"Max Meyer's Audacious 29-Note Musical Scale" talk by Christopher Green
Schedule
Fri, 17 Oct, 2025 at 12:00 pm
UTC-05:00Location
Memorial Union (University of Missouri) | Columbia, MO
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11 a.m. Reception and Lunch11:45 a.m. Musical Performance by Bill Kalinkos and Selim Göncü
12:00 p.m. Keynote Address by Christopher D. Green
Stotler Lounge, Memorial Union (University of Missouri)
In this talk, Dr. Green (York University) will describe Max Friedrich Meyer’s career, pioneering musical theory, and the scandal that led to Meyer’s abrupt departure from Missouri in the early 1930s. Meyer founded a psychology laboratory at the University of Missouri in 1900. His research was mainly directed at the psychology of music. Cleverly combining suggestions from the distant musical past with modern ideas and technologies, Meyer proposed a musical scale that contained 29 notes rather than the standard 12. In this way, Meyer aimed to correct inconsistencies in the tuning of musical instruments that had bedevilled musicians back to the Renaissance, and beyond. Meyer even had two unusual organs custom built to help him demonstrate his musical ideas.
This event is sponsored by the Budds Center for American Music Studies, the Fred McKinney Psychology Lectureship, and the Melvin H. and the Kathleen Marx Lecture in Experimental Psychology Fund.
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Where is it happening?
Memorial Union (University of Missouri), Child Development Laboratory, 31 Gwynn and Stanley Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
