Meyer was the first-ever psychology professor hired by the University of Missouri.[2] He opened the laboratory in experimental psychology and taught an extensive range of psychology courses during his professorship which included: Introduction to Psychology, Perception and Behaviour, Differential Psychology, General Aesthetics, Theory of Music, Advanced Psychology, Comparative Psychology, Social Psychology, Industrial Psychology and Abnormal Psychology.[2] As of 2019, Meyer has 209 publications in three languages circulating in 2,439 library holdings around the world.[3] His books are still in print and can be obtained through Amazon.
Music theory
Meyer started developing his work during the year 1894 at the University of Berlin when he became a pupil to Carl Stumpf. During his time as a pupil, he was described as having a technical ingenuity that assisted Meyer in developing instruments to research music theory.[6] During his years studying under Stumpf, he developed his theory of cochlear function. His main source of data was "introspective observations of difference tones, of the relative intensities of tones in a compound tone, and of the differences in relative intensity of tones sounded simultaneously and separately".[6] From this theory, he developed a hypothesis about "the anatomical and physiological properties of the ear" where the assumption was that "the inner ear is a hydraulic system, that the effective cochlear oscillations occur in the basilar membrane, that this membrane is inelastic, and that its motions passively follow the motions of the stapes".[6] This received little attention until the year 1966.
After having a falling out with Stumpf, he migrated to London and spent time in the psychological lab of James Sully at the University of London for 6 months. Here he worked on developing an apparatus where a deaf person could even compose, as well as worked on a theory of harmony.[7][8]
Meyer then travelled to America and spend time at Clark University and later the University of Missouri. Here he published a series of articles, one of them about an experiment he conducted back in Berlin which favoured the view that memory of absolute pitch can be improved with practice.[7][9] This time was also very important as he published his first edition of his theory of music. In this first edition, he critiqued his predecessor Stumpf, as well as Hermann von Helmholtz, saying how he felt that their focus of the diatonic scale prevented them from developing a scientific, empirical theory of music.[7][10] He also constructed a scale "represented by the infinite series of all composites of the powers of 2, 3, 5, and 7", which he believed was sufficient to study music theory.[7][10] He extended his theory of music during his first year at Missouri, adding that the hearing of simultaneous tones contain two important effects: "the melodic relationship also heard in successive tones, and consonance".[7][11]
In 1903, Meyer conducted a study related to "the aesthetic effects of final tones, the intonation of musical intervals, and quartertone music".[7][12] The findings of the study found that quartertone music in European music became more pleasant with increased familiarity (as long as it followed the "general laws of European music"). Since some quartertones were also present in Oriental music, he used these findings to support the theory that the psychological laws of music are the same all over the world, even though a good amount of this study relied on his own interpretation of certain results.[7][12]
Some of his final works included trying to develop tests that measured a variety of factors as well as trying to find a scientific music staff that would not require musical signs (ex. flats), but these results were never published.[7] He also developed the musical arithmetic in 1929, which discusses the neurological implications of music perception, but this lacked reference to previous literature.[7]
