Dear Sir,—The undersigned desire to express to you their thanks for the opportunity afforded to them of hearing and seeing the wonderful performances of your protégé, the blind boy pianist, Tom. They find it impossible to account for these immense results upon any hypothesis growing out of the known laws of art and science.
In the numerous tests to which Tom was subjected in our presence, or by us, he invariably came off triumphant. Whether in deciding the pitch or component parts of chords the most difficult and dissonant; whether in repeating with correctness and precision any pieces, written or impromptu, played to him for the first and only time; whether in his improvisations, or performances of compositions by Thalberg, Gottschalk, Verdi, and others; in fact, under every form of musical examination,—and the experiments are too numerous to mention or enumerate,—he showed a power and capacity ranking him among the most wonderful phenomena recorded in musical history.
Accept, dear sir, the regards of your humble servants,
| B.C. Cross, James M. Beck, G. Blandner, J.A. Stern, | J.H. Rednor, Carl Roese, C. Blancgaur, J.A. Getza, And several others. |
Here are some clippings from American and English newspapers.
From "The Public Ledger," Philadelphia, Sept. 27, 1865:—
"Many professors of music of great eminence have been ready, after listening to him, to declare that they would never touch the piano again. What he has done in public in the way of playing the most difficult pieces after hearing them but once, and with a perfection that years of practice could not usually apply, is known to all the lovers of music in this city.
"The secret of this wonderful power is the most perfect ear for the harmonies of sound ever observed,—'only this, and nothing more.' To him every thing is music. Discords do not seem to disturb him; but his ear catches every harmony, and his whole being seems entranced and controlled by it. Let him stand with his back to a piano, and any number of chords be struck, and he will instantly tell every note sounded, showing that he has been able to discriminate, and his memory to retain distinctly and perfectly, each sound. The phrenologists say that memory is in proportion to clearness and strength of the impression produced at first; and this must be the case with him. From two years old this remarkable power of sound over him has been noticed. He has been blind from birth; and it would seem here, as often observed before, that, by a compensative law of our being, in proportion as one sense is defective, the expenditure of vital energy thus saved is absorbed by some other sense. Probably all our sensations are the result of vibrations; and the pulsations of light that usually enter and give all their exquisite pleasure through the eye-ball are in his case compensated for by the pulsations of sound, which strike on an ear possessed of nerves of double delicacy and vital energy from the absorption and concentration of two senses in one.
"'Blind Tom' is not, however, the senseless being that most imagine him, but rather like one completely guided and governed by this one sense alone. As a lad, the song of a bird would lead him to wander off into the woods; and then the sound of the flute would bring him to those who went in search of him....
"Perhaps a proper study of the case of this lad might show to what extent all (though in less degree) might be educated through music. It is certainly this alone that can be most easily developed. Probably the highest and best emotions might be thus permanently excited within him; while the desire for those pleasures leads him to put forth intellectual efforts that nothing else can.... But his performances in music show how the highest results of art and study are most easily reached by this lad in his one-sided culture and development,—that of the ear alone. It is with him a sort of inspiration. The science of music he will probably never be able to master; but we must remember that the art of it preceded the science in Egypt, in Palestine, in Greece, and in Rome, by long ages. Indeed, it was the music of the Hebrews, and then of the Christian Church, that gave birth to scientific music, and alone developed it, until that of the opera gave rise to a distinct branch of the culture. This re-acted powerfully on sacred music itself. 'Blind Tom' at present likes operatic music best."