We hear a lot about mediums—people who supposedly can communicate with spirits. Browsing paranormal magazines or websites like Paranormalium, we often read about séances during which mediums received various messages from spirits. Most often, these are words spoken by the spirit through the medium or messages received via automatic writing.
Rosemary Brown, however, was a special medium, for in addition to messages, she also received musical scores of new works by great composers from the afterlife! But let's start from the beginning...
Rosemary Brown was born on July 27, 1916, and died on November 16, 2001. Her father was an electrician, and her mother a catering manager. The apartment was located directly above the concert hall where Rosemary won a dance competition as a child. However, her father prevented her from pursuing a dancing career.
She was only seven years old when she was first introduced to the world of deceased musicians. She claimed that a ghost dressed in a long black cassock and with long white hair appeared to her one day, announcing that he was a famous composer and that he would one day make her famous. Brown didn't know who he was until ten years later when she saw a portrait of Franz Liszt.
It's worth noting that, in addition to Rosemary, many other members of her family also displayed psychic abilities, and in her own case, these began to manifest at a very young age. For example, she recounted to her parents events that had occurred before her birth, and when asked how she knew all this, she claimed that "visitors" had told her so.
In 1943, Rosemary contracted polio, which left her paralyzed on the left side of her body. At the age of 15, she began working at the post office. One day, while walking home, she heard a voice telling her to change her route. It turned out her old route had been destroyed in a bombing raid.
In 1952, she married Charles Brown, a government scientist who had once been gardener to King Farrouk of Egypt. They had two children. In 1961, her husband and mother died, and around that time, Rosemary began experiencing ghostly visitations.
Rosemary Brown presents one of the songs received from the afterlife
Liszt presumably resurfaced in 1964. Rosemary Brown, a seemingly unremarkable middle-aged widow living in London's Stockwell district, had little interest in music before 1964. Shortly after World War II, she took piano lessons for three years, but her neighbor, a church organist, was not impressed with her playing. He claimed she had difficulty playing the hymn, let alone more difficult pieces.
In 1964, Liszt "renewed his acquaintance" with Mrs. Brown, and she soon committed to paper new works by famous composers of the past, including Johannes Brahms, Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Schubert, Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, and Liszt himself. The works included a 40-page sonata by Schubert, Chopin's three-movement Fantaisie-Impromptu, 12 songs by Schubert, and two sonatas by Beethoven, as well as his Symphonies No. 10 and 11, both unfinished.
In total, over the course of several decades, Ms. Brown committed over a thousand compositions to paper. The handwriting reveals the hallmarks of the great masters. All of the pieces are written for piano, but some have been transcribed for orchestra.
Rosemary Brown was financially supported by believers in the occult. She wrote three books on channeling and made numerous recordings, some of which she plays herself. Rosemary Brown's last recording was made in 1988. In the mid-1980s, as Brown's health declined, the spirit visits ceased. She always refused to ask the spirits questions that might confirm their existence. She said, "I can't just press a button and call in composers." However, when she was looking for a cover for her album in 1970, the musicologist Sir Donald Tovey, who had died in 1940, came to her aid.
Brown claimed that each composer dictated new pieces to her in his own unique way. Liszt took control of her hands, and she wrote down the notes. Others, like Chopin, handed her the sheet music and moved her fingers over the appropriate piano keys. Schubert tried to sing to her, but, as she said, his voice wasn't very good. Beethoven and Bach simply dictated the notes. She particularly disliked this last method because she wasn't sure what the final result would sound like. All the composers spoke to her in English, except for Fryderyk Chopin, who often spoke Polish. Since Mrs. Brown didn't speak Polish, she transcribed his words phonetically and later read them with the help of an interpreter.
Her contacts with composers weren't limited to the musical sphere. They often visited her in the most unexpected places. For example, Liszt would meet Mrs. Brown in a shop, asking about the price of bananas, and she would watch television with Chopin. In interviews, Mrs. Brown shared a wealth of information about the characteristics of the composers she interacted with. Beethoven "was no longer deaf" and "didn't make grumpy faces," Debussy "dressed strangely" and "looked like a hippie," and Chopin "was constantly shouting something in French." Later, she also saw the ghosts of other famous figures, such as Shakespeare, van Gogh, and even Saint Peter.
Rosemary Brown and the recording of "Gruebelei" dictated to her by Franz Liszt
Music critics expressed very mixed opinions about Ms. Brown's compositions. Many believed that Ms. Brown's pieces indeed bore stylistic features of already known works by the aforementioned composers. While there have been counterfeits and imitations in the past, performing them requires considerable musical knowledge, which Ms. Brown certainly lacked.
In an interview, Brown stated that she belonged to a music conservatory, which somewhat undermined the credibility of her claims about transmitting works by famous composers from the past. The Ludwig Finscher Encyclopedia of Music, in turn, states that Rosemary Brown had worked as a church organist since 1965. It has been suggested that she may have had musical training in the past, but all her theoretical knowledge had "evaporated" due to amnesia. However, this was denied by Rosemary Brown's personal physician. She herself maintained that her musical abilities did not allow her to perform many of the works she received from deceased composers.
Rosemary Brown was studied by numerous trained musicians and psychologists, but no fraud was detected, so other explanations for her phenomenon were put forward. One suggested that composers left behind sketches of many new works, and Brown was able to decipher them, involuntarily using telepathy. Another hypothesis suggested that music was transmitted to her telepathically by people living in her neighborhood. However, Brown had no contact with composers who worked in a similar style to Bach or Brahms.
Many musicians and musicologists have admired Rosemary Brown's compositions. Composer Richard Rodney Bennett said that while many people can improvise, it is impossible to fabricate such music without years of prior study. Hephzibah Menuhin added that Ms. Brown's music perfectly matches the style of these composers.
Alan Rich, a music critic writing for New York magazine, was somewhat skeptical, however. After listening to recordings of several pieces transcribed by Brown, he concluded that they were merely arrangements of some of the more famous compositions. Leonard Bernstein, on the other hand, saw similarities only in works dictated by Rachmaninoff.
Rosemary Brown herself was put through a test by the BBC in 1969. The test involved Brown sitting at a piano, waiting for Franz Liszt to appear. During the session, she composed a piece that she claimed the composer himself dictated to her. Unfortunately, the piece proved too difficult for her to play, so another pianist was asked. The composition was then reviewed by a Liszt expert, who found it to bear significant similarities to his style.
However, doubts have resurfaced, as there is no material evidence—apart from, of course, the written works—that the great composers dictated the pieces. As Harry Edwards rightly points out in "A Skeptic's Guide to the New Age," simply writing and playing a piece in an old style does not necessarily mean it was dictated by a composer from the past. Many contemporary composers write music in the style of the old masters, and music schools sometimes offer training in this direction.
Regardless of whether the claim of receiving works from deceased masters is true or not, the fact remains that the music recorded by Mrs. Brown has been met with acclaim, and not just from music lovers. Some of the pieces recorded by Rosemary Brown have appeared on the album "The Rosemary Brown Piano Album." Numerous books have also been published, the most famous of which is "Unfinished Symphonies: Voices from the Beyond."
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