H.P. Lovecraft: "The Music of Erich Zann" {read by Tony Scheinman}

"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. The story is an account of the enigmatic Erich Zann, an elderly musician whose unique and unworldly melodies draw the curiosity of a young university student. The setting of the story is presumably France or another French-speaking country, sometime in the late-19th or early-20th century, though the exact location and date are 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. Auseil is read like oseille, meaning sorrel or, colloquially, money. The identity of the student is never elaborated upon, only that he is a foreigner like Zann and studies metaphysics. 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." ****** (Voice Recording): *read for LibriVox by Tony Scheinman LibriVox (Short Ghost and Horror Collection 032) librivox.org/short-ghost-and-horror-collection-032… ****** (Music): "Classic Horror 2", "Dark Walk"," Quinn's Song - First Night", "Thunder Dreams", "Unease Piano", "Zombie Hoodoo", & "Deep Drone" by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ****** (Illustrations): Weird Tales, May 1925 (illustration) by Andrew Brosnatch (Public Domain) "Pont Royal and Musée d'Orsay, Paris, July 10th, 2020" by Pierre Blaché (Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication) "Gargoyles on the Terrace of Notre Dame de Paris, 2010" by Moyan Brenn (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic) "An Artist's Depiction of Zann's Room" by Laurent Cozic (Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)) "Portrait of Lovecraft" by Dominique Signoret (Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)) Bronze bust of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum. Providence, Rhode Island by Kenneth C. Zirkel (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported) *All other artwork an photos are in the public domain ****** If you like this video subscribe to my channel. There are many more videos like this one lovingly prepared and edited by myself for your enjoyment! Check out my extensive playlist collections as well.