Afterwords: Rosemary Brown

Available for over a year

"The first time I saw Franz Liszt, I was about seven years old, and already accustomed to seeing the spirits of the so-called dead..." - Rosemary Brown Afterwords explores the work of Rosemary Brown, an English musician and spirit medium who said her pieces were dictated to her by dead composers like Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy. Entering the spotlight in the late 1960s, Brown's work was analysed by musicologists and composers, discussed by priests and talk show hosts. It opened up discussions on the afterlife, on the nature of composition itself and on musical performance as a type of conceptual art. In this archive-led documentary, we dive into some of the recordings from the time and hear new interviews with the composer Neil Luck, pianist Siwan Rhys, radio presenter and journalist Kate Molleson, Spectator Arts Editor and Director of the London Contemporary Music Festival, Igor Toronyi-Lalic and the radio producer Daniel Snowman who interviewed Rosemary Brown in 1969. Produced by Eleanor McDowall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3