Anthropology has compiled a vast and necessary catalogue of how people do things, from the reckoning of kin to the preparation of mealies. Included in this compendium have been a few impressive collections of material representing the arts. But neither in the arts nor in all the panoply of other human behavior have anthropologists found much to say about why people do things. Except for a few adventurous souls, we have elaborated a study of man without a theory of man.In this sense, Leonard Meyer has written an anthropology of music before the anthropologists have. He has brought together, with full recognition, ideas and material from Hornbostel, Kunst, Herzog, Sachs and many others to give his study crosscultural dimension. The sum of his work has been to use theory from logic, linguistics, and, most heavily, Gestalt psychology, to construct a system of explanation which is lucid and compelling, Briefly, the thesis is that emotion in music can be understood in the light of psy chological theory of all emotion: when a tendency to respond is inhibited or blocked, affect results; meaning is a triadic relationship between (1) the stimulus, (2) its tendency (what it indicates or implies-principally but not entirely defined by the particular idiom) and (3) the conscious observer. All this is in relation to the form of the music. Meyer recognizes perfectly the connotative aspect of musical experience, but his theory is concerned with the formal elements-melody, meter, and, for Western music, harmony-features which can be discussed objectively.The most exciting part of the book is the spelling out of the theory in terms of expectation and learning.' I . . . in a very general way expectation is always ahead of the music, creating a background ot diffuse tension against which particular delays articulate the affective curve and create meaning. Formal expectation is constantly active on several architectonic levels as a sort of generalized aesthetic tension which is shaped and particularized in the course of the listening" (pp. 59-60).There are three "principles of pattern perception," with a stimulating chapter devoted to each: the Law of Good Continuity, Completion and Closure, and the Weakening of Shape. The many illustrations are drawn from tribal, folk, and Oriental music as well as from various periods in the development of the music of Western Europe.Meyer's basic idea is certainly not new. What is new is the full relief of his discussion and the thoroughness and clarity with which this basic idea has been built into a systematic theory. It is not too much to say that his approach provides a basis for the meaningful discussion of emotion and meaning in all art. When anthropologists do come to a full-dress approach to the arts in human experience, they will be grateful for this book.