Braille music writing

The braille music is that of Louis Braille in 1828 developed musical notation for blind and severely visually impaired people, which is used today worldwide. He used the same six points as in his Braille , with the top four points indicating the pitch and the lower two points the value (duration) of a note. In its ingenious system of note, octave, harmony and additional symbols it is possible to bring the vertical sequences of polyphonic music into a linear sequence of characters that the blind can read.

The National Library for the Blind in Stockport ( Great Britain ) has the largest collection of Braille sheet music . The German Central Library for the Blind, based in Leipzig (DZB), has a library for the blind in which there are more than 6,200 sheet music (as of 2014) that blind musicians from all over the world can borrow. With DaCapo , sheet music for the blind is transmitted computer-assisted, which can be used professionally by blind musicians. The transfer can take place from normal-type notes to Braille notes as well as vice versa.

literature

• B. Krolick (Ed.): New international handbook of Braille notation. Braille Press, Zurich 1998.
• M. Huwyler: Music points: exercises, overview of symbols, commentary. Braille Press, Zurich 1996.

Web links

• PDF document on the topic and the same content as html (16 kB)
• The DaCapo I and DaCapo II projects . The pdf Braille music notation - a brief overview for the sighted - is also available here.
• Notation Musicale Braille (French)
• Braille Music Code 1997 (English)
• Easy introduction to Braille music writing