Having dropped out of school as a young man, Rezső Seress one day came across a traveling circus. He applied to Mr. Bruno, the circus director, saying that he wanted to be an artist. He broke into the public consciousness with the song "Another Night" composed in 1925. It sold sixteen thousand copies.
In 1935, László Jávor, a reporter for the evening journal "8 O'Clock", approached him with a poem he had written entitled "Sad Sunday", and asked if he would put it to music. Seress took the job but had a very hard time getting it done even though the poet continually pestered him. He finally debuted the song one night at the Forum Café, having paid a student from the Academy of Music 5 Pengő [roughly $16.25 in today's dollars] to transcribe musically what he whistled to him since Seress didn't know how to score music but composed his songs just by whistling them. Jávor published the sheet music to no response from the public. Seress was bitter about the failure and would have forgotten about Sad Sunday but for the appearance of newspaper accounts of a maid who had committed suicide and left the lyrics of Sad Sunday to be found as her suicide note. A week later, a ministerial apprentice shot himself in the backseat of a taxi and next to his farewell letter lay the sheet music of Sad Sunday!
On November 7, 1935, the journal "8 O'Clock" referred to the song as a Killer hit, and it could not have gotten a bigger response. The following week it would be written up in Swiss, Italian, American, German and French newspapers as the Anthem of Suicides. It was sung on stage that fall at the [Berlin?] Olympics, and in 1936 it became a hit in America for Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra among others.
Meanwhile, in Hungary because he was Jewish and could perform in fewer and fewer places, the composer's situation had become miserable. At the outbreak of the war in 1941, he was marched to a labor camp, in conditions that caused his kidneys to deteriorate, but - as he himself later recounted - his life was saved by an SS officer who knew his songs!
After the war, he played the piano at the Kispipa bar on Acacia Street in Budapest still living in abject misery while he was rumored to have $370,000 in royalties waiting for him in an American bank that could not be transferred until Hungary paid reparations for its role in the war. His act was a must-see, but [in isolated, postwar Hungary at the uncomfortable and obscure Kispipa], he struggled for success. As was said about attendance at his performances: There was always room on the plane. He could have performed at Carnegie Hall, where even Oscar Peterson would have had to bow down to recognition by audiences of Seress as the most famous Hungarian songwriter; but he would remain in Hungary even in '56 when the borders opened. He continued to play at Kispipa, where he was seen by celebrities such as the Prince of Wales, the Shah of Iran, Spencer Tracy, Benjamino Gigli, Arturo Toscanini, and Otto Klemperer who called Seress "not just a musician - but a genius".
However, his songs were officially banned after 1949. He lived like a beggar in his Dob Street apartment, where he listened to recordings of Sad Sunday every day, in English, French, Chinese, Danish and all sorts of exotic African languages. At the age of 69, he was fed up with everything, and as if struck by the doom of his most famous global hit, the old suicide anthem, he jumped off the balcony of his apartment. Though he survived the fall, he must have been very anxious to die because while recovering at the hospital he succeeded in strangling himself with the wire by which his plastered leg had been raised.
By other accounts, Seress, a communist by philosophy, had originally written his own lyrics for the tune which he had called Vége a világnak (The world is ending) in response to the precarious political situation brewing in Europe at the time (1933), and it was Jávor who was tasked to tone it down with a more upbeat suicide theme.
Jávor's lyrics in Hungarian:
Szomorú vasárnap száz fehér virággal
Vártalak kedvesem, templomi imával
Álmokat kergető vasárnap délelőtt
Bánatom hintaja nélküled visszajött.
Azóta szomorú mindig a vasárnap
Könny csak az italom, kenyerem a bánat.
Szomorú vasárnap.
Utolsó vasárnap, kedvesem, gyere el
Pap is lesz, koporsó, ravatal, gyászlepel
Akkor is virág vár, virág és koporsó
Virágos fák alatt utam az utolsó
Nyitva lesz szemem, hogy még egyszer lássalak
Ne félj a szememtől, holtan is áldalak.
Utolsó vasárnap.
Ősz van, és peregnek a sárgult levelek
Meghalt a földön az emberi szeretet
Bánatos könnyekkel zokog az őszi szél
Szívem már új tavaszt nem vár, és nem remél
Hiába sírok, és hiába szenvedek,
Szívtelen rosszak és kapzsik az emberek.
Meghalt a szeretet.
Vége a…
The above in English:
Sad Sunday with a hundred white flowersI was waiting for you, my dearest, with temple prayerDreaming of a Sunday morningMy sorrow has returned without you.Since then, Sunday has always been sadIt's just my drink, my bread is grief.Gloomy Sunday.This last Sunday, my dearest, come to meThere will also be a priest, a coffin, a funeral home, a mourning clothYou can also expect flowers, flowers and coffinsMy journey under flowering trees is my lastMy eyes will be open to see you againDon't be afraid of my eyes; they will bless you from death.Final Sunday.It is autumn and the yellowed leaves are wiltingHuman love has died on earthThe autumn wind is sobbing with sad tearsMy heart is no longer waiting for a new spring and is not hopingI cry in vain, and I suffer in vain,People are heartless bad and greedy.Love is dead.Finally…
And it's got a beat you can dance to! As alluded to in the video, on the global spread of rumors of the song's potency, it made appearances in languages the world over.† Two American versions debuted in 1936-- a more faithful translation of Jávor's lyrics by Desmond Carter, recorded first by Paul Robeson, and a less strictly literal version (with an "it was all a dream" bridge to provide some relent from the gloom) by Sam M. Lewis, made famous later by Billie Holiday's utterly enthralling 1941 recording of it in particular.
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
Gloomy is Sunday with shadows I spend it all
My heart and I have decided to end it all
Soon there'll be candles and prayers that are sad I know
Let them not weep let them know that I'm glad to go
Death is no dream for in death I'm caressing you
With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you
Gloomy Sunday
Dreaming, I was only dreaming
I wake and I find you asleep in the deep of my heart dear
Darling I hope that my dream never haunted you
My heart is telling you how much I wanted you
Gloomy Sunday
If you need a lift or a reason to live after the above (and who wouldn't?), how about Confidence Man's Holiday?:
Zest for living supplement:
* Please note, unspeakable (as heck) does not endorse the video's version of the song's story. The translation is provided for the curious.
† Certain types of Hungarians (you know the type because they're everywhere in every culture) will tell you, as if they could somehow know, that you can only understand Gloomy Sunday in Hungarian which they think is a way of saying that there is something extraordinary and exclusive about how their own Hungarian brain interacts with Hungarian lyrics-- a way of claiming glory for themselves for someone else's work-- glory that you as a non-Hungarian cannot ever be privy to. It's a Hungarian thing! You wouldn't understand! But what they are really saying, in order for that to be true, is that Hungarian poetry is provincial. Not universal. Limited in scope and application. Which would be pretty pathetic if true, but having some experience with Hungarian lyrics and poetry and literature, I can assure you as you suspected all along, that's pure horse shit!
No comments:
Post a Comment