Mom always told me to take eye breaks
While researching remedies for nearsightedness, I ran across an article with a reference to an intriguing study. Dr. Paul Harris an optometrist at the Baltimore Academy for Behavioral Optometry did a study on orchestral musicians and “found that the shape of the eyes of musicians changed to accommodate the instruments they played.” The text of the resulting paper is actually online; it was published in the Journal of the American Optometric Association in 1988. Dr. Harris studied the posture and eye positions of musicians in the Baltimore Symphony and discovered strong correlations with how their eyes adapted to their asymmetrical postures. Musicians spend many hours in one position, heads tilted this way or that to better hold their instruments, read their music and watch the conductor all at once. It’s not surprising that they end up with astigmatism as their eyes adjust to the asymmetry.

The abstract of the paper also hints that “good sight readers in music use a fundamentally different eye scan pattern to read music from the pattern that they use to read written language.” I know I don’t read music the same way as I read a book. There are many layers of information in music, not just the notes but all the annotations regarding dynamics, speed, accents, fingerings, accidentals, exhortations to watch the conductor. I scan multiple points, back and forth, and often much further ahead than what I am actually playing. And I know a number of musicians with glasses prescribed especially for the middle-distance of an orchestra stand. I hope I can avoid that for a few more years.