Required Listening - Gloomy Sunday

In 1933, Hunagrian composer Rezső Seress set a poem to music. The poem, by László Jávor, discussed the sadness and horror of a vapid modern culture. The melody was perfected to fit this sentiment. Listen to the original lyrics in this Hungarian video.


And the literal English translation:

Gloomy Sunday with a hundred white flowers
I was waiting for you my dearest with a prayer
A Sunday morning, chasing after my dreams
The carriage of my sorrow returned to me without you
It is since then that my Sundays have been forever sad
Tears my only drink, the sorrow my bread...

Gloomy Sunday
This last Sunday, my darling please come to me
There'll be a priest, a coffin, a catafalque and a winding-sheet
There'll be flowers for you, flowers and a coffin
Under the blossoming trees it will be my last journey
My eyes will be open, so that I could see you for a last time
Don't be afraid of my eyes, I'm blessing you even in my death...
The last Sunday

The haunting sounds were considered so melancholy, so expressive, that many felt driven into despair by listening to it. And the despair increased its popularity. By the end of the thirties the song had been recroded in Russian, French, Japanese, German, Spanish, and English. The most famous recording may be Billie Holiday in 1941.

The girl who inspired the song, later killed herself with her suicide note reading only, “Gloomy Sunday”. Seventeen other suicides took place in Hungary where references to Gloomy Sunday were made (in the note or left on the record player). It was considered so depressive, that the song, including Holiday’s recording, was banned by the BBC for being “not at all in keeping with what we feel to be the need of the public in this country’.

After previous attempts, the composer committed suicide in 1968. Since then the song has been recorded by Elvis Costello, Sinead O’Connor, Bjork, Marianne Faithfull, Sarah McLachlan, Portishead, Ray Charles and Sarah Brightman. Click on the artist's name to hear their version. Each singer lends their own impression of emotion and the causes of melancholy.