Horror has been on my mind a lot as of late. Halloween is around the corner, I’m currently in the stages of editing and finishing up a fantasy/horror short story, and weird fiction (AKA horror with supernatural/otherworldly elements) is always my go-to source of literary entertainment. I had recently purchased an amazing audio recording, set to background music, containing several of H.P. Lovecraft’s notable works produced by Cadabra Records, specifically Dagon, The Cats of Ulthar, and The Music of Erich Zann. I was especially excited about The Music of Erich Zann piece, as that always been a favorite of mine by Lovecraft, a very short, almost understated work of his that doesn’t have the same widespread knowledge as some of his other stories. And while listening to it, savoring the incredible vocal talent of Andrew Leman and the wonderfully creepy accompanying music, I came to a conclusion: The Music of Erich Zann, more-so than The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, or any of the other masterpieces he penned, is, in my opinion, Lovecraft’s best and most effective work of horror fiction.
In order to understand what makes this story so successful, we have to look at all the elements Lovecraft used as building blocks to the story. As a brief summary, the narrative is of a student (presumably in Paris or other large French city) who rented an apartment in a building along the Rue d’Auseil. There he hears music such as he’s never heard before from another tenant, a viola player that is the eponymous Erich Zann. Fascinated by the music and how strange it is, the narrator wishes to hear more from Zann, though he is rebuked for his interest by the viola player and warned against listening to it further. While transcribing a letter to explain why he plays the otherworldly music that he does, a sudden disturbance comes from the window which should look out upon the city, but from which the narrator can only see utter blackness, and the entire message is swept away into the darkness outside and the room is plunged to into shadows. The narrator tries to leave, but upon stumbling across the room, bumps into Zann, who is implied to be dead though is at the same time furiously playing at his viola. Fleeing from the apartment building, the narrator comes to find that he can no longer find the entire street where the event took place, as if he’s completely erased its placement from memory or it’s been completely taken out of reality. The story itself is much better than my lackluster description here, and it’s a very quick read, so if it’s something you haven’t read, I’d highly suggest it. You can find it for free here.
Lovecraft is well-known for imbuing artistic artifacts or creations with evil intent. Pickman’s Model focuses on a painter’s abhorrent subjects detailed in his art work. There’s the famous Cthulhu idol depicted in The Call of Cthulhu. We even get scattered passages of text from dreaded books like the Necronomicon in The Dunwich Horror. But utilizing music is a different thing all-together. With each of the afore-mentioned artistic mediums, there is a level of visual description involved in their idea, whether its the actual shape of the thing or the concrete words meant to create horrific implications. One of the golden rules of horror is that if you want your monster or scary figure to remain frightening, you should show them as sparingly as possible. The more we understand something, the less we fear it, and so as visual creatures, seeing something or having physical descriptions of something goes a long way in sometimes removing the horror from it.
The same cannot be said about music. As an auditory sensation, there is no way to descriptively picture the idea of music; there are only the musical terms that can seek to describe characteristics of its form, and the emotional impact it imparts upon the listener. Therefore, the idea of what that music actually sounds like remains completely in our own imaginations, while our impressions are formed by the way in which the characters react to its sounds. We see the narrator, who describes it as ‘weird’ and ‘haunting,’ nevertheless wish to hear more of the strange melodies, which implies a level of beauty around them. At the same time, we see Erich Zann react with fear and anger when the narrator attempts to whistle their notes, signifying a hint of danger behind their occurrence. Having characters react to a tangible piece of artistry always has the potential weakness in that we can conceive of what that thing looks like, and so find it unrealistic for people to have such strong reactions to what doesn’t that seem terrifying if rendered in reality. An ephemeral sensation like music, and its lack of clarity found in the written word, is much harder to fall into this state, and thereby creates a sustaining tone of horror that can persist throughout the entire work.
As cool as something like this looks, it’s not really scary, is it?
This lack of clarity that turns out to be positive for the story carries through into the actual reasons behind the horrors described, specifically in regards to what is going on. Short answer: we don’t know and will never know. Contrary to how frustrating that might initially seem, it is actually the much more effective method for trying to instill uneasiness and fear within us. Think again about how a monster is much scarier if you don’t have a clear conception of what it is. The same thing can be said about the reasons behind something horrifying happening. Sometimes, the more reasons and explanations are given behind an event, the less impactful they become. As much as I love and appreciate some of Lovecraft’s longer works like At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, the demystification of many heretofore indescribable entities into invading aliens warring with each for supremacy over the planet really cuts through the initial sense of dread they previously invoked. Unlike those stories, we never have any idea as to what forces are at work upon the Rue d’Auseil: why Zann has to play the way he does; what is out there in the darkness beyond the window; what happened to make the street vanish, and why? There are no answers, and it becomes that much more tantalizing because Zann was in the process of writing down the explanation, was going to share with us what was going on.
We are kept in the dark not only with the meaning and implications of the story, but with the very conclusion of the narrative as well. When the room has been plunged into darkness and the narrator is attempting to flee, he describes that Zann continues to play away frantically at the viola, in a way that seems wholly mad and alien to him. Because he can’t see the viola player, though, he is left to wonder how the exactly the sounds he’s hearing are being produced, or a single player is seemingly creating a cacophony of sound. The scene is so expertly crafted and so eerily rendered that it’s tempting not to just paste the whole last few paragraphs here to illustrate how Lovecraft achieves an amazing climax without the narrator seeing a single thing. Instead, I’ve picked one sentence that exemplifies the tone in which the horror is being conveyed: “When my hand touched his ear I shuddered, though I knew not why - knew not why till I felt the still face; the ice-cold, stiffened, unbreathing face whose glassy eyes bulged uselessly into the void.”
Chilling.
All the narrator can do is fumble about, grasping out and able to touch only the outcome of the horror that has transpired, just like us the reader. This story leaves you with such an unearthly sense of dread, of things existing just beyond our realm of reality that we have no conception of, and that will snuff out and rip us out of existence should someone not be playing music like that of Erich Zann’s.