Gloomy Sunday
The
song was composed by Rezső Seress while living in Paris,
in an attempt to become established as a songwriter in late 1932. The
original musical composition was a piano melody in C-minor,
with the lyrics being sung over it. Seress
wrote the song at the time of the Great Depression and
increasing fascist influence
in the writer's native Hungary, although sources differ as to the degree to
whether his song was motivated by personal melancholy rather than concerns about
the future of the world. The basis of Seress's lyrics is a reproach to the
injustices of man, with a prayer to God to
have mercy on the modern world and the people who perpetrate evil. There
are some suggestions that
the words of "Vége
a világnak"
were in fact not written until World War II itself
and not copyrighted until
1946.
There have been several urban legends regarding the song over the years,
mostly involving it being allegedly connected with various numbers of suicides,
and radio networks reacting by purportedly banning the song. However, most of
these claims are unsubstantiated.
Press reports in the 1930s associated at least nineteen suicides, both in
Hungary and the United States, with "Gloomy Sunday", but most of the deaths
supposedly linked to it are difficult to verify. The urban legend appears to be,
for the most part, simply an embellishment of the high number of Hungarian
suicides that occurred in the decade when the song was composed due to other
factors such as famine and poverty, as well as the rise of Nazi Germany's
influence in Europe. No studies have drawn a clear link between the song and
suicide.
In January 1968, some thirty-five years after writing the song, its composer
did commit suicide.
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