The Music of Erich Zann
| "The Music of Erich Zann" | |
|---|---|
| Author | H. P. Lovecraft |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Publisher | The National Amateur |
| Media type | Magazine |
| Publication date | March, 1922 |
"The Music of Erich Zann" is a short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft. Written in December 1921, it was first published in National Amateur, March 1922.[1]
Synopsis
A university student is forced, by his lack of funds, to take the only lodging he can afford. In a strange part of the city he had never seen before, on a street named "Rue d'Auseil", he finds an apartment in an almost empty building. One of the few other tenants is an old German man named Erich Zann. The old man is mute and plays the viol[2] with a local orchestra. He lives on the top floor and when alone at night, plays strange melodies never heard before. Over time, the student gains Zann's trust, and eventually learns of his secret, that the old man has discovered melodies and rhythms of sound of an almost otherworldly nature. Zann plays these sounds to keep back unknown and unseen creatures from Zann's window, which is said to look out into a black abyss, most likely another dimension.
Setting
The setting of the story is presumably Paris, though the city is never named. Auseil is not a true French word, but it has been suggested that Lovecraft derived it from the phrase au seuil, meaning at the threshold.[3] Auseil is read like oseille, meaning sorrel or, colloquially, money.
Reaction
Lovecraft considered "The Music of Erich Zann" one of his best stories, in part because it avoided the overexplicitness that he saw as a major flaw in some of his other work. An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia notes that it "might, however, be said that HPL erred on the side of underexplicitness in the very nebulous horror to be seen through Zann's garret window."[4]
The story was frequently anthologized even during Lovecraft's lifetime, including in Dashiell Hammett's 1931 collection Creeps by Night.[3]
Ramsey Campbell has stated that "The Music of Erich Zann" was "the single Lovecraft story that the late Robert Aickman liked".[5]
Influence
James Wade wrote a sequel to the story, "The Silence of Erika Zann", first published in The Disciples of Cthulhu (1976).
Univers Zéro's album Ceux du dehors (1981) includes a track titled "La musique d'Erich Zann". According to drummer and bandleader Daniel Denis, all members read the short story in the studio and promptly improvised the piece.
German Technical Thrash Metal Band Mekong Delta second album is titled The Music of Erich Zann after the story. German Ambient band Forma Tadre has an album titled The Music of Erich Zann.
American Thrash Metal band Revocation song "Madness Opus" off their 2014 album Deathless is based of off The Music of Erich Zann.
Eric Zann is a pseudonym of Jim Jupp, who has released an album on the Ghost Box Music record label. Hungarian Metal band Without Face has a song called The Violin of Erich Zann. British Anarcho-punk band Rudimentary Peni featured a depiction of Eric Zann on the original cover of their album Cacophony.
French composer Claude Ballif wrote the stage music of the same name. American composer Raymond Wilding-White wrote a piece by the same name for violin and electronics, with Eugene Gratovich of DePaul University in the role of the university student.
In Charles Stross's The Laundry Files novels series including The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum, The Apocalypse Codex and The Rhesus Chart one of the characters has a violin made by an "Erich Zahn" which is made from human bones and, when played, eats the soul of the intended victim.
Greek Death metal band Septic Flesh references the story in the song Lovecraft's Death on their 2008 album Communion
Panu Petteri Höglund's collection of Cthulhu stories in Irish, An Leabhar Nimhe, includes a story called Paappana, nó Ceol Erkki Santanen, with several allusions to this story, such as the name of the protagonist, Erkki Santanen.
Alexey Voytenko composed "The music of Erich Zann" for violin solo in 2009.
Notes
- ↑ Straub, Peter (2005). Lovecraft: Tales. The Library of America. p. 823. ISBN 1-931082-72-3.
- ↑
- Although Zann's instrument is often depicted as a violin (see "Influence" below), Lovecraft's intended use of this term appears to be to refer to a violoncello: in a letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (October 31, 1931?) he describes Zann as a "'cellist" (Joshi and Schultz, p.177).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Joshi and Schultz, p. 178.
- ↑ Joshi and Schultz, p. 177.
- ↑ Ramsey Campbell, "Chasing the Unknown", in Cold Print. Headline, 1993, ISBN 0-7472-4059-0, (p.12).
References
- Lovecraft, Howard P. (1984) [1925]. "The Music of Erich Zann". In S. T. Joshi (ed.). The Dunwich Horror and Others (9th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-037-8. Definitive version.
- Harksen, Henrik. Metaphysics in "The Music of Erich Zann" . Denmark: H. Harksen Productions, 2003 for the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association Mailing No 123 (July 2003).
- S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia
External links
Works related to The Music of Erich Zann at Wikisource- "H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Music of Erich Zann'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive; publication history and full story text
