Introduction to the Spanish edition of Emotion and Meaning in Music, by Leonard B. Meyer

(Alianza Editorial, Alianza Música Collection, No. 79, Madrid, December 2001)


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Many years before this book came into my hands, I was already deeply interested in everything related to the psychology of musical perception, as well as the syntactic and semantic issues regarding music as a language. I was equally concerned about the lack of interest from Spanish-language publishers of the time in providing their readers with appropriate translations of the relatively abundant literature on these topics. By chance -or rather, disorganization- I stumbled upon a series of essays that referenced these matters, all revolving around the volume the reader now holds.
The first essay (I cite them in the chronological order in which I encountered them) was one I purchased in 1980 in Rome, during my student days. It was titled Musica e linguaggio nell'estetica contemporánea (1), and its author, Enrico Fubini, devoted a brief but insightful paragraph to this book, which immediately caught my attention. In 1988, I came across a book by Umberto Eco, La definición del arte (2), in which the Italian semiotician extensively discussed Emotion and Meaning in Music (an entire chapter of the second part, titled "Musical Emotion: A Psychological Explanation"). Finally, a few months later, I devoured with true delight the Spanish translation of La estética musical de la Antigüedad al siglo XX (3), where Enrico Fubini again referred to Leonard B. Meyer's study, this time exhaustively.
With this background, my interest in this book steadily grew. However, due to its absence in Spanish and the difficulty of finding it in our country, I set it aside for a few years. That was until a trip to New York in 1992, when, browsing through the music theory section of Patelson's bookstore, I unexpectedly and happily came across it.
An initial quick reading during the long journey home, followed by several slower, more thoughtful readings, not only convinced me of the tremendous importance of this work but also profoundly altered my own approach to teaching my disciplines of harmony and analysis. Since then, I have incorporated many of the concepts discussed here into my lessons.
In this sense, Meyer's analyses of excerpts from composers such as Chopin, Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, or Bartók, to name just a few, are profoundly enlightening. Equally illuminating are his wide-ranging aesthetic considerations, particularly those concerning style (such as those forming the core of the lucid second chapter), which demonstrate the author's admirable ability to synthesize the diverse disciplines that influence art, whether in terms of its creation, history, or psychological and scientific foundations.
In my view, the appearance of Emotion and Meaning in Music in Spanish marks the settling of a long-standing debt -one not erased by time. The recent blossoming of theoretical and analytical literature in our language concerning music owed a debt to one of the pioneering works in the psychological approach to music (4). It is worth noting that the original version of this study dates back to 1956 and represented, both then and now, a significant contribution to earlier studies in this field.
Although the origins of this discipline can be traced to the Greek philosophy of the 6th century BC, its modern formulation lies in the studies of Helmholtz (1821–1894), who offered a synthesis of physics, physiology, and musical psychology. However, it wasn't until the 20th century, particularly the 1930s, that the field experienced its first peak. During this decade, major works appeared that would serve as a foundation for Meyer's studies.
Books from this period include J. Dewey's Art as Experience (1934), J. L. Mursell's The Psychology of Music (1937), C. E. Seashore's Psychology of Music (1938), and M. Schoen's The Psychology of Music (1940). This era also saw the emergence of major, sometimes conflicting, schools of thought, such as mentalism, behaviorism, and, notably, Gestalt theory, as formulated by K. Koffka in Principles of Gestalt Psychology (1935).
It is primarily this latter school to which Leonard B. Meyer's theses in Emotion and Meaning in Music adhere. Indeed, this work represents the first attempt to apply Gestalt theory, originally developed for visual perception and largely applied to the plastic arts, to music.
However, Meyer's approach does not focus solely on the perceptual aspects of music as an end in themselves but instead on how these aspects influence the listener's affective aesthetic experience. This generates a complex realm of psychological sensations we generically call emotion, which, in turn, assigns specific meaning to different musical situations. This originality is the book's main hallmark -although, relatively speaking, it is not entirely original. Meyer, in a way returning from positivist scientism, adopts a stance that aligns him with 18th-century musical theorists (like Mattheson or Rameau), who were more concerned with the interaction between sensation and affect than with the purely physical or mathematical aspects of music that had preoccupied their predecessors.
To this end, in Emotion and Meaning in Music, Meyer brilliantly synthesizes Gestalt theory with the information theory formulated by C. Shannon and W. Weaver (The Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1949), published just seven years before Meyer's book. Nonetheless, it is not in this study that Meyer explicitly declares his adherence to the latter theory (although the conclusions drawn align in both works). Instead, one must wait over twenty years, until the publication of Music, the Arts and Ideas (5) in 1967, whose first chapter, titled "Meaning in Music and Information Theory", begins with the following words:

"I have dealt elsewhere and in some depth with the central importance of the origin and subsequent inhibition of tendencies that create expectation in the formation of musical experience (Emotion and Meaning in Music, particularly in Chapters 1 and 2). In that analysis of musical experience, many concepts were developed and numerous suggestions were proposed, which I later found to have a surprising parallel -indeed, equivalence- in information theory. Among these were the importance of uncertainty in musical communication, the probabilistic nature of musical style, and the functioning in musical experience of what I have since learned is the Markov process. Specifically, it appears that the psycho-stylistic conditions that give rise to musical meaning, whether affective or intellectual, are the same as those that communicate information. It is this hypothesis that I aim to explore here".

Indeed, information theory represents a step beyond Gestalt theory in that, while the latter primarily focuses on the synchronic perception of a form (hence its application to visual and plastic arts), the former centers on the communication of diachronic messages. In these, each event carries more or less information depending on its predictability relative to the previous event. This temporal aspect of the theory facilitates its application to music, which can thus be measured in terms of "probability" and "uncertainty", making it a satisfactory complement to Gestalt theory for studying the psychological aspects of musical phenomena.
Thus, the main objective of this essay is, as mentioned earlier, twofold: first, to establish how the perceptual mechanisms of humans create an impression of a specific Gestalt form in response to musical stimuli; second, to examine the expectations of a particular form generated in this way, which can either be fulfilled or frustrated. As a result, the listener experiences a musical emotion that is directly related to the meaning inherent in the music itself -derived from the degree to which these expectations are met.
This aspect of meaning is particularly interesting because Meyer's study of it aligns with a broader concern about the semantic quality of musical messages, encompassing the diametrically opposed attitudes of absolutists and referentialists. These range from the most radical absolutist figure, Igor Stravinsky, who denied that music could "express anything: a feeling, an attitude, a psychological state, a phenomenon of nature, etc. ..." (6), to the most extreme referentialist, Deryck Cooke, who in his study The Language of Music (7) went so far as to establish an authentic vocabulary of musical emotions. The meaning Meyer refers to clearly lacks such semantic quality: its content is solely derived from its internal organization within a style, and its sense can only be fully understood by those familiar with its rules, even if only intuitively.
Meyer's approach also bears resemblance to Schenkerian analytical methodologies -despite his explicit critique of some of its most widespread concepts in this work. Meyer transcends the realm of tonal language, which is nearly exclusive to Schenkerian theory, to hypothesize, in the later chapters, the existence of possible linguistic-musical universals through the application of his theory to primitive and non-Western languages and styles.
For all these reasons, it is unsurprising that the publication of Emotion and Meaning in Music was enthusiastically received by the most distinguished scholars in musical psychology and related disciplines such as aesthetics and semiotics. To the latter belongs the aforementioned book by Umberto Eco, La definición del Arte, whose chapter titled "Musical Emotion: A Psychological Explanation" states:

"More than any other, musical discourse lends itself to structural analysis in terms of measurable and concrete relationships. A given rhythm has its own mathematical expression, sound itself can be expressed through frequencies, and harmonic relationships have a specific numerical value. This does not mean that a discourse on the nature of music must avoid all reference to the world of emotions it evokes in the listener -a world that exists and is inevitably tied to the musical phenomenon, and which, therefore, it would be foolish to ignore. But the relationship with the listener is precisely specified as a relationship between a complex of sound stimuli with a certain organization (analyzable) and a human reaction manifesting itself according to psychological and cultural behavior patterns (also analyzable, or at least describable). Moreover, the type of reaction to the stimulus itself as part of an organic discourse intervenes in the complex of stimuli to confer meaning upon them. But this is the inherent meaning of the musical discourse and is not referential but intrinsic to its structure, embodied in the discourse (we might say: the sense, the autonomous direction of the discourse, is not an external world to which the discourse refers). An embodied meaning distinct from a designative meaning. These are terms used by Leonard B. Meyer in his book Emotion and Meaning in Music, which we find to be a magnificent example of this type of approach".

And, in relation to the listener's affective response to the fulfillment or frustration of tendencies elicited:

"This interplay of inhibitions and emotional reactions contributes to imparting meaning to the musical discourse: thus, while in everyday life numerous crisis situations are created that remain unresolved and dissipate as accidentally as they arose, in music the inhibition of a tendency becomes meaningful insofar as the relationship between tendency and resolution is made explicit and concludes. By the mere act of closing, the stimulus/crisis/tendency that originates/satisfaction that occurs/restoration of order cycle acquires meaning. 'In music, the very stimulus -the music itself- activates the tendencies, inhibits them, and finds meaningful solutions for them'."

Umberto Eco also highlights the necessity of turning to a theory like Gestalt to formulate a hypothesis such as the one Meyer proposes:

"The way the tendency arises, the type of crisis, and the types of solutions that might satisfy the listener -all these issues are explained by resorting to Gestalttheorie: it is the laws of form that govern this psychological dialectic. That is, the laws of closure, of good form, of proximity, of similarity, etc."

This theory serves as the starting point for adopting, in turn, consistent aesthetic attitudes and solutions:

"Therefore, since pleasure arises from crisis, it becomes evident in Meyer's argument that the laws of form, while forming the basis of musical understanding, govern the discourse as a whole only insofar as they are entirely transgressed during the development; and the listener's expectation is not for obvious solutions, but for unexpected solutions, for transgressions of the rule that intensify and make the final resolution of the process all the more achieved".

For his part, as mentioned earlier, Enrico Fubini devotes one of the sections of the significant Chapter 13th ("Formalism in the 20th Century") of his book The History of Musical Aesthetics from Antiquity to the 20th Century to this work, stating:

"Meyer sides with the absolutists, which does not preclude the possibility that music, under certain natural conditions of listening, may assume referential meaning, even if this is not its most essential function; there are historical and cultural habits that cause certain technical procedures to be associated with concepts and states of mind, but these are precisely cultural associations, not indispensable ones, and therefore subject to change. All of this is part of the power music has to activate imaginative, affective, or any other kind of extramusical processes, which may distract us from truly musical values. It is not this secondary aspect that interests Meyer; rather, he focuses primarily on meaning, understanding it as the set of internal relationships within the structure of the work in connection with the listener's response".

Later, Fubini more precisely clarifies the sense Meyer gives to the term "meaning" in connection with information theory:

"In other words, the meaning of music is the product of an expectation; the resolution that follows, however, will never entail a total surprise, because it involves the knowledge of the precarious and unstable situation whose solution is configured as a field of possibilities within a given musical style or technique. It is now clear that the problem of meaning is closely tied to that of communication; indeed, it is the same problem. Meaning is not a property of music as such; it does not function as a mere stimulus. Music can acquire a meaningful and communicative function only under certain conditions, within a specific context of historical or cultural relations. A sound, or even a series of sounds, lacks meaning in and of itself".

Fubini subjects the concept of emotion as established by Meyer to a similar analysis:

"During the waiting period, as the crisis resolves, an emotional or intellectual pleasure is generated, depending on the case; then, the solution, as well as the tension preceding it, must represent a certain novelty, must possess something unusual, must symbolize some 'deviation' from normalcy, always, of course, within the limits of the possibilities anticipated, in a sense, due to the stylistic context in which the music emerges, and thus predictable to the listener. Novelty for novelty's sake, a solution that entirely disregards conventions and the language in use, does not satisfy the expectation and leaves the musical discourse devoid of meaning. What becomes evident is that the perception of the meaning of the musical message is not a passive contemplation but rather an active process that engages our entire psyche; a conscious process in search of a solution that exists in a provisional state of ambiguity, lack of resolution; a process, ultimately, that arrives at a solid point. Meaning becomes evident, no more and no less, to the extent that the relationship between tension and solution becomes explicit and conscious".

This positive, active engagement by the listener inevitably serves as a profound source of reflection, as it is irreconcilable with a negative approach to music on the part of certain leading representatives of current compositional trends:

"Therefore, inventing music means approaching it negatively; meticulously checking for traditional material and eradicating it; identifying anything that implies something recognizable and eliminating it, while simultaneously liberating everything that has been suppressed in previous eras. Nothing is more constructive than such destruction. The result must be to prevent the listener from establishing any association between one gesture and the next, as this type of experience allows them to feel only what they already know (8)".

At the beginning of this introduction, I stated that my knowledge of this book had decisively influenced my approach to my own teaching disciplines. But it has also affected my own attitude toward art in general, and musical composition in particular, by forcing me into a series of aesthetic reflections that have contributed to consolidating some of my aesthetic convictions, while also being useful in radically modifying others that were not so firmly rooted. Without a doubt, the knowledge of the psychology of music now accessible thanks to the work of Meyer and many other authors is the best way to acquire appropriate evaluative criteria to judge, as accurately as possible, both one's own and others' aesthetic attitudes (such as that underlying the aforementioned declaration by the German composer Helmut Lachenmann).
In this translation, I have generally opted to retain the frequent reiterations characteristic of the author's style, aiming to convey part of the literary tone of the original text to the reader. This version adheres as closely as possible to the 1956 edition, including the notes, which are mostly bibliographical, found at the end of the text. These notes indicate where titles with Spanish translations have been verified. Given the significant expansion of bibliography in this field during the second half of the 20th century, I deemed it inadvisable to update the references as a complement to this edition due to the sheer scope of such an endeavor. Furthermore, modern tools now make it much easier to access such information. Lastly, the footnotes include remarks on some difficulties encountered when translating certain technical terms.


NOTES

1. Enrico Fubini, Musica e linguaggio nell'estetica contemporanea (Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Torino, 1973). A Spanish translation exists under the same publisher.
2. Umberto Eco, La definición del arte (Ed. Martínez Roca, S.A., Barcelona, 1980).
3. Enrico Fubini, La estética musical desde la Antigüedad hasta el siglo XX (Alianza Música, nº 31, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1988).
4. For Leonard B. Meyer, the only Spanish translation I have identified is El Estilo en la Música, published in 2000 by Ed. Pirámide.
5. Leonard B. Meyer, Music, the Arts and Ideas (The University of Chicago Press, 1967).
6. Igor Stravinsky, Chroniques de ma vie (Paris, Denoël et Steele, 1935).
7. Deryck Cooke, The Language of Music (Oxford University Press, New York, 1959).
8. Quoted by Samuel Adler in his article A Reflection on Musical Form at the End of the 20th Century (Cuadernos de Veruela, vol. 2, Zaragoza, 1998).

Madrid, May 2001

Reviews

LEONARD B. MEYER. (2001). Emoción y significado en la música.
By Miguel Ástor
(Review published in the magazine Akademos (vol. 3, no. 2, 2001), of Venezuela Central University


La emoción de la música
By José Luis Téllez
(Review published in no. of the magazine Scherzo (Madrid, April 2002)