[Smt-talk] Schenkerian analysis - visual impaired student

[Bennighof, James]

It's unlikely that this would prove to be a useful approach to follow on any
continuing basis, but when I was in graduate school in the early 80s a blind
fellow student asked me to help her by embossing a Schenker graph on a large
piece of shelf paper (maybe four feet long); I had to draw the graph in
reverse in pencil on the paper and then go over all the pencil markings with
a toothed marking wheel (ordinarily used for sewing) so as to produce bumps
on the opposite side.  When the paper was turned over, the bumps reproduced
the graph, now unreversed.

I don't remember some of the crucial details of how much she was able to
comprehend.  I believe that she was at that point incapable of seeing
anything distinctly--perhaps just very large (furniture- or human-sized)
areas of darkness and light--but she must at some point (perhaps because of
having had more sight when younger) have learned about music notation in
general.  I think I or a faculty member probably talked her through what the
various figures meant.  But again, this was not a long-term study of
Schenker for her, but, I think, just something to give her a bit of a sense
of what it was like.

--Jim Bennighof
-- 
James Bennighof 
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Policy
One Bear Place, #97014
Baylor University 
Waco, TX  76798-7014
(254) 710-6500 (office)
(254) 710-3600 (fax)



> From: Nicolas Meeùs <nicolas.meeus at paris-sorbonne.fr>
> Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 19:02:04 +0100
> To: smt-talk smt <smt-talk at societymusictheory.org>
> Subject: [Smt-talk] Schenkerian analysis - visual impaired student
> 
> Dear collective wisdom,
> 
> The University Paris-Sorbonne, under the pressure of Luciane Beduschi
> (now of Skidmore College), organized compulsory classes in Schenkerian
> analysis for our third-year students. One of them, visual impaired,
> asked to be freed from these classes and, indeed, we saw no other
> solution than to exempt her from this course.
> 
> I would be most interested to know if anyone has experience of such a
> situation.
> 
> Nicolas Meeùs
> Université Paris-Sorbonne
> 
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> rg