Sylvia Cranston and Carey Williams – USA
[Condensed from Reincarnation:A New Horizon in Science, Religion, and Society, pp. 152-55, Theosophical University Press, 1999 edition. This excerpt is reproduced on Theosophy Forward in a slightly revised format to fit the magazine’s template. Permission is granted to reprint one time this article written and published by Anita Atkins (aka-Sylvia Cranston) and Carey Williams to Jan Nicolaas Kind, publisher of Theosophy Forward. Copyright Owner: Dr. Caren M. Elin, September 5, 2017].
To be born blind and in slavery in Georgia in the year 1849 was hardly a propitious entry into this world. In a magazine article, “Blind Tom: Mystery of Music,” Webb Garrison related that for business reasons, “most Georgia farmers of a century ago were very particular about their annual crop of slaves, and Perry H. Oliver, of Muscogee County, was no exception.” So, when the baby of one of his slaves was born stone blind, he was keenly disappointed. “Later, Oliver sold the mother at a slave, auction to General James Bethune of Columbus, Georgia. Then he pulled the blind youngster from hiding. ‘Here,’ he chuckled, ‘I forgot to tell you she has a boy. I’m throwing him in free’” (Coronet, July 1952). And so the poor mother with her one- year-old child was torn from her home and friends, to live among strangers. General Bethune named the boy Thomas Greene Bethune, but the world was to know him as “Blind Tom.” In her novel My Antonia, Willa Cather told a fictionalized version of his story, and called him Blind d’Arnault.
Among the many accounts of this astounding prodigy, the best researched is that of Ella May Thornton, honorary state librarian of Georgia. Her study, “The Mystery of Blind Tom,” was published in the Winter 1961 issue of The Georgia Review. We quote here from that article:
“While he was still an infant in arms, Tom’s extraordinary susceptibility to any and every sound manifested itself – but to music in particular.... All of the Bethunes, who were of high intelligence, cultivation, and benevolence, recognized the unusual qualities of the small Negro.
The first amazing demonstration of Tom’s musical virtuosity was the occasion when he, unexpectedly [at the age of three], joined his voice with those of the Bethune girls as they were singing on the verandah steps one evening. It was not the melody that he carried, but the more difficult second part. . . . He, spontaneously and perfectly, carried on to the end of the song.
The next surprising exhibition was the following year when he was four, upon an evening when the young ladies had had several hours of music at the piano. After they had scattered to other parts of the house, all that had been played earlier was heard again. When the original performers hastened back to the parlor, there was the little black mite at the keyboard, giving back, in ecstasy, all that he had received.”
“No one knew of his ever having touched a piano before,” adds Miss Thornton, “and it seems probable that he never had,” because “sounds attract attention, and a slave boy playing the piano in a busy household would soon be detected.”
It is reported by the music magazine Etude (August 1940) that, right from the start, Blind Tom used both the black and white keys. Thus he was aware of the major and minor scales of Western music. As the black and white keys are not a natural arrangement, but an ingenious device invented by man, it is diffi cult to understand how a blind child could use them without some prior acquaintance with the piano and a period of training in its use. Miss Thornton emphasizes that, when he began to play the great classics, he approached them “differently from those who play ‘by ear’ and know nothing of the placing of the fingers.” He “displayed an absolute accuracy of fingering which a highly professional reviewer in 1862 declared was ‘of the schools.’”
Although Tom’s mental faculties were quite limited, it would be a mistake to confine him to that class of rare retarded children who, having computerlike brains, can record and play back compositions heard only once. While Tom had this faculty to a remarkable degree – he could hear a new piece twenty pages long and repeat it perfectly – he had unusual creative talent, too, as we shall see.
“There were music teachers of the first class in Columbus at this time,” relates Miss Thornton:
… one of them being Carlo Patti, the brother of the noted Madame Adelina. General Bethune sought instruction for Tom. thinking perhaps that formal teaching might be beneficial. The Columbus teacher, who may have been Patti himself, for he instructed the Bethune girls, declined the request saying:
‘No sir, I give up; the world has never seen such a thing as this little blind Negro and will never see such other. I can’t teach him anything; he knows more of music than we know or can learn – all that great genius can reduce to rule and put in tangible form; he knows more than that; I don’t even know what it is, but I see and feel it is something beyond my comprehension. All that can be done for him will be to let him hear fine playing; he will work it all out by himself.’”
Tom’s public concerts began when he was eight years old. When he was twelve, at “the very time of Georgia’s secession, on January 19, 1861, Tom appeared in concert in New York City and, throughout the war, played in towns in both Confederate and Union territory, as well as behind the lines of both armies. Thousands of soldiers heard him, and many recounted these occasions, in wonder and amazement, in their diaries and journals, later numerously published. In 1866 and 1867 he performed widely in the British Isles and on the Continent and, for nearly twenty years thereafter, far and wide throughout America. He played at the White House by command performance.”
While Tom played Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bach, Chopin, and many others, he was no mere repeater of the music of others.
“Of his countless hours at the keyboard, a liberal portion of these was given over to improvising. And, once given form, these melodies were forever afterward a part of his repertoire, which was said to embrace seven thousand pieces. In more than one critique it was pointed out that those who undertook to set down his compositions were never able to lay hold of the mystery and beauty of his musical phrases. .
. . His grasp and mastery of the sciences of counterpoint and harmony were complete. . . . Indeed, all the elements requisite to the formation of a total musical power seemed to have been fused into his being.”
Miss Thornton ends her study with a problem: “A question is often raised as to whether there have been any findings by psychologists, physiologists, and other men of science, as well as musical authorities, in explanation of the astounding attainments of Blind Tom. The answer I make, after long study, is that there has been no explanation.” Yet explanation there must be. If reincarnation proves to be true, then one could say that somewhere, sometime, this blind slave boy must have learned to become a superb musical artist.
It may be significant that the appearance of Blind Tom on the Western scene was especially timely. It was toward the close of the black night of human slavery in the United States when he demonstrated to millions of listeners that the poor, despised, seemingly degraded, uneducated black person was capable of accomplishments that white people with the best education could not duplicate.
The excerpt above was previously published in Theosophical Digest 1996 v8 i4 p12.