!["Blind Tom." [Bethune, Thomas. or Wiggins, Thomas.] (1849–1908) Blind Tom Concert Ticket, October 28, 1877](http://www.schubertiademusic.com/cdn/shop/files/Blind_Tom_Concert_Ticket_23319.jpg?v=1722190744)
"Blind Tom." [Bethune, Thomas. or Wiggins, Thomas.] (1849–1908). Blind Tom Concert Ticket, October 28, 1877. Excessively rare original concert ticket, "Complimentary...Blind Tom Concert. Admit One" noting that "forfeited if sold or transferred" and with punch holes to the month of October and date of 28, the year 1877 printed upper right corner. Concert tickets are almost certainly by nature the most ephemeral type of concert ephemera. While "Blind Tom" concert programs and broadsides are indeed scarce, we have traced no examples whatsoever of performance tickets having appeared on the market. Mounting remnants to verso, else fine. 2 x 4.4 inches; 11 x 5 cm.
Born enslaved and formally uneducated, his unique musical talent led to world tours, performances at the White House and an enthusiastic fan base that included Mark Twain. Now believed to be an autistic savant, during his amazing life this musical prodigy is reported to have learned to play more than 7,000 pieces, including standard classical and Romantic repertoire and many original compositions. One of the earliest concert reviews published in the Baltimore Sun on June 27, 1860 announced that Tom was a phenomenon in the musical world "thrusting all our conceptions of the science to the wall and informing us that there is a musical world of which we know nothing." Mark Twain, a great enthusiast for Tom's playing, wrote in 1869 that Tom "lorded it over the emotions of his audience like an autocrat. He swept them like a storm, with his battle-pieces; he lulled them to rest again with melodies as tender as those we hear in dreams; he gladdened them with others that rippled through the charmed air as happily and cheerily as the riot the linnets make in California woods; and now and then he threw in queer imitations of the tuning of discordant harps and fiddles, and the groaning and wheezing of bag-pipes, that sent the rapt silence into tempests of laughter. And every time the audience applauded when a piece was finished, this happy innocent joined in and clapped his hands, too, and with vigorous emphasis...Some archangel, cast out of upper Heaven like another Satan, inhabits this coarse casket; and he comforts himself and makes his prison beautiful with thoughts and dreams and memories of another time... It is not Blind Tom that does these wonderful things and plays this wonderful music--it is the other party."
"Blind Tom." [Bethune, Thomas. or Wiggins, Thomas.] (1849–1908). Blind Tom Concert Ticket, October 28, 1877. Excessively rare original concert ticket, "Complimentary...Blind Tom Concert. Admit One" noting that "forfeited if sold or transferred" and with punch holes to the month of October and date of 28, the year 1877 printed upper right corner. Concert tickets are almost certainly by nature the most ephemeral type of concert ephemera. While "Blind Tom" concert programs and broadsides are indeed scarce, we have traced no examples whatsoever of performance tickets having appeared on the market. Mounting remnants to verso, else fine. 2 x 4.4 inches; 11 x 5 cm.
Born enslaved and formally uneducated, his unique musical talent led to world tours, performances at the White House and an enthusiastic fan base that included Mark Twain. Now believed to be an autistic savant, during his amazing life this musical prodigy is reported to have learned to play more than 7,000 pieces, including standard classical and Romantic repertoire and many original compositions. One of the earliest concert reviews published in the Baltimore Sun on June 27, 1860 announced that Tom was a phenomenon in the musical world "thrusting all our conceptions of the science to the wall and informing us that there is a musical world of which we know nothing." Mark Twain, a great enthusiast for Tom's playing, wrote in 1869 that Tom "lorded it over the emotions of his audience like an autocrat. He swept them like a storm, with his battle-pieces; he lulled them to rest again with melodies as tender as those we hear in dreams; he gladdened them with others that rippled through the charmed air as happily and cheerily as the riot the linnets make in California woods; and now and then he threw in queer imitations of the tuning of discordant harps and fiddles, and the groaning and wheezing of bag-pipes, that sent the rapt silence into tempests of laughter. And every time the audience applauded when a piece was finished, this happy innocent joined in and clapped his hands, too, and with vigorous emphasis...Some archangel, cast out of upper Heaven like another Satan, inhabits this coarse casket; and he comforts himself and makes his prison beautiful with thoughts and dreams and memories of another time... It is not Blind Tom that does these wonderful things and plays this wonderful music--it is the other party."