How very few thinkers on music dare even consider the topic of emotion and meaning in music shows the difficulty of the task Meyer sets himself. This is a truly important book--far beyond any history or theoretical tome I've ever read, this aims right at the heart of what music is about. It is very tough going--this was adapted from Meyer's doctoral dissertation, but it repays every effort made. Meyer's mind is enviably far-ranging; he uses examples from the visual arts to the hard sciences and philosophy to make his points. His later book, Explaining Music, is an easier read, still full of valuable insights but much more oriented toward a theoretical, quasi-Schenkerian approach to music. But for me, Emotion and Meaning in Music (along with his much later Style and Music) is much more significant, dealing with more profound and much less frequently discussed issues. This book has my HIGHEST recommndation.

Leonard Meyer once again proves he is one of the great thinkers about music in this fantastically wide-ranging book. The subtitle, Theory, History, and Ideology is not an empty promise--Meyer's discussion is exactly the relationships between Theory and Ideology, especially in Romantic music; how ideology affects compositional practice. His thoughts on elite egalitatarianism, disguise in music, and the persistence of Romanticism are a must-read for the serious music scholar. That Meyer's thoughts can scarely be contained within the confines of a book is deomonstrated by his own writing style--fully half of the book is footnoted asides--points brought up by the main text and worthy of discussion but which would side-track the main points if pursued there; almost as if Meyer has written two books in one! I cannot recommend this book more highly--I think it is one of the most important English language books on music ever written.

Here Cooper and Meyer take on the nature of rhythm in music, using a system of relationships between accents and unaccented or lesser accented notes based on poetic feet. It is one of the very few attempts to discuss rhythm (beyond a basic categorization such as simple/compound; duple/triple)--that it is not, perhaps, completely successful should not entirely invalidate the effort, or indeed, the achievement. Certain topics are not entirely well-explained. I remember that as a student I asked Professor Meyer the difference between two particular terms used in the book--his answer was that he could no longer remember (this was probably 15 years after the book was written) and that the distinction no longer seemed important to him. True, the book was jointly authored and perhaps this distinction was never fully convincing to Meyer--I don't know. In spite of this, the book is truly important for introducing and discussing the concept of form as a rhythmic idea. That rhythm, like pitch, can have hierarchic structures may at first seem counterintuitive; but Cooper and Meyer make a convincing arguement. And that after some 35 years this book is still in print and has not been superceded speaks volumes.