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The Hungarian ‘suicide song’: Gloomy Sunday
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Many say that Hungarian folk songs are more melancholic and even sometimes sadder than the similar songs of other nations. Even though I do not share this opinion there was a song which was associated with 19 deaths and therefore, e.g. BBC banned its broadcast. This song is Rezső Seres’s Gloomy Sunday, the most well-known Hungarian song in the world.
Popularity came with suicides
The song was composed by Rezső Seress in 1932 as a piano melody in the melancholic C-minor. Originally, its title was The world is ending and it was about despair caused by war ending in a prayer about the sins of people. In fact, Seress was a genius of his time writing dozens of popular hits in the 1930s, but he could not read music. Thus, he asked a graduate from the Academy to help him
write down what he was whistling.
However, poet László Jávor rewrote its lyric and changed its title to Gloomy Sunday in which the main protagonist commits suicide because his lover died. He was inspired by a recent break-up with his fiancée so he sang about meeting his lover again in the afterlife. Interestingly, the former was forgotten while the latter became world-famous. But how?
At first, it seemed that it would be forgotten in no time. However,
a maidservant committed suicide
and police found the lyrics of the Gloomy Sunday in her hands. Later, a ministerial advisor shot himself dead in a car and the police found the lyrics of the song in his hands, too. Shortly, 8 Órai Újság, a popular Hungarian daily in those days, wrote about the song as the ‘suicide song.’
For a truly depressing version of this song, try Marc Almond on the “Torment and Torreros”album!