H.P. Lovecraft: The Music of Erich Zann - short story review

Unusually concise in expression and easy to follow for such a wordy guy like Lovecraft. While I love some of his more complex stories, this one stands out as one of my favorites of his. The atmosphere he creates and the way he goes into detail just enough as to force you to turn the gears of your imagination to complete the scenes is fascinating. The story follows the protagonist who can’t remember the location of a mysterious street he’s been on — Rue d’Auseil —, which “lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone.”

It was a shadowy street with very old houses and old, silent and reticent people, one of whom was a German viol-player called Erich Zann, who regularly played his instrument at night on the 5th floor of the tallest building in that street, in “a lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gable window was the only point on the street from which one could look over the terminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond”.

His playing intrigued the protagonist, and from there on strange things started happening, of which I shall stay silent, as I’d prefer that you read it yourself, preferably with a Lovecraftian playlist on YouTube to complete the atmosphere (especially appropriate for this short story, as a lot of its horror and creepiness comes from sound descriptions and the intrinsic paranoia of the human mind).

Rating: 4/5