The Music of Erich Zann

The Music of Erich Zann is a horror short story written by H. P. Lovecraft, an American author. Lovecraft composed it in December 1921, and it appeared in the March 1922 issue of National Amateur. The narrative follows a young university student who becomes fascinated by the strange, otherworldly music played by an elderly, mute German musician named Erich Zann.

A student of metaphysics, short on money, rents a cheap room in a building on a street called the Rue d'Auseil, near his university. The street is very steep, bordered by a river, dark warehouses, and a high wall; only a single window on the top floor looks over the wall. The building's landlord, Blandot, is disabled. Among the few tenants is Erich Zann, an old, mute German man who plays the viol in a local theater orchestra.

Zann lives alone on the top floor and plays strange melodies at night that the student has never heard. Blandot tells the student who Zann is, and the student approaches him in the hallway, asking to hear his music. Zann agrees and plays some unique melodies, but not the ones the student had heard before. When the student hums and whistles the remembered tunes, Zann reacts with alarm, glancing nervously at his curtained window—the only window that looks over the wall.

The student tries to look outside, but Zann angrily pulls him back. Zann then writes that he is a lonely old man with phobias and nervous disorders, pleased the student likes his music but refusing to play those particular tunes. He persuades the student to move to a lower floor, promising to invite him to hear other music. The student agrees, but Zann becomes more reclusive and his health declines, never letting the student listen.

The student's curiosity grows, and he begins eavesdropping on Zann's unearthly melodies, considering Zann a musical genius. One night, he hears a commotion and Zann scream. Zann lets him in and starts writing an explanation. After over an hour, Zann is startled by a distant low note, stops writing, and begins playing his viol furiously with growing terror.

The student realizes Zann is playing to drown out or keep something away. Zann enters a stupor, playing without stopping. Another sound, mocking them, is heard, and a gust shatters the window. An unnatural wind blows Zann's unread papers out the window.

The student finally looks out and sees not city lights but a terrible black void, an infinite abyss of chaos. The wind extinguishes the candles, leaving them in darkness. The student feels a chill thing brush against him. He reaches Zann, screaming for him to run, but Zann continues playing.

When he tries to carry Zann, he finds the musician dead, though his body still plays. The student flees the apartment and the entire neighborhood, later realizing the sky was calm and city lights were shining. Years later, writing his account, the student says he has never found the Rue d'Auseil again; it appears on no maps, and no one has heard of it. He feels relief at not finding the street or the lost papers that could explain Zann's music.

The story is set presumably in France or another French-speaking country, in the late 19th or early 20th century, though the exact location and date are unnamed. Auseil is not a real French word; it may derive from au seuil, meaning at the threshold, or resemble oseille, meaning sorrel or money. The student is a foreigner studying metaphysics, and his identity is never elaborated. Lovecraft considered this one of his best stories, partly because it avoided the overexplicitness he saw as a flaw in other work. An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia notes that the story might be underexplicit in the very nebulous horror seen through Zann's window. The story was frequently anthologized during Lovecraft's lifetime, including in Dashiell Hammett's 1931 collection Creeps by Night. Ramsey Campbell has called it the single Lovecraft story that most influenced him.