Musical Vision: A Brief History of Music & Blindness

Blind musicians and composers have been a powerful force in our world from ancient times. When we think of certain famous exemplars from Homer to Stevie Wonder, we may think of them as having extraordinary talent which propelled them to success despite their blindness. But what if their blindness caused them to develop their musical talents into a superpower?

Though there must be thousands of fascinating stories of blind musicians from all time periods and all parts of the globe, this class will focus on a few examples in the Western world from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, including these:

Maria Theresia von Paradis, the Viennese singer/pianist/composer who premiered a Mozart piano concerto.
“Blind Tom” Wiggins, the nineteenth-century slave pianist who could play anything after hearing it only once and became a phenomenon.
Louis Brailles, the organist who as a teenager in the 1820s invented the Braille system we still use today, and quickly adapted it to be used for music.
Louis Vierne, who died while giving his 1750th organ recital at Notre-Dame de Paris.
Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel who both went blind at the end of their lives and were operated on by the same charlatan eighteenth-century eye surgeon.
Joaquim Manoel da Câmara, the mixed-race guitarist who sang “modinhas” on the streets of nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro.
Claude Montal, who in nineteenth-century France created a career path for blind piano technicians that continues to this day.