Musical Compositions from the life beyond.
The life’s work of Rosemary Brown.
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Rosemary Brown,
documentary film on DVD “Musik
from the Beyond” (English version).
You must have
that fantastic video
documentation of the London housewife, who wrote about 1000
musical pieces by dictation of famous dead composers. Length 52
min, colour, PAL (not in the American NTSC, but all newer US
video players should play PAL too). Price 19.50 Euro + port and
delivery: EU 1-4 discs + € 5.50, USA up to 500 g + € 9.50 (air
mail). Available from:
Gerhard Helzel, Timm-Kröger-Weg 15, D-22335 Hamburg, Germany.
Payment: see above CD 1.
Rosemary Brown was born in Stockwell, South London, on July 27, 1916. She died on November 16, 2001, aged 85. She led a middle-class life, with few features worthy of attention. Yet the events that surround her life are extremely remarkable, almost spectacular, in that they arise from her almost unique ability to transcribe and perform music by great composers who contacted her from the life beyond. These pieces, intended for the piano, expressed in a convincing way the genius and handwriting of the great masters. Over the years (Rosemary Brown was twenty years old when she began to write down music passed on from the world beyond) almost one thousand pieces came through her to us. Today, some of this piano music is available from music stockists.* Individually the works are by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and Liszt. Two recordings, containing a number of impressive pieces, were issued on Philips and Intercord in the 1970s. We must therefore see it as all the more gratifying that a new CD has now appeared, carrying no less than forty individual pieces by the composers mentioned above. 38 of these pieces are performed on the piano by Gerhard Helzel, Dipl.-Ing. of Hamburg, artist and composer, who has also provided orchestration for 3 pieces by Grieg, Schumann and Liszt.
Extract from the film: for Windows XP (5 min, new: wmv-file
1.89 MB with increased quality), for gratis download.
CD
1 “Musik from the Beyond
1”: The
wonderful, romantic CD (super length: 77 minutes) can be ordered
in the EU for € 12.50 + 5.50 port, USA + 9.50 port (air mail)
and delivery from the author
Gerhard Helzel, Timm-Kroeger-Weg 15, D-22335 Hamburg, Germany.
Payment: easily per Paypal. You only need a Paypal account, which many already have. Otherwise, you can get it here.
CD
2 “Musik from the Beyond
2”. Contains: 1) – 4)
Schubert, Sonata in F minor (f-moll), 5) Beethoven, Adagio (in A-dur),
6) Chopin, Impromptu in E flat (es), 7) Chopin, Étude in F-sharp
minor (fis-moll), 8) Chopin, Étude in E major (E-dur), 9) Chopin,
Nocturne in F-minor (f-moll), 10) Chopin, Nocturne in C-sharp
minor (f-moll), 11) Chopin, Impromptu in F-minor (f-moll), 12)
Lizst, Caprice (in Es-dur), 13) Lizst, Rhapsodie in F# minor (fis-moll),
14) Brahms, Intermezzo in B b (in B-dur), 15) Rachmaninoff,
Étude-Tableau in C-sharp minor (Cis-moll), 16) Rachmaninoff,
Fantasie-Étude in E-flat (es). All recorded by Gerhard Helzel,
€ 12.50 + 4.00 Port (Europe) / 4.- (outside Europe, e.g. USA,
Canada, Australia).
Port and delivery for 2-4 discs (DVD or CD): EU € 5.60, outside (USA, Canada, Australia) € 9.60.
Many letters of thanks! From all over the
world my two CDs and the film on DVD are ordered. For
example V. S. from Russia wrote: “Thank you so much!
My parents have just got the CDs and heared them uninterruptedly!
It is not possible to explain the feeling by words, when you
imagine that this music is transmitted to people from the other
world!”
H. B., pianist, Îles de la Réunion, wrote: «J'ai bien
reçu vos deux disques qui m'ont enthousiasmé ! Que de beauté !
» (“I have well recieved your two discs which have
filled me with enthusiasm! What a beauty!”)
D. L., Australia: “I would like also to thank you for
devoting time to concentrate on bringing these pieces to a wider
audience.”
A. N. B., diploma social pedagogue, Germany: “I want
to thank you very much that you sent me once more, the Rosemary
Brown CD so quickly. I hear it every day and I am always
impressed. From the Internet, I understand that you interpreted
the piano pieces. I love your piano playing. ”
2 examples from the first
CD that you can download gratis:
Rosemary Brown, Etude Ges-dur, inspired
by Chopin
Rosemary Brown, "Danse exotique",
inspired by Debussy.
* Score editions can be obtained from: Paul C. R Arends-Verlag, Postfach 1120, D-83251 Rimsting, Germany, tel. 08051-1634, www.arends-musikverlag.de (e-mail: kontakt@arends-musikverlag.de). The Rosemary Brown piano album can perhaps be still obtained as photocopy through Paxton, Borough Green, Sevenoaks, Kent, U.K.
Even in Antiquity, musical works and their inspiration formed the theme of Plato’s ‘Ion’. In this work, he describes trance as a means by which the gods through spiritual possession (κατοχή) assisted artists in the composition of music. However, following on from the ban on ‘heathen’ cults imposed in A.D. 392 (Oracle of Delphi, 394), the ancient music, often containing hymns to the gods, was subjected to an unprecedented war of annihilation, which terminated in the destruction of all Greek and Roman music. A more precise definition of this ‘inner voice’ occurs for the first time in the Bible, where it is described as the ‘voice of God’ (Exod. 3, 14) : אהיה אשר אהיה “Ego sum qui sum” = ‘I am that I am’. At the Council of Trient in 1546, the Catholic Church attested that ‘Holy Writ’ had been handed down by dictation, but did conclude that errors were possible: …sublatis erroribus…omnes libros tam Veteris quam Novi Testamenti, cum utriusque unus Deus sit auctor, nec non traditiones ipsas,…tamquam vel oretenus a Christo, vel a Spiritu Sancto dictatas…Lutherans even considered that the Bible had been dictated by God, word for word, down to the last comma and full-stop. Today, conclusions like these belong to the past; what we do however affirm is that spiritualist messages, even dictations true to the letter, are possible, independent of religion, and that the dead themselves, similarly confirm this to be true.
Gerhard Helzel.
The following extract is taken from Musikenzyklopaedie (Encyclopedia of Music), ed. Ludwig Finscher, 2nd edn., 2000 (Kassel: Bärenreiter), Personenteil (personal entries) vol. 3, columns 1019-1021, Prof. Isolde Vetter, ‘Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG)’ (Music past and present):
Brown Rosemary, nee Dickeson, born 1917, London suburb of Balham, British spiritualist and musical medium. 1952, married Charles Philip Brown, journalist (d. 1961), two children. Impoverished family background. 1964ff. intensive self-taught study of music, 1965 organist for her spiritualist community.
Autobiographical works: Unfinished Symphonies: Voices from Beyond, Souvenir Press, London 1971); Immortals at my Elbow, Bachmann & Turner, 1974 .
English text by Dr Gerald Newton, University of Sheffield
E-Mail: 
You can mail to the author
in English, German, French, Latin, (Italian) and classical Greek.
Dipl.-Ing. Gerhard Helzel, Timm-Kröger-Weg 15, 22335 Hamburg, Tel. 040-505374