by Tim Rayborn
5
The Dead Speak
Belief in spirits, ghosts, and the afterlife seems to be an essential component of human culture. One would be hard-pressed to find any group of people in the world that didn’t hold to some kind of belief in disembodied spirits at one time or another. Some theorize that we are hardwired for metaphysical yearnings and belief in an afterlife. Such ideas could have been useful as a survival mechanism of some kind back in the day—well, way back in the day. Countless debates rage about how valid any of it is, and they will almost certainly never end.
The musical world, as you’ve probably already guessed, has its share of hauntings, contact with the dead, and mysterious ghostly manifestations. What follows is only a sampling of the hundreds, if not thousands, of stories. Skeptics will scoff and believers will believe, but here are some unsettling stories that might make you wonder what’s really out there, beyond our everyday perceptions.
They just decomposed
Born in 1916 to an electrician and a caterer, Rosemary Brown was, to outward appearances, an ordinary enough person. The London resident was the mother of two, a widow, and not someone who sought attention. But Rosemary seemed to have an extraordinary gift. Throughout her life, starting in her early childhood years, she claimed that the spirits of many of the great composers communicated with her and often dictated new compositions.
The first composer to appear to her was Franz Liszt, when she was seven years old. She didn’t know who he was until she saw his portrait ten years later, but described him as a man with long white hair wearing a black robe. This was exactly how he would have looked in old age, since he ended his life as a priest. He told her that one day he would give her music. It seems that her mother and grandmother considered themselves psychic, so perhaps she wasn’t too surprised to be contacted by a spirit.
In any case, she set this visitation aside, married, and raised a family. It wasn’t until 1964 that the visits began in earnest. She suffered an accident at the school kitchen where she worked and decided to take up playing the piano again during her recovery, having quit more than once in the past. It was then that Liszt returned to her, and it was he, she said, who brought in other composers to communicate with her. For more than twenty years, she would receive numerous communications from a galaxy of classical music stars, each giving her their “new” pieces to present to the world. The thing is, Rosemary’s musical talent was limited, and she had little knowledge of theory or composition. She could not improvise or play from memory. She freely admitted to the inability to play many of the pieces dictated to her, simply because they were too technically demanding.
The works that she received and transcribed included a lengthy sonata and twelve songs by Schubert, piano works by Chopin, Beethoven’s tenth and eleventh symphonies (!), plus new sonatas by him. Other composers included Bach, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Grieg, Debussy, Schumann, and later the newly departed Stravinsky, who apparently wanted to continue right on with his work and wasn’t going to let a little thing like death get in his way.
Each of these luminaries had a preferred method of relaying their works. Chopin and Liszt liked to guide her hands on the keyboard, and she could write down a few notes at a time. Beethoven and Bach liked to dictate the notes to her, but she wasn’t as fond of this method because she could not hear how the pieces would sound. She said that Chopin had watched television with her and was appalled by what he saw. She claimed that Beethoven, incidentally, was no longer deaf and didn’t have his “crabby look,” though he was once very annoyed when they were interrupted by someone at the door. Schubert liked to sing his works to her, but, she noted, “he hasn’t a very good voice.”
So what did people make of all of this? It’s a fantastic story, to say the least. Needless to say, the skeptics were up in arms and the press had a field day, though usually they poked fun at her in a good-natured way. How about composers, conductors, and musicologists? Surprisingly, she was met with some rather enthusiastic support for the pieces she produced. Hephzibah Menuhin, sister of Yehudi and an accomplished concert pianist, found the pieces to be impressive, noting that Rosemary was sincere and that the works she had produced were “absolutely in the style of these composers.” British composer Richard Rodney Bennett became a noted advocate. He said that he had been stuck in one of his own compositions, but that Debussy, via Rosemary, had offered a solution that had worked. In an interview for Time magazine he stated, “If she is a fake, she is a brilliant one, and must have had years of training…. Some of the music is awful, but some is marvelous. I couldn’t have faked the Beethoven.”
Others were less impressed. André Previn, the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra at the time, remarked that if these were genuine, they should have remained on the shelf. Leonard Bernstein said that he could “buy” one of the Rachmaninoff pieces, but the rest didn’t impress him much. Alan Rich, music critic for the New York magazine, felt that they were simply subpar reworkings of existing pieces, though what he heard was only a recording of the simpler compositions.
On the other hand, Peter Katin, a well-known pianist and respected interpreter of Chopin, recorded some of Chopin’s dictated works and was impressed. In 1969 the BBC asked Rosemary to sit at a piano and contact Liszt to present her with a short piece, which he did. She was unable to play it because of its technical precision, but when a Liszt expert examined it later, he noted that it was indeed very much in his style. When a recording was made of some of the pieces in 1970, she asked noted musicologist Sir Donald Tovey to write notes for the record. He was happy to oblige, suggesting that:
In communicating through music and conversation, an organized group of musicians who have departed from your world, are attempting to establish a precept for humanity, i.e. that physical death is a transition from one state of consciousness to another wherein one retains one’s individuality.
The thing is, Tovey had died in 1940, but she claimed to be in regular contact with him.
So, what was really going on? Honestly, we just don’t know. Various psychologists and musicians examined Rosemary, and none of them came away with the impression that she was faking, cheating, or otherwise trying to commit fraud. Some suggested that she had latent musical abilities of which she wasn’t even aware, or that maybe she had more talent when she was younger but blocked it out due to some trauma. Others suggested that she had a hidden accomplice, one who was very much alive. The fact remains that some of the pieces were excellent and others were mediocre, which is probably exactly what we would expect from any composer’s output. In the mid-1980s, the ghostly visitations ceased, and her health began to decline. She died in 2001, the mystery of her musical revelations still unsolved.
Schumann’s violin concerto, brought back from the dead
The 1930s witnessed another remarkable case of a composer reaching out from beyond, one of those who would give new works to Rosemary. We have already seen what a troubled life Robert Schumann lived. As he was increasingly beset by hallucinations in his later years, his grasp on reality became more and more tenuous. Despite this, he continued to compose music. In the autumn of 1853 he wrote his only violin concerto. He intended for it to be played by the great violinist Joseph Joachim, a master with whom he had collaborated in the past. There was a problem, though: Joachim was aware that Schumann’s mind was going. Seeing the piece as a product of the composer’s increasing madness—especially after Schumann’s attempted suicide—he was not at all inclined to perform it. Joachim found the music to be morbid and did not want it performed. He wrote in a letter that it contained “a certain exhaustion, which attempts to wring out the last resources of spiritual energy.”
So he stashed it away and never had it published, not even in Schumann’s complete works published by Brahms and Schumann’s widow, Clara. Joachim may have thought that it would tarnish the composer’s reputation and convinced them to omit it, owing to the composer’s mental state when he wrote it. Interestingly, Brahms did later
publish a piece titled “Schumann’s last musical thought,” which was a theme on which Brahms was composing variations. Schumann, believing one of his many delusions, had claimed that this melody had been dictated to him by the spirits of Mendelssohn and Schubert, when in fact Schumann had written it for the slow movement of the violin concerto itself. His mind was already well on its way to going, and he didn’t even recognize music from his own previous work.
After Schumann’s death, Joachim retained the concerto manuscript and later gave it to the Prussian State Library in Berlin. In his will (he died in 1907), Joachim requested that the piece remain there and not be performed or published until a hundred years after Schumann’s death, which would be 1956. That’s where the matter should have rested, but then things got weird.
In March 1933, Swedish ambassador Baron Erik Kule Palmstierna held a spiritualist séance in London. These gatherings were hugely popular in later Victorian times and still retained some of their allure and mystique among the curious well into the twentieth century. In attendance were Joachim’s grandnieces, Jelly d’Arányi and Adila Fachiri, who were sisters and both violinists themselves. The medium conducting the séance revealed that a spirit voice claiming to be Schumann was asking for Jelly to locate and bring to light one of his unpublished works. Jelly later claimed that she had no knowledge of any of his works that were hidden from the general public.
Schumann also asked her to perform the piece. As if to answer their next question about where it was located, another message came through in a later session, claiming to be from Joachim’s spirit; he told them to ask Baron Palmstierna to go to the Hochschule Museum in Berlin. This turned up nothing, but a new tip led the baron to the Prussian State Library where he found the manuscript. This incident is remarkable because up until this time very few even knew that the piece existed, though one account does mention that the first movement may already have been performed a few years earlier. How this information came to light has never been explained. Perhaps Schumann’s spirit did indeed reach out to them, though Joachim also being on hand to point them in the right direction is probably a little too good to be true.
In any case, nothing came of it immediately. Four years later, however, violinist Yehudi Menuhin received a copy of the score from a music publisher in Mainz, asking for his opinion. Somehow they’d gotten word of its existence and obtained a copy, obviously in violation of Joachim’s instructions in his will. Menuhin was impressed and wanted to offer a world premiere in 1937. The problem was that Jelly d’Arányi then came forward and claimed the right to the first performance, based on the information she had received at the séances!
As you can imagine, this claim didn’t hold much legal water, despite the remarkable revelations that the séances seem to have produced. Menuhin fared no better in his efforts. The copyright resided in Germany, and Hitler’s Nazi government was in no mood to allow Menuhin, a Jew, to be the first to premiere a lost work by a major German composer. A German violinist named Georg Kulenkampff gave the first performance in Berlin in November 1937; a recording followed soon after. Menuhin was able to perform it at Carnegie Hall in December, and d’Arányi gave her performance in London, also in December, so ultimately everyone was happy (we hope).
The piece came to light at last, but there is still no logical explanation for what happened at those séances.
Haunted concert halls and opera houses: where the dead keep giving encores
There is probably no human settlement on Earth where someone hasn’t reported a ghostly encounter at some point. Every kind of building imaginable and most natural areas have been tagged as homes for ghosts, and the music world is certainly no exception. The casual researcher can discover huge numbers of haunted theaters that have doubled for both plays and musical productions. It would be impossible to list more than a few, so here are a handful of interesting ones, with many more waiting to be explored. Set your skepticism aside for a bit and read on, if you dare.
Twin City Opera House, McConnelsville, Ohio
This theater, which hosts everything from movies to concerts, opened in 1892. Its first show was a production of The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan. Over the years it has been beset by paranormal activity, and its website even encourages visits from would-be ghost hunters. The incidents range from the benign to the truly frightening. There are at least fourteen different ghosts who roam the building, among them the spirit of Everett Miller. Miller was an usher at the theater for thirty years and it seems he has no intention of leaving any time soon. He is frequently seen and has been contacted by those who do such investigations. There is Red Wine Robert, a stagehand at the turn of the twentieth century who allegedly has been captured on tape saying, “I’ve got red wine.” Lucky ghost! There is the spirit of John Leezer, who was stabbed to death in the ballroom at the beginning of the twentieth century; who knew that a dance floor could be so dangerous? There is also the mysterious lady in a white Victorian dress—sometimes seen walking across the stage—but her identity is unknown.
By far the most unsettling, however, is the black amorphous shadow that has been encountered many times deep in the basement, near old blocked-up tunnels that run under the town. This entity, if that’s what it is, seems to radiate malice and does not like being approached. Numerous people have observed it, and it has been photographed; the photos usually show dark areas or splotches in one corner or another. Frightened witnesses have reported hearing it growling and even warning them to “get out.” Drastic drops in temperature have been felt in its presence (a common indicator of ghostly incursions), and witnesses have felt sick around it. Why this particular building would attract such a thing, or any of the spirits observed here, is not known, but the theater continues and thrives, in part because of its haunted reputation.
Rhoads Opera House, Boyertown, Pennsylvania
This theater no longer exists, but it was once the scene of a terrible tragedy. The term “opera house” as used in America at the time was frequently something of a misnomer. More often than not, such places showed plays and vaudeville—some of which were unsuitable for children and those of a “delicate” nature—but they used the name “opera house” to make themselves seem more respectable, especially in small, conservative, and religious communities. The Rhoads Opera House was such a place, and on the fateful night of January 13, 1908, it was showing a play about the Scottish Reformation, a subject that would have appealed to the local Protestant community. Hundreds turned out to watch a dramatization of the Scots sticking it to the Catholic Church.
During the course of the evening, a stereopticon—a device used for showing slide photographs—seems to have thrown a bit of a fit, crackling and sparking. This unnerved those in the audience who didn’t know what was happening, and a number made their way toward the stage to get a better look. In the commotion that followed, someone kicked over a kerosene footlight that ignited a nearby barrel of oil, sending the stage up in flames. The crowds panicked and rushed to flee the theater, but this was in the days before proper fire codes, and the doors opened inward rather than outward. Over 170 people died from smoke inhalation and flames, and the building was reduced to ruins.
In the aftermath of what became a national scandal, new fire safety codes were drawn up for all future buildings in the state, and these eventually set the standard for the rest of the country. This was of no help to the dead, and no comfort to their families and loved ones.
Shortly after the accident, eerie things began to be reported in and around the shell of the building. Levelheaded people told of hearing agonized screams and moans coming from the ruin; were these sounds the cries of the victims? One elderly man was convinced that the ghost of his wife had asked him to come to the building to be with her, so he tried to squat there but was eventually removed. Others nearby reported that their homes had since become haunted, perhaps due to the restless spirits that were still lingering about the area. The opera house was not rebuilt and today the site is covered with
shops and apartments. There have been periodic reports of ghostly screams of pain, heard both in the area and at the local cemetery where many were buried. Perhaps an event so horrific has somehow imprinted itself at the site, like a terrible recording set on repeat.
Metropolitan Opera House, New York
Unlike the previous two examples, this one has more humor than horror. Located at Broadway and 39th Street, the opera house was home to many of the great singers and productions in the first half of the twentieth century. The legendary Enrico Caruso was a regular performer (and yet is said to haunt the Brady Theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma), Arturo Toscanini conducted there, and Puccini premiered his opera The Girl of the Golden West at this theater. One soprano, Frances Alda, took up residence as an apparition for a time in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in New Zealand, she became a star in the opera world, performing at the great houses in Europe and America. She died in Venice in 1952 at the age of seventy-three but apparently wasn’t content to stay there.
Shortly after her death, people reported seeing her back in New York at the Met. Patrons would say they had witnessed an aged woman, gaudily dressed, sitting at the end of their row, or even next to them, muttering to herself or making critical comments about a given evening’s particular production. She is said to have clicked her tongue and tapped her program, or waved her hands about, often in displeasure at the sopranos’ performances. The interesting thing is that she would never return after the first act. The manager and the ushers became used to hearing patrons complain about this woman—whose description matched Frances—and promised to take care of the matter. After eventually realizing that it was her ghost, they didn’t bother to follow up, knowing that she wouldn’t return for the rest of the performance. This strange phenomenon went on until 1966, when the Met moved its company to the more modern Lincoln Center. Frances didn’t move with the company, however, and her critical hauntings ceased. The old building was demolished, so perhaps she’s at peace at last, or maybe she’s still stirring up trouble somewhere else.