Rosemary Brown, medium and pianist

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burgmuller
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Rosemary Brown, medium and pianist

Post by burgmuller »

A few days ago, I found a video on youtube with a Ballade op posth by Chopin. I felt a bit puzzled because I've never heard of such a pice before, what is more, it didn't sound like "real" Chopin's music to me, it sounded more like: alla maniera de... So I started a research on Saint Google. I've found out that it was a medium-pianist, Rosemary Brown, that claimed that some of the greatest composers dictated pieces to her. She didn't have a bad taste, no, no, no, composers like Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Bach...
This is the ballade, we could say it's really posthumous... :lol: What can you tell me on the subject??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3lO3c54zG8
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Re: Rosemary Brown, medium and pianist

Post by ClaudioNol »

I've never heard of Rosemary Brown. I guess those composers that were dictating pieces to her were saving their better pieces for some other medium and pianist lol.
You can get great value with these cpap machines so check them out.
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Re: Rosemary Brown, medium and pianist

Post by Timtin »

The Rosemary Brown Piano Album - 7 Pieces inspired by Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms & Liszt.

That's the title of an album published by Paxton of Sevenoaks, Kent, England, in 1974.

The respective pieces are entitled Bagatelle, Moment Musical, Nocturne in Ab, Longing, Waltz in Bb minor,
and finally two pieces inspired by Liszt, Jesus walking on the water & Grūbelei.

To be honest, I think that these pieces are a load of derivative tosh, with the possible exception of the 'Brahms'
Waltz in Bb minor. If I sat down and put my mind to it, I could probably also produce some pieces in the style of
these same composers, without all of the nonsense attached to Rosemary Brown's so-called inspirations. No doubt
most, if not all, my Pianophilian colleagues could do so too.

I guess that the cover of the album gives away its true nature, with a picture Rosemary Brown playing the piano
like she's truly 'Brahms & Liszt'!
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Re: Rosemary Brown, medium and pianist

Post by fredbucket »

I have performed the Nocturne in C# minor (inspired by Chopin) in public (complete with explanations as to the meaning of the word ‘posthumous’) and it went down, in the context of what else I was playing, rather well...

I actually like the piece.

Regards
Fred Brown
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Re: Rosemary Brown, medium and pianist

Post by Timtin »

These are the thoughts of others on her musical prowess, or lack of it:-

The critic Denis Matthews described her music as mainly ‘charming pastiches’ with naive manifestations of style. He claimed that her Beethoven largo e maestoso movement was a vague memory of the largo e mesto from the D major Sonata op. 10 no. 3 with a misremembered maestoso instead of mesto. He felt her Bach prelude based on the C minor from The 48 lost its harmonic progression, while a Chopin study was a ‘pale shadow’ of op.10 no. 4 in C sharp minor. In short, Matthews suggested that, far from tapping into a psychic source, Brown was re-creating compositions using her own conventional skills.

David Scott Rogo, a musician and psychic investigator, attempted an experiment to establish whether Brown could produce music beyond her personal tastes. He asked her to produce either a Monteverdi madrigal, or a Machaut choral piece, or (ideally) a dodecaphonic piece by Schoenberg or Webern. Brown declined, arguing that she needed to be on the same wavelength as the composer she was attempting to channel. Commenting on Brown’s work, Scott Rogo expressed disappointment with the similarity of the musical forms; he also criticized the over-use of sequences in the melodic line and the symmetrical measurement in the barring and phrasing.

Melvyn Willin, a musician and psychic investigator, made a study of Brown’s pieces and found them to lack textures and details that would have been characteristic of their supposed composers. Leading musicologists in British universities contacted by Willin were similarly unimpressed.

Regards, Tim.
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