A touch of Beethoven

[Quijote]

Here's an article of interest, I'm sure.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012...dren-orchestra

[Sorrano]

Nice, that adds new dimensions to experiencing music.

[Enrique]

Back again, after some trouble with the machine. I've always wondered if a deaf person, one who was born deaf, can be taught to read music. Such a person can be taught to correctly play a drum reading from the part (particella), provided the music is written for solo, say, snare drum. Even more, a deaf people ensemble could play Varese's Ionization. Of course the conductor would play an essential role. In fact these people can be taught instruments like the piano or the clarinet. The problem would be to read music without an instrument. Could such a person learn the octave interval, or the fifth, for example? If any of you knows something about this I would like to know.

[Chris]

In fact these people can be taught instruments like the piano or the clarinet.

They could learn where the notes are, but they wouldn't be very good players. Listening is an essential part of playing an instrument, even solo.

The problem would be to read music without an instrument. Could such a person learn the octave interval, or the fifth, for example? If any of you knows something about this I would like to know.

I doubt it. They could learn about intervals in terms of the mathematics, the physics of it. They could even sense some of what that means using low frequencies that could be felt. But if you have no experience of sound, I don't think you could imagine what a piece of music would sound like.

[Roehre]

Evelyn Glennie?

[Enrique]

They could learn where the notes are, but they wouldn't be very good players. Listening is an essential part of playing an instrument, even solo.

I give you that they wouldn't be good players. One reason is that a mechanism of feedback is required. For instance, when driving an automobile the eyes provide information that is used by the brain to correct errors in the direction. The same happens when playing an instrument or singing. But a deaf person (born deaf) can have a very acute sense of rhythm. I think that dance is previous to music and can be thought of as independent of music. The motor centers of the brain can generate rhythmic movements quite independently of hearing. So our individual could make a good harpsichord player. By "good" I mean it could play it like a machine would do, at the very least. In order that he plays better than the machine, he could be instructed to make a small rallentando when approaching the final bars, though the machine could be too.

As to the pitch question, I would like to know what science has to say. I would like to read, from some authority, a statement such as "In the present state of technology there is no way a (totally, born) deaf person can "think" the octave interval", for instance.

[Enrique]

Evelyn Glennie?

This is a good example (I've seen a documentary of her on TV) that comes in support of my claim, that a person born deaf could make an excellent percussionist. She is very close to inborn deafness because of the early age at which she began to lose hearing. If someone read post #2, there I said that Ionization could be played by a deaf people ensemble. It seems I was not far from the truth, for Evelyn plays in orchestras too.

[Chris]

As to the pitch question, I would like to know what science has to say. I would like to read, from some authority, a statement such as "In the present state of technology there is no way a (totally, born) deaf person can "think" the octave interval", for instance.

What does science or the present state of technology have to do with it? What we think of as pitch is essentially our brains interpreting the frequency of sound waves. If you have never experienced that interpretation, how could you think of it?

Blind people do not understand what sighted people mean by "color". Colors are the way our brains interpret the frequency of light waves. You can explain the physics of this to a blind person, and he can have a perfect grasp of it, but he has no frame of reference for interpreting that information as what sighted people know as color. In the same way, a deaf person could certainly understand the physics of sound, could understand that an octave is two waves, one with double the frequency of the other, and could even experience that in terms of vibrations, but there is just no way for him to interpret that information as what people who can hear perceive as pitch without having experienced it.

[Enrique]

What does science or the present state of technology have to do with it? What we think of as pitch is essentially our brains interpreting the frequency of sound waves. If you have never experienced that interpretation, how could you think of it?

Science has everything to do with that question. Your statement "What we think of as pitch is essentially our brains interpreting the frequency of sound waves" belongs to the field of psychology. So, if psychology is a science ...

What is the end product of a perception? I do not find a word in English for it. It seems to be percept, but this seems to be an old-fashioned word. The word in Spanish as I learned at school is imagen, literally image. So let's use image. When I am looking at a pencil, my mind will build an image of the pencil. This image, a visual image in this case, will be in my conscience. When I hear a bell, a corresponding image will be formed in my conscience too. This time, it will be an auditive image. Also, in absolute silence, with no sound reaching your ears, you can form the image of the interval of a fifth.

OK. Now a blind person can conceive in his mind the geometrical object called a triangle, without ever having been able to see. This means that he can make the visual image of a triangle to be in his conscience at a given moment. Now explain to me what is the difference between the blind - triangle situation and the deaf - interval situation. Remember the blind never saw a triangular object in his entire life, in just the same way as the deaf never heard two successive sounds forming an interval of a fifth.