# Rosemary Brown



## Michael Sayers (Jun 7, 2015)

Hi Everyone,

I am wondering if anyone here has an opinion on the compositions notated by Rosemary Brown. With only a small sampling of the 600+ compositions available it isn't easy to form an estimate. I find this one to be quite interesting.






And, also, this one:






Mvh,
Michael


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2015)

Michael,

Sometime ago, before you joined it seems, there was quite a flurry of threads about pastiche and other less obvious kinds of conservatism.

The upshot of all of that was to define (again) several camps (at least two). There was little or no conversation, just a lot of yelling at each other from our various bunkers.

Aside from the spiritualist part of it, my take on it is that Liszt has already written numerous compositions. I understand the desire, if you're keen on Liszt, to have even more Liszt than he wrote himself. But he only wrote what he wrote. 

Best,

Michael


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2015)

I don't understand. Is she a composer or are these just alternate arrangements of some sort?

I guess the most confusing part is the YT caption "Music Composed By Rosemary Brown" when every video appears to have the name of another composer in the title...

What is this?


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2015)

She was a medium who claimed to have received dictation from several dead composers.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Dear Michael,

I'll give an answer since it was my post from some time back in the 'Charlatans in music' thread that you commented on there.

These pieces are written in the approximate style of Liszt, I agree (from the point of view of the listener: the technical aspects of the writing I could not comment on).

They are either pastiches written by someone gifted in writing musical pastiche, or they have been communicated to Rosemary Brown posthumously by Liszt using her skill as a medium. Which you believe depends on your world-view. No further evidence for either claim is available, Ms. Brown having 'passed over' herself in 2001.

Here's what a psychologist thought about her:



> The psychologist Robert Kastenbaum analysed Brown's music compositions and came to doubt that they were dictated to Brown by spirits of well known composers. According to Kastenbaum:
> 
> There are no striking themes, complex structures, depths of feelings, or harmonic, tonal, or rhythmic innovations. During their days on earth all the composers not only created distinguished music but also contributed to the development of compositions for the keyboard. One of the characteristics that made each of them so remarkable was their unpredictability. Their next composition might well open a new domain in musical sensitivity or technique. Alas, they have now all fallen into desuetude. Nothing new shows up to enrich their post-mortem compositions, and nothing surprises, except perhaps the lack of surprises. Kastenbaum suggested the composers were secondary personalities of Brown herself


I know which side of the divide I'm on, but you are entitled to your own view and to enjoy Rosemary Brown's music for whatever you take it to be!


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

They needed to go to a psychologist to determine whether they were communicated to her from the dead? I think I could have answered that one myself.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2015)

He who has ears, let him hear.

(Though, come to think of it, that guy was a bit of psychologist himself.)


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2015)

Schubert missed out there.


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## Michael Sayers (Jun 7, 2015)

For me, Rosemary Brown mainly is a focus of fascination. Definitely the compositions sometimes recreate the atmosphere of a particular composer, and it would be good to have access to the whole 600+ manuscript stash to see if some sort of a pattern or formula for this appears. I think one can see traces of such a formula in the available items, but maybe these are just features that appealed to whoever chose them for publishing and recording. It is mainly the 200 or so Liszt ones that I am interested in to see if they mirror Liszt's wide range as a composer. The music academics back in the day who had access seem to have been impressed, so I would expect more variety there than what is in the available material.

I am not totally unbiased in this curiosity, and I do have personal motivations. This is because I have had contact with Liszt and it has been only natural to explore if similar experiences have been documented by others.

He has proven himself to me in the course of our time together through his knowledge of music which, even when it is foreign to my own musical knowledge, invariably turns out to be correct.


Mvh,
Michael


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

You're in contact with Franz Liszt?

I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask him, if you don't mind. I'll PM them to you, and you can send them to him via the crystal ball. Thanks!


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## Hmmbug (Jun 16, 2014)

As Andre Previn put it, "If these compositions are genuine, they would have best been left on the shelf."

(To say nothing about how genuine she is...)


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## Michael Sayers (Jun 7, 2015)

Celloman said:


> You're in contact with Franz Liszt?
> 
> I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask him, if you don't mind. I'll PM them to you, and you can send them to him via the crystal ball. Thanks!


Hi Celloman,

I am anticipating he will be here again between July 1 and July 10. He no longer has to majestically make his presence known. Old habits die hard, evidently, and likely I'll know that I am correct in sensing he is here and to "tune in" when I smell the puffs from one of his cigars as he meanders around. Contrary to the article linked below, I think he sometimes smokes more than one day - if you happen to encounter him, don't tell him that I told about it.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=805&dat=19130626&id=VklIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4UgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1594,1999793&hl=en

Maybe you would be interested to see the score of a piano composition from this year to which Liszt contributed the harmonic and melodic content for the first 23 measures with a simplified piano arrangement for me to improve upon, and also the score of a Bach transcription for piano received from him in 1998.

Mvh,
Michael


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