[il-talk] Braille music article

Sat Jan 21 09:44:21 UTC 2017

I never learned how to read braille music.  I just play my acoustic
guitars by ear.  Braille is very cool.

On 1/20/17, Melissa Allman via IL-Talk <il-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Not only is Braille a legacy, it is our literacy.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Jan 20, 2017, at 2:49 PM, Steve Hastalis via IL-Talk
>> <il-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>>    I too immensely enjoyed reading this article about Braille music.  I
>> started flute lessons at six, piano at seven, and Braille music at ten.
>> More recently, I have written out my own parts for church hoir and jazz
>> band.  Braille music enable sme to learn pieces exactly.
>>
>> We who use and appreciate Braille, whatever the system, must challenge
>> negative assertions about Braille.  We must cherish and protect this
>> wonderful legacy.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: IL-Talk [mailto:il-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Debbie
>> Pittman via IL-Talk
>> Sent: Monday, January 09, 2017 1:57 AM
>> To: 'NFB of Illinois Mailing List' <il-talk at nfbnet.org>
>> Cc: Debbie Pittman <debbiepittman99 at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [il-talk] Braille music article
>>
>> 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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