Gloomy sunday...

The power of music can never be
ignored. It can take you from one extreme of emotion to the other,but
can it
really lead you to take such a drastic action as committing
suicide?

In 1933,the hungarian composer Rezso Seress wrote a song which,if
legend
is to be believed,is responsible for the deaths of over 100 people.
Seress
wrote "Gloomy Sunday" after the break up of his relationship with
his
girlfriend... The apparent suicides attributed to the song were first
reported
in 1936 when a shoemaker in Budapest was found dead. Next to him was
a
suicide note which quoted the lyrics of "Gloomy Sunday." One
particularly
unpleasant moment was to come when a man requested that the
in-house
band of a nightclub in Budapest should play the song...he then went
outside
and blew his brains out! The local police imposed a ban on the song but
the
genie seemed to be out of the bottle and spreading across europe at
speed. A
berlin shopkeeper was found hanged and at her feet was a copy of
those
lyrics!

Many claim that broken romances are the true causes of these
suicides.
However, this is debatable. For instance, one man jumped to his death
from
a seventh story window followed by the wailing strains of "Gloomy
Sunday".
He was over 80 years old! In contrast to this, a 14 year old girl
drowned
herself while clutching a copy of "The Suicide Song".
As the death toll mounted,the BBC imposed a broadcast ban on the song
and
other networks in the USA and europe followed suit. Amazingly,even
Seress
himself was not to escape the strange curse of the song...his ex
girlfriend,the
inspiration for the song was found dead...clutching a piece of paper
with just
two words on it. Gloomy Sunday.
When questioned as to just what he had in mind when he wrote the
song,
Seress replied, "I stand in the midst of this deadly success as an
accused
man. This fatal fame hurts me. I cried all of the disappointments of my
heart
into this song, and it seems that others with feelings like mine have
found
their own hurt in it." After the initial excitement of the song had
died
down,the BBC decided that it would release the song,but only in
an
instrumental version. This arrangement of the song was playing on
automatic repeat when london police burst into a flat to find a woman
dead
from an overdose of barbituates. The BBC reimposed a ban
immediately
and this has never been lifted since.

Resno Seress was haunted by the fact that his song was apparantly
responsible for all of these deaths over the long years since he wrote
it,and
in 1968,he too succumbed to the curse and committed suicide.

A copy of this song can be downloaded from the internet at the
following address...

http://bjork.mmedia.is/special/gloomysunday/Gloomy_Sunday.mp3