The music of Rosemary Brown is the subject that has brought people to my blog more than any other.  My writing about her has put me in touch with some fascinating people in faraway places, and just recently that has led to my being given another album of Brown pieces as .mp3s, plus a collection of Brown sheet music I hadn’t seen before.  I’ve put all of it up for you in one place, along with the material I already had; the URL is at the bottom of this post.

Through a series of e-mails begun with, if I remember correctly, a reprint of my original article on Mrs. Brown in The Ground of Faith, I’ve had the good fortune to become acquainted with a Brazilian musician and composer, Guilherme Tavares, who has supplied me with a lot of these materials, and also did me a tremendous favor by editing my own recording of “Grübelei.”  A circular sort of Web process brought some of the recordings to Guilherme, involving other people with strong interests in the Brown phenomenon:  Ademir Xavier left a comment on my blog about Érico Bomfim, who is trying to record all of Mrs. Brown’s work, then Guilherme contacted Érico, who sent recordings to him, which he passed on to me, and I am now making available to you.

Guilherme also found a BBC radio program about musical mediumship, from three years ago, and recorded the section about Mrs. Brown.  He asked me to transcribe it, and I am posting it here.  It includes the moment when “Grübelei” came into the world– a fascinating moment in which the most hardened skeptic would be hard pressed to believe Mrs. Brown was faking.  I’m going to save further comments on the new material and on Mrs. Brown in general for the next post, but for now, I’ll say that I’m especially intrigued by what she said about all composers perhaps getting music from a central source beyond themselves, possibly transmitted to them by intermediaries, just as the composers themselves were transmitting music to her.  This has been my meta-question about Mrs. Brown’s work all along– where does music really come from?  If Liszt or Beethoven or whoever give music to Mrs. Brown, where are they getting it?

I remember one of my piano teachers, Jane Viemeister, who’s a competent composer herself, saying that music is like an endless waterfall; all you have to do is take your bucket and scoop some up, and there’s always more where that came from.  Arlo Guthrie once said that music was like a stream going by, and it was his job to dip out the good stuff before Bob Dylan could get it!  Many composers have reported feeling that they were simply writing down music that was being dictated to them by some higher Source, perhaps even God.  Yet, every composer has a recognizable, individual style.  I still find this all mysterious– especially when a poem pops unbidden and fully formed into my head.  I can’t write music, but my best work does tend to happen in much the way those composers describe.

The conclusions, or rather non-conclusions, reached during this radio program are pretty close to my view of the subject.  Except that, having lived with a spirit close by much of the time, getting mixed up in my daily life, I don’t have any problem believing that Liszt could advise Mrs. Brown on the price of bananas in the supermarket.

“Music from Beyond the Veil,” hosted by Professor Paul Robertson on BBC Radio 4, first aired July 14, 2009

[A rather rough recording of “Grübelei” plays in the background.]

Mrs. Brown:  It really began when I was a child.  I had a vision of Liszt, but at that time I was not aware that this was Liszt, because I was too young to have seen pictures or photographs of him.  And he told me that when he was on the earth, he was a famous composer and pianist, and that when I grew up he would give me music.  After Liszt had established a link with me, he first brought Chopin, but then he began to bring others, and there is now quite a group communicating fairly regularly.

Robertson:  A group which included many of the greats, Brahms, Debussy, Schumann, Schubert, even Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.  This piece of music, recorded in 1969, is attributed to Franz Liszt, yet it was recorded nearly 80 years after his death.  He chose as his musical intermediary, if we are to believe her account, a quietly-spoken, unassuming housewife from Balham.  Her name was Rosemary Brown, and she created a stir in the late ‘60s, when her musical mediumship added dozens, and eventually hundreds, of new compositions to the musical canon of Liszt and his group of famous friends from beyond this earthly veil.  As a musician myself, a violinist who spent most of his career leading a string quartet, you could say that I too am a medium, but when I aim to express some long-dead composer’s intentions and emotions, I believe I’m working from a musical score.  Yet, I’m fascinated by the mysterious connection between music and our spiritual lives, not least the question of where seemingly transcendent musical inspiration comes from.

In 1969, BBC Radio 3 broadcast “Music From the Dead Composers,” an hour-long program which took a close look at Rosemary Brown’s claims.  During the program, Rosemary described how she received new compositions from beyond the grave.

Mrs. Brown:  Liszt, who was the first one to give music to me, has a way of controlling my hands.  I think quite a few people will have heard of something called automatic writing, where a spirit controls the hand of a person here, and writes through them.  Well, in this case, Liszt somehow contrives to control both my hands, so that he can make them play the music, and he plays the same phrases over several times, while I watch and try to memorize the notes, and then I’ll write it out afterwards to the best of my ability.

Robertson:  In May 1969, during the making of “Music From the Dead Composers,” presenter Geoffrey Skelton and his producer Daniel Snowman visited Rosemary’s home, a small end-of-terrace house in Lakewood Road, Balham, to record with her as she received her music.  Forty years later, Daniel Snowman can still remember how Rosemary sat at the piano waiting for inspiration to strike.

Snowman:  It was a very emotionally low-beat occasion; there was no sense of a séance or of magic or tables moving or all those things.  We simply turned the machine on and sat there, with her obvious agreement– she gave us a cup of tea and all that– and we sat.  And she would, every now and then, mumble various things– not sure whether they were to us or for us, or to somebody [chuckles] from the dead.

Mrs. Brown:  I’m becoming aware of their… they’re present.  At least they’re here, see.  They’re going to transmit.  I can see Liszt quite clearly.

Snowman:  And then she said, “Oh, yes, Liszt, Liszt is here now.”  And Liszt apparently dictated to her a difficult piece called “Grübelei.”  And she was mumbling back and forth with him, in English, “What? Five-four in the right… and a different… and the key signature, how many sharps?  And three-two in the left?”  You know, kind of, “If you say so, Maestro.”

Mrs. Brown:  [slowly picking out notes, scratching on paper]  I don’t know what I’ve left out.  What have I left out… left out… left out?  Oh, yes, you said repeat that, that goes there, yeah.  No….

Snowman:  And then gradually the thing seemed to come together.  She tried to play it, couldn’t, Geoffrey had a go, and it came together as an interesting piece.

The most extraordinary thing to me about that piece she produced in our presence, “Grübelei” by Liszt (supposedly), was that somebody of the ability and authority of Humphrey Searle, a great Liszt expert at the time, you know, looked at this piece and said, “Yeah, it’s very much like the kind of piece he was experimenting with towards the end of his life.”  It’s an extraordinary piece for somebody to simply do a pastiche of Liszt, to come up with something like that.

Willin:  Well, I had quite a lot of correspondence with Rosemary when she was alive, um, and I’ve looked at a lot of her music and I’ve done a lot of tests on it, and I’ve discussed it with possibly thousands and certainly hundreds of people.

Robertson:  Dr. Melvyn Willin describes himself as being a paramusicologist.  As well as being a music teacher and performer, he researches cases where music apparently meets the paranormal.

Willin:  And what do I have to say?  Um, I think that she was genuine, I think she was tapping into something.

Robertson:  So when you say genuine….

Willin:  She wasn’t fraudulent.

Robertson:  She was sincere.

Willin:  Sincere, yes.

Robertson:  OK.  But do you think she was, in your terms, a genuine medium for something she couldn’t otherwise have achieved?

Willin:  I think she believed that she was genuinely in touch with the composers that she said she was in touch with.  Um, and hey, perhaps she was.  I would be happier to think that she was in touch perhaps with something that was within her, that she was perhaps getting some help from externally.  But I don’t believe that Beethoven or Liszt was telling her the price of bananas in the supermarket, etc.

As to her music, it’s always come across to me, and to others, as a rather good pastiche of the actual composers.  But having said that, I wouldn’t say always, and that’s the frustrating thing, because I can’t say that no, I think all her pieces were pastiche.  I have to say that I think an awful lot were, but there was the odd one or two, that I just think, I don’t know how she did that.

Robertson:  So where does that leave us with the intriguing case of Rosemary Brown?  Not even her most ardent critics accused her of being fraudulent, or of somehow deceiving the public, and she was clearly sincere in her belief about where her talents came from.  It’s interesting, though, to hear her in an interview of 1967, describing her composer friends from the other side as themselves intermediaries for something greater.

Mrs. Brown:  Well, it seems to me to come from a central source of inspiration, as if there were spheres of music, and I think it is channeled down to me, as perhaps it is channeled down to other composers, by various intermediary beings, spirits, whatever you like to call them.  And in this instance, I think there are people who have been composers upon the earth, trying to channel the music to me.

[Background music: a tenor singing “O Sole Mio.”]

Robertson:  I’ll leave the last word to Leo May, who is as certain in his conviction as Rosemary Brown was in hers that he’s channeling the spirits of dead musicians, in his case, those of Enrico Caruso and Mario Lanza.

[An interview begins]  So in a way, it’s not a million miles different to having a talent and then having a duty to serve that talent.

May:  I’m a servant, yes.

Robertson:  And is that quite important, to feel that?

May:  It is indeed important, yes.  Indeed it is, to serve it.  I want to serve the spirit world, which I know, if anybody says to me, “do you believe in the spirit world?” I say, “No.  I know it.”  And there’s the difference between knowing it and surmising that it might be there.  I know it.  Without a doubt.

Part 2:

In my last post, I mentioned some recordings of Rosemary Brown pieces made by the young Brazilian pianist Érico Bomfim.  I first heard him a few months ago, playing two nocturnes attributed to Chopin.  My immediate reaction was that these were pleasant pieces, but in no way could I say they had been composed by my dear friend.  Dang.  I was a little uncomfortable about this, but I was involved with other projects at the time, and didn’t think much further about it until I received the recent shipment of Brown sheet music I told you about, sent by Guilherme Tavares, which included both of the nocturnes.  Now I’ve had a chance to play them both and hang out with them for a while.  My impression is still the same.  The C# minor nocturne, constructed of block chords like the “chorale” section of some Chopin nocturnes rather than the stereotypical lyrical melody plus arpeggiated accompaniment, is very enjoyable, but I hear it as a well-crafted Brown piece with little resemblance to the work of the named composer.  The nocturne in F minor is built on a typical nocturne plan, with a sinuous and rhythmically complex melody very much like what we would expect of Chopin, but somehow still not sounding like his voice.  I was surprised that these nocturnes would sound so not-Chopin, since the A flat nocturne I already knew has so many of his characteristics, resembles known pieces of his, and completely convinces me.  (Well, 99%.)  While it’s possible, even likely, that a composer’s style would change over time, these sound more like the work of another competent composer of the same era than like Chopin himself.  Still, I can’t rule out his being involved with their creation.

The F minor nocturne has been bugging me today.  It’s an attractive piece, and I’ve gotten interested in it enough to want to learn it thoroughly.  Why is it that although it’s constructed exactly like a Chopin nocturne, with similar turns of phrase, it doesn’t sound like him?  What does Chopin sound like that’s different from this?  If anyone should be able to answer, it’s me, but so far I can’t.  Earlier today I was playing the nocturne and asking myself these questions, and I called out to my mother, “Does this sound like Chopin to you?”  Without hesitating, she called back, “No!” from the next room, adding, “It doesn’t make me think of him.”  Poor thing, she has to listen to me practicing Chopin day in and day out, so she knows very well what he sounds like.  Later I played it some more, and got to thinking that measures 8-10 did in fact have a strong Chopinesque flavor, and felt physically like something he’d do.  I asked my husband the same question I’d asked my mother, and he immediately shook his head, not even needing time to think about it.

Both of these nocturnes were published as being written by Rosemary Brown and “inspired by” Chopin.  That seems about right to me, and perhaps as close as we can get to describing the truth.

Years ago I’d played, or tried to play, a set of six mazurkas that were included in the Brown sheet music I had in hard copies, and I’d felt that they were weak as examples of Chopin’s work.  Six more came with the new collection, and I tried those right away.  On a first reading, they seemed as unconvincing as the two nocturnes.  Then I heard Leslie Howard playing all 12 of the mazurkas on the “Listen Beyond Today” album.  They sure sounded a lot better than they did when I tried them!  In fact, they sounded quite respectable, Chopinesque enough and very Polish– played with the proper rhythmic fluidity, too.  And when I heard the last of the 12, in G# minor, I nearly wept for joy, because I felt I was truly hearing my friend’s voice again.  That one is lovely, and it has a simple but sophisticated left hand part that I can easily relate to Chopin.  I’m enjoying learning it, and as happens with good music, I’m finding more in it as I practice.  Listen to it here: https://www.box.com/s/5dhe0hslmbpd81ej8zvl

As I reported last time, “paramusicologist” Melvyn Willin said that there were “the odd one or two” pieces in Mrs. Brown’s opus that he couldn’t explain as “pastiche.”  There are a lot more than one or two, but I know what he meant.  That 12th mazurka is one of them, as is the A flat nocturne, Rachmaninov’s “Sleigh Ride,” “Grübelei” of course, and some others I’ve noticed.  We can all agree that they are good music, wherever they came from.

No matter what one thinks “really” happened, the Rosemary Brown phenomenon is intriguing and, I believe, well worth studying.  What do we know for sure?

– Fraud is not a plausible explanation, for reasons I have outlined in the past and will not bother to repeat.

– The pieces are written in a variety of styles that are recognizably those of the composers named.

– There are a great many pieces; one must say that no matter how they were produced, the output is impressive.

– Quality varies among the pieces.

It is necessary to conclude that one of three things must be true:

1. Mrs. Brown was never in contact with any spirit entity, but got all of the music through somehow tapping into an ability that was beyond the ordinary but still hers alone, or

2. Mrs. Brown was given the music directly by the deceased composers, just as she said, and the clarity of the transmission was variable, with some or all of the pieces unintentionally including input of her own, or

3. Mrs. Brown was given the music by spirit entities only pretending to be those deceased composers, thus explaining the uneven quality.  (These entities would still have to be excellent musicians, and very familiar with the styles of the composers.)

It’s that third possibility that gives me the willies.  My friend Fryderyk has repeatedly indicated, assuming I’ve understood correctly, that he was personally involved in the Brown project, and in fact, as I’ve played and listened to these new pieces in the past week or so, he has shown up a number of times– unfortunately not clearly enough that I could ask questions.  If Mrs. Brown was visited by deceiving entities, that could mean the same thing is happening to me.  I do think this is highly unlikely, for reasons I’ve explained in previous posts, but I keep it in the back of my mind as a possibility, being a proper scientist and never believing that I have possession of all conceivable information.

Regarding possibility #1, I must say, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry when people insist that the composers weren’t present and didn’t even exist.  I mean, from Mrs. Brown’s point of view, Liszt and the others were right there in the room and totally obvious!  (For my friends who can actually see Fryderyk when he is near me, it’s just as obvious.)  If only I could have met Mrs. Brown and seen her in action, surely I could have gotten some idea whether a given composer was hanging about near her, or at least, whether someone was there.  Any even slightly able psychic could have done that.  Didn’t anyone try?  Most likely they did, but no matter how many subjective perceptions there were, they wouldn’t have been enough to convince those who were determined to believe the whole thing was a crock.  And what if the hypothetical competent psychic determined that no one was there except Mrs. Brown herself?  Again, the phenomenon would still be fascinating and deserving of study.  However, at least once, something happened to show even the non-psychic that an invisible someone was in the room.  As described in Look Beyond Today, Mrs. Brown’s 1986 book:

“On one occasion, Liszt even came up with a ‘party trick’ to help me get through a very difficult encounter.  I was going to be interviewed on television in Birmingham by a lady called Wendy Cooper.  One of my previous books had just been published and the television people were calling in a computer expert who was going to use his professional knowledge to analyse my music and say whether it was genuine or not. 

I felt very uncomfortable but Liszt said to me, ‘Don’t worry.  Everything will be all right.’  Just before we went on the air, the studio was very busy with technicians everywhere.  I hadn’t even seen a copy of my new book yet myself so I picked up the review copy which was to be flashed on screen.  I looked at it, then Wendy took it back and placed it on the piano stool — they had brought in a piano because they wanted me to play some of my pieces from the composers.  After putting down the book, we went and sat some distance away.  There was no one near the piano at all, but I saw Liszt walk over to it and then pick up the book to have a look at the jacket.  He was curious, too.  He had a good look then put it down.  Everyone saw the book move but they could not see Liszt lifting it up.  All they saw was the book rising up from the stool, hovering in mid-air, and then sinking down again.  Everyone about me was thunderstruck.  I said, ‘That’s Liszt.  He just wanted to look at the book.’  From that moment on, my credibility rocketed.  Everyone was looking at me in a different light, and even the computer genius declared my music genuine!

Wendy subsequently wrote an article about this in the Birmingham Post in which she said: ‘In the past I have certainly been sceptical where the supernatural is concerned, and none of the mediums or clairvoyants I have met and interviewed has done anything to change my mind.  Rosemary Brown has — or at the very least she has forced my mind open to the fact that there is something about her story and her music that defies rational explanation.’”

Well, an invisible being may be able to pick up a book, but a nonexistent being definitely can’t.*

Possibility #2 continues to look like the probable truth to me, especially after listening to the BBC broadcast of the obviously puzzled Mrs. Brown trying to get “Grübelei” straight.  But what exactly was going on?  The details, the nuts and bolts of how it worked?  I’m not sure that can be answered completely, but as my own experiences have piled up over the years, perhaps I have a little better understanding.

I’ve never channeled written music, nor found myself improvising brilliantly (or at all, I’m afraid) under Fryderyk’s influence.  However, over the past nearly 20 years I’ve received quite a bit of guidance about piano technique and musical interpretation from that master.  I’ve only posted a small amount of that here, because I’m having considerable trouble organizing it all, and because more keeps coming in and my understanding of it keeps changing– not to mention a certain embarrassment at telling you that Chopin is sometimes my piano teacher.  A few weeks ago, on September 10, I had an experience with him that I thought elucidated some of the issues about musical channeling, and it seems like time to come out with this.

Way back in the late ‘90s, I had one of the biggest thrills of my life, Chopin using my hands to play.  I was an even less advanced player then, and I was pretty limited material for him to work with, but we accomplished something amazing nonetheless.  It was as if he slid his arms and hands inside my own and used them himself, very directly.  I still couldn’t play anything that would have been impossible for me the rest of the time, but musically the result was far beyond what I could produce on my own.  He also was able to cause me to do some things quite differently from the way I had practiced them– I wasn’t simply channeling a more able version of myself (which I’ve also done at times), but rather someone whose thoughts were distinct from mine.  Not long after that, I read Mrs. Brown’s description of Liszt “putting her hands on like gloves,” and I immediately believed her, because exactly that had happened to me.

A healer friend tried to convince me that allowing someone to make use of my body in that way was dangerous, and although I didn’t entirely accept her view, sadly, it never happened again.  (An “evil” entity wouldn’t have cared if he was harming me, but Fryderyk stopped as soon as I expressed concern.)  Years went by before there was any apparent attempt to play with me again, though I longed for it and often asked, and when it finally happened, it seemed he was using a new method.  I didn’t feel anything specifically inside my hands, but there was a sense of being surrounded energetically, all over, and then there was a clear influence that one could hear and see in my playing– influence but not exactly control.  I couldn’t begin to tell you how he was doing it, only that a great deal of the effort was being taken up by someone other than myself, and that I sounded quite different.  That was what happened last month.

I had been struggling mightily with the Fantaisie-Impromptu, which does not respond at all well to struggle of any kind.  My right arm was painful and felt locked up and heavy, unable to move fluidly enough to get anywhere with that piece.  Practicing harpsichord had confused my usual piano habits and increased my difficulties, and I was badly stuck.  Feeling that my invisible teacher was around, I asked for help, hoping it might be one of those all-too-rare times when I could get a clear message.

I could feel a warm energy surrounding me, and there was a strong sensation around my hands, but nothing like the “glove” effect.  It was more a sense of being buoyed up, having support under me.  I tried to put aside any thought of not being able to keep up with him, and I began the piece.  Suddenly I went from stuck in the mud to playing it up to tempo for the first time ever, that is, something like 20% faster than my usual best speed, and with a sense of great freedom and ease, and no pain at all.  The trouble was that every few measures I’d notice the impossible thing I was doing and that would stop me for a moment and break the flow.  It was by no means a fine performance.  Still, it was decidedly more than I’d been able to do just a few minutes earlier.  My mother heard all this– if you don’t believe it, she can vouch for me!

While trying to hang on to this piece that’s at the far edge of my ability, I also had to observe what was happening and figure out why it seemed so much easier.  This is the advantage of not going into trances; although I can’t let go and be completely controlled, which limits how much information can come through me, I can learn directly from what happens.  This was happening awfully fast and for only a few minutes, though, and I was only able to perceive and remember certain aspects of it.  The main thing I got out of it was that I should employ a much larger circular movement of my right arm, initiated from the shoulder; I think before that I was overusing just my forearm, and that was causing the pain.  At any rate, as soon as I did this, the pain stopped.

The next day it turned out that I could do the same, but then I started to lose what I had gained under Fryderyk’s influence.  And as I continued to practice and push toward greater speed, I found new ways to hurt myself, and had to analyze my movements yet again.  At this writing, I feel that I’ve worked through most of the issues that have been holding me back on this piece, and that I’m doing at least most of what Fryderyk was trying to get me to do, as well as what my Earth-based teacher advises.  We’ll see….

Who was playing the Fantaisie-Impromptu that day?  We were, I suppose.  I can’t exactly say that I was channeling Fryderyk’s playing; it was my own playing, but with a lot of help.  My experiences of playing with him, as best I can describe them, have been like two minds using one body, like pilot and copilot.  Most of the time I couldn’t have said where one ended and the other began.  If Mrs. Brown’s experience was anything like mine, perhaps sometimes she was getting a clearer signal from the composers, recording their exact transmission, and other times she was getting more of the music from within herself, and maybe not always sure which was which, because they blended together.  That’s my best guess at this point.

What might the composers have experienced of this?  Can we assume that they came in with a finished composition in mind, and Mrs. Brown simply wrote it down?  If so, did some get transmitted with great accuracy, while others had holes filled, consciously or not, by Mrs. Brown’s own ideas?  Were there as many frustrations for the composers as for their scribe?  If there were errors or omissions, did they always try to go back and fill in the gaps, or did they sometimes decide to leave well enough alone– and could they even perceive those errors while they worked?  Were there times when the music was written in collaboration with Mrs. Brown, using her own (perhaps unconscious) input, rather like my experience of “playing with” rather than being “played through”?  And in cases like that C# minor nocturne, the one that sounds so little like Chopin, did a composer just give Mrs. Brown a little push, then leave her to compose more or less on her own?

It seems to me that fairly often in Brown works, the hand moves to nearby keys that feel intuitively obvious, that is, the way one might naturally do it when improvising.  There’s nothing unusual about that in an “authentic” piece, especially with Chopin.  However, it’s occurred to me that the composers might have found it easier, when pushing Mrs. Brown’s hand to find the next notes, to take the path of least resistance.  The mechanical process of moving her hands may thus have influenced some of the compositions.  This would not have been relevant when the music was being transmitted by dictating note names, but Mrs. Brown has also described both Liszt and Chopin directly placing her hands on the piano keys, leaving her to notate what she had just played.  I can imagine advantages and disadvantages of both methods, and differing effects on the final compositions.  This is an area where I’d so much appreciate some details, and I hope I can get some enlightenment from my composer friend eventually.

So who composed the works of Rosemary Brown?  Her name is on the pages, and I’m comfortable with that, even if the composers who “inspired” the pieces did all the composing.  She still had to do the work of bringing the notes through and putting them on paper– a gigantic amount of work, producing hundreds of pieces over many years.  Perhaps not so different, as she pointed out in the BBC radio program, from the many “real” composers who have felt they were simply downloading the music directly from the heavens.  Although it’s not quite the same thing, I’m reminded of an episode of classic Star Trek, in which a patient in a mental hospital recites a bit of Shakespeare and announces that she has just written it.  Another patient points out that it was written by Shakespeare a long time ago.  “That doesn’t change the fact that I wrote it again myself this morning!” she retorts.

Even more online material about Rosemary Brown has shown up since I wrote the last post a few days ago:

In this video, The Amazing Kreskin interviews Mrs. Brown on his TV show in 1973, and she plays a polonaise attributed to Chopin– a simple but definitely Chopinesque one.  The Brown segment starts at about 8:50.  Although Kreskin was a magician, not a psychic, he was respectful toward his guest.  Later in the program, he shows off his own piano chops with an impressive music-based trick.  I always liked that guy, and now that I know he plays the piano, I like him all the better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcraiFro0x8

Here is a collection of additional articles about Rosemary Brown, and others regarding mediums and psychics, as well as UFO experiencers: http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/  The quote above from Look Beyond Today came from this site.

*A couple of years ago, I wrote about Fryderyk possibly moving a CD from one place to another on a shelf, but that wasn’t witnessed, and remains only an intriguing mystery. 

by Elene Gusch, B. Mus., DOM

(Revised 7/19/16; originally posted May 15, 2011) 

This is a blast from the past, an article I wrote in 2007 for the journal of the Society for Spirituality and Paranormal Studies.  It was reprinted in the online magazine The Ground of Faith, and occasionally someone contacts me because they found it there.  I thought I had already posted it here, but it seems I’d let it slip past me.  That’s just as well, though, because Franz Liszt was the instigator and central figure of the Brown project, and now, in the midst of his bicentennial year, it’s the perfect time to bring attention to his efforts.  (That other guy who had his 200th birthday last year was his main assistant.) 

I had thought that all Rosemary Brown recordings and sheet music were out of print, at the time I originally posted this back in 2011 I certainly could not find any available except as a few pieces being passed from person to person.   It turns out that Arends Musikverlage, a small German company, has been publishing it, in their Keturi line.  When I hunted for Mrs. Brown’s works they never showed up in search results, but recently Sonja Arends contacted me and now I have the ordering information.  There are a number of pieces I had never had an opportunity to see before.  Some samples of recordings can be found here:  http://www.arends-musikverlag.de/rosemary-brown/  There is a short biography of Mrs. Brown and a link to a page where you can order sheet music, all in English. 

Some samples of the sheet music, provided by the publisher, are included in the following links.  You will need  to click on the name, then do the same on the page that comes up next, to view the PDFs. 

Bagatelle E-Dur Keturi Musikverlag 

Consolation Keturi Musikverlag 

Fragment Keturi Musikverlag 

Impromptu Keturi Musikverlag 

Reve en Bateau Keturi Musikverlag 

The Rosemary Brown Piano Album appears to still be available from Novello, as well: 

http://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.action?itemid=14027813& 

My own recording of Liszt’s “Grubelei,” created with engineering help from Guilherme Tavares, can be found 

here: https://app.box.com/s/isl0e5ybqgm84ljdusvi   

I’m posting the article just as it appeared originally: 

The Music of Rosemary Brown from a Pianist’s Perspective 

by Elene Gusch, B. Mus., DOM 

“Distinguished musicians could again be called upon to commend the work of Rosemary Brown.  I would rather take this opportunity to do it myself, for a music publisher supports a venture in the most convincing way possible.  He risks his own money…. 

“I have undertaken publication of the music because I believe in its validity, and because it is necessary if widespread performance is to take place.  How else can the efforts of these composers and Mrs Brown be rewarded?… 

“From the first manifestation of Mrs Brown’s gifts as an intermediary in the mid-sixties, cynics have attacked the weaknesses in the music, whilst enthusiasts have counter-attacked with the many splendid passages.  Both extremes leap to the eye without difficulty.  The real difficulty lies in looking at the phenomenon as a whole and comprehending the boundaries that have been crossed in its making.  Inconsistencies will remain in the quality of the music until communication gets easier (assuming that it can).  But the triumph of contact at this level is so overwhelming that no musician should ignore the results.”   –Basil Ramsey, publisher, in the introduction to An album of music for children of all ages 

A great deal of ink has already been spread about on the subject of Rosemary Brown, one of the most publicized mediums of the late 20th century.  Much of that, unfortunately, has consisted of misquotes, inaccuracies, and thoughtless derision, rather than intelligent consideration of the facts of her life and work.  Mrs. Brown herself (possibly with a ghostwriter, no pun intended) wrote four books, though only two, Unfinished Symphonies and Immortals at my Elbow, have been available in recent years.  Another book, an analysis of Mrs. Brown’s musical output by Ian Parrott, has been out of print for some time, and I have not been able to get hold of a copy.  Some recordings were made, but to the best of my knowledge they are out of print too, along with all of the sheet music.  It so often happens that events which seem unexplainable to mainstream thought make a splash at first, and for a while everyone talks about them, but then they are forgotten.  Rosemary Brown’s music has shared that fate. 

Although there have been many examples of musical mediums, Mrs. Brown’s activities were extraordinary in that her work has been transmitted to us in written form.  The story is that, beginning in the early 1960s, she took dictation from a team of well-known deceased composers, writing down hundreds of pieces of varying length and complexity, mostly for piano solo.  Some musical authorities of the time, including Leonard Bernstein, found the works to be convincingly like those of the composers who were supposed to have created them, but unsurprisingly, many other people have scoffed and insisted that Mrs. Brown was a charlatan, or that the composers were only “imaginary friends” of hers.  Yet, it has to be admitted, even by the most skeptical and materialistic minds, that something highly unusual was going on.  The sheer number of pieces is impressive, even ignoring the fact that they comprise so many disparate musical styles.  It would have been difficult for even a very able and well-trained composer to come up with them all, especially to produce them at the speed with which they came through, and it is a documented and indisputable fact that Rosemary Brown had only the most minimal education in music.  (She lived in the same house most of her earthly existence, and there would have been no opportunity for her to get extensive training out of the sight of her friends and neighbors.)  If we are going to postulate that this woman produced such a huge and varied opus purely out of her own unconscious mind, having no idea what she was doing, we still have to explain how a thing like that could be possible.  We are stuck, one way or another, with a realization that human potential must be much greater than we thought.  It is impossible to believe that this music was produced by purely “normal,” everyday means.  Simply saying that it is fake, as someone told me just the other day, does not begin to explain the observed phenomena. 

Of course, there are people among us today who can produce music that is convincingly similar to the work of well-known composers.  One of them is Bruce Adolphe, who produces “Piano Puzzlers” for American Public Media’s program Performance Today.  He recasts a familiar tune in the style of some recognizable composer, and a contestant is supposed to guess both the name of the tune and that of the composer.  It’s generally not hard to figure out, because the composers’ styles are so distinctive.  Bruce Adolphe is amazing, and it’s not entirely beyond belief that Rosemary Brown could have been doing something similar, but for the reasons mentioned above it seems unlikely indeed. 

The Brown project, we are told, was the brainchild of Franz Liszt, who believed that if people on Earth could receive musical compositions from the other side that could not possibly be produced by ordinary means, they would have to believe that there is more to life than our physical existence.   In Liszt’s own words, given in an introduction to Robert Schumann’s “Twelve Cameos,” “We in spirit hope to help people to realise that they are evolving souls destined to pass into the realms of non-matter where they will continue to evolve.  This realisation should give them a whole new dimension of thinking, and raise their self-image above its earthbound limits.” 

Liszt was aided and abetted by Fryderyk Chopin, who acted as second-in-command, and a number of other heavy hitters, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Rachmaninov, Franz Schubert, Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, Robert and Clara Schumann, Claude Debussy, Hector Berlioz, and even J. S. Bach.  Still other composers made occasional appearances. 

Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with classical music knows that each of these composers possessed a unique and distinctive style, which one might expect to be recognizable in any new works they produce.  In fact, having them write in recognizable styles was crucial to the success of the project.  Liszt explained, “The music transmitted is not put forth with the object of surpassing previous musical achievements.  The aim is to pour through a sufficient measure in terms of musical expression to give clear demonstrations of the personal idiom of each composer concerned.  Therefore, each composer endeavours to filter through the essence of his own spirit rather than to attempt gigantic works of technical virtuosity.” 

Although the composers all have individual styles, a number of them lived during the same time period, influenced each other, and were influenced by the same historical forces, so there are certain resemblances even among their “real” works.  Late Chopin, for example, sounds to me somewhat like Brahms.  Some of the composers—Liszt, Chopin, and Berlioz—were friends during their material existence.  Brahms loved Clara Schumann, and was an important part of her life.  The lifespans of Beethoven and Schubert overlapped those of the Romantic-period composers.  Even among those who were not contemporaries, there are connections; Chopin worshipped and closely studied Bach, Debussy was inspired by Chopin, Liszt was a great exponent of Beethoven, and so forth.  It’s not surprising to find this group of artists working together. 

I have lived with this body of work for the better part of a decade, and although proof of Mrs. Brown’s claims is not possible, I cannot avoid believing in her sincerity and veracity.  I would like to describe what the music is like from the point of view of a pianist.  I am not going to attempt a rigorous musicological analysis; I am only hoping to give a subjective sense of what playing and hearing the music is like, since the reader has probably not had the opportunity to come into contact with it.  I am going to discuss only the pieces for which I have sheet music. 

I first heard of Rosemary Brown in 1998, five years into my own contacts with the spirit world.  I didn’t have much trouble accepting the premise that the music had been channeled, and because I had done some very limited channeling at the piano myself, I was vitally interested.  It took me about a year to get hold of any of the printed or recorded music, though.  I was fortunate enough to meet Jane Ellen, a composer based here in Albuquerque, who happened to have a copy of one recording, as well as a number of the books of sheet music.  Since all the sheet music is out of print, what I have is in the “Xerox edition,” and I have been unable to acquire any more. 

Holding that music in my hands, and actually playing it, was strangely disturbing at first, even for someone with my background.  The sheer weight of it, the concreteness, was stunning.  Instead of being a vague, it-might-be nice concept, the vitality of the composers, their inarguable aliveness, lay in my hands as a physical fact.  And yet I still balked at believing one hundred percent, and despite all the evidence, part of me continues to doubt a little.  So I do understand, just a bit, why this work has been swept under the very large rug that covers so many signs of survival after death. 

One might expect that, since the method of transmission was so arduous, the pieces in this collection would be quite simple.  That is not the case.  While they are not “gigantic works of technical virtuosity,” many require fairly advanced pianistic skills.  One finds successions of four and even five-note chords in each hand, as well as passages using crossed hands.  Considerable speed is often called for.  Some of the pieces are surprisingly lengthy;  Liszt’s “Woodland Waters,” for example, runs 14 pages.  The majority of the pieces are only a few pages long, and they are relatively accessible to the amateur pianist.  Still, there are a number of pieces that I cannot play up to tempo at this point.  Since recordings are not available for most of these works, I have not been able to hear them the way they should sound, and I can’t give you a complete evaluation of them. 

Earlier pieces are coyly marked “Inspired by…,” but in the later publications one finds “From… as dictated to Rosemary Brown.”  The pieces were largely received without marks of expression, tempo, etc., but there are notable exceptions, particularly with Liszt and Schumann, both of whom used elaborate, untranslated verbal directions that sent me running for my dictionaries.  The editors needed to fix a number of quirks in the notation that were caused by Mrs. Brown’s lack of musical expertise, such as E’s being written instead of F-flats.  Some oddities of notation remain, and some notes may simply be mistakes.  Mrs. Brown made no pretense of being absolutely accurate.  In Immortals at my Elbow, she wrote, “To get anything as elaborate as a piece of music across clearly without any mistakes in transmission, is an almost impossible feat.”  It is common to find errors and discrepancies in the notation of earth-plane composers as well, so this is not surprising. 

Many of the pieces with programmatic titles cited in this article are from An album of music for children of all ages.  Apparently there had been many requests from the public for easier music that could be enjoyed by a wider audience, and this book was the result.  It’s a good place to start if one has access to the printed music. 

By far the greatest number of pieces came from Franz Liszt, and they are also the longest.  Even a cursory look at the pages gives a strong impression of his style.  As always, Liszt favored heavy religious and philosophical themes, like the arpeggiated, undulating “Jesus walking on the water in the midst of the storm.”  His Italian fluency is on display in marks of expression such as “strepitoso” (noisy) and “sordamente” (muffled). 

I have an extremely unscientific but reliable method of recognizing Liszt’s work: when I hear it I tend to giggle uncontrollably.  The more seriously he is taking himself, the less seriously I can take him.  I find this effect in Mrs. Brown’s Liszt pieces as well.  Even the quiet and simple “A Rainy Day,” from the album for children, has a certain pomposity.  I do like it very much, though. 

Liszt’s “Grübelei” (Meditation), in my opinion, stands head and shoulders above most of the pieces in the Brown repertoire.  As you can probably tell, I am not much of a Liszt fan, but this piece is wonderful.  It is daunting at first—mostly because the right hand is in 5/4 and the left hand is in 3/2— but it greatly rewards the player who sticks with it.  I have returned to it again and again, and I always find something more in it, which I think is the sign of great music.  Even if Mrs. Brown had produced nothing else, one would have to say that something interesting was going on. 

The genesis of “Grübelei” is an amusing story.  Liszt began it during a taping by the BBC in 1969.  The producers wanted to film the process of receiving the music right as it was happening.  Mrs. Brown was nervous at being tested in this way, and made sure that the BBC people understood that they might end up with nothing at all, since a medium cannot count on getting a message at any specific time.  “Be sure you give me something spectacular!” she said to Liszt.  When the taping began, Liszt appeared immediately and set to work, but the piece made no sense to Mrs. Brown, having those two time signatures juxtaposed, as well as constant changes of key and accidentals thrown about everywhere.  She attempted to play some of it, but found herself unable to cope with the difficulty, and had grave misgivings about the whole thing.  She asked Liszt if perhaps it might be better to do another Hungarian rhapsody or something of that nature, but he assured her that “Grübelei” was going to impress the listeners far more.  A member of the BBC team then asked to try playing the piece, which he was able to do without much trouble.  His comment was, “Mrs. Brown, I think you’ve got something here.”  The piece was later taken to Humphrey Searle, who was a Liszt expert.  Mr. Searle was also impressed with it, and noted a spot which resembled a cadenza in one of the Liebestraums; Mrs. Brown believed that Liszt had intended that measure to be a clue to his authorship.  (Unfinished Symphonies, pp. 88-93) 

Most of my time at the piano is spent with works of Chopin, and I know his style intimately.  When I first played through the Brown pieces of his that were available to me (a prelude, a nocturne, a waltz, and six mazurkas), I felt a little uncomfortable with them.  The mazurkas, in particular, struck me as odd, more angular and less flowing than the familiar mazurkas from his lifetime, and seemed far from his best work.  However, it was hard to imagine anyone else having written them.   More recently, as I have played them again and again, they have grown on me, and I hear parts of them as quite delightful, but I still see them as a relatively weak link in the Brown repertoire. 

While working on this article, I found myself embroiled in an online discussion of the Nocturne in A-flat, transmitted in 1966.  The opinion of the other writers was that this piece didn’t sound like a nocturne, certainly didn’t sound like Chopin, and was “banal.”  I find their position strange.  Since the piece has a slow, lyrical, flowing melody above a wide-spread, arpeggiated accompaniment, it is in fact very much in the mold of an archetypal nocturne.  As to whether it sounds like Chopin, there is one section in which I hear his voice so clearly that it brings me to tears, but I suppose that is a matter of opinion. 

I tried running this nocturne past my husband, a professional woodwind player, without telling him what it was or who was supposed to have written it.  His first comment was that it made him think of a certain “warhorse” piece—one that is played frequently, maybe almost to death—and the warhorse turned out to be Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9 No. 2, which has the same type of accompaniment and begins with the same gesture of a rising major sixth.  My husband also noted the vocal quality of the melody and its resemblance to Italian opera, which had a huge influence on Chopin.  The Brown nocturne, to me, is also reminiscent of the Cantabile in B-flat, KK IVb/6. The Chopin prelude is interesting, stylistic, and not problematic, but it has to go extremely fast to sound right, and so I have not yet heard it properly. 

The mazurkas, angular and 20th-century-like as they are, do sound Polish.  They are built largely of short melodic cells that repeat either literally or in sequences, a characteristic of mazurkas often found in Chopin’s known works.  In the set I have, the keys of the six pieces descend by half steps, and they are unified in style and general mood.  They are simple in construction but not particularly easy. 

Looking at “The Waltzing Doll,” from the album for children, gives a Chopinologist like me something of a turn, since Chopin abhorred programmatic titles and never gave anything but generic names to his works.  However, this piece was meant to fit into a collection in which everything has a cute title, and it is intended to appeal to children, so I suppose he had to conform.  It is pleasant, straightforward waltz with a sinuous melody, and darn if it doesn’t sound exactly like a waltzing doll.  It also sounds like it was written by the same person who wrote the mazurkas. 

Only two of the Rachmaninov compositions are in my possession.  One is a chromatic, étude-like prelude, and the other is a charming piece from the album for children, “Sleigh Ride.”  When I play “Sleigh Ride,” it’s as if I can feel snow falling all around me; the tessitura is high throughout, and its steady, tinkly eighth notes give it a crystalline quality.  My only complaint about this fun piece is that the introduction is a little bit hokey. 

The Beethoven scherzo and bagatelle fit right in with his shorter and easier known pieces, and their forward-rushing energy and expansiveness feel like him to me.  They are fast, and while they are not truly difficult, they are on the tricky side.  There is also a much easier piece in the album for children, “A Little Carol.”  It reminds me of the sprightly middle movement of the “Moonlight” Sonata. 

Johannes Brahms contributed two intermezzi and a waltz.  They contain large chords and dramatic melodies, and they cover a wide swath of the keyboard, as Brahms is wont to do. 

I’m not an expert on Schubert, but I’m sure I hear characteristic gestures of his in the two pieces labeled “Moment Musical,” as well as the tuneful, singable melodies one expects of him.  I’ve also noticed that Schubert seems to be inordinately fond of C-flats, and plenty of them do occur in his Brown project pieces. 

I have listed Clara Schumann among the composers, and indeed she was a composer in her own right, but in the Brown project she acted only to bring works of her husband to the earth plane, often appearing with their friend Johannes Brahms.  Robert Schumann apparently could not manage the kind of focus necessary to transmit the pieces himself.  Liszt tells us, however, that Schumann is in much better mental health these days than he was during his life.  In the introduction to “Twelve Cameos,” he says, “The pieces illustrate some enchanting facets of the multi-sided genius of Robert Schumann.  He lost his way on earth because the mirrors of his mind reflected false images to him.  Now, of course, his mind is clear, and he shares in the delight of an unclouded vision of the beauty of Creation and its Creator.” 

The “Twelve Cameos” form an organized whole, with the keys of the pieces rising chromatically from D-flat to C.  Each piece is very brief, and is named for an emotion or psychological state, such as “Uberraschung” (Surprise) or “Nachdenklichkeit” (Thoughtfulness).  All the titles and markings are in German, and for me, complex enough to make a dictionary imperative.  The only thing that strikes me as being different from what I would expect of Schumann is that the two hands do not overlap or intertwine in the way his work often requires. 

There is also a more extended Schumann piece, “Longing,” which is not part of the Cameos, despite the similar title.  It is a sweet and not at all difficult piece, one of the most enjoyable and accessible in the group. 

I have two rather atmospheric and decidedly impressionistic pieces attributed to Debussy, both concerning avian subjects.  In the midst of writing this, I played “Le Pâon” (The Peacock) in the presence of my husband, who couldn’t see what I was supposed to be playing and had not heard the piece before.  I asked, “Who wrote that?” and without hesitation, he replied, “Debussy.” 

Grieg is represented in my collection only by “A Song of Childhood,” which is gentle, lyrical, and easy to play.  It has a sparse accompaniment and the feel of a folk song. 

I also have only one piece attributed to Bach.  It is a prelude in the typical Bach mode of a repeating pattern that relentlessly continues throughout the piece.  I’m afraid it is not especially interesting, though I cannot say that there is anything specifically wrong with it, or anything that is absolutely not Bach-like. 

Mrs. Brown found Bach rather intimidating, not someone to chat casually with like Liszt or Chopin.  She said that in the beginning he gave her a few pieces that followed his known style, to establish his identity, and then he moved on to new material that we might not recognize as his.  This brings up an important point: there is no reason to expect a composer, or anyone else, to be exactly the way they were many years ago or to produce exactly the same kind of work.  It is daunting to imagine how one might reproduce a style one used at a much younger age and under very different circumstances.  Yet, for the most part, the composers of the Rosemary Brown project have done just that, and we clearly hear their living voices. 

Bibliography 

Brown, R. Immortals at My Elbow (in the US, Immortals by My Side), Bachman & Turner, London, 1974 

Brown, R. Unfinished Symphonies, William Morrow and Co., Inc., New York, 1971 

Books of sheet music: 

Music from Beyond, Basil Ramsey, 1977 

An album of piano pieces for children of all ages, Basil Ramsey, 1979 

The Rosemary Brown Piano Album, Novello & Co. Ltd. 

Six Mazurkas for piano solo from Frédéric Chopin, Basil Ramsey, 1981 

Twelve Cameos for piano solo from Robert Schumann, Basil Ramsey, 1980 

Individual pieces: 

Intermezzo in A flat, inspired by Johannes Brahms, 1978 

“Le Pâon,” inspired by Claude Debussy, 1978 

“Woodland Waters,” inspired by Franz Liszt, 1977 

Elene Gusch has been working as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine since 1996, but her bachelor’s degree is in classical guitar performance.  She has performed extensively on Renaissance lute as well as guitar, and over a period of three decades taught private music lessons on a number of instruments, most often piano.  Her main musical interest is the work of Fryderyk Chopin.  She has gotten the Piano Puzzlers right just about every time. 

 Source: https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/the-music-of-rosemary-brown-from-a-pianists-perspective