The Muse - A Bizarre Music Story
The Symphony That Wouldn’t Leave: A Dream, a Loss, and a 30-Year Journey to Bring Music to Life
Late one night, Stuart Sharp, a former pub cook in the United Kingdom with no formal musical training, dreamt of a symphony. It was not just a fleeting melody or a vague tune, but an entire, vivid, and complete orchestral masterpiece. It came fully formed. When he awoke, the music did not fade. It lingered, haunting him, demanding to be written and played.
“Before this amazing dream, my life was pretty standard,” Sharp told the BBC. He had left school without qualifications, worked his way up to become a cook in a pub, married, and had a daughter, Emma. Life was ordinary and predictable. But everything changed with the death of his son, Ben, at birth in traumatic circumstances. “My wife nearly died at the same time,” he says. “We went from a very happy night to a morning of total devastation.”
To make things worse Stuart had a hard time finding a place to bury his son. On the night of Ben’s funeral, Sharp lay down, hoping for a moment of rest amid the grief. Instead, he heard something extraordinary: angelic music, a chorus of voices, and a symphony so vivid he could walk through the orchestra, watching each instrument play its part. The melody was beautiful, otherworldly.
With it he got a message “Sometimes when this happens, we give the person a gift.” Stuart recalled, “It was like the Snow People had visited me in my sleep,” Sharp said, referencing the local legend, and being that he had visited him as a child. “The music was so pure, so perfect, it felt like it came from another world.” The Snow People, according to folklore, are said to inspire those who are lost or grieving, gifting them with visions of beauty and hope.
The next day, the music returned. And the day after that. It played in his mind relentlessly, seven days a week, at the strangest times. Sharp, who had no background in music, was baffled. “I wanted to just get on with my life, and it wouldn’t let me,” he says. He tried to drown it out with alcohol, but the symphony persisted. He could hear and decades later recall every instrument's music.
Others were less understanding. Many assumed Sharp was suffering from a mental illness, possibly schizophrenia. “Most people thought I needed psychiatric treatment,” he says. Fearing he might be institutionalized if he spoke openly about the music, Sharp kept it to himself. But he knew, eventually, he would have to find a way to bring the symphony out of his head and into the world.
It took years for Sharp to summon the courage to tell his wife and family about his plan. She thought he was kidding. Six months later as promised he left for London.
“I was going to go to London to record this music,” he says. But the journey was far from easy. He recalled driving to London and waiting for instructions in a parking lot. He was met with silence.
Sharp ended up homeless, living on the streets of London and in squats for years. His wife divorced him and remarried. He became disconnected from his daughters. “It was a disaster for me,” he admits.
Still, the music would not let him go. “I thought I’d get this done as quickly as possible—next year, maybe,” he says. But the process stretched on, year after year until three decades had passed.
A turning point came when Sharp met Anthony Wade, a jazz musician who became his “good Samaritan.” Wade helped Sharp transcribe the symphony note by note, a painstaking process. “Quite often, when I couldn’t get him to understand what I wanted, I would put my head next to his and say, ‘Can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear it?’” Sharp recalls.
Finally, after years of struggle, and raising over 1,000,000 pounds to score the piece, the day of the recording arrived. “When the baton came down and the first instrument started to play, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up,” Sharp says. “I wasn’t quite sure whether I was back in the dream.”
The piece was played once by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It was reported the only time the orchestra stood and applauded the composer.
For Sharp, the journey has been a success. The symphony, born of a dream and forged through decades of hardship, is now a reality. But the cost was high. “In reality, for my family, it was not like that at all,” he says. Still, there has been reconciliation. “We’ve come full circle, and they do understand now.”
The music, Sharp says, is a great comfort to him. “I’ve been on my own for a very long time, so it’s my friend. If ever I’m feeling low, I can listen to it and feel uplifted.”
Stuart Sharp’s story is one of loss, perseverance, and the unyielding power of art. It is a reminder that often, the most extraordinary creations emerge from the deepest pain—and that even the most unlikely dreams can find their way into the human mind and be remembered note for note for 30 years.
If this story of the ability to pick up entire symphonies from the field is not amazing enough Sharp added a detail that ties into another wild music story. Stuart claimed that his inspiration also involved his ability to “actually walk into the orchestra and watch what each instrument was doing. The melody was beautiful.
This matched the ability of the former comedian Jackie Gleason, who could not read or write music to pick up any mistake made by any instrument in his orchestra while he was conducting it. He went on to produce 40 to 50 original albums.
More importantly, the ability to walk into an orchestra in his mind and listen, links to one of the wildest music stories of all time. This is the story of Bob Milne, one of the best ragtime piano players in the world, who is able to play complex ragtime pieces while carrying on a conversation with people. This is a combination of left-brain talking and right-brain music which is extremely difficult.
More importantly, Milne has the ability to listen to two symphonies in his head at the same time. He says he does it all the time.
He when challenged by neuroscientist Kerstin Battermann at Penn State University, Milne stated that he could listen to four symphonies at the same time. Not only can he hear them simultaneously, but he can also identify each instrument, every note, and even the composer—all while carrying on a conversation or performing a completely different piece of music.
Milne explained the four orchestras that are playing in his head,I see them as silhouettes. There's no conductor in front of
either one. There's a brownish hue out in front of them like it's the floor.
It's more the color of the deep brown of a violin. And in back of them, there's
a semicircle that's bluish in color.
Then when I listen to them—I'm going to listen to Brahms
Second Symphony over in the left side, and over on the right side I'll turn on
the Emperor Concerto Third Movement of Beethoven. So, I'm listening to that.
Now these are in two different keys. Emperor's in E flat, Brahms is in D. So
now if I want to pay particular attention, oh let's say I'm gonna listen to the
Emperor here. I'm gonna go into the E major, I just sped it up. I can speed the
thing up to go to some other part in it. I can jump backwards. Let's see, just
a minute. I can hear it in F, I can put it into any key I want to, but I'm
gonna roar forward in this third movement of the Emperor here and listen to the
E major variation on the piano, which is just like a—it's just rocking on this
beautiful E major part. Pivoting around to the E flat note and going up and
down from there on the piano.[i]
“It’s like having four radios playing in my head, all tuned to different stations,” Milne explains. “I can focus on one, or I can listen to all of them at once. It’s just how my brain works.”
Just like Stuart Sharp, Milne “in his mind's eye, he can fly out over these orchestras and actually look down on the individual instrument he wants to see.”
Milne in the four-symphony challenge said that there were two symphonies side by side on a stage. One symphony is in the orchestra pit in front of the stage, and one orchestra is in a hole below the stage. He can move over one symphony or another, speed up one symphony, and tune up and down the volume of a symphony as all four play. Milne added,Okay, now I'm up there in the air listening to this thing, and over on my left side I can still hear this Brahms going along. Now Brahms, I can only see the silhouettes from the front, whereas the Emperor over here I can see full color and every person's face in it plus hear the lines that they're playing.I can hear the bass much louder. And then let's see, yeah then if I go over to the left side I'm hearing the violins. can see every wrinkle in the pleated shirts of their tuxedos, and I can see the deep brownish orangish color of the violas, and I can hear the deep sound, beautiful sound of that low viola, and I can hear every little rosin scratch across their bows.
The test involved Milne being put in an MRI and Milne was asked to play each symphony in his head. He was told when to start each symphony. These started at different times. They chose a Schubert's symphony, a Brahms, a Beethoven. and one from Mendelssohn. This would provide a variety of keys and different tempos.
Each symphony was started 10-15 seconds apart and, in the studio, they tracked where each symphony was at all times. After the symphonies had played for a while. Milne was told to stop and asked him what was playing at that moment in all four symphonies. Milne was down to the note on each.
A conductor of an orchestra was used as a control. He was able to do one symphony but was totally lost one he was asked to do two.
What they found is astonishing: Milne’s brain appears to have an almost unparalleled capacity for parallel processing, allowing him to compartmentalize and analyze multiple streams of music simultaneously.
“It’s like watching a master juggler keep a dozen balls in the air at once,” says Dr. Bettermann who worked closely with Milne. “His brain doesn’t just hear the music—it organizes it, categorizes it, and makes sense of it in real-time. It’s a rare and remarkable gift.”
Milne has exhibited musical talent his whole life. He taught himself to play the piano by ear at the age of four. By the time he was a teenager, he was performing professionally, dazzling audiences with his ability to play complex ragtime pieces with effortless precision.
This is a reflection of most major musicians who have also taught themselves to play, as most are right-brained and cannot read or write music which is a very left-brain way to learn music.
Yet, for all his talent, Milne remains humble and grounded. “I don’t think of myself as special,” he says. “I just love music, and I’ve been lucky enough to find a way to connect with it on a deeper level.”
For those on the sidelines watching Milne’s abilities clearly illustrate the unrecognized magic and the power of the human mind.
The Symphony That Wouldn’t Leave: A Dream, a Loss, and a 30-Year Journey to Bring Music to Life
Late one night, Stuart Sharp, a former pub cook in the United Kingdom with no formal musical training, dreamt of a symphony. It was not just a fleeting melody or a vague tune, but an entire, vivid, and complete orchestral masterpiece. It came fully formed. When he awoke, the music did not fade. It lingered, haunting him, demanding to be written and played.
“Before this amazing dream, my life was pretty standard,” Sharp told the BBC. He had left school without qualifications, worked his way up to become a cook in a pub, married, and had a daughter, Emma. Life was ordinary and predictable. But everything changed with the death of his son, Ben, at birth in traumatic circumstances. “My wife nearly died at the same time,” he says. “We went from a very happy night to a morning of total devastation.”
To make things worse Stuart had a hard time finding a place to bury his son. On the night of Ben’s funeral, Sharp lay down, hoping for a moment of rest amid the grief. Instead, he heard something extraordinary: angelic music, a chorus of voices, and a symphony so vivid he could walk through the orchestra, watching each instrument play its part. The melody was beautiful, otherworldly.
With it he got a message “Sometimes when this happens, we give the person a gift.” Stuart recalled, “It was like the Snow People had visited me in my sleep,” Sharp said, referencing the local legend, and being that he had visited him as a child. “The music was so pure, so perfect, it felt like it came from another world.” The Snow People, according to folklore, are said to inspire those who are lost or grieving, gifting them with visions of beauty and hope.
The next day, the music returned. And the day after that. It played in his mind relentlessly, seven days a week, at the strangest times. Sharp, who had no background in music, was baffled. “I wanted to just get on with my life, and it wouldn’t let me,” he says. He tried to drown it out with alcohol, but the symphony persisted. He could hear and decades later recall every instrument's music.
Others were less understanding. Many assumed Sharp was suffering from a mental illness, possibly schizophrenia. “Most people thought I needed psychiatric treatment,” he says. Fearing he might be institutionalized if he spoke openly about the music, Sharp kept it to himself. But he knew, eventually, he would have to find a way to bring the symphony out of his head and into the world.
It took years for Sharp to summon the courage to tell his wife and family about his plan. She thought he was kidding. Six months later as promised he left for London.
“I was going to go to London to record this music,” he says. But the journey was far from easy. He recalled driving to London and waiting for instructions in a parking lot. He was met with silence.
Sharp ended up homeless, living on the streets of London and in squats for years. His wife divorced him and remarried. He became disconnected from his daughters. “It was a disaster for me,” he admits.
Still, the music would not let him go. “I thought I’d get this done as quickly as possible—next year, maybe,” he says. But the process stretched on, year after year until three decades had passed.
A turning point came when Sharp met Anthony Wade, a jazz musician who became his “good Samaritan.” Wade helped Sharp transcribe the symphony note by note, a painstaking process. “Quite often, when I couldn’t get him to understand what I wanted, I would put my head next to his and say, ‘Can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear it?’” Sharp recalls.
Finally, after years of struggle, and raising over 1,000,000 pounds to score the piece, the day of the recording arrived. “When the baton came down and the first instrument started to play, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up,” Sharp says. “I wasn’t quite sure whether I was back in the dream.”
The piece was played once by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It was reported the only time the orchestra stood and applauded the composer.
For Sharp, the journey has been a success. The symphony, born of a dream and forged through decades of hardship, is now a reality. But the cost was high. “In reality, for my family, it was not like that at all,” he says. Still, there has been reconciliation. “We’ve come full circle, and they do understand now.”
The music, Sharp says, is a great comfort to him. “I’ve been on my own for a very long time, so it’s my friend. If ever I’m feeling low, I can listen to it and feel uplifted.”
Stuart Sharp’s story is one of loss, perseverance, and the unyielding power of art. It is a reminder that often, the most extraordinary creations emerge from the deepest pain—and that even the most unlikely dreams can find their way into the human mind and be remembered note for note for 30 years.
If this story of the ability to pick up entire symphonies from the field is not amazing enough Sharp added a detail that ties into another wild music story. Stuart claimed that his inspiration also involved his ability to “actually walk into the orchestra and watch what each instrument was doing. The melody was beautiful.
This matched the ability of the former comedian Jackie Gleason, who could not read or write music to pick up any mistake made by any instrument in his orchestra while he was conducting it. He went on to produce 40 to 50 original albums.
More importantly, the ability to walk into an orchestra in his mind and listen, links to one of the wildest music stories of all time. This is the story of Bob Milne, one of the best ragtime piano players in the world, who is able to play complex ragtime pieces while carrying on a conversation with people. This is a combination of left-brain talking and right-brain music which is extremely difficult.
More importantly, Milne has the ability to listen to two symphonies in his head at the same time. He says he does it all the time.
He when challenged by neuroscientist Kerstin Battermann at Penn State University, Milne stated that he could listen to four symphonies at the same time. Not only can he hear them simultaneously, but he can also identify each instrument, every note, and even the composer—all while carrying on a conversation or performing a completely different piece of music.
Milne explained the four orchestras that are playing in his head,
I see them as silhouettes. There's no conductor in front of either one. There's a brownish hue out in front of them like it's the floor. It's more the color of the deep brown of a violin. And in back of them, there's a semicircle that's bluish in color.
Then when I listen to them—I'm going to listen to Brahms Second Symphony over in the left side, and over on the right side I'll turn on the Emperor Concerto Third Movement of Beethoven. So, I'm listening to that. Now these are in two different keys. Emperor's in E flat, Brahms is in D. So now if I want to pay particular attention, oh let's say I'm gonna listen to the Emperor here. I'm gonna go into the E major, I just sped it up. I can speed the thing up to go to some other part in it. I can jump backwards. Let's see, just a minute. I can hear it in F, I can put it into any key I want to, but I'm gonna roar forward in this third movement of the Emperor here and listen to the E major variation on the piano, which is just like a—it's just rocking on this beautiful E major part. Pivoting around to the E flat note and going up and down from there on the piano.[i]
“It’s like having four radios playing in my head, all tuned to different stations,” Milne explains. “I can focus on one, or I can listen to all of them at once. It’s just how my brain works.”
Just like Stuart Sharp, Milne “in his mind's eye, he can fly out over these orchestras and actually look down on the individual instrument he wants to see.”
Milne in the four-symphony challenge said that there were two symphonies side by side on a stage. One symphony is in the orchestra pit in front of the stage, and one orchestra is in a hole below the stage. He can move over one symphony or another, speed up one symphony, and tune up and down the volume of a symphony as all four play. Milne added,
Okay, now I'm up there in the air listening to this thing, and over on my left side I can still hear this Brahms going along. Now Brahms, I can only see the silhouettes from the front, whereas the Emperor over here I can see full color and every person's face in it plus hear the lines that they're playing.I can hear the bass much louder. And then let's see, yeah then if I go over to the left side I'm hearing the violins. can see every wrinkle in the pleated shirts of their tuxedos, and I can see the deep brownish orangish color of the violas, and I can hear the deep sound, beautiful sound of that low viola, and I can hear every little rosin scratch across their bows.
The test involved Milne being put in an MRI and Milne was asked to play each symphony in his head. He was told when to start each symphony. These started at different times. They chose a Schubert's symphony, a Brahms, a Beethoven. and one from Mendelssohn. This would provide a variety of keys and different tempos.
Each symphony was started 10-15 seconds apart and, in the studio, they tracked where each symphony was at all times. After the symphonies had played for a while. Milne was told to stop and asked him what was playing at that moment in all four symphonies. Milne was down to the note on each.
A conductor of an orchestra was used as a control. He was able to do one symphony but was totally lost one he was asked to do two.
What they found is astonishing: Milne’s brain appears to have an almost unparalleled capacity for parallel processing, allowing him to compartmentalize and analyze multiple streams of music simultaneously.
“It’s like watching a master juggler keep a dozen balls in the air at once,” says Dr. Bettermann who worked closely with Milne. “His brain doesn’t just hear the music—it organizes it, categorizes it, and makes sense of it in real-time. It’s a rare and remarkable gift.”
Milne has exhibited musical talent his whole life. He taught himself to play the piano by ear at the age of four. By the time he was a teenager, he was performing professionally, dazzling audiences with his ability to play complex ragtime pieces with effortless precision.
This is a reflection of most major musicians who have also taught themselves to play, as most are right-brained and cannot read or write music which is a very left-brain way to learn music.
Yet, for all his talent, Milne remains humble and grounded. “I don’t think of myself as special,” he says. “I just love music, and I’ve been lucky enough to find a way to connect with it on a deeper level.”
For those on the sidelines watching Milne’s abilities clearly illustrate the unrecognized magic and the power of the human mind.
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