The Hungarian Suicide Song

Hello ATS'ers.

I have came across another interesting urban legand that i thought i would share..

The Hungarian Suicide Songn Website Link

Do you believe a song can kill?

In the early 1930s, Hungarian songwriter Rezso Seress was struggling to make a living. Music publishers were uninterested in his work. His fiancée argued with him constantly. Give up the dream, she’d say, and who could blame her? The chips were down, and money was tight. But Seress wouldn’t have it; he’d become a successful songwriter, he told her, or he’d live out on the streets.

Unfortunately, his troubles continued. This led to one final heated argument, after which he and his fiancée parted ways.

The day after their fateful break up, which happened to be a Sunday, Seress sat alone in his apartment in Paris, his fingers tapping quietly at his piano. Dark clouds gathered in the sky, a gloomy thunderstorm to accompany his melancholy state of mind. It began to rain.

At that moment a strange melody came to Seress, and a fitting title for a new song: Szomorú Vasárnap.

Gloomy Sunday.

THE SONG THAT KILLED?

Sunday is gloomy,
My hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless
Little white flowers
Will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of
Sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thought
Of ever returning you
Would they be angry
If I thought of joining you?
Gloomy Sunday.

After he finished the composition, Seress shopped the new song — with lyrics by a friend, the poet Laszlo Javor — around to music publishers. Things didn’t go well at first. One publisher rejected the song for being too depressing. Eventually, however, a publisher accepted Gloomy Sunday, and in 1935 it was recorded by Hungarian pop singer Pal Kalmar.

Seress was elated, as you would expect. That’s when it started.

A young woman in Berlin was found hanging from a rope in her apartment, the sheet-music to Gloomy Sunday in her bedroom. Another woman, in New York, killed herself, and in her suicide note requested Gloomy Sunday to be played at her funeral. A man jumped to his death from his apartment window, the song’s sheet-music by his piano. A woman in London was found dead of an overdose as a record of Gloomy Sunday skipped over and over on a gramophone in the next room.

All told, at least 19 suicides — though some claim hundreds — were associated with the song. It became known as the “Hungarian suicide song,” and is even said to have been banned in Hungary due to its strange effect on those who listened.

Perhaps the most popular version of the song was Billie Holiday’s 1941 recording, sung in English. This version was also eventually banned by the BBC.

The story of the Hungarian suicide song ends nearly as it began. Well, sort of. Seress, hoping to get back together with his ex-fiancée, learned to his horror that she had poisoned herself. Just as the other alleged suicides, she too had the sheet-music to Gloomy Sunday nearby. Finally, in 1968, Rezso Seress himself committed suicide by jumping from the top of a building in Budapest, Hungary.

Of course, all of this is just an urban legend, with bits of truth sprinkled in, and mostly coincidences. A song can’t really kill.

Can it?



Thank you for reading!!!!

edit on 28-10-2013 by BloodSister because: Typo Error

A movie was made about the song and although fiction I liked it a lot...Here is a clip about the song followed by a bit of the movie called Gloomy Sunday.

I think its a relaxing song

reply to post by cathar


Brilliant! thank you for sharing!!!

here is the composer's wikipedia bio

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by BloodSister


This was in an episode of Dark Matters: Twisted but True. I don't believe any song has the power to kill, but music certainly elicits emotion so given the right circumstances, it might have been an appropriately melancholy song to commit suicide to. I wonder if anyone has compiled data on the popularity of certain songs among people who have committed suicide? I know there are a lot of songs that most people don't realize are about suicide. The Police - Can't Stand Losing You for instance was another song banned by the BBC (because of the cover art for the single WP link)

Makes for an interesting story nonetheless!

maaaaaaan I aint listening to dat !!!!! interesting though

An interesting read. I'm not buying it as being real.
I think that if the story is real, it's because music can alter the mood, and it can push some people over the edge, to commit suicide.

But I won't listen to the song.

Reading Goethe's "Sorrows of young Werther" was supposed to have a similar effect at the time.
However, it's impossible not to be reminded of this story;