The idea of ‘musical apparitions’ implies the presence of music with or without an apparitional performer in a situation that would suggest that its physical production was implausible. Research in this area has been undertaken in the past by the psychical researcher Ernesto Bozzano, which included examples of deathbed music being heard as well as alleged hauntings involving music; further studies of such phenomena were carried out in the 20th century by the parapsychologist D Scott Rogo in which he investigated people from the UK and USA who claimed to have heard ‘transcendental music’.
Possibly the oldest surviving musical treatise is the written by Aurelian of Réome. After expounding on theoretical matters derived from Boethius and others, Aurelian mentioned instances of the hearing of ‘angelic music’. There are many other sources from antiquity that describe angelic choirs being heard, but a degree of caution is necessary in referring to such ancient manuscripts, since faulty translation may have suggested external origins for music when this was not intended. Further to this, the authors themselves, often of a deeply religious or mystical nature, may have externalised what was part of their deeply held belief system. With the exception of the Electronic
