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"Florence Marryst writes in her _There is No Death_ that after her
first seance with Florence Cook the whole dinner table around which
perhaps thirty people wer sitting, with everything upon it, rose
bodily in the air, to a level with their knees, and the dishes and
glasses swayed about in a perilous manner, without, however, coming
to any permanent harm.
"In another seance with Katie Cook a piano was carried over the heads
of the sitters. One of the ladies became nervous, broke the chain of
hands, whereupon the piano dropped on the floor, the two carved legs
and the sounding board smashed in.
"The levitation of two pianos, in the presence of an eleven-years-old
child, was described as early as 1855 in Prof. Thury's _Les Tables
Tournantes._ The Phenomenon was witnessed by President Lincoln in Mrs.
Laurie's house. ...
"Mr. Jencken, the husband of Katie Fox, said in a paper read before
the London Dialectical Society : 'As regards the lifting of heavy
bodies, I can myself testify I have seen the semi-grand at my house
raised horizontally eighteen inches off the ground and kept suspended
in space two or three minutes.'
"The Master of Lindsay, before the same body, said : 'I was next to
him (Horne). I had one hand on his chair and the other on the piano,
and while he played both his chair and the piano rose about three
inches and then settled down again.'
"Dr. Ashburner recorded the following personal experience : 'Mr.
Foster, who is possessed of a fine voice, was accompanying himself
while he sang. Both feet were on the pedals, when the pianoforte rose
into the air and was gracefully swung in the air from side to side for
at least five or six minutes. During this time the castors were about
at the height of a foot from the carpet.'" (Spence, Lewis.
Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 1920)

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "threesixesinarow" <music.conx@...>
wrote:

> "In another seance with Katie Cook a piano was carried over the heads
> of the sitters. One of the ladies became nervous, broke the chain of
> hands, whereupon the piano dropped on the floor, the two carved legs
> and the sounding board smashed in.

I'm not sure if levitating pianos is actually musically useful. I find
the history of Schumann's Violin Concerto more interesting in that
department. Schumann, depressed over his mental problems, attempted
suicide; at around the same time he claimed that the spirits of
Schubert and Mendelssohn helped him out a little in the musical theme
department. The result was Schumann's Violin Concerto, which I like
but which was not a success. Against opposition by Brahms, Clara
insisted it not be published, and it was buried in obscurity.

Then at a seance cirle in the thirties, "Schumann" shows up and says
he'd really like to get the thing performed. Following clues he gives,
the manuscript for it is located, and it *is* performed. It has
several recordings now, and is a minor part of the violin repertoire.

The Nazis really appreciated the discovery, since Mendelssohn, though
a good Lutheran, was Jewish by ancestry, and Bruch, though a perfect
example of the sort of German the Nazis approved of by ancestry, was
guilty of liking Jews and writing Kol Nidrei. Because the Nazis liked
it as a way of plugging the leak in the Big Five Violin Conertos, it
had a harder time finding acceptance, but now it has.

So far as I know, it has never been performed while levitating.