Department of Ophthalmology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California.
Ophthalmology. 2014 Jul;121(7):1480-5. doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2014.01.009. Epub 2014 Feb 22.
This article considers the impact of vision and hearing loss on great painters and musical composers. The visual work of Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet all showed alterations as their vision failed. In contrast, Gabriel Fauré, Bedřich Smetana, and Ludwig von Beethoven wrote many of their best compositions while totally deaf, and Georg Friedrich Handel and Frederick Delius struggled to compose late in life when they lost their vision (although their hearing remained excellent). There are 2 major distinctions between the role of vision and hearing for these artistic disciplines. First, there is a surrogate means of "hearing" music, through the musical score, which allows composers to write and edit music while totally deaf. The greatest problem with deafness for a skilled composer is interference from internal noise (tinnitus). There is no surrogate for vision to allow a painter to work when the subject is a blur or the colors on the canvas cannot be distinguished. Second, although the appreciation of art is visual and that of music is auditory, the transcription of both art and musical composition is visual. Thus, visual loss does pose a problem for a composer accustomed to working with good sight, because it disrupts habitual methods of writing and editing music.
本文探讨了视力和听力损失对伟大画家和音乐作曲家的影响。玛丽·卡萨特、乔治亚·奥基夫、埃德加·德加和克劳德·莫奈的视觉作品都显示出随着视力下降而发生的变化。相比之下，加布里埃尔·福雷、贝德里希·斯美塔那和路德维希·范·贝多芬在完全失聪的情况下创作了许多最佳作品，而乔治·弗里德里希·亨德尔和弗雷德里克·戴留斯在视力丧失后（尽管他们的听力仍然很好）晚年时努力作曲。对于这些艺术学科，视觉和听觉的作用有 2 个主要区别。首先，有一种替代的“听”音乐的方法，即通过乐谱，这使作曲家在完全失聪的情况下也能作曲和编辑音乐。对于一位熟练的作曲家来说，耳聋最大的问题是内部噪音（耳鸣）的干扰。没有替代视觉的方法可以让画家在主题模糊或画布上的颜色无法区分时工作。其次，尽管艺术的欣赏是视觉的，音乐的欣赏是听觉的，但艺术和音乐作品的转录都是视觉的。因此，对于习惯于良好视力的作曲家来说，视力丧失确实会带来问题，因为它会打乱他们惯用的作曲和编辑音乐的方法。
