Style and Music

Style and Music Theory, History, and Ideology

University of Chicago Press Edition

Paperback (06 Mar 1997)

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Publisher's Synopsis

Leonard Meyer proposes a theory of style and style change that relates the choices made by composers to the constraints of psychology, cultural context, and musical traditions. He explores why, out of the abundance of compositional possibilities, composers choose to replicate some patterns and neglect others.

Meyer devotes the latter part of his book to a sketch-history of nineteenth-century music. He shows explicitly how the beliefs and attitudes of Romanticism influenced the choices of composers from Beethoven to Mahler and into our own time.

"A monumental work. . . . Most authors concede the relation of music to its cultural milieu, but few have probed so deeply in demonstrating this interaction."-Choice

"Probes the foundations of musical research precisely at the joints where theory and history fold into one another."-Kevin Korsyn, Journal of American Musicological Society

"A remarkably rich and multifaceted, yet unified argument. . . . No one else could have brought off this immense project with anything like Meyer's command."-Robert P. Morgan, Music Perception

"Anyone who attempts to deal with Romanticism in scholarly depth must bring to the task not only musical and historical expertise but unquenchable optimism. Because Leonard B. Meyer has those qualities in abundance, he has been able to offer fresh insight into the Romantic concept."-Donal Henahan, New York Times


Book information

ISBN: 9780226521527
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Imprint: The University of Chicago Press
Pub date:
Edition: University of Chicago Press Edition
DEWEY: 781.17
DEWEY edition: 20
Language: English
Number of pages: 376
Weight: 536g
Height: 229mm
Width: 154mm
Spine width: 21mm