Meyer, Leonard B(unce)

Meyer, Leonard B(unce), eminent American musicologist; b. N.Y., Jan. 12, 1918. He was educated at Bard Coll. (1936–37), Columbia Univ. (B.A., 1940; M.A., 1948), and the Univ. of Chicago (Ph.D., 1954). In 1946 he joined the faculty of the Univ. of Chicago, where he served as head of the humanities section (1958–60), chairman of the music dept. (1961–70), prof, of music (1961–75), and the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Prof. (1972–75). In 1971–72 he held a Guggenheim fellowship. From 1975 to 1988 he was the Benjamin Franklin prof, of music at the Univ. of Pa., and subsequently held its emeritus title. In 1971 he was the Ernest Bloch Prof, of Music at the Univ. of Calif, at Berkeley, and later was a senior fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory (1975–88). He was a resident scholar at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy in 1982. In 1984 he was the Tanner lecturer at Stanford Univ. and in 1985 the Patten lecturer at Ind. Univ. In 1987 he was made an honorary member of the American Musicological Soc. Many of his erudite books and articles have been tr. into various foreign languages, among them French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Japanese, and Chinese.

Writings

Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago, 1956); with G. Cooper, The Rhythmic Structure of Music (Chicago, 1960); Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth Century Culture (Chicago, 1967; with new postlude, 1994); Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973); Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Philadelphia, 1989).

Bibliography

E. Narmour and R. Solie, eds., Explorations in Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Essays in Honor of L. B. M. (Stuyvesant, N.Y., 1989).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire