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Ernesto Bozzano - Psychic phenomena at the moment of death [110 cases suggesting survival after death]

Transcendental Music

5-th case. - Nita O'Sullivan-Beare, musician and composer, reports in The Occult Review (March 1921) how one of her last romances was composed. She writes:

A few years ago, I was in Paris, and one evening, at sundown, I went to the Madeleine church. There were no more than a dozen believers and I knelt next to a woman who had a basket of vegetables. Suddenly I heard a very melodious song, consisting of voices alone; but I couldn't determine its origin. It was a melody that seemed to form on the spot and rise in wide harmonic volutes, filling the sacred atmosphere. A very beautiful voice, full of feeling, dominated the others by extending the last notes of each cadenza. Not being able to orient myself, I asked the woman, my neighbour, where this song came from.

She looked at me with astonishment and replied in French: "Excuse me, Madame; what music do you hear?"

- Here: Can't you hear this choir?"

She shook her head and said: "Madam, I can't hear anything."

She soon left, and another woman knelt next to me. I took the opportunity to ask her the same question: she simply answered: "There is no music."

But as I kept hearing the same hymn, I took the liberty of shyly asking my neighbour if, by any chance, she wasn't a little hard of hearing. This question seemed to hurt her; she left suddenly: "Not at all, Madam."

Meanwhile, the choir continued to ring under the vast vaults of the church. I kept listening. Then I hurried back to my hotel, where I immediately transcribed the main bars which constitute the theme of my last song romance: Love's Fadeless Rose.