Per aspera ad astra: artists who overcame difficulties to achieve greatness

Classical musicians past and present have enjoyed fame and success, despite having to contend with a range of disabilities, physical and mental. With Disability Pride Month in July, an annual celebration of people with disabilities, it’s an opportunity to acknowledge those achievements.

Those accomplishments also could be characterized by the often-evoked Latin phrase: Per aspera ad astra (through difficulties to the stars).

This July marks the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law on July 26, 1990. The first-ever Disability Pride Day occurred in Boston on Oct. 6, 1990. Fourteen years later, Chicago hosted its first Disability Pride Parade. Events now take place nationwide each July, highlighting the challenges and achievements of the more than 70 million Americans with disabilities.

Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who has served as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra several times, started to lose her hearing at age 8 and became profoundly but not totally deaf. In a 2015 essay, Glennie explained how she has learned to detect vibrations through her feet and other parts of her body and can even distinguish rough pitches of notes.

Glennie prefers that listeners focus on her musicianship and not her deafness, but articles and reviews about her inevitably bring up the topic and often characterize it erroneously. Because of these errors, she felt the need to write the essay and publish a book titled Listen World! (2019).

“In this essay I have tried to explain something which I find very difficult to explain,” she wrote in 2015. “Even so, no one really understands how I do what I do. Please enjoy the music and forget the rest.”

Here is a look at 10 other classical-music notables who have triumphed over disabilities:

Ludwig van Beethoven, composer (1770-1827): deaf

Perhaps no disability in classical music is more famous than Beethoven’s near-total hearing loss, which began when he was about 28. He wrote a letter to his two brothers in 1802, known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he describes his despair over the encroaching deafness and his contemplation of suicide but also his resolution to soldier on.

Factoid: Many of Beethoven’s greatest works were written after the onset of his deafness, with his groundbreaking Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) (1803-04), being one of the earliest and most significant creations of his middle period.

Andrea Bocelli, tenor (1958- ): blind

Eschewing a traditional classical career path, the Italian tenor has become something of a rock star of classical music, performing in stadiums and arenas and selling more than 90 million records worldwide. Suffering from congenital glaucoma, he lost his vision completely at age 12 after being hit in the eye with a soccer ball.

Factoid: While he was attending law school, Bocelli performed in piano bars to earn money. After obtaining his degree, he worked as a court-appointed attorney for a year.

Frederick Delius, composer (1862-1934): blind

Returning to France after World War I, the English composer began to show signs of the syphilis that he contracted in the 1880s; by 1928, he was paralyzed and blind. Aspiring composer and conductor Eric Fenby served as Delius’ assistant from then until his death, recording compositions from the composer’s dictation and helping him revise earlier works.

Factoid: Director Ken Russell created a 1968 black-and-white episode for the BBC’s “Omnibus” series, titled “Song of Summer,” which chronicled those final years when Fenby lived with Delius and his wife, Jelka.

Leon Fleisher, pianist (1928-2020): focal dystonia

One of the top American pianists of the 20th century and a sought-after pedagogue, by 1964, he largely had lost the use of his left hand because of focal dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions. He began performing works for the left hand composed for Paul Wittgenstein (see below) and commissioned new works in the form. Through botox and deep massage, Fleisher was able to resume his career as a two-handed pianist in 1995. (Other musicians who have suffered from focal dystonia include pianists Glenn Gould and Gary Graffman and composer Jake Heggie.)

Factoid: Fleisher made many appearances with the CSO, starting in 1945 and 1946 with six concerts at the Ravinia Festival, the first two with conductor Leonard Bernstein and the next four with George Szell and William Steinberg.

Norman Malone, pianist (1938- ): paralysis

The Chicago native began studying the piano when he was 5. Hs relationship with the instrument changed forever five years later, when his father attacked him and his siblings with a hammer. After suffering temporary paralysis, he was able to relearn how to walk and talk, but he did not regain of use of his right arm. He went on to enjoy a successful career as a choir teacher and in his spare time, learned Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.

Factoid: After he was featured in the Chicago Tribune, Malone began playing concerts of left-handed solo piano music and made his debut in 2016 at age 78 with the West Hartford Symphony Orchestra. The experience was captured in a PBS documentary titled, “For the Left Hand” (2021).

Itzhak Perlman, violinist (1945- ): polio

Perlman, one of the greatest living classical musicians, contracted polio when he was 4 and was forced to rely on leg braces and crutches to walk. Despite his disability, he began studying the violin at age 5 and entered the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv (now the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music).

Factoid: In 1994, Toby Perlman, along with husband Itzhak, established the Perlman Music Program for aspiring string players and pianists. The program, now based on a 28-acre campus on Shelter Island, which is situated between the north and south forks of New York’s Long Island, has produced scores of noted alumni across the field.

Robert Schumann, composer (1810-1856): mental illness

Schumann attempted suicide in 1854 by throwing himself into a river. He survived and admitted himself to a sanatorium, where he remained until he died 2.5 years later. It is impossible to know from what he suffered, but many scholars point to bipolar disorder, while others believe he died of neurosyphilis.

Factoid: Schumann was part of perhaps the most famous love triangle in classical-music history, involving his wife, Clara, a world-renowned pianist, and Johannes Brahms, who met the couple when he was 23. Brahms was an important support to Clara during her husband’s illness and the two had a close, affectionate relationship but apparently nothing more.

Leif Segerstam, composer and conductor (1944-2024): autism

The renowned Finnish musical figure mentioned in a 2024 interview that he was autistic, but little information exists about where he fell on the spectrum. Conductor Hannu Lintu, one of Segerstam’s students, told the New York Times that his mentor could be deliberately provocative and enigmatic, and “enjoyed baffling people around him.”

Factoid: Segerstam wrote 371 symphonies, a figure that could make him the most prolific composer ever of such works. He led the CSO in concerts in 2001, 1999 and 1997.

Paul Wittgenstein, pianist (1887-1961): war injury

Although he studied with famed soloist Theodor Leschetizky and began a career as a pianist, Wittgenstein gained lasting fame not for his playing but his commissions of piano works for left hand by composers such as Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith and Maurice Ravel. While serving in World War I, Wittgenstein was shot in the elbow, which led to his right arm being amputated. However, he continued to perform with his just his left hand and sought new works to accommodate his condition.

Factoid: Many of the works that Wittgenstein commissioned continue to be performed — mostly by two-handed pianists. None of these compositions is better known than Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which soloist Alice Sara Ott is set to take on Sept. 25-28 with the CSO.

Iannis Xenakis, composer (1922-2001): blinded in one eye

When a tank blast struck him during street fighting, Greek-born pianist Xenakis was wounded and facially disfigured. Greece had been plunged into civil war after the 1944 occupation by British forces to avert the nation from falling to the communists. Xenakis was a member of a student branch of the Greek People’s Liberation Army.

Factoid: The composer wrote the 1963 book Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition and also was an architect who designed the modernist Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair.