Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, TX. I just finished reading Rosemary Brown’s compelling memoir, Unfinished Symphonies, published in 1971.
Rosemary describes herself as a London homemaker who began meeting and co-publishing musical scores with some of the world’s most famous composers.
The fact that most of the composers had been dead for over a century when she collaborated with them is the curious circumstance surrounding this otherwise ordinary woman. People will justifiably argue about the “real” source of Rosemary’s talent However, the fact that a person with little musical training could produce over 500 piano and orchestral works – closely mirroring the composition styles of Beethoven, Schuman, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Debussy and Brahms – is an issue one might not dismiss so lightly. Rosemary’s mediumship started with a visit from a spectral Franz Liszt, who called upon her when she was just seven years old. According to Rosemary, Liszt told her he would be back to visit many times. And when he came back, he often brought friends, most of whom were also well-known and respected composers. At one point, Liszt engaged in conversation with Rosemary about spirituality. Liszt remarked, “the soul may be in darkness but there is within it that divine instinct, an understanding. The soul will attain God-consciousness ultimately, though not necessarily during its life on earth.”
He also stated that “all the many pretenses which we learn to live with have gone. We may be shy about our bodies, but to those in the spirit world, the human body is no more than a house or vehicle in which we live and which houses our soul.” What ARE the undiscovered capabilities of the mind? Can the subconscious be tapped for serious and technical talents that we would suspect only from decades of training and mastery? These are among questions you will be asking if you read Rosemary Brown’s memoir. And now you have the capability of Googling some of her transcripted works, so you can judge for yourself whether these could be works from an ethereal realm or not.
I wondered why Rosemary could not merely leave a pencil and stack of paper on the table overnight. If Franz Liszt can rotate a swivel chair, as he allegedly does in one scene from the book, then the spirits must have power to move physical objects. Professor Tenhaeff, Director of the Institute of Parapsychology at the State University of Utrecht in Holland stated: “I am… wholly convinced that the origin of Rosemary Brown’s compositions should be made the subject of an… investigation, one that will lead to an important enrichment of our knowledge of the so-called mediumistic-phenomena.”
if you are interested in both music and the paranormal, this book is for you. No matter your beliefs on spiritualism and mediumship, the memoir is a catalyst for consideration.
As singer-songwriter Iris Dement notes in one of her best-known songs, “I choose to let the mystery be.” Maybe you will too.
This is Andrea Elise for HPPR Radio Readers’ Book Club.
Andrea Elise was born in Sopron, Hungary and immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1956. She grew up in Amarillo, and attended Amarillo College before transferring to Duke University, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. She spent two years in the Peace Corps in South Korea, then obtained a Master’s degree in Counseling from West Texas A&M University.
Her interests include writing essays and poetry (she published a book of poems and haikus in 2023), partner dancing (if anyone is interested in East Coast swing or jitterbug dancing, please get in touch), playing mandolin, hiking, working out and reading. She lives in Amarillo with her very understanding husband, their two high-maintenance cats and several foster cats who somehow made her husband’s tool shed a resting place complete with room service.
