meyer’s
earlier and later writings reveals a fundamental transformation of outlook. Emotion and Meaning, while
acknowledging the significance of motor responses
and other bodily processes, concludes that since
“everything which occurs as a motor response can be
accounted for in terms of mental activity and, since the
converse of this is not true, music is best examined in
terms of mental behavior” (p. 182). In contrast, in his
unpublished manuscript, “Thinking about music:
Observations and hypotheses,” Meyer proposes that
“Musical experience, and consequentially musical
enjoyment, is to a considerable extent shaped by the
bodily responses to rhythmic/metric patterns and to
somatic empathy with patterns of pitch contour”
(Meyer, 2002, p. 6).
Thus, motor responses and somatic empathy
become for Meyer the roots of the cognitive constraints
and musical patterns underlying his music aesthetics
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Tributes to Leonard B. Meyer
and theory. In particular, he views the Gestalt law of
good continuation, fundamental in his implicationrealization model, as well as related musical patterns,
such as the gap-fill schema, as stemming primarily
from motor responses and somatic proclivities: “it is
not just, or perhaps even primarily, our minds that
tend to continue, and perhaps complete, patterns, but
our bodies” (2002, p. 4). Consequentially, the role of
melodic contour and other “statistical” parameters in
delineating emotion is interpreted as resulting from
listeners’ somatic empathy with the bodily efforts and
tensions involved in sound (particularly vocal) production: “the statistical parameters beget the physicalsomatic conditions which, through empathy, characterize
emotional states in the primal present” (Meyer, 2001,
p. 346).
This embodiment of music cognition (and consequentially, of musical affect) suggests to Meyer a wealth
of testable hypotheses and experimental methods, most
still waiting to be harvested. They concern topics such
the relationship of melodic intervals and tempo (Meyer,
2002, p. 11), the effect of motor behavior on musical
memory (2002, pp. 9-10), the role of performers’ bodily
behavior in constructing listeners’ cognitive, affective,
and motor “preparatory set” (2002, p. 14), and how
bodily aging affects the aesthetic preferences of composers and listeners (2002, p. 17).
Half a century ago, Emotion and Meaning in Music
inspired psychologists and music scholars to explore
the uncharted spheres of music perception and cognition, and thus create a new discipline. As issues of crossmodality and embodied music cognition are becoming
a buzzing center of that discipline (as the latest
SMPC—where cross-modal topics provided about a
third of the presentations—attest), its author has left us
an astonishingly relevant legacy of insightful observations and bold hypotheses, waiting to be explored.
The Very Model
R OBERT G JERDINGEN
Northwestern University
Disciplines like philosophy, ethics, social theory,
premodern science, and aesthetics owe such a debt to
the same seminal scholar that they each have been
described as “footnotes to Aristotle.” In music studies,
and especially in music cognition, a similar debt is
owed to Leonard B. Meyer, the scholar whom Joseph
Kerman lauded as “the most original and profound
481
writer on music of the post-World War II era” (2000).
Over the course of his long career, Meyer’s ideas and
his ways of approaching great questions became so
tightly woven into scholarly discourse as to transcend
his authorship and appear self-evident. Yet each of
Meyer’s great insights had a beginning, a source in his
lifelong studies of the human mind and its cultural
artifacts.
In the spring of 1980, Daedalus, the journal of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published
Meyer’s “Exploiting Limits: Creation, Archetypes, and
Style Change.” His essay stemmed from an address
delivered to an earlier symposium hosted by Emory
University. Titled Transcending Limits, the symposium
was intended to highlight similarities in how the arts
and sciences achieved progress. The role likely envisioned for Meyer was to describe the hero composers
who broke the bonds of convention and thereby created
new musical styles and possibilities. But Meyer, a composer in his younger days, would have none of that
Romantic conceit:
Much depends on what is meant by the phrase transcending limits. But the prevalent view—which may
serve as a reminder of the still-powerful presence of
Romanticism in our culture—seems to be that
expressed by Bronowski: “We expect artists as well as
scientists to be forward-looking, to fly in the face of
what is established, and to create not what is acceptable, but what will become acceptable.” This view,
which is entirely compatible with common cultural
scuttlebutt, implies that artistic change is the desirable
and necessary consequence of experimentation (the
scientific model is obvious) and that such experimentation results in revolutions in technical means and
perhaps aesthetic ends as well. In short, what seems
meant by transcending limits is the overturning of
some prevalent style of art and the institution of a new
one through a revolution comparable to those said by
some to be characteristic of the sciences. The conception of creativity posited by this view seems to me to be
partial and strained. When applied to the arts, it is misleading and mistaken in significant ways.
The kind of artistic creativity that interested Meyer
was not the invention of a new chord or scale. Instead it
“involves exploiting and extending the possibilities
potential in an existing set of principles in order to
make a presentational pattern.” What this “kind of creativity produces is not a generalization but a particular,
not a propositional theory but a presentational phenomenon—a specific set of relationships designed to be
directly understood and experienced by culturally competent audiences.” Thus instead of transcending limits,
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and performed, Meyer always understood that music,
and our ways of interacting with music, are deep reflections of cultural, political, and historical trends within
broader society. How music is, and how we respond to
music, tells us something hugely important about the
nature and direction of human society.
Meyer delivered his Kingston lecture less than two
months before the event that changed the course of the
21st century: the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet, alone of the
contributors to that conference, he was already making
strong links between music, politics, war, and peace.
For him, the decline in goal-directed conceptualizations of music (conceptualizations which prize adventurous personal heroism) in favor of “present oriented”
egalitarian popular and minimalist music, was a reflection of a wider cultural “decline in the valuing of personal honor, the heroic, and the risk-taking associated
with them” (Meyer, 2001, p. 356). It could be seen as
both prescient and ironic that the only person he chose
to cite verbatim in his address was Admiral Arthur,
commander of the US naval forces during the first Gulf
War, who is quoted as having said, “we now have people being taught how to be cautious, not how to be
bold.”
Intellectual boldness, with all its inherent risks, is
what Leonard Meyer exemplified. For this, above all, he
will remain in my pantheon. Our discipline has been
enriched beyond measure by his work.
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