Exhibition

INTRODUCTION TO THE EXHIBITION:

Welcome to the accompanying exhibition for the 2024 symposium Reframing the Gaze: Maria Theresia Paradis, Blind Musicians, and Musical Culture Before and After Braille. This exhibition features seventeen objects related to blind musicians and readers, from Paradis’s lifetime up to the present day. All of the objects are meant to be handled. The first nine objects are printed items, while objects 10-17 feature Braille or tactile alphabets, drawings, and music notations.

The exhibition is organized into three tables, representing three themes:

1. About Blind Musicians

2. By and For Blind Musicians

3. In Our Time

Each object is identified with a label that is printed, as well as a Braille number sticker cued to an audio version of the label that can be accessed at our symposium website, at the page “Exhibition”. The object descriptions are by myself, Adeline Mueller (AM), and Siggy Ehrlich (SE), the student research assistant for the symposium. Siggy will read the descriptions that they wrote, and I will read the ones that I wrote.

We hope you enjoy exploring these items.

Object 1.

James Wilson. Biography of the Blind: Including the Lives of All who have Distinguished Themselves as Poets, Philosophers, Artists etc. Collected and edited by Kenneth A. Stuckey, from the four original editions of 1821-38. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1995.

FORMAT: TEXT

Published in four editions from 1821 to 1838, James Wilson’s Biography of the Blind features biographical sketches of over fifty blind people in various professions. The sketches frequently portray the blind person “overcoming” their blindness in an unexpected way and excelling in their field. The author, a blind Virginian raised in Ireland, divides his profiles into sections by profession, and a new introduction was added when the book was compiled and published in 1995. There are five women represented in biographical sketches, including Maria Theresia Paradis, who has the second longest biography of all the women. The short three pages on her life attribute her blindness to fear, and Wilson discusses the controversy of her “treatment” under Anton Mesmer and her concert tour of Europe with her mother. Innovative for its time, Wilson’s collection offers an insight into how blindness was perceived around the end of Paradis’s life. 

(SE)

Object 2.

William R. Dempster (Music) and Hannah F. Gould (Text). The Blind Boy. Boston: Oliver Ditson,1842. 20th edition. 

FORMAT: MUSIC

The front cover of the twentieth edition of the sentimental ballad The Blind Boy, published in 1842, features an image of a young boy playing a banjo-like stringed instrument for a group of other children in a garden or park. In the foreground sits another boy, who may be the blind boy of the title. The poem is by the Massachusetts poet Hannah Gould, the music by the Scottish ballad composer William Dempster. In a lilting major-mode waltz, the boy wonders about the things he cannot see: soft summer air, music, and the scent of flowers (ironically, these are all things one does not experience through sight). The protagonist describes himself as a “poor little boy that knows not of sight,” and he asks others to explain to him the things he is curious about. It is unclear when the first edition of this song was printed.

(SE)

Object 3.

Der blinde Geigenspieler beim Geldsammeln. Engraved illustration in W. G. Becker’s Taschenbuch zum geselligen Vergnügen auf das Jahr 1825. Edited by Friedrich Kind. Leipzig: Georg Joachim Göschen, 1825.

FORMAT: PICTURE

The title of this illustration translates to “The blind violinist collecting money.” It first appeared in the 1825 volume of Friedrich Kind’s annual, “Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker’s Pocket Book of Sociable Entertainments.” Kind is perhaps most famous for writing the libretto to Carl Maria von Weber’s 1821 Singspiel Der Freischütz. The illustration shows an old gentleman with a wooden leg and closed eyelids, holding out a hat into which well-to-do passersby eagerly place coins, while a small child clutches his arm and a guide dog stands in front of him. Behind the old man stands a younger, well-dressed man playing a violin with his eyes closed. This illustration accompanies a poem, also called “The Blind Violinist,” by Arthur von Nordstern, which tells the story of an old wounded veteran of the German army begging on the streets of Berlin with his seven-year-old son, as he scrapes away on a shabby violin. He plays a military march, but no one pays him any attention, until a stranger comes, takes the violin from him, and proceeds to continue the march and a round of the British anthem “God save the King,” with such tender artistry that everyone’s heads turn, and they identify him as the renowned French violinist Alexandre Boucher. As the crowd showers the veteran with money, his face shines with joy, but he is unable to thank Boucher, for the violinist has already slipped back into the crowd. Boucher did famously tour Austria and Germany at this time, so the story may have some basis in historical events.

(AM)

Object 4.

Alissa Walser. Am Anfang war die Nacht Musik. Munich: Piper Verlag, 2010. 

FORMAT: TEXT

This book is one of at least three known novelizations of Paradis’s life, and the main source for the Austrian feature-film biopic Licht (or Light), released in 2017. The book is by Alissa Walser, a Frankfurt-based author, translator, and visual artist. It covers the period in 1777 when Paradis first began receiving treatments from Franz Anton Mesmer, with a coda in 1784 when Mesmer attends a concert given by Paradis in Paris during her European tour. The book’s title can translate to “In the Beginning was the Night-Music” or (as Waltraud Maierhofer points out) as “In the Beginning, Night was Music.” “Nacht Musik” is also a play on Mozart’s 1787 serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Object 5 in the exhibition is the English translation of the novel.

(AM)

Object 5.

Alissa Walser. Mesmerized (English translation of Am Anfang war die Nacht Musik). Translated by Jamie Bulloch. London: MacLehose Press, 2012.

FORMAT: TEXT

[See Object Label 4]

Object 6. 

Various original editions of Maria Theresia Paradis’ surviving published scores, printed from digital scans at various libraries, in a display binder.

FORMAT: MUSIC

This binder gathers printouts of digital scans from various European libraries of all of Paradis’ known printed music scores, in their original editions. The selection includes her setting of Gottlieb Pfeffel’s biographical poem about her, “Ich war ein kleines Würmchen,” which was originally published in the Vienna Musenalmanach in 1785. Also included is her 1786 song collection Zwölf Lieder auf ihrer Reise, some of whose texts are taken from the novel Sophiens Reise von Mehmel nach Sachsen by Johann Timotheus Hermes; her epic setting of Lenore, based on the best-selling ballad by Gottfried Bürger; her cantatas on the deaths of Emperor Leopold II and King Louis XVI of France, respectively; and her Lied “Auf die Damen.”

(AM)

Object 7. 

Maria Theresia Paradis, Stammbuch. 

FORMAT: MANUSCRIPT

This binder includes a printout of the recently digitized Stammbuch, or autograph album, of Maria Theresia Paradis, which is housed in the Vienna City Library. The book’s 275 entries include greetings by notable historical figures Paradis met on her travels, from Charles Burney and Ben Franklin to poets, musicians, salonnistes, students, and artistic collaborators, including her lifelong friend and companion Johann Riedinger. The earliest entries date from 1783, when Paradis first embarked on her European tour, with the last dating to 1823, the year before her death. Many of the messages feature poems, drawings, or pressed flowers. The album is bound in red leather and encased in a wooden box with a drawer, which might originally have been intended for storing a pen and ink.

(AM)

Object 8.

Benjamin B. Bowen. A Blind Man’s Offering. New York: Published by the Author, 1847.

FORMAT: TEXT

Benjamin B. Bowen wrote this miscellany of poems, essays, and personal stories of his life in 1847. He graduated from what is now known as the Perkins School for the Blind, where he was noted for excelling in vocal and instrumental music, and he later found work as a church organist. Perhaps this experience inspired his essay entitled “Music” where he discusses the universality of music. He claims that music is able to fill in where words fail and that it is not fully understood by people. He also discusses how music “is the favorite employment of the blind,” but they struggle to find jobs because people are skeptical of their capabilities. On the last pages, Bowen includes a musical score to “The Fairy Waltz,” which he composed for his daughter Maria. 

(SE)

Object 9.

Revised International Manual of Braille Music Notation 1956 (American Edition). Part I: Western Music. Louisville, KY: American Printing House for the Blind, 1961.

FORMAT: TEXT

This manual, published in 1956, serves as a guide for notating Western Music in Braille. It was created by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) with the aim of standardizing notation for Braille Music. In a 1929 conference, attempts were made to create a standardized approach to Braille music, however the participants could not agree on all matters. It was only at the 1954 Paris Conference that blind musicians and scholars worked out the remaining issues to create a uniform system. 

(SE)

Object 10.

Tactile map of New England mounted on board. 

On loan from Perkins School for the Blind. 

FORMAT: CARTOGRAPHIC MATERIAL

This mass-produced tactile map of New England and eastern Canada was originally created for the use of blind students at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts (founded in 1829 as the first school for the blind in the United States). As the label on the back records, sighted students could also benefit from being able to feel the borders, rivers, and mountains. It gave all students a better understanding of where places were situated. It was believed that maps like this offered the best way to teach and test geography. This is an early example of the “curb-cut effect,” where something created for accessibility purposes benefits a wider range of people.

(SE)

   Object 11.

Page from Lord Byron’s “Don Juan” in Boston Line Type mounted on foam core board. The page is from a Boston Line Type edition of Byron’s Poetry, published in 1884. 

On loan from Perkins School for the Blind.

FORMAT: BOSTON LINE TYPE

Boston Line Type was a tactile alphabet for the blind developed by Samuel Gridley Howe, the first director of the Perkins School for the Blind (founded in 1829 as the first school for the blind in the United States). Braille had already been created at the time of Boston Line Type, however most American teachers resisted learning a new symbol-based writing system. Boston Line Type involved expensive equipment to print. This sample page from the 1884 Boston Line Type edition of Byron’s Poetry shows stanzas 105-108 from Lord Byron’s epic poem “Don Juan,” originally published in 1819. These verses describe the young maiden Haidée, who rescues Don Juan after he is shipwrecked.

(SE)

Object 12.

Johannes Brahms. Cello Sonata in F major, Op. 99 No. 2. Leipzig: Deutschen Zentral Bücherei für Blinde, 1951. 

FORMAT: BRAILLE MUSIC

This is a Braille music edition of the cello part to Johannes Brahms’ Sonata for cello and piano in F major, Op. 99, No. 2, originally composed in 1886. The title page indicates it was published by the German Central Library for the Blind in Leipzig in 1951, and was based on an edition of the sonatas by the cellists Hugo Becker and Carl Friedberg. The bookplate indicates that it was purchased from the library shop. The score is exhibited alongside a reproduction of the first page of the cello part from the original edition by Simrock.

(AM)

Object 13.

100 Jahre Blinden-Museum 1891-1991. Berlin: Blinden-Museum 1991.

FORMAT: TEXT

This book commemorates the 100th anniversary of the German Museum for the Blind in Berlin. It is a catalog of the 1991 anniversary exhibition, and includes essays by a number of authors on the history of the museum, its collections, and the cultural history of blindness and blind education in Europe. The book features two transparent relief overlays. The first is on the cover, and gives the book’s title and subtitle in Braille, as well as a relief printing of a Psalm published in The Netherlands in 1736 using an experimental system of symbols for the notes and letters cut out of playing cards. In the middle of the book is the second transparent overlay, a relief printing of a 1906 combined Braille and “black-letter” board with accompanying stylus. The Blinden-Museum is currently closed for an extensive renovation to increase its accessibility. 

(AM)

Object 14.

Menena Cottin and Rosana Faría. El Libro Negro de los Colores. Mexico City: Ediciones Tecolote, 2006. FORMAT: TEXT WITH BRAILLE AND RAISED-LINE DRAWINGS

This children’s book was originally written in Spanish, and has now been translated into at least eighteen different languages and won a number of awards. The book is all black, with Cottin’s short sentences printed in Braille at the top of each left-hand page, and in white print on the bottom, in which a boy named Tomás describes how different colors feel, smell, taste, and sound. On the right-hand pages, Faría’s all-black relief illustrations of strawberries, leaves, rain, and more bring Cottin’s imagery to life. The last sentence, in English, reads: “Thomas likes all the colors because he can hear them and smell them and touch them and taste them.”

(AM)

Object 15.

Menena Cottin and Rosana Faría. El Libro Negro de los Colores. Translated by Elisa Amado as The Black Book of Colors. Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2008. 

FORMAT: TEXT WITH BRAILLE AND RAISED-LINE DRAWINGS

[See Object Label 14]

Object 16.

Susan Bird, Ian Jenkins, and Fabio Levi. Second Sight of the Parthenon Frieze. British Museum Press, 1998. 

FORMAT: TEXT WITH BRAILLE AND RAISED-LINE DRAWINGS

This large book comes in a plastic suitcase with the subtitle, “Tactile book for visually impaired and sighted people.” It is described as forming part of the Tiresias Project, a permanent exhibition in the Parthenon Galleries of the British Museum, and is designed to help both sighted and visually impaired people understand the placement of overlapping figures in this massive marble sculpture. The drawings constitute overviews of the plan of the frieze, and closeups of the carvings, with different perspectives or angles used in order to show the composition more clearly. All the line drawings are superimposed with tactile drawings, and the descriptions are printed in text superimposed with Braille. The book is accompanied by three audio cassettes constituting five hours of commentary.

(AM)

Object 17.

Three-dimensional replica of composing board invented for Paradis by Johann Riedinger. 2024.

FORMAT: OBJECT

The highlight of our exhibition is a modern replica of the composing board invented for Paradis by her longtime friend, assistant, and collaborator, Johann Riedinger. Riedinger published a detailed description of the composing board in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1810, along with an engraved illustration of the board and the set of pegs of various shapes representing notes, rests, accidentals, articulation markings, ornaments, clefs, and bar lines. In a true labor of love, Riedinger commissioned carpenters to make the tables, and wood turners to make the note-value pegs, while he himself fashioned the wire ledger and bar lines and carved all the other pegs himself. Paradis used this composing board to notate her sketches, before passing it along to a copyist to note down on music paper, and she also apparently used it to learn new pieces. The composing board survives and is currently held in the musical instruments collection at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

In another example of the “curb-cut effect,” Riedinger asserted that his composition board had advantages for sighted as well as blind users, citing two high-profile testimonials:

this manner of composing music is such that sighted people could also use it to their advantage [...] and not only the court Kapellmeister Salieri admitted, but also Blessed Haydn assured, that this kind of score is much easier to scan and modify than in ordinary writing, and that it also offers much convenience when studying four-part music.

Our symposium collaborated with Luke Jaeger and the staff at the Mount Holyoke College Fimbel Maker and Innovation Lab to build this full-size replica from Riedinger’s engraving and description, and from images of the board from the Kunsthistorisches Museum. A framed poster shows some of the technical designs Luke used to calculate the measurements for the board, the inlaid ledger and staff lines, and the peg holes, which were sawed and drilled using a ShopBot. Luke then 3D-printed the treble clef and pegs, which were then mounted on metal dowel pins. Thomas Liimatainen, Machinist for the Sciences, crafted the brass bar lines for the project. 

Visitors are welcome to identify the familiar D-major tune–which was composed by a famous contemporary of Paradis, in a piece that premiered the year of her death–that we have set in order to demonstrate the notation system. Or you may try composing your own melody on the lower staff. We have included a selection of pegs in three sorting bins behind the composing board; they are labeled in print and in Braille.

(AM)