Sometimes the spark that ignites a new area of scholarship happens in the classroom, sometimes it happens in the field where research is conducted, and sometimes it happens at an academic conference or symposium. In the case of "music and disability"—an emerging subfield of musicology and music theory—it happened on a train.

About ten years ago, music scholar Joseph Straus was traveling by Amtrak, on his way home from Penn State University, where he had just given a colloquium. After chatting with the person seated next to him—a Penn State faculty member - he pulled out a book he'd been reading about autism, the neurobiological syndrome characterized by impaired social interaction and communication and restricted and repetitive behavior. Seeing the book, his fellow passenger asked if he was interested in "disability studies." Straus had never heard of this new interdisciplinary field, but the ensuing conversation launched him on a pursuit that would unite two spheres of his life—the academic and the personal. He had not been reading about autism out of idle curiosity; his older son, who is now 17, lives with the condition.

That Penn State faculty member provided him with a reading list of materials that theorized disability in much the same way that feminist theory theorizes gender - the same way scholars often discuss race or sexual orientation. Initially, Straus was skeptical about all "theory" studies. "What is there to theorize?" he asked. "Either you're a man or a woman. Either you have all of your limbs or you don't. It's self-evident." But after a bit more reading and reflection, he changed his mind. "Though there is some biological basis, culture is deeply implicated in the creation of all these categories," he says. "That was a shocking revelation to me in terms of disability, and I began to wonder, is there a musical angle to this?"

So Straus sent out a query to listservs in music theory and musicology, asking if anyone would like to join him for a panel discussion on music and disability at an upcoming conference. Hardly anyone knew what he was talking about. "People had thought before about music and disability, but always under the rubric of music therapy," he explains. "Music might be a therapeutic tool that professionals could use to remediate disability in some way. My son has received music therapy, and it's a wonderful thing, but it's utterly different from what we're talking about here, which is theorizing disability as a cultural category. We're talking about social relationships shaped by culture, and that's what people like me are trained to do—we talk about culture."

In literature or film, says Straus, themes of disability are easy to perceive because they are often embodied in memorable characters such as Ahab of Moby-Dick, Shakespeare's Richard III, or Darth Vader of Star Wars. The disabilities of such characters function as a metaphors, often for moral failings. But in music, a non-representational form, these themes can be harder to discern. Nonetheless, Straus says, "music tells stories, and some of those stories can be understood in terms of disability." He adds, "One of the things I've tried to do is show the ways in which music simultaneously reflects and shapes the history of disability."

One such story, Straus says, can be heard in western European music of the early 19th century. During this period, the first institutions to treat disability - particularly blindness and deafness - were being founded upon the premise that these conditions were not "a curse from God," but rather something that an individual, through his or her own effort, could overcome. At the same time, the "overcoming" narrative entered music. Perhaps the parallel is most vivid in works by composers who had personal experience with disability, such as Beethoven, who became deaf, and Franz Schubert, who suffered the ravages of syphilis and died at the age of 31. Many of their works, and other pieces of the period, can be understood as "a body." (Straus points out that this is a common metaphor in music criticism.) That body is then threatened with a "non-normative" element, and thereafter the piece is focused on regaining balance and health. "Earlier music in the western tradition doesn't really follow that particular shape," Straus says. "I think the fact that it emerges in this time and this place is bound up with disability."

Another story is evident in some modernist music from the first half of the 20th century. Completely different from the work of Beethoven and Schubert, this musical style is often based upon the notion of "inversional balance," in which notes are balanced above and below a central note. Composers of the Second Viennese School (Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg) wrote music during this period that demonstrated a high tolerance for imbalance; in fact, Straus says, pieces could even end on a note of imbalance. Curiously, in later works by these same composers, the newly devised twelve-tone system of composition virtually guaranteed musical symmetry. What intervened that could account for this fundamental shift? According to Straus, it was the outbreak and sustained bloodshed of World War I. Composers, witnessing the horror of mortal combat and soldiers severely wounded and disfigured, "recoiled in horror," he says. This recoiling was expressed by a new regime in their music - one that excluded imbalance.

Straus readily acknowledges that much of his work is speculative. "Certainly, not a lot of people have said this before," he says. "On the other hand, I've experienced some of the same skepticism that was experienced by the people who first talked about music and gender or music and sexuality, and it turns out that those were fruitful categories for talking about music."

Scholarship in this area has followed on the heels of a powerful social movement that has led to legislative measures such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and, equally important, a change in thinking. Prior to this movement, the prevalent conceptual model for disability was a medical one, says Straus. Now, the model is social and cultural. "The notion is that people come in all shapes and sizes and all ways of being in the world," he says. "Societies erect literal and metaphorical barriers to separate the normal from the disabled, and stigmatize those on the wrong side of the wall. Both disability rights and disability studies are about examining and breaking down those walls in the name of inclusion and accessibility."

Straus continues to find relevant stories everywhere, from his own life to the international concert stage. A current project, perhaps inspired by his experience with his son, explores how autistic people hear music. "Normal" hearers make sense of music by erecting mental hierarchies, he explains. They organize the notes into groups, and those groups are then organized into larger groups, and so on. "But people with autism don't do hierarchies; they do associations," he says. "They are hearing in a distinctive and quite wonderful way. Let's not remediate it in the manner of music therapy. Let's try to learn some new ways of hearing." He is also writing about disability and performance by focusing on three renowned individuals: violinist Itzhak Perlman, who lost the use of his legs during a bout with polio in childhood; percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who became deaf by the age of 12; and bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff who, due to his mother's ingestion of thalidomide during pregnancy, is unusually short in stature and has partially formed arms. "Each has a dual task," Straus explains. "They must perform their music, and they must perform their disability."

Last year, Straus taught The Graduate Center's first class in disability studies. It attracted students not only from the Music Program, but also from Sociology, Psychology, and English. "Students here are superbly trained," he says. "The Graduate Center is a dream place to teach because it's not just about imparting knowledge to others. It's about highly skilled people at various stages in their careers discussing issues of mutual interest. It's a shared intellectual enterprise - in some ways more of a think tank than a school in the traditional way."

Straus suggests that this new subfield of scholarship might inspire people to re-think their favorite musical pieces, whether those pieces are classical, popular, country, blues, or any other genre. Moreover, for those living with disabilities and their families and friends, it might make it possible to view those disabilities as "differences rather than deficits." In this regard, Straus speaks from personal experience. Along with many others, he now views autism not as medical pathology but as cognitive difference. He says, "My life with my son led to my thinking about music in a different way, and new ways that I've learned to think about music have changed my relationship with him. I no longer think of him as someone who is ill and for whom a cure should be sought or even wished. So this academic study I've undertaken has had a significant impact on my private life as well."

—Gail Goldberg

Photo by Anders Rising/Getty Images
Photo of Joseph Straus by A. Poyo