One may object to certain features in yesterday's graphics on the grounds that the prominent melodic F# cannot be prolonged, because to do so would contradict the underlying harmonic hierarchy -- but Meyer's priorities go to melodic processes, not to patterns (especially linear patterns) in a harmonic/voice-leading web.
Reading the analysis in the theme/thesis terms of my MTS article, the theme can easily be described as the richness of implication in the first five notes: gap-fill (at several levels), complementation, linearity, arpeggiation.
The thesis is harder to formulate. At one level, it might be negative; drawing on my epithet "shadow Schenker," we can say that Meyer was concerned about this time with producing an alternative to Schenkerian analysis, that he was convinced melody and rhythm had more salience than harmony, and that he was also convinced Schenker's hierarchies were too limiting because they are uniform. Thus we could say that we are asked to believe this piece continually puts before our ears questions (gaps, implications) and that our attention in listening, our "empathetic identification" with the music, is directed to the game of reading and solving these problems. This formulation, however, applies equally well to Schenker – we need only substitute "delay" for "implication." This substitutibility is suggestive in itself about the level of kinship of these methods; the only alteration we need is to specify melodic priority: "we are asked to believe this piece continually puts before our ears questions (gaps, implications, of melody and rhythm) and that our attention in listening, our "empathetic identification" with the music, is primarily directed to the game of reading and solving these melodic and rhythmic problems." Meyer sometimes presents these as individual choices (though they will be intersubjective rather than purely personal if one is a "conscientious critic"), but the environment is sufficiently rule-driven that "solving problems" is more appropriate than "making individual choices."
(The kinship of methods may be further suggested by the lack of influence of the formalizations or rationalizations of each: of Meyer by Eugene Narmour, of Schenker by several authors).
