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University M icrdom s International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8400187 Cox, Renee S. THE AESTHETICS OF LEONARD MEYER: MUSICAL FORMALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1983 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1983 by Cox, Renee S. All Rights Reserved PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark 7 . 1. Glossy photographs or pages_______ 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print______ 3. Photographs with dark background______ 4. Illustrations are poor copy_______ 5. Pages with black marks, not original copy___ 6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page_______ 7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages i / 8. Print exceeds margin requirements______ 9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine_______ 10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print_______ 11. Page(s)_____________lacking when material received, and not available from school or author. 12. Page(s)_____________seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows. 13. Two pages numbered_____________. Text follows. 14. Curling and wrinkled pages_______ 15. Other_____________________________________________________________________________ University Microfilms International THE AESTHETICS OF LEONARD MEYER: MUSICAL FORMALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The,Ohio State University By Renee Cox, B.M., M.M. # K ff # # The Ohio State University 1983 Reading Committee: Approved By Dr. Herbert Livingston Dr. Burdette Green Dr. Charles Atkinson Advisor Department of Music ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Paul Ramsey, Eric Lane, Edward Danial, and Leonard Meyer. VITA May 2*1, 1 952.... Born - Independence, Missouri 197*1. B.M., Oberlin College 1 976. M.M., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1976-present.... Assistant Professor of Music History, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 1 979 . University Fellow, Ohio State University January-May, 1982 . Assistant Professor of Music History, Oberlin College PAPERS "The QUEM QUAERITIS Dialogue and the Development of the OFFICIUM PASTORUM and the OFFICIUM STELLAE," Journal of The Ohio State Graduate Students in Music VIII (Autumn, 1 9 8 1 ) . "Meyer, Meaning, and Music," read at the Tennessee Philosophical Association, November, 19 81. "Implication, Pointing, and Semiotic," read at the American Society of Aesthetics, March, 1982. FIELDS OF STUDY Music History Aesthetics of Music Music Theory TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............. i VITA ................................................... ii LEONARD MEYER: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION .... ±v INTRODUCTION .......................................... 1 Chapter I. MEYER AND FORMALISM............................... 7 II. EXPECTATION, AESTHETIC EMOTION AND MEANING . 39 III. IMPLICATION: SUBJECT OR OBJECT? ............... 77 IV. EXPECTATION, MEANING AND INFORMATION THEORY. 104 V. ANALYTIC FORMALISM IN A FLUCTUATING STASIS . 140 VI. MEYER, FORMALISM AND STRUCTURALISM ............. 171 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................... 1 8 2 i i i LEONARD MEYER: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Leonard Meyer was born in New York on January 12, 1 91G- He received the PhD in History of Culture from the University of Chicago in 1954, and has received honorary degrees from Grinnell College, Loyola University, and Bard College. He was a faculty member at the University of Chicago from 1946-75, where he chaired the music department from 1961-70 and served as Phyllis Fay Horton Professor of Humanities from 19 72-75. He is presently serving as Benjamin Franklin Professor of Music and University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Other positions held are Fellow, Center of Advanced Studies, Wesleyan University, 1960-61; member, National Humanities Faculty, 1970-71; Ernest Bloch Professor of Music, University of California at Berkeley, 1971; Guggenheim Fellow, 1971-72; and visiting professor, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, 1973. He was awarded the Gordon Laing Book Award in 1 969 for KusiCj the Arts and Ideas. Published works include Emotion and Meaning in Music (19 5 6), The Rhythmic Structure of Music (1960, Grovsenor Cooper, co-author), Music , th_ e _ A.r ts_and_Ideas ( 1 967 ), Which includes several previously published articles. Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations (19 7 3) "Concerning the Sciences, the Arts— AND the Humanities" iv ( 1 9 7 4 ) "Grammatical Simplicity and Relational Richness: The Trio of Mozart’s G Miner Symphony" (1976), 2 "Toward a Theory of Style" (1979),3 "Exploiting Limits: Creation, Archetypes and Change" (1980)^and "Process and Morphology in The Music of Mozart" (1982),3 (The 1 979 and 1980 articles are from a forthcoming book on musical style.) Meyer's work has been widely read and commented on, and his influ­ ence has been considerable enough for F. E. Sparshott to write in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) that Meyer's aesthetic theory "was the most widely accepted account of music in America in the 1960's." ^Critical Inquiry 1/1, pp. 163-217. ^Critical Inquiry II/2, pp. 693-761. ■^Included in The Concept of Style, ed. Berel Lang (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979) pp. 3^44 . Saedalns 107. pp . 177-2 05. ^Journal of Musicology i/l, pp. 64-94. ^"Meyer, Leonard B(unce)," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed . Stanlie Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), Vol. 12, p. 244. V Abbreviations used in this Document EMM: Emo tion and Meaning in Mus ic MAI : Music, the Arts and Ideas EM : Explaining Music JAAC : Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism INTRODUCTION Leonard Meyer is one of the most important and influ­ ential music aestheticians of the twentieth century. His work over the past thirty years is reflective of a wide variety of knowledge and interests, interests wL_ch may seem on the surface so diverse as to have resulted in frequent shifts of position. It is posited here that although Meyer's work is eclectic and marked by frequent changes of termi­ nology, it all corresponds in significant ways to the for­ malist perspective. Because Meyer has been very much aware of and involved in the Zeitgeist of the twentieth century, however, he cannot be labeled a formalist without some quali­ fication: his formalism increasingly comes to parallel structuralist concerns. This study will therefore begin by considering Meyer's music aesthetics against a background of nineteenth and twentieth-century formalism, and conclude by relating some of Meyer's contributions to those of contemporary French structuralists. Before presenting Meyer's theories, dis­ cussing scholarly criticisms which have been or could be leveled against them, and assessing the theories in light of these criticisms, it will be helpful to consider briefly the implications and condition of contemporary formalism. Formalism has traditionally been concerned with form and formal relationships in art- rather than with expression or extra-artistic associations. While it was a popular aesthetic perspective in the late nineteenth and early twen­ tieth centuries, relatively few artists and critics pre­ sently call themselves "formalists"; S. I. Hayakawa has commented that the term formalism has degenerated into "a meaningless noise meaning disapproval . Some of the rea­ sons for this disapproval may be articulated as follows. First, in being