STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Myra Ross began to lose what vision she had in her teens, but that hasn’t stopped her pursuing her passion for playing the viola and the violin. She writes about her experience as a blind string player, and the skills she has learnt in order to enjoy playing orchestral and, above all, chamber music

Iam a blind violinist and violist. Even before I started to lose the limited vision I had in my late teens, I could not read music while I was playing it. I learnt it aurally. I knew what notes I was hearing and could play them automatically with an intuitive sense for good fingerings. Through high school as a violinist, I was lucky to share a stand with someone whose strong playing helped me learn my part. I was able to see music only from very close range: sometimes I’d hold my instrument in my lap like a guitar with my nose in the music and pluck the notes into my memory. That is how I learnt the viola music for the New York All-State Orchestra, but learning that way is slow compared with doing it via listening. Unfortunately, I was never motivated to use the method to learn studies that would have improved my technical skills! During my degree at the University of Rochester (Eastman School of Music), I majored in singing, not violin or viola, although I did have violin lessons. By then, I was no longer able to read with my instrument in my lap, but I was already good at learning through listening.

Braille music is a linear language using literary Braille symbols which, in music notation, signify completely different things. I more or less taught myself to read it from a Braille book many years ago but hardly use it. Whereas in vocal music locating the notes is simple, string parts have many additional Braille symbols for fingerings, bowings, articulations and chords. The clutter makes finding the actual notes too difficult for me, so learning quartet music, for example, from Braille would not work.

I’m a member of the Pioneer Valley Symphony, a wonderful community orchestra in Massachusetts, where for 40 years I’ve played either viola or first violin. I started with the viola, spending a considerable amount of time listening to professional recordings to isolate the viola parts, which once learnt usually did not present much of a physical challenge. I decided that my skill development would be much better served by playing first-violin parts, which, although more challenging to play, are much easier to hear at rehearsals or in recordings. That enabled me to use my practice time to improve my technical skills instead of trying to figure out what notes to play. In the orchestra, there are others around me who usually let me know when my bowings are backwards or even more creative. I seldom sit on the outside of a desk, so the audience rarely sees when I don’t get the bowings right. Truth be told, I don’t always learn every note, but I am careful about entrances, and I am a strong player. I know when I should be confident and when I need to pull back.

I know many people, all of whom are sighted, who play chamber music all the time and who have told me how fulfilling it is. Physically, I am capable of playing most second-violin and viola parts (I prefer viola), but mentally I just did not think I could play chamber music because there is no room for error – nowhere to hide. Although I learn music easily, I had not found the courage to try chamber music, fearing that I could not hold my own as the only person on my part. I did not think good players would want to play with me because I might get lost, and I did not want the pressure. I lamented that I was missing a unique experience but could not imagine how to do it.

Myra Ross playing the violin at home

DAVID SETH ROSS

CREDIT GETTY

The Pioneer Valley Symphony, the Massachusetts community orchestra of which Myra is a member

PIONEER VALLEY SYMPHONY

For many years, the Manhattan Quartet has run week-long annual conferences in Europe and the US. Each focuses intensively on one substantial quartet. Participants spend many hours each day dissecting the music, working towards perfect intonation and balance, and polishing phrases. In addition, they attend a presentation by a theorist each day. This is the real music-geek stuff that I love!

I knew about these conferences because several people from my orchestra participated in them regularly, but I never did because I was working more than full-time as a public high school college counsellor, and besides, I did not think I could play string quartets.

Just before I retired from my counselling job in 2019, I learnt that the focus of the Manhattan Quartet’s January 2020 conference in Bonn, Germany, would be Beethoven’s ‘Rasumovsky’ Quartet in C major op.59 no.3, one of my favourite quartets. It has one of the best viola parts in the quartet literature. I was motivated. In retirement, I would have time. Could this be my chance? I decided to take it. I asked people who knew my situation and had participated in these conferences to recommend me to the quartet. I’m sure that none of these people could have imagined how a blind person could memorise the viola part in such a long quartet, but I guess the recommendations were persuasive. It is a credit to the Manhattan Quartet’s members that they were willing to accept me based on those recommendations. (Wouldn’t it be great if blind people’s experiences were always like that?) The pressure was on.

To learn my part, my first move was to listen to recordings to pick out the viola line. I relied on the contrasting timbre, the range and the compositional use of the viola to find it. I quickly learnt that voice-leading rules often do not apply to viola parts, and I love the fact that they are so versatile: solo melody, bass-line, foundational rhythm, ‘third violin’, ‘second cello’. Many violists have instruments with distinctive tonal qualities, and the part came through clearly on their recordings much of the time – I got more than the basics just from listening to them.

MANY VIOLISTS HAVE INSTRUMENTS WITH DISTINCTIVE TONAL QUALITIES AND THE PART CAME THROUGH CLEARLY ON THE RECORDINGS

My next step was to ask for help from a violinist friend who also played the viola. She read the part and we recorded it using a remarkable handheld device called the Victor Reader Stream, which was created for blind people. (It is a recorder and player, podcast catcher, book reader, internet radio and more, with tactile buttons – really the audio equivalent of a Swiss Army knife for blind people.) I learnt more of the quartet from that recording.

I needed a polished recording of just the viola part in order to learn the rest, particularly the contrapuntal fourth movement. As a gift to myself upon my retirement, I had started having viola lessons, and my teacher recorded the part for me. I loaded his mp3s on to my Victor Reader Stream, and I was in business. On this device, unlike on the iPhone, it is easy to rewind by even one or two seconds, and one can slow passages down. I could easily listen to a difficult passage over and over until I got it. After lots of practice, much more than would be necessary for a sighted person, I was ready to try it with some friends from the orchestra. The first couple of meetings were rocky, but with their support I started to become more confident. By early January, I thought I might just be OK.

Before I went to Bonn, some other amateur musician colleagues were concerned that I would not know where the rehearsal letters were. How would I start in the right place after inevitable mishaps? I thought it strange that they were worried about that yet they had no problem believing I could memorise the part. I confess that I don’t know where eight bars before letter C is, for example, but I usually know much more than just my part, so if someone else were to play their starting point, I was likely to know where we were. If the worst came to the worst, I would enter a bar or two late, and we would do it again.

For the first rehearsal in Bonn, I was placed with strong players. The first violinist of the Manhattan Quartet was the coach (really the judge). He needed to see what I could do and to decide whom to group me with for the rest of the week – people who needed a lot of help or people who could really play. Although I was scared to death, I did well, I guess, because for the rest of the week I got to play with some wonderful players. I learnt a lot – especially that I can play string quartets after all. I had not had that much fun in years. What a thrill to be a part of such glorious music making!

Since Bonn, I have played regularly with a working quartet at home. I sometimes learn my part from commercial recordings and only need help with certain passages (from people who can read the alto clef, of course!). My daughter sometimes gets phone messages from me about this or that passage. She downloads the part and plays it on the piano for me. Occasionally, I ask people to record my part from a whole multimovement quartet. Learning notes can be painstaking, but often it is relatively easy. Ironically, the hardest parts to memorise are in supporting passages that are the easiest to play.

Alas, I cannot just get together with others and sightread just for fun like so many people do. Even if they do not play very well, they experience the camaraderie and the joy of the music. That experience is simply not available to me. In fact, if I could have just one visual ability, I would want to be able to see music while I am playing it. As it is, I need to learn a part well before I can play with anyone. My repertoire is therefore limited, even though my muscle and musical memories are good. For the moment, it’s enough, but I am hopeful that I’ll eventually develop a repertoire in my memory bank that I can call upon at will. What I really need is a library of recorded viola parts that I can go to when I know I will have a new opportunity to play. Recently, someone emailed me to see if I could read a viola part in Brandenburg Concerto no.3 the following week. I know the violin parts, but not the viola part, and I do not have a viola recording to draw on. Those parts are tough to pick out from a recording.

Myra (second row, third from right) and fellow string players at the Manhattan Quartet’s 2020 conference in Bonn, Germany

BRAILLE MUSIC GRAPHIC RNIB. CONFERENCE PHOTO MANHATTAN QUARTET

BRAILLE FOR MUSICIANS

In addition to devising his tactile system for representing text, punctuation and numbers using the 64 possible combinations in his six-dot ‘cell’ to represent unique characters (the system still used internationally), Louis Braille invented a linear system for reading music.

Braille music repurposes the 64 possible combinations of dots in a cell to communicate not just the pitches to be played and their duration but all nuances of the score such as directions, bar numbers and rehearsal letters. On one line, string parts have symbols denoting double-stops, bowings, fingerings, articulations and instructions (written in literary Braille). Piano music is also presented on one line, bar by bar: the right-hand part for each bar followed by the left-hand part for that bar. Vocal music uses one line for lyrics with the line below for the music notation. Music is transcribed into Braille manually by sighted people who read music as well as both literary and Braille music expertly. It is a highly skilled craft. For the past few decades, it has also been possible to automate the transcription process with software, vastly increasing the number and variety of Braille scores.

An example of how Braille notations correspond to musical notes, key and time signature

The Victor Reader Stream, ‘the audio equivalent of a Swiss Army knife for blind people’

My quartet worked on Beethoven’s ‘Rasumovsky’ Quartet in F major op.59 no.1, which the Manhattan Quartet had planned to do at Colgate University (Hamilton, NY) two years ago. Delayed by the pandemic, they finally did it in June 2022. I was ready. I was more experienced this time, far more excited than scared, but it wasn’t all easy.

For both conferences my husband was with me. In Bonn, he helped me find rehearsal rooms, there being no Braille on doors in Germany. We walked around the city a lot, which I could not have done without him. At Colgate University, I had no time for orientation and mobility training, so he escorted me between buildings and rooms until I found people in the group who were going where I was going. Although my very lightweight BAM case was on my back most of the time, freeing up one of my hands for my cane, I still needed help with meals. I can’t imagine how to use a cane while carrying dishes, cutlery and drinks in a cafeteria.

At Colgate, I had the time of my life playing with some conservatoire students and graduates. One group played the third movement of the Beethoven as the prayer that it really is; another got the syncopations right in the fourth movement – no easy task for amateurs after only a few hours of work. An impromptu gathering for some movements of the Dvořák ‘American’ Quartet still thrills me when I relive it. What a gift to have met people from all over the country who love playing this music as much as I do. I am eternally grateful to my husband, my local quartet friends and the Manhattan Quartet for making it possible for me to pursue these opportunities that have changed my life. This year’s conference (again at Colgate University) will focus on the remaining ‘Rasumovsky’ Quartet, no.2 in E minor. I’ll be there.

RESOURCES FOR BLIND AND LOW-VISION MUSICIANS, THEIR FAMILIES AND TEACHERS

‘During my research for this article, I sent an email to people in an organisation of blind musicians,’ says Myra. ‘I knew a little about the group, but had no idea that a few members would be professional string players. I was surprised to receive a reply from a blind Doctor of Musical Arts student who is a violist and memorises music as I do but, in addition to listening, learns using Dancing Dots – software that creates music scores in XML and plays them through her computer and electronic Braille display. I knew a little about this product but had never tried it, thinking that the learning curve would be too steep and fearing that it would not work well enough. She offered me computer audio files that she has created. She inspired me to purchase the software. After one short training session, a sheet of music I scanned suddenly played out of my computer as the Brahms F minor Viola Sonata. I hope soon to be able to learn the viola part to the Schubert String Quintet from my computer. Who knew writing this article would change my life like this!’

Dancing Dots Dancing Dots is the creator of Goodfeel Braille Music Translator, and Lime Lighter, a solution for low-vision performers. William (Bill) McCann, a blind musician and programmer from Pennsylvania, has developed software to enable visually impaired musicians to learn, compose, print and record music independently. One can scan printed music, get a sighted person to correct the scan using on-screen tools, hear it played back through a computer and simultaneously read it on an electronic Braille display. Dancing Dots also offers consultation, training and Braille music textbooks and courses. dancingdots.com

Bettye Krolick, How to Read Braille Music: An Introduction, Braille edn (Boston, MA, 2018), based on 2nd print edn (1998) Written by sighted Braille transcriber Bettye Krolick (1926–2011), this book explains the music Braille symbols most frequently found in scores from elementary through to intermediate level. Suitable for children and adults. Available in print and Braille from Massachusetts-based National Braille Press. nbp.org

BRAILLE SCORE RNIB

Music Education Network for the Visually Impaired (MENVI) This free online international membership organisation is a network of musicians, students, parents and music educators of visually impaired students. It exists for, and is guided by, blind musicians. menvi.org

National Library Service for the Blind, Library of Congress, US – Music Materials The NLS music collection includes Braille and large-print music scores, recorded instructional materials, and recorded materials about music and musicians. All materials are circulated free to qualified patrons (anyone who cannot use printed materials, for whatever reason). Some digital audio and eBraille materials are available for download. loc.gov/nls

Music Library, Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), UK The RNIB’s Music Library holds one of the largest collections of accessibleformat music and publications about music for blind and low-vision musicians. Materials are free to access for members of the RNIB Library. bit.ly/3FmzgV8