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By Harvey H. Miller
The Recueil de morceaux d’orgue à l’usage spécial des élèves de l’Institution impériale des jeunes aveugles de Paris (1863) is one of the earliest known publications of music in braille notation. Its fifty-four pieces were composed by four blind composers who attended and later taught at the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles, Paris’s school for the blind. With this edition (N071), which includes historical background on the composers, the institution, and braille notation, this music is available to sighted musicians for the first time. The following is the editor’s account of the genesis of this project, which took him upward of ten years to complete.