The Music of Erich Zann by H. P. Lovecraft was written in 1921 and published in 1922. Lovecraft himself really enjoyed this story and it was republished in a number of collections. I think this is my favorite story so far, in the readings I’ve done. I’ve heard from many others that it’s their favorite as well.
Once again we start at the ‘end’ with the main character (nameless) telling us of something that happened when he was in college. I really wish Lovecraft wouldn’t do this. It ruins the suspense for me. We know the student lives. We know nothing momentous happens to the world.
Student is struggling in school, being kicked out of apartments left and right for not paying his rent, and somehow he ends up on a steep, twisting street with twisty houses which dead-ends at a high wall on the top of a hill. This is in a run down industrial part of Paris (or somewhere in France) with factories and smog. It’s the poor part of town. The house the student is in isn’t at the very top of the hill – it’s three houses down – but it’s the tallest by far and as a result the attic space has a window which looks out over the end-of-street wall.
I love the descriptions of the street – for pedestrians only, very run down – and the twisty houses. I love the poor student paired with the elderly musician who lives in the attic. Both are struggling. The student is on the 5th floor and he hears the attic musician playing late at night. The student is intrigued by it and goes up. The musician lets him listen a little, but gets agitated when the student asks the musician to play a more intriguing piece he’d heard a previous night. The musician manages to get the student moved to a lower floor so the student can’t listen in any more.
The student sneaks up at night anyway to listen at the keyhole. One night the student hears wild playing and, worried, starts knocking on the door. The musician lets him in and writes a note (he can’t talk) saying he’ll explain it all.
Then the musician spends AN HOUR STRAIGHT writing an entire novel about the situation. And of course instead of letting the student read page 1 while the musician writes page 2, the student just sits there twiddling his thumbs the entire time. Which of course leads into him never getting to read any of it, because …
Music starts coming from beyond the high window, and the musician immediately starts loudly playing to drown it out. The wind whips up, the windows smash in, and the notes all flutter out the window. Looking out the window, the student only sees blackness. Then the candles blow out, and the student realizes the musician is dead, even though the music is still loudly playing. The student flees for his life.
And after that, the student has never been able to find this street ever again. Nobody has heard of it.
This brings to mind for me the notion of a ‘trap street’ – a fake street created by mapmakers so that if anyone ever copied their entire map the thieves would copy the fake street, too, and be caught by the thievery. Authors do this too – insert a deliberate mistake so that if someone else copied it the mistake would show up.
I love the plot of this. Was the musician trying to drown out the dangerous alien signal because otherwise the signal would destroy listeners’ brains or brainwash them? Or maybe playing opposite music (destructive interference) to neutralize it? If so, why isn’t that elderly musician bringing on someone else to help him? He’s not going to live forever. And the musician does in fact die, so now what? The world didn’t end. Did the alien succeed in his mission? There seems to be no ‘consequence’ to the music duel ending.
I enjoy this one a lot! Lots to keep thinking about!
Read The Music of Erich Zann by H. P. Lovecraft –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_of_Erich_Zann
My video review –