EHESS: Archives of historical musicology: blind and deaf musicians in Europe, from the medieval to the classical period

Lecture at the École des Hautes Études en Science Sociale (EHESS): “Archives of historical musicology: blind and deaf musicians in Europe, from the medieval to the classical period”

In the field of historical musicology, few academic texts bring together in a single volume the archives of disabled musicians from periods prior to classicism.

In medieval times, blind people who had access to musical training provided by their parents or churches could make a career out of it, in turn training musicians who recounted the stories of their teachers. There are also records of musicians who gradually became deaf and continued to make a living from their profession in the classical era.

How did musical training evolve in medieval times? How did the opening of specialized institutions transform musical practices in the medieval and Renaissance periods? What compositional techniques and musical practices were developed by blind music professionals? When do we find traces of the first deaf musicians and composers?

This presentation opens the doors to the archives of the medieval, baroque, romantic, and classical periods, tracing the footsteps of these blind and deaf musicians who left their mark.

For the fourth year, the seminar “Constructing a history of disability and deafness through the centuries” attempts to respond to an observation: Deaf History (the history of deafness), Disability History (the history of disability), and Mad History (the history of madness or mental disorders) have each developed their own international scientific networks and their own epistemologies with a certain degree of distance or even compartmentalization.

The aim of this seminar is therefore to bring together research that is often carried out in parallel and to build a scientific network that transcends current boundaries, notably by bringing together historians who, over the last twenty years, have been renewing the three fields of research through new approaches, methods, and subjects. Scientific communities interested in the history of disability, deafness, and mental disorders in the French-speaking world have tended to be built around specific themes (blindness, deafness, psychiatry) or historical periods and cultural areas (the history of disability in the 20th century, or in medieval Europe).

In contemporary times, these research communities have taken divergent paths. On the deafness side, historiography has based its approaches on a socio-anthropological conception of deaf people and sign language, leaving the concept of deafness tied to a medical history of disability or, at the very least, to a history of technical and institutional categories and their critique. In the field of disability history, some research has focused on the institutional history of disability and public policies for its management.

While the histories of disability and deafness are intertwined in contemporary times (the origins of education for the deaf and blind date back to the 18th century, and deaf people fought alongside blind people for the right to free, secular, and compulsory education in the 1930s), the historiographies of the two rarely intersect. The central themes diverge depending on the period: researchers interested in the medieval and modern periods pay considerable attention to the influence of religion, which is not the case for the contemporary period. Historical literature on the contemporary period has evolved from an interest in public policy, the actions of educational or associative institutions, or biographical trajectories (of major historical figures such as doctors or educators) to transnational or more biographical approaches, or to more intersectional approaches that take gender or race into account. Some historical works are beginning to integrate the intersectional paradigm into their research, where “disability” is conceptualized as one of the multiple identity characteristics of the individual. In the field of Mad History, historiography has recently focused on therapeutic alternatives to institutionalization, the life trajectories of those affected, and the relationships between institutions and families.

The full program (in French) and information are available at this link: https://enseignements.ehess.fr/2025-2026/ue/23