Emilie Autumn - Gloomy Sunday (Deluxe Version)

Rezso Seress (Hungarian pronunciation: ['r??ø? '??r??]; 3 November 1889 – 11 January 1968) (originally Spitzer) was a Hungarian pianist and composer.

Rezso Seress (nicknamed Rudi) lived most of his life in poverty, in Budapest. Contrary to other websites who said that he lived in Paris, he only ever left Budapest when, being Jewish, he was taken to a labour camp by the Nazis in World War two. He survived the camp and after spells of employment in the theatre and the circus, where he was a trapeze artist, he concentrated on songwriting and singing after an injury. Seress taught himself to play the piano with only one hand, he composed many songs, including Fisetek Four (Waiter, bring me the check, En ugy szeretek eszeg lenni (I love being pissed) and a song for the Hungarian Communist party to commemorate the chain bridge crossing the river in Budapest, entitled Ujra a Lanchidon.

His most famous composition was "Szomorú Vasárnap" (Gloomy Sunday) written in 1933, which gained infamy as it became associated with a spate of suicides. The first suicide was Joseph Keller, a cobbler,in Budapest in February 1936. His suicide note contained the words of Gloomy Sunday. Following this event, 17 additional people took their lives i a way, related to the song.Over 100 others are rumoured to have done the same worldwide. Several jumped into the Danube clutching the sheet music, two shot themselves listening to a Gypsy band's rendition of the song, whilst one man requested the song in a nightclub before going outside and shooting himself.

Outside of Hungary, a Berlin shoekeeper hung herself with a copy of Gloomy Sunday at her feet, in New York a young secretary gassed herself, having requested the song be played at her funeral and saddest of all, a 14 year old girl drowned herself while holding the sheet music to the song. The BBC decided that it was in the public interest to ban the song from broadcast (it had been translated into English and many other languages including Esperanto), but later, allowed instrumental versions to be played on air. The full ban was re-imposed by the BBC however, when in London, a policeman heard an instrumental version of the song endlessly being played in an apartment on his beat (Cops had regular walking routes in London in those days). Investigating, he found another suicide.

The song remained banned by the BBC until quite recently, when it was allowed to be played again, following recent renditions by Elvis Costello and Marc Almond (Marc and the Mamba's)and Bjork.In the USA, it was first recorded by committed Socialist Paul Robeson and the ban there was short lived, being lifted in the late 1930's.

Perhaps the strangest of the suicides was in Rome, where an errand boy heard a beggar humming the tune and immediately got off of his bicycle, emptied his pockets and gave the contents to the beggar, before jumping into the river Tiber.

Many American and European radio services found it too depressing for broadcast (though it is unclear how much of this is fact and how much is urban legend). Probably the best known version of the song "Gloomy Sunday" in English was sung by Billie Holiday. The urban legend song "Gloomy Sunday" was also banned in Hungary and America.

Seress felt a strong loyalty to Budapest and Hungary, and one reason for his poverty whilst having a world famous song was that he never wished to go to the USA to collect his royalties, instead, staying as resident pianist at the Kispipa restaurant in his home town. This restaurant had a spipe stove at the centre of it's dining room, and was remarkably cold for a restaurant. The place was the favourite of the Jewish working class, hookers, musicians and bohemian spirits.

As his fame began to wane, along with the good feeling towards left wing politics, he became very depressed. Although surviving the Nazi forced forced labour in the Ukraine, and beaten heavily several times, the composer survived the Holocaust, unlike his mother. Seress committed suicide in Budapest in January 1968, by jumping out of a window, adding more fuel to the fire as regards the power of the "Suicide song".

The song was originally written when writer László Jávor broke up with his girlfriend and asked Seress to compose a song for Jávor's Hungarian text. When asked about the song, Seress stated that "I stand in the midst of this deadly success as an accused man. This fatal fame hurts me. I cried all the disappointments of my life into this song, and it seems others with feelings like mine have found their own hurt in it".

When the song was first written, the pair found it difficult to find anyone to publish it. One publisher said "It is not that the song is sad, there is a terrible compelling despair about it. I don't think it would do anyone any good to hear a song like that".

Reszo was a master of the melancholy lyric set against reasonably upbeat drinking songs and it is perhaps sad that he is remembered for one song. "Bring me the cheque now please waiter, life has bored me to my knees" was typical.

In Budapest, the restaurant Kispipa Vendéglo(The little pipe stove) is still there today (though far more upmarket)in the Jewish "rag trade" area of Budapest, and the house pianist continues the tradition of playing the song.

A visitors book at the restaurant that was thrown away by Seress's disappointed heirs, was said to contain the names of Arthur Rubenstein, Jehudi Menuhin, Spencer Tracy, Nikita Kruschev, John Steinbeck, Paul Robeson and many other famous signatures.

Perhaps the best footnote to the story also comes from this book, where Otto Klemperer (a orchestra conductor) wrote "Er ist kein musiker - er ist nur em Genie" (He is no musician - he is just a genius).