The Music of Erich Zann - H.P. Lovecraft

"The Music of Erich Zann" is a horror short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft. Written in December 1921, it was first published in National Amateur, March 1922.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The music of Ericson by H.P. Lovecraft. I have examined maps
of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue
d'olsay. These maps have not beenmodern maps alone, for I know that
names change. I have, onthe contrary, delve deeply into all the
antiquities of the place, and ifpersonally, explored every region of whatever name

(00:22):
which could possibly answer to the streetI knew as the Rue d'horsay. But
despite all I have done, itremains an humiliating fact that I cannot find
the house, the street, oreven the locality where During the last months
of my impoverished life as a studentof metaphysics at the university, I heard
the music of Ericson that my memoryis broken. I do not wonder for

(00:43):
my health, physical and mental,was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my
residence in the Rue d'olsay, andI recall that I took none of my
few acquaintances there, but that Icannot find the place again. It is
both singular and perplexing, for itwas within a half hour's walk of the
university and was distinguished by peculiarities whichcould hardly be forgotten by anyone who had
been there. I have never meta person who has seen Rue d'ssay.

(01:07):
The Rue d'lsay lay across a darkriver, bordered by precipitous brick blear windowed
warehouses, and spanned by a ponderousbridge of dark stone. It was always
shadowy along that river, as ifthe smoke of neighboring factories shut out the
sun perpetually. The river was alsoodorous, with evil stenches, which I
have never smelled elsewhere, and whichmay some day help me to find it,

(01:30):
since I should recognize them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow,
cobbled streets with rails, and thencame the ascent, at first gradual but
incredibly steep, as the Rue d'lsaywas reached. I have never seen another
street as narrow and steep as theRue d'ossay. It was almost a cliff,
closed to all vehicles, consisting inseveral places of flights of steps,

(01:53):
and ending at the top in alofty, ivied wall. Its pathing was
irregular, sometimes stone, as sometimescobblestones, and sometimes bare earth was struggling
greenish gray vegetation. The houses weretall, peaked roofed, incredibly old and
crazily leaning backward, forward and sideways, occasionally an opposite pair, both leaning

(02:15):
forward almost met across the street likean arch, and certainly they kept most
of the light from the ground below. There were a few overhead bridges from
house to house across the street.The inhabitants of that street impressed me peculiarly.
At first I thought it was becausethey were all silent and reticent,
but later I decided it was becausethey were all very old. I do

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not know how I came to liveon such a street, but I was
not myself when I moved there.I had been living in many poor places,
always evicted for want of money,until at last I came upon that
tottering house in the Rue d'rsey,kept by the paralytic Brendeaux. It was
the third house from the top ofthe street, and by far the tallest
of them all. My room wason the fifth story, the only inhabited

(02:59):
room there, since the house wasalmost empty. On the night I arrived,
I heard strange music from the peakedgarret overhead, and the next day
asked old Blando about it. Hetold me it was an old German viol
player, a strange dumb man whosigned his name as Erik Zan, and
who played evenings in a cheap theaterorchestra, adding that Zan's desire to play

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in the night after his return fromthe theater was the reason he had chosen
this lofty and isolated garret room,whose single gable window was the only point
on the street from which one couldlook over the terminating wall at the declivity
and panorama beyond. Thereafter, Iheard Zan every night, and although he
kept me awake, I was hauntedby the weirdness of his music. Knowing

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little of the art myself, Iwas yet certain that none of his harmonies
had any relation to music I hadheard before, and concluded that he was
a composer of highly original genius.The longer I listened, the more I
was fascinated, until after a weekI resolved to make the old man's acquaintance.
One night, as he was returningfrom his work, I intercepted Zon
in the hallway and told him thatI would like to know him and be

(04:03):
with him when he played. Hewas a small, lean, bent person
with shabby clothes, blue eyes,grotesque, sat there like face and nearly
bald head, and at my firstwords, seemed both angered and frightened.
My obvious friendliness, however, finallymelted him, and he grudgingly motioned for
me to follow him up the dark, creaking and rickety attic stairs. His

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room, one of only two inthe steeply pitched carrot, was on the
west side, toward the high wallthat formed the upper end of the street.
Its size was very great, andseemed the greater because of its extraordinary
barrenness and neglect of furniture. Therewas only a narrow iron bedstead, a
dingy washstand, a small table,a large bookcase, an iron music rack,

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and three old fashioned chairs. Sheetsof music were piled in disorder about
the floor. The walls were ofbare boards and had probably never known plaster,
whilst the abundance of dust and cobwebsmade the play seemed more deserted than
inhabited. Evidently, Arixand's world ofbeauty lay in some far cosmos of the
imagination. Motioning me to sit down, the dumb man closed the door,

(05:11):
turned the large wooden bolt, andlighted a candle to augment the one he
had brought with him. He nowremoved his vial from its moth eaten covering
and taking it, seated himself inthe least uncomfortable of the chairs. He
did not employ the music rack,but offering no choice and playing from memory,
enchanted me for over an hour withstrains I had never heard before,
strains which must have been of hisown devising to describe their exact nature as

(05:34):
impossible for one unversed in music.They were a kind of fugue with recurrent
passages of the most captivating quality,but to me were notable for the absence
of any of the weird notes Ihad overheard from my room below on other
occasions, those haunting notes I hadremembered and had often hummed and whistled inaccurately
to myself. So when the playerat length laid down his bow, I

(05:56):
asked him if he would render someof them. As I began my request,
the wrinkled sat here like face lostthe bored placidity it had possessed during
the playing, and seemed to showthe same curious mixture of anger and fright
which I had noticed when first Iaccosted the old man. For a moment,
I was inclined to use persuasion regardingrather lightly the whims of senility,
and even tried to awaken my host'sweirder mood by whistling a few of the

(06:18):
strains to which I had listened thenight before. But I did not pursue
this course for more than a moment, for when the dumb musician recognized the
whistled air, his face grew suddenlydistorted with an expression wholly beyond analysis,
and his long, cold, bonyright hand reached out to stop my mouth
and silence the crude imitation. Ashe did this, he further demonstrated his

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eccentricity by casting a startled glance towardthe lone curtained window, as if fearful
of some intruder, a glance doublyabsurd, since the garret stood high and
inaccessible above all the adjacent roofs,this window being the only point on the
steep street, as the concierge hadtold me, from which one could see
over the wall at the summit.The old man's glance brought Blando's remark to

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my mind, and with a certaincapriciousness, I felt a wish to look
out over the wide and dizzying panoramaof moonlit roofs and city lights beyond the
hill top, which of all thedwellers in the Rue d'Orsay, only this
crabbed musician could see. I movedtoward the window and would have drawn aside
the nondescript curtains, when, witha frightened rage even greater than before,

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the dumb lodger was upon me again, this time motioning with his head toward
the door, as he nervously stroveto drag me thither with both hands.
Now thoroughly disgusted with my host,I ordered him to release me and told
him I would go at once.His clutch relaxed, and as he saw
my disgust and offense, his ownanger seemed to subside. He tightened his

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relaxing grip, but this time ina friendly manner, forcing me into a
chair, then with an appearance ofwistfulness, crossing to the littered table,
where he wrote many words with apencil in the labored French of a foreigner.
Zan said that he was old,lonely, and afflicted with strange fears
and nervous disorders connected with his musicand with other things. He had enjoyed

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my listening to his music and wishedI would come again and not mind his
eccentricities. But he could not playto another his weird harmonies, and could
not bear hearing them from another,nor could he bear having anything in his
room touched by another. He hadnot known until our hallway conversation that I
could overhear his playing in my room. And now ask me if I would
arrange with Blandou to take a lowerroom where I could not hear him in

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the night. He would, hewrote Defray the Difference in rent. As
I sat deciphering the execrable French,I felt more lenient toward the old man.
He was a victim of physical andnervous suffering, as was I,
and my metaphysical studies had taught mekindness. In the silence, there came
a slight sound from the window.The shutter must have rattled in the night

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wind, and for some reason Istarted almost as violently as did Ericson.
So when I had finished reading,I shook my host by the hand and
departed as a friend. The nextday Blandoe gave me a more expensive room
on the third floor, between theapartments of an aged money lender and the
room of a respectable upholsterer. Therewas no one on the fourth floor.

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It was not long before I foundthat Zan's eagerness for my company was not
as great as it had seemed.While he was persuading me to move down
from the fifth story. He didnot ask me to call on him,
and when I did call, heappeared uneasy and played listlessly. This was
always at night. In the dayhe slept and would admit no one.
My liking for him to not grow. Though the attic room and the weird

(09:28):
music seemed to hold an odd fascinationfor me, I had a curious desire
to look out of that window,over the wall and down the unseen slope
at the glittering roofs and spires whichmust lie outspread there. Once I went
up to the garret during theater hourswhen Zan was away, but the door
was locked. What I did succeedin doing was to overhear the nocturnal playing

(09:50):
of the dumb old Man. Atfirst I would tiptoe up to my old
fifth floor. Then I grew boldenough to climb the last creaking staircase to
the peaked garret. There in thenarrow hall, outside the bolted door with
the covered keyhole, I often heardsounds which filled me with an indefinable dread,
the dread of vague wonder and broodingmystery. It was not that the

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sounds were hideous, for they werenot, but that they held vibrations suggesting
nothing on this globe of earth,and that at certain intervals they assumed a
symphonic quality which I could hardly conceiveas produced by one player. Certainly,
Ericson was a genius of wild power. As the weeks passed, the playing
grew wilder, whilst the old musicianacquired an increasing haggardness and furtiveness. Pitiful

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to behold. He now refused toadmit me at any time, and shunned
me whenever we met on the stairs. Then one night, as I listened
at the door, I heard theshrieking vial swell into a chaotic babble of
sound, a pandemonium which would haveled me to doubt my own shaking sanity,
had there not come from behind thatbarred portal, a piteous proof that

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the horror was real. The awful, inarticulate cry which only a mute can
utter, and which rises only inmoments of the most terrible fear or anguish,
I knocked repeatedly at the door,but received no response. Afterward,
I waited in the black hallway,shivering with cold and fear, till I
heard the poor musician's feeble effort torise from the floor by the aid of

(11:16):
a chair. Believing him just consciousafter a fainting fit, I renewed my
rapping at the same time, callingout my name. Reassuringly I heard Zan
stumbled to the window and closed bothshutter and sash, then stumbled to the
door, which he falteringly unfastened toadmit me. This time, his delight
at having me present was real,for his distorted face gleamed with relief while

(11:39):
he clutched at my coat as achild clutches at its mother's skirts. Shaking
pathetically, The old man forced meinto a chair whilst he sank into another,
beside which his viol and bow laycarelessly on the floor. He sat
for some time inactive, nodding oddly, but having a paradoxical suggestion of intense
and frightened listening. Subsequently, heseemed to be satisfied, and, crossing

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to a chair by the table,wrote a brief note, handed it to
me, and returned to the table, where he began to write rapidly and
incessantly. The note implored me,in the name of mercy, and for
the sake of my own curiosity,to wait where I was while he prepared
a full account in German of allthe marvels and terrors which beset him.
I waited, and the dumb man'spencil flew. It was perhaps an hour

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later, while I still waited,and while the old musician's feverishly written sheets
still continued to pile up, thatI saw Zan start as from the hint
of a horrible shock. Unmistakably hewas looking at the curtained window and listening
shudderingly. Then I half fancied Iheard a sound myself, though it was
not a horrible sound, but ratheran exquisitely low and infinitely distant musical note,

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suggesting a player in one of theneighboring houses, or in some abode
beyond the lofty wall over which Ihad never been able to look upon Zan.
The effect was terrible, for droppinghis pencil. Suddenly, he rose,
seized his vial, and commenced torend the night with the wildest playing
I had ever heard from his bow, save when listening at the barred door.
It would be useless to describe theplaying of Eric Zon on that dreadful

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night. It was more horrible thananything I had ever overheard, because I
could now see the expression of hisface, and I could realize that this
time the motive was stark fear.He was trying to make a noise to
ward something off or drown something out. What I could not imagine awesome,
though I felt it must be.The playing grew fantastic, danis and hysterical,

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yet kept to the last the qualitiesof supreme genius which I knew this
strange old man possessed. I recognizedthe air. It was a wild Hungarian
dance popular in the theaters, andI reflected for a moment that this was
the first time I had ever heardZon play the work of another composer,
Louder and Louder, Wilder and Wildermounted the shrieking and whining of that desperate

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vial. The player was dripping withan uncanny perspiration and twisted like a monkey,
always looking frantically at the curtained window. In his frenzied strains, I
could almost see shadowy satyrs and bacchanalsdancing and whirling insanely through seething abysses of
clouds and smoke and lightning. Andthen I thought I heard a shriller,
steadier note that was not from thevial, a calm, deliberate, purposeful

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mocking note from far away in thewest. At this juncture, the shutter
began to rattle in a howling nightwind, which had sprung up outside,
as if in answer to the madplaying within Zan's screaming vial now outdid itself,
emitting sounds I had never thought avial could emit. The shutter rattled
more loudly, unfastened, and commencedslamming against the window. Then the glass

(14:43):
broke, shiveringly under the persistent impacts, and the chill wind rushed in,
making the candles sputter and rustling thesheets of paper on the table where Zan
had begun to write out his horriblesecret. I looked at Zan and saw
that he was past conscious observation.His blue eyes were bulging, glassy,
and sightless, and the frantic playinghad become a blind, mechanical, unrecognizable

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orgy that no pen could even suggest. A sudden gust stronger than the others
caught up the manuscript and bore ittoward the window. I followed the flying
sheets in desperation, but they weregone before I reached the demolished panes.
Then I remembered my old wish togaze from this window, the only window
in the Rue d'ossey, from whichone might see the slope beyond the wall

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and the city outspread beneath. Itwas very dark, but the city's lights
always burned, and I expected tosee them there amidst the rain and the
wind. Yet when I looked fromthat highest of all gabled windows, looked,
while the candles sputtered and the insanevial howled with the night wind,
I saw no city spread below,and no friendly lights gleamed from remembered streets,

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but only the blackness of space,illimitable, unimagined space, alive with
motion and music, and having nosemblance of anything on Earth. And as
I stood there, looking in terror, the wind blew out both candles in
that ancient piqued garret, leaving mein savage and impenetrable darkness, with chaos
and pandemonium before me, and thedemon madness of that night baying vile behind

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me. I staggered back in thedark without the means of striking a light,
crashing against the table, overturning achair, and finally groping my way
to the place where the blackness screamedwith shocking music. To save myself and
Erik Zon, I could at leasttry whatever the powers opposed to me.
Once I thought, some chill thingbrushed me and I screamed, but my

(16:33):
scream could not be heard above thathideous vial. Suddenly, out of the
blackness, the madly sawing bow struckme, and I knew I was close
to the player. I felt ahead, touched the back of Zan's chair,
and then found and shook his shoulderin an effort to bring him to his
senses. He did not respond,and still the vile shrieked on without slackening.
I moved my hand to his head, whose mechanical nodding I was able

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to stop, and shouted in hisear that we must both flee from the
un own things of the night.But he neither answered me nor abated the
frenzy of his unutterable music. Whileall through the garret, strange currents of
wind seemed to dance in the darkness. And babble. When my hand touched
his ear, I shuddered, thoughI knew not why, knew not why
till I felt the still face,the ice cold, stiffened, unbreathing face,

(17:21):
whose glassy eyes bulged uselessly into thevoid. And then, by some
miracle, finding the door and thelarge wooden bolt, I plunged wildly away
from that glassy eyed thing in thedark, and from the ghoulish howling of
that accursed vial, whose fury increasedeven as I plunged, leaping, floating,
flying down those endless stairs, throughthe dark house, racing mindlessly out

(17:44):
into the narrow, steep and ancientstreet of steps and tottering houses, clattering
down steps and over cobbles, tothe lower streets and the putrid canyon walled
river, panting across the great darkbridge to the broader, healthier streets and
boulevards. We know all these areterrible impressions that linger with me, and
I recall that there was no wind, and that the moon was out,
and that all the lights of thecity twinkled. Despite my most careful searches

(18:08):
and investigations, I have never sincebeen able to find the rue d'osy.
But I'm not wholly sorry, eitherfor this or for the loss, in
undreamable abysses of the closely written sheetswhich alone could have explained the music of
Erixon, end of the music ofErikson.