Rosemary Brown

[Lionel Harrsion]

BTW, wasn't there a lady a few decades ago who wrote down works which dead composers 'dictated' her from beyond? So I think we should try to find such a medium and ask her if she could coax our favourite composers to stream a few masterworks via the aether. 

This lady was criticised because she could offer only small piano pieces. If Bruckner cared to give us further samples of his genius wouldn't he choose something more spectacular? Finishing his 9th symphony perhaps?

Her name was Rosemary Brown and I once had the pleasure of meeting her.  Without saying that she was definitely not a fake, she went a long way to convincing such people as Richard Rodney Bennett, Hephzibah Menuhin, Ian Parrott, Humphrey Searle and Peter Katin.  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio...

[ahinton]

Well, Bruckner's Ninth Symphony has been completed several times now without the help of Rosemary Brown (whose identity has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread). I was a student of Searle and his take on Brown's work as expressed to me when I asked him about it was equivocal, to say the least - and, given the results of her rather hopeless endeavours, it's no wonder! I don't think that she set out to hoodwink anyone either for money or for other cynical reasons but, notwithstanding that, there can surely be no doubt either that her labours produced outcomes that had scant connection with the composers whose work they purported to represent or that the "after-life" must be a deeply degenerating experience in which one dissolves into some kind of creative dementia; for what anyone may or may not think it to be worth, my money's on the former.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Tee hee, I remember (just) seeing Rosemary Brown on the television (in the mid 1960s?) and I think I recall that no less than Philips issued a LP of her playing unwritten pieces by Schumann, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Greig, Beethoven, Liszt et al that these long deceased composers had dictated to her in her dreams. (Which just goes to show that music really is an international language since how else could Ms Brown have understood what was said to her?)

I succumb to nostalgia. I think the lady made one or two appearances on the BBC series 'Face the Music' chaired by Joseph Cooper and where the likes of Robin Ray (who dazzled all with an encyclopaedic knowledge of opus numbers), Joyce Grenfell, Bernard Levin were often panel members? Gosh, we had innocent pleasures in those days. And am I right in remembering Ms Brown telling all that Liszt often accompanied her in trips to the shops and was much worried by the steadily rising price of vegetables?

[giles.enders]

I too remember seeing Rosemary Brown on television in the 1960's.  What puzzled me then and now is what language did she speak with them in.  She was never asked that question and I doubt that she was multilingual, there was also no probing at the time about whether she saw the composers or they just spoke to her. It would be interesting to see the programme again if it still exists.

[Alan Howe]

Friends may want to follow this link for more information...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist)

[ahinton]

One of the problems here is that Brown, who had scant musical experience or technical expertise of any kind, might be classified by some alongside the likes of Eric Fenby, who had plenty of each, despite the obvious differences that Brown claimed her work to result from "communications" from deceased composers whereas Fenby's needed to make no claims for itself and resulted from communications from the alive but ill and dying Delius. I wonder what Fenby thought about Brown and her work. I would not wish to argue with Richard Rodney Bennett, but I cannot help but question how what Brown did came about and, whatever the answer to that might have been (and it could well have emerged as a consequence of some as yet insufficiently researched neurological condition of not inconsiderable interest), it certainly wasn't ever any kind of direct contact with the deceased composers themselves and, if it had been, one would have little option but to despair about the Alzheimer-like symptoms that would appear to befall composers following their demise...

[semloh]

I too remember seeing Rosemary Brown on television in the 1960's.  What puzzled me then and now is what language did she speak with them in.  She was never asked that question and I doubt that she was multilingual, there was also no probing at the time about whether she saw the composers or they just spoke to her. It would be interesting to see the programme again if it still exists.

Well, it seems that she was asked that question..... see:

http://nell-rose.hubpages.com/hub/Music-From-The-Beyond-The-True-Story-Of-Rosemary-Brown-And-her-Musical-Spirit-Compositions

This site includes photos and video clips and is really rather fascinating, especially to me, a hard-nosed materialist! 

Claims to be channelling new works from dead composers is not uncommon. Didn't one famous concert pianist claim to be doing that with Beethoven? I thought it was John Lill, but that doesn't seem quite correct....?

[Alan Howe]

...it certainly wasn't ever any kind of direct contact with the deceased composers themselves...

Quite so.

[petershott@btinternet.com]

Nor, for that matter, any indirect contact!

[Alan Howe]

Absolutely not!

I think that only leaves two possibilities...

[TerraEpon]

So given the logical assumption that they are in fact not pieces channeled from dead composers....just who actually wrote them anyway?

[Alan Howe]

In my view the two possibilities are:

1. That RB had some sort of extraordinary mental condition yet to be explained. This would no doubt be the modern psychological/psychiatric explanation.

2. That RB, as a medium herself, was in fact in contact with discarnate entities (which inhabit the spiritual world), posing as dead composers for the purpose of deception. This would be the historic Christian explanation.

[ahinton]

Interesting and rational thoughts both, although I incline towards the first of them, despite that seeming to be a kind of cop-out. Something caused her work to be possible and, whatever that may have been, bringing her and the work itself under the microscope all those years ago did little if anything to reveal it; it's just unfortunate - especially in terms of the implications of fantasising and fraud on her part (the former of which seems somewhat unfair and the latter wholly unjustified) - that the names of certain well-known composers got dragged into it, for the results, which would have done none of them any favours, accordingly did Brown herself few favours! Why was it only Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, Beethoven and the others with whom she presumed herself to be in contact? The Nell Rose piece opens with a reference to Stravinsky, who was, I think, the only 20th century composer who found his innocent way into this collection of Brown communicants, yet I'm not aware that she ever tried to "receive" any new works from him.

Easy as it might be for some to dismiss her and her work as mere fakery, these can surely be little doubt that something as yet undiscovered and not yet understood was going on from time to time, but the prospect that Beethoven, Liszt et al were in any sense behind it or indeed involved in it in any way whatsoever is not only absurd but might also discourage any bona fide neuroscientific research into whatever phenomenon it may have been, which would be unfortunate. That at one time or another H Menuhin, Kentner, Searle and Bennett seemed to some degree to be taken in by it (is there any record of Y Menuhin's thoughts on it?) still seems odd - Searle's especially, perhaps, given that he was one of the previous century's most distinguished Liszt scholars...

[Alan Howe]

FWIW, I think the latter explanation is the correct one. Commentators on contacts with various sorts of discarnate entities (such as religious apparitions, encounters with aliens, etc.) note that they always have one thing in common, namely deception. Thus, depending on the context, they may pose as a particular religious figure (work this out for yourself!), or as a visitor from outer space, or (in  RB's case) as a composer. In my locality - a small seaside town with an elderly population - we have a lot of mediums who visit claiming to be able to put the bereaved in touch with their deceased relatives. They may be sincere, as no doubt RB was, but they are in fact themselves being deceived and are perpetrating deception upon others.

I note with interest from the Wikipedia article that RB's family was involved in mediumistic practices...

[thalbergmad]

Fascinating thread which deserves to continue to be discussed. I will not join in as I could rattle on for ages on the subject.

For the record, I have never been in touch with a deceased composer, but after a hypnotic regression session, it appears I did fight for Cromwell at the Battle of Naseby in 1645 and got a pike in the shoulder for my troubles.

Clearly nonsense as given the choice I would be for the King.

Thal