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Explorations in Music, The Am, and Ideas: Essays in Honor of Leonard B. Meyer. Edited by Eugene N annour and Ruth A. Solie. Stuyvesant: Pendragon Press, 1988. xiii, 473 pages.

Marvin, Elizabeth West

Leonard Meyer should be proud of this collection in his honor. It is clear that his work has deeply influenced a generation of scholars. The editors agree that ''what these writers have learned from Meyer is the refusal to be defeated by or capitulate to the sometimes argumentative interplay between the historical persona of musicology and its more analytical moods". In many of these essays, the authors manage to "step back" and take a critical and evaluative look at the nature of musicological and music-theoretical research, both in relation to other disciplines and in relation to the musical experience of composer, performer, and listener. For the impetus behind these studies, we may have Leonard Meyer to thank. Readers familiar with his work will recognize several themes in this organizational scheme that recur with some regularity in Meyer's puplications, most notably the empirical bent of several articles, the attention given to musical meaning and to the aural and creative experiences of listeners and composers, and the critical examination of the methodology of music theorists and historians. All the authors represented here show their indebtedness to Meyer's work in some manner, either by direct citation or by their choice of subject matter or approach.

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Current Musicology

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Academic Units
Music
Publisher
Columbia University
Published Here
February 6, 2015