Rosemary Brown (spiritualist) - Life

Life

Brown claimed to have been only seven years old when she was first introduced to the world of dead musicians. She reported that a spirit with long white hair and a flowing black cassock appeared and told her he was a composer and would make her a famous musician one day. Brown did not know who he was until, about ten years later, she saw a picture of Franz Liszt. Many other members of Brown's family were allegedly psychic, including her parents and grandparents, and she herself displayed psychic powers at an early age. She told her parents of events before her birth, and when asked how she knew, she replied that her "visitors" had told her.

Liszt apparently did not reappear until 1964, by which time Brown had married and brought up two children. Living in a Victorian terraced house in Balham, South London, she appeared to be an unexceptional middle-aged widow. Before 1964 she had paid little attention to music and had had little instruction in it. After the Second World War, she had bought a second-hand piano and taken lessons for three years.). But a neighbor, once a church organist, was not impressed. "She could just about struggle through a hymn," he said. Then in 1964 Liszt "renewed contact" and original compositions began flooding in from great musicians of the past. Mrs Brown transcribed pieces from Brahms, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Grieg, Debussy, Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven, and Liszt himself. These included a 40-page Schubert sonata, a Fantaisie-Impromptu in three movements by Chopin, 12 songs by Schubert, and two sonatas by Beethoven as well as his 10th and 11th Symphonies, both unfinished.

Brown claimed that each composer had his own way of dictating to her. Liszt controlled her hands for a few bars at a time, and then she wrote down the notes. Others, like Chopin, told her the notes and pushed her hands on to the right keys. Schubert tried to sing his compositions to her "but he hasn't got a very good voice". Beethoven and Bach simply dictated the notes — a method she said she disliked since she had no idea what the finished product would sound like. All of these composers spoke to her in English. Brown stated this did not surprise her: "Why shouldn't they go on learning on the other side?"

A recording titled The Rosemary Brown Piano Album presents performances of some of the music Brown transcribed. She published a number of books, including Unfinished Symphonies: Voices from the Beyond.