When I am in a theoretical and aesthetic mood, I am often tempted to spend more time with Professor Meyer’s more recent theory of style, which I find highly interesting and more comprehensive and promising than his “Emotion and Meaning in Music” (and which is much more important, I feel, than almost all of the post-Schenkerian, post-Babbitt/Forte theoretical literature that is out there, or at least used to be out there in the 1970s and 1980s.)

I also fondly recall Richard Crocker’s stripped down (though still fairly comprehensive)”History of Musical Style” from my freshman year (under Professor Crocker); and I imagine that some future scholar will write a similarly engaging, one-volume history of Western style incorporating some of Professor Meyer’s rhythmic, motivic, harmonic, and humanistist ideas.

Frankly, while I have most of Professor Meyer’s books on my shelf, I find myself spending more time with the less-theoretical, though equally brilliant, critical writings of Professor Meyer’s age-peer, Joseph Kerman.

I recommend the full body of Professor Kerman’s musicological and humanistic criticism to those readers here who aren’t familiar with it.