[il-talk] Braille music article

[Debbie Pittman]

Thank you so much.  This was wonderful.



-----Original Message-----
From: IL-Talk [mailto:il-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Bill Reif via IL-Talk
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2017 9:07 PM
To: NFB of Illinois Mailing List
Cc: Bill Reif
Subject: [il-talk] Braille music article

Below is a great article about Louis Braille and his invention of Braille music. I thought Braille music happened much later.


Cordially,

Bill


Braille:  The Man and His Code for Music
By William R. McCann
The song is ended,
But the melody lingers on.
You and the song are gone,
But the melody lingers on.
These words of Irving Berlin were written about bringing an old love to 
mind.  But we can apply them aptly to the important work of a genuine 
hero of the blind, Le Professeur Louis Braille.  As we approach the 
bicentenary of his birth, it is a fitting time to pay homage to his 
memory and to his enduring legacy.
It is my privilege and my aim in this article to acquaint the reader 
with an aspect of Braille’s work that too often has been overlooked.  I 
try to give a relatively nontechnical description of his system for 
music notation and propose that it is still relevant in our time.
The Man Himself
Once a comedian was trying to tell a joke but he kept interrupting 
himself by laughing.  Someone in his audience asked him why he kept 
laughing and he explained that it was because he knew how this story was 
going to end.  To properly appreciate the work of our benefactor or, for 
that matter, of any great figure in human history, we must engage our 
imaginations and transport ourselves back to a time when the story was 
not yet over.  Nobody yet knew the ending or even whether that ending 
would be a happy one.
No doubt, some readers of these pages can relate quite personally to the 
youth of only 10 years whose loving father, in 1819, brought him from 
his happy home in the countryside to the strange surroundings of the 
school for the blind in the big city of Paris.  How many blind people up 
to our own day have had to live away from home during their developing 
years to gain an education?  At the world’s first school for the blind, 
Braille found not only a portal to the world of learning and ideas but 
also hours of study and labor in the various enterprises of the school 
such as slipper making.  After his life-changing meeting with Captain 
Barbier, who shared the technique of “night writing” with the teenager, 
Braille forfeited many hours of sleep to study and design his 
significant adaptation of Barbier’s system.
At the age of 20, he published his system.  But universal acceptance and 
recognition of his work had to wait for many years after his death.  He 
worked diligently during his short life to teach other blind people not 
only music but also mathematics, geography, French and history.  He took 
on many other duties aside from teaching such as serving as foreman for 
the school’s slipper-making operation.  He played the organ 
professionally for masses and other liturgical functions.  He encouraged 
and supported members of his extended family and his many friends. Yet 
he suffered real adversity.  Not everyone believed in his work.  There 
was a time when a new director of the school even burned all the books 
produced in Braille’s code!  Add to all of this the fact that Braille 
contracted tuberculosis in his mid-twenties, the disease which 
ultimately took him from this world at the age of 43.  Still, he kept on 
working, teaching and caring until the day he died.
But why even discuss these things?  Precisely because we are the 
beneficiaries of the hope that Louis Braille never abandoned. Each time 
we read a braille book sitting outdoors on a sunny day, learn to play a 
piece of music from a braille score, or braille ourselves a grocery 
list; any time we read or write for school, work, or leisure, we are 
collecting the dividends of a life invested fully in the conviction that 
an idea, an inspired, innovative idea, has the power to overcome 
adversity, prejudice, indifference and even injustice.  Let us never 
forget his example especially during those times when these obstacles 
appear in our own paths.  May his example strengthen our own resolve to 
prevail over adversity, improve our own circumstances, and leave a 
legacy to those that follow us.
Braille’s System for Music
Until I founded a company 16 years ago to develop a braille music 
translator software, I was among the majority of people who did not know 
that Louis Braille invented braille music notation.  Even though I had 
been reading and writing braille music for many years I somehow had the 
impression that the application of his system to music came after his 
death.  To the contrary, he considered music notation from the very 
beginning.  In 1829, he published his system under the title: Procédé 
pour écrire les paroles, la musique et le plainchant au moyen de points 
a l'usage des aveugles et disposés pour eux.  So music and singing were 
in the mix right from the start.
Braille played the piano, the cello and the organ very well.  He yearned 
to read music just as sighted musicians did.  He tried using tactile 
representations of printed staff notation but rejected it as ill-suited 
to the needs of blind musicians.  Such scores were bulky and expensive 
to create just as similar tactile editions of literary texts were.  He 
determined that what was needed was a system that maximized the ability 
of the human finger to collect information.  Instead of mimicking the 
method of input based on the human eye, he substituted a method 
optimized for the sense of touch.
Again, since we know very well how the story ends, we simply accept that 
the braille cell contains six dots.  But why?  In fact, Louis Braille 
experimented with using cells of 12 ore more dots.  But he knew 
intuitively that a cell of six dots guaranteed that each dot was on an 
outside edge.  Modern technology has brought us the marvel of paperless 
braille displays which have the option of showing an eight-dot cell.  
But anyone who has ever been confused by an 8-dot character that does 
not use dots 1 and 4 but includes a dot 7 or 8 knows why the six-dot 
cell avoids ambiguity.
But wait!  The six-dot cell yields only 64 unique combinations. How can 
Braille’s system express equally well text, arithmetic and musical 
information with such a small number of characters?  The answer 
communicates the elegance of his creative mind.  He redefines each of 
these characters to carry a different meaning depending on the type of 
information to be written.  For example, dots 1-3-4-5 represent the 
letter n in text, a variable value in mathematics or a half note to be 
played on the musical pitch C or DO.  Braille and others since his time 
have developed rules of context that help readers know when which type 
of information is being shown in a document.  The ability to change 
comprehension of the type of braille code being read is called 
code-switching. Experienced braille readers do it unconsciously and 
without confusion.
Braille’s system is quite well defined and permits the accurate 
transcription of minute details of a score of western music written in 
conventional staff notation.  That is, the braille score shows not only 
the notes to be played and their rhythm (how long they should be played) 
but such details as the text for titles, lyrics, etc., when to play more 
loudly or softly, when to speed up or slow down, when to play passages 
smoothly or by leaving a bit of silence between notes (staccato).  In 
short, Braille insisted that the blind musician have access to the same 
information conveyed to sighted musicians; every detail of the piece 
which the composer thought important to write down.
A part in braille music notation reads from left to right along a single 
line unlike print notation.  Braille assigned the top 4 dots of the cell 
(1, 2, 4 and 5) to represent the 7 degrees of the western scale by 7 
unique combinations.  He uses the bottom dots (3 and 6) to indicate the 
rhythmic value of a note.  Therefore, under the tip of a single finger, 
one can know the pitch to be played and how long to play it.  A series 
of 7 octave signs tell us in which register the note should sound.  For 
example, Middle C or DO is indicated by the fourth octave sign (dot 5) 
which immediately precedes the cell showing the note.  The first note of 
a passage must be written with an octave sign but subsequent notes may 
or may not need one depending on their musical distance from that first 
note.  Braille established a set order for other signs that must precede 
or follow a note.  By following this logical presentation of 
information, a transcriber can clearly communicate the slightest nuance 
of musical performance.
But can’t blind people just listen to sighted musicians playing a piece 
of music from the score and thus learn to perform it?  There is a global 
tradition of passing on music aurally and I myself have learned many a 
tune by listening.  But if a blind musician learns a piece by mimicking 
the interpretation of the music notation read by a sighted player, he 
separates himself from seeing that specific information the composer 
wished to pass on in order to help musicians to faithfully realize the 
music to be performed.  In other words, the blind musician can only 
follow and not lead.  We know that the symbols on the page, whether 
print or braille, are not the music but a means of helping us to 
recreate the music heard in the mind’s ear of the composer.  As the only 
blind member of our high school band, I would sometimes learn to copy 
perfectly the mistakes of the sighted trumpet player beside me until I 
received my braille scores and could play certain passages correctly 
with confidence.  As blind people, we must often follow.  Having the 
information available to sighted peers empowers us to lead if we wish.  
Success breeds success and points us in a positive direction.
Mrs. Bettye Krolick, the lady I lovingly refer to as the Fairy Godmother 
of braille music, once told me of how she got started in transcribing 
music into braille.  It was 1970.  She had studied hard and learned to 
transcribe her first assignment, some clarinet music for a local 
elementary school student named Jeff.  Soon after, at an early morning 
band rehearsal, she observed the student, braille score on his music 
stand, playing one of the parts before practice began.  A couple of the 
sighted students looked on, and one said to the other in admiration: “He 
plays from memory!”
On hearing this remark, Jeff sat up straight and tall in his chair and 
played on with greater confidence than ever.  This simple but eloquent 
gesture by a blind fourth-grader motivated Mrs. Krolick to dedicate a 
substantial portion of her life’s time and energy to transcribing, 
standardizing and promoting the use of music braille all over the 
world.  She quickly realized that memorization comes naturally to the 
blind and that she could provide in braille the unfiltered information 
the composer meant to convey to the player.
Just as we can more fully appreciate the grandeur and magnitude of a 
great mountain the further it recedes in the distance, as time passes we 
can look over our shoulders and see our hero’s stature grow as he  
towers over literary history in the company of innovators like 
Gutenberg, Edison and Helen Keller.  In fact, Miss Keller traveled to 
Paris in 1952 to commemorate the centennial of the death of Braille.  At 
that time, his remains were moved to the Pantheon of Heroes of the 
French people amid many special events and tributes.  I myself am 
blessed and honored to be invited to speak about Braille’s system for 
music at our own generation’s tribute which will take place on the 
occasion of the bicentennial of Braille’s birth in Paris in early 
January, 2009.  See the URL below or contact the Association Valentin 
Haüy in Paris for details.  I hope to greet many of you there on that 
joyous occasion and to continue to add my own efforts to preserve and 
extend something to the heritage of this patron saint of the blind, 
Louis Braille.
About the Author
Bill McCann is the founder and president of Dancing Dots Braille Music 
Technology.  He has authored numerous articles about his own work to 
automate production of braille scores with his company’s first product, 
the GOODFEEL Braille Music Translator software. GOODFEEL is now in use 
throughout the United States and in 40 other countries.  With Richard 
Taesch, he is the co-author of “Who’s Afraid of Braille Music?”
Related Websites
Bicentenary of Louis Braille’s birth: 
http://www.avh.asso.fr/bicentenaire/louis_braille/louis_braille.php?langue=eng&
Dancing Dots:  www.dancingdots.com
Music Education Network for the Visually Impaired:  www.menvi.org
National Resource Center for Blind Musicians: www.blindmusicstudent.org


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