Blind Musicians in Spain, from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century
Blog curated by Marco Ramelli, TU Dublin Conservatoire
Chapter 2 – Blind Musicians in Spain, from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century
I began with the observation that while blind people were associated with many aspects of music-making, there was a particularly notable affinity between blind communities and plucked-string instruments, often in further association with storytelling and mendicancy. Over the centuries, this constellation—blindness, plucked-strings, storytelling, and mendicancy—recurred in communities across various cultures, even across geographically distant regions.[13]
Spain was no exception: from ancient times, blind musicians, particularly guitarists, were a pervasive presence in both street music and religious or noble contexts. As Jesús Montoro Martínez writes in Los ciegos en la historia:
The blind individuals who earned a decent living through their art and ingenuity were those who primarily cultivated music, giving lessons or playing all kinds of instruments at dances, pilgrimages, and temples. Blind musicians were so numerous, and in some cases so famous, that popular opinion mistakenly came to believethat every member of this social group was a musician.[14]
From the Middle Ages, blind individuals in Spain created organizations for mutual aid and protection.[15] These organizations began to control begging and street music-making. For example, Los Ciegos de Madrid [The Blind of Madrid] (first ordi-nances of 1614) enjoyed two monopolies: the sale of newspapers and smallbooklets, and the public exercise of music.[16] Los Ciegos de Zaragoza [The Blind of Zaragoza] (founded in1329) held the monopoly on reciting and singing prayers door-to-door; this also involved playing an instrument, which I will turn to later.
These were closed societies of specialists, comprising mainly musicians. Musical knowledge and tricks of the trade were passed down orally, often as “secrets,” directly from older members to younger ones. It was common for parents of blind children to arrange for their sons to be trained by blind men. As Sutherlandnotes, “Documents from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries show parents apprenticing their blind sons to older blind men.”[17]
This phenomenon was not confined to beggars and the poorest segments of society. Blind musicians influenced not only street music but also sacred and cultivated music, often working for churches or noblecourts. Many of these musicians were organists or vihuelists who were able to rise out of poverty throughtheir exceptional talent. In such contexts, with the support of sighted individuals, prominent blind musicians published their works—an uncommon achievement for the blind—leaving a lasting impact on music history. Notable examples include Antonio de Cabezón (1510–66),[18] Francisco Salinas (1513–90),[19] and Miguel de Fuenllana (c. 1500–79), three blind composers who can easily be considered among the most influential composers of their century. These were not isolated cases but rather unusually prominent figures who, due tosocial and economic circumstances, managed to leave written records.
Nor was this a solely Spanish phenomenon: blind musicians in other European countries played a central role in the evolution of lute and organ. For example, Francesco Landini (1325–97), a blind composer, lutenist, and organist, was also an inventor of a plucked instrument called syrena syrenarum.[20] In fifteenth-century Germany, three of the most celebrated organists—Arnolt Schlick (1460–1521), Paul Hofhaimer (1459–1537), and Conrad Paumann (1410–73)—were blind, and notably, all three played the lute.[21] Paumann was even said to have developed the German system of lute tablature. [22]
Blind musicians were often also poets and storytellers. In Spanish culture, blind poets, usuallyaccompanying themselves on the vihuela or guitar, became a cultural stereotype and played a foundational role in the development of Spanish poetry. Although primarily referred to as poets, they were, in effect, also musicians. Many poems written by blind authors have survived in pliegos sueltos (literally “loose sheets” orchapbooks). One example is a chapbook from 1570 by Gaspar de la Cintera, who was known as “El Ciego de Úbeda,” containing “amusing verses and jokes to sing and play on the vihuela.”[23]
[14] All translations by the author. Jesús Montoro Martínez, Los ciegos en la historia (Madrid: ONCE, 1992), 152: “Los ciegosque se ganaban dignamente la vida con su arte e ingenio eran quienes preferentemente cultivaban la música, dando lecciones o tocando toda clase de instrumentos en bailes, romerías y templos. Fueron tan numerosos los músicos invidentes, algunos de ellos muy célebres,que la opinión popular llegó a pensar equivocadamente que todo miembro que componía este Grupo Social era músico.”
[15] For example Valencia’s Cofradía dells Cegos Oracioners (founded in 1314) and Barcelona’s Els Cecs Trovadors (founded in1329). Alberto del Campo Tejedor, “Ciegos Repentistas en Andalucía: De Al-Majzumi al Ciego de los Corrales,” Hispanófila174 ( June 2015): Similar communities of blind people can be found in many places in Europe, such as in Germany, Italy,England, and France. Kenneth Pardey, “The Welfare of the Visually Handicapped in the United Kingdom” (PhD diss.,University of Stirling, 1986), 471–73; Gabriel Farrell, The Story of Blindness (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press,1956), 149–50.
[16] Garvía Soto, La Organización Nacional de Ciegos,
[17] Madeline Sutherland, “Toward a History of the Blind in Spain,” Disability Studies Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2015).
[18] Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita, Música y discapacidad visual en el mundo hispánico del siglo XVI: El organista y compositor Antonio de Cabezón (Madrid: Cinca, 2024).
[19] Francisco Salinas was a highly esteemed composer and organist, though unfortunately, all of his music has been Hewas also an influential music theorist, and his writings remain particularly important, as he was the first to describe meantonetemperament. Francisco de Salinas, De musica libri septem (Salamanca, 1577).
[20] Leonard Ellinwood, “Francesco Landini and his Music,” The Musical Quarterly 22, no. 2 (1936): 190–216.
[21] David Yearsley, Bach’s Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 101–6.
[22] Minamino suggests that Paumann may also have played a key role in the development of right-hand plucking technique for the lute: “Paumann’s acquaintance with the organ and harp increases the possibility that he cultivated solo lute technique and even that he could have been responsible for the transfer of the fingering technique from one instrument to ” Hiroyuki Minamino, “Conrad Paumann and the evolution of solo lute practice in the fifteenth century,” Journal of Musicological Research 6, no. 4 (1986): 291–310. For an explanation of German lute tablature, including comments on its relation to visual impairment, see Kurt Dorfmüller, “Issues in Transcribing German Lute Tablature,” transl. Ellwood Colahan, Soundboard Scholar 8 (2022), doi.org/10.56902/SBS.2022.8.11.
[23] Guillermo Sena Medina explores the influence of Gaspar de la Cintera on the poetry of the renowned mystical poet San Juande la Cruz (1542–91), highlighting the impact of blind poets on the works of sighted poets. Guillermo Sena Medina, “Un antecedente ‘sanjuanista’ en ‘El Ciego de Úbeda,’” San Juan de la Cruz 3 (1985–87).
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