The Real Music of Erich Zann?

This video captures a wondrous attempt at bringing H.P. Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann" to life. Several talented classical music performers take to their instruments of choice and unleash a strangely enticing tune that would make Zann, and perhaps Lovecraft, very proud. It appears to be a taped part of an old performance from the late 1990s at Monterey Peninsula College Music Hall. In parts, the ominous blend of cello and piano approaches being a bit too vibrant to wholly reflect the darkness of the music spotlighted in Lovecraft's tale, but the effort must be applauded.

The imagined Erich Zann composition reverberates with a basis in what seems to be period appropriate (late 19th century) music, rudely distorted by rising madness. All in all, even musical ignoramuses like myself can appreciate the incredible reality and weird beauty of this ode to H.P. Lovecraft and the fictional Zann. Few can deny the power these musicians have in conveying an exotic otherness dancing just behind the familiar frame of traditional concert music, not unlike the unknowable insanity frothing behind the dilapidated outline of Zann's window. Bravo!



-Grim Blogger