The following biographical outline of Kate Hevner Mueller's life has been drawn largely from one article, "Kate Hevner Mueller: Woman for a changing world" from Journal of Counseling and Development (see below for exact reference). Besides a two-page account of her life, the article, written after her death, fashions some of her personal written recollections and published works into an interview format with minor editorial changes. All quoted passages and page number references below come from this interview format in the article.
An additional account of Mueller's life was found on a web site of the Indiana University Archives Collection (see below for URL). This site also gives scope notes and a detailed listing of Mueller's papers, housed in the archives' collection.
Kate Hevner Mueller was a scholar/researcher, teacher, administrator and mentor. Within the field of Music Psychology, she is arguably best known for her pioneering work in systematically measuring elements contributing to emotion in music and her development of the Adjective Circle. She also developed tests measuring three areas in the appreciation of music: music discrimination, musical concepts and attitude toward music. However, her expertise and body of publications went beyond the area of Music Psychology. Besides work in Music Appreciation and Aesthetics, she is recognized for her contributions to Student Personnel Work in Higher Education and the role of women in society. Those interested in Mueller's non-musical contributions should consult the two biographical references for more information, as the following biographical outline and selected bibliography focus on her contributions to Music Psychology.
1923: graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in psychology.
Her comments on her time at Columbia:
"After teaching high school in my hometown, I decided to pursue a master's degree at Columbia University. I studied the history of psychology, experimental and abnormal psychology, and statistics. I also took a philosophy course from the well-known John Dewey. Dewey was bewildering to me, for he sat at his desk with his hand over his mouth, talking, or rather rambling and rambling, or so it seemed to me. I enjoyed the assigned readings and somehow got through the course, but I must admit I never could follow the lectures.
"After getting up enough courage, I asked Professor Garrett to supervise my thesis, which had to do with the intensity of the sensation (ie. the loudness of the voice in reading comprehension). Work on the thesis was discouraging. I found it the most deadly and uninteresting thing I ever did and still wonder how I finished it." (p. 409)
1928: graduated Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology from University of Chicago. Her advisor was L. L. Thurstone and her thesis was entitled: An Empirical Study of Three Psychophysical Methods.
Her comments on the time spent in Chicago:
"At Chicago I chose to live in one of the residence halls. There were no rules for graduate students, and I enjoyed that very much. I found the classes smaller, more pleasant, and certainly, more stimulating. I did some teaching in general psychology, and Thurstone and I lost no time in embarking on a thesis. We demonstrated the truth and value of his law of comparative judgment by means of handwriting analysis. I planned to spend 2 hours each night, 10 to 12 o'clock, in the tabulation of samples, and finished that part in the second quarter. The reward for the endless hours of work came in finding that my doctor's thesis, the summary of the results of the study, was only 11 pages long. I actually typed it myself!" (p. 409)
1929-1935: Faculty member of the Department of Psychology at University of Minnesota; She continued research on the measurement of music appreciation which she had begun at Wilson College.
Her comments on her time in Minnesota:
"I was very overwhelmed by the aggressive competition of the faculty there. Pressure to produce research was greater than anything I had ever experienced. Teaching skills were negligible; it was reprints that counted... My primary assignment was teaching experimental psychology to sophomores, although in the spring I had one class in psychology of the arts." (p. 409)
Hevner rose to the challenge to produce and publish research. During the years she was there, approximately fourteen items were published. One concerned her dissertation work and three were on topics directly related to teaching psychology, but the rest were concerned with music and aesthetics of art (see selected bibliography below).
1931: first met her future husband John Henry Mueller (b. 1895) while working in Oregon on her research about Aesthetics of Art. They began corresponding through letters.
Her account of meeting her husband:
"While on the faculty at Minnesota, I received a grant from the Carnegie Committee for the Study and Advancement of the Teaching of the Arts to continue work on my music appreciation test at the University of Oregon. John was a faculty member at Oregon and a member of the Carnegie Committee. He was very interested in the outline that I had submitted and in the music appreciation test. Having been trained in sociology at Chicago, he rejected the experimental method common to psychology. John's first statement to me was that appreciation cannot be tested, to which I replied, `You don't know what you're talking about.' He insisted that we make an appointment the next day at a practice room in the music school. I thought this was a preposterous challenge, because in developing my test I had spent many hours coaching my student pianist in the proper playing of my tests, and suddenly a mere sociologist proposed playing them on sight! Of course, I had no idea that he was a talented pianist. His criticism was also somewhat mollified by the success I could report in my earlier experiments.
"I took John seriously because he was the first man I met who was more intelligent and more committed to excellence in his professional work than I was. At the same time, he was more of a serious challenge to my own ways of thinking. And how we argued! We each had a different point of view of beauty and the best way to understand, to teach, and to enjoy it." (p. 409)
"In the spring of 1937, John and I had one of our `at homes' for some 20 people, with tea, sherry, and music, because we had a new Steinway, and friends were curious to hear my husband play. Sherry was as `far out' as anyone in Bloomington dared to go in those years. Guests came and went and others tried the piano, and at the very last I looked out the window and saw Dean Agnes Wells and Assistant Dean Lydia Woodbridge coming up our walk. I had been eager to meet other women on the faculty, and Miss Wells had invited me to one of her Sunday afternoon teas, so of course I was returning the compliment. But I had already learned that Miss Wells was an ardent member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and so I ran to the dining room saying, `John! Here comes Dean Wells--help me get these glasses of sherry out to the kitchen.'
"They came, John played, they ate my fruit and drank my tea, they admired our new bookcases and John's Russian enameled work, and we finished the cookies. I often wondered what might have happened if they had come in earlier when the sherry was served.
"In 1937 Miss Wells was requested by her physician to give up her position as dean of women, and she called one day to tell me that she had recommended me as her successor. Although I knew nothing about the functions of the dean of women, I saw no reason why I could not do as well as the deans I had known in action, but John was thoroughly frightened. My argument then, as always, was that when a woman married she would have to take any old job that came her way and make the best of it, and, in any case, where would you find someone better, especially at that price? But John did all he could to discourage me.
"I well remember my interview with Herman B. Wells [no relation to Dean Agnes Wells], the new president of Indiana University, who began by telling me that Agnes Wells had briefed him as follows: `She has a good husband and a PhD, and psychology is the new thing for these jobs, and also she has 10 years experience at five different places and does not belong to a sorority.' We talked for a while about my work in psychology... We did not talk of specific programs or plans, which was not surprising because neither of us could have had too much to say on the subject." (pp. 409 & 411)
"Herman B. Wells, the president of Indiana University, and the dean of faculties took Kate to lunch and offered her an assistant professorship. Kate looked at them and said, `I was an assistant professor before I came here, and I have no intention of being one again'; and she got up and walked out on them. She went home and told John, and he was just horrified. But after a few days, they offered her an associate professorship..." (pp. 407-408)
Coomes, Michael D., Elizabeth J. Whitt, and George D. Kuh. "Kate Hevner Mueller: Woman for a changing world." Journal of Counseling and Development, 65 (1987): 407-415.
Indiana University Archives Collection. Mueller, Kate Hevner: Kate Hevner Mueller papers, 1909-1981. Collection #170. Available from http://www.indiana.edu/~libarch/Personal/170pers.html; Internet, accessed 24 November 2002.
"Tests for esthetic appreciation in the field of music." Journal of Applied Psychology, 14 (1930): 470-477.
"A study of tests for the appreciation of music." Journal of Applied Psychology, 15 (1931): 575-583.
"A method of correcting for guessing in true-false tests and empirical evidence in support of it." Journal of Social Psychology, 3 (1932): 359-362.
"*The mood effects of the major and minor modes in music." Psychological Bulletin, 30 (1933): 584.
With Robert H. Seashore. "A time-saving device for the construction of attitude scales." (1933). Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 366-372.
"*The affective value of certain elements of musical form." Psychological Bulletin, 31 (1934): 678-679.
"Appreciation of music and tests for the appreciation of music." In: Studies in Appreciation of Art, ed. Ralph Waldo Leighton, 83-151. Studies in College Teaching - Bulletin 3. Eugene: University of Oregon, 1934.
"The affective character of the major and minor modes in music." American Journal of Psychology, 47 (1935): 103-118.
"Expression in music: a discussion of experimental studies and theories." Psychological Review, 42 (1935): 187-204.
"Experimental studies of the elements of expression in music." (1936). American Journal of Psychology, 48 (1936): 246-268.
"The affective value of pitch and tempo in music." American Journal of Psychology, 49 (1937): 621-630.
"Studies in expressiveness of music." Proceedings of the Music Teachers National Association, 33 (1939): 199-217.
With John Mueller. "Trends in Musical Taste." Humanistic Series No. 8., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1943.
"Studies in Music Appreciation: I. A Program of Testing; II. Measuring the listener's recognition of formal music structure; III. Experimental analysis of the process." Journal of Research in Music Education, 4 (1956): 3-25.
"The other side of the record." Council for Research in Music Education Bulletin, 21 (1970): 22-31.
Twenty-seven major American symphony orchestras: a history and analysis of their repertoires, seasons 1842-1843 through 1969-1970. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.*Publication contains abstract only.