Zanns instrument cannot be the contrabass. Zann sits in a chair to play it. Bass players sit on a stool to play. The narrator touches the chair to try to get Zanns attention; he would have to make an improper groping to get the attention of a bass player seated at his stool. Like most Lovecraft protagonists, that of Zann is far too cultivated to do such a thing. If it is a viol pure and simple, that has to be a strange band he plays in. Maybe he got a full-time job playing in Les Hugenots? I didnt think so. So, a bass viol? No. Erich Zann plays neither a viol nor a bass viol. There are many other indicators that a bass instrument is not likely - it is louder than a human scream, etc. Also, the notion of a wild Hungarian dance popular in the theaters being played on the contrabass would be only accidentally funny. Uh-huh, a wild bass theme. Scrub-a-dub-dub. So wild. While there is lots of room for off-the-shoulder humor in Lovecraft, I think that would be overrefined in this instance. The truth of the wildness of the horror ought to be greater than the truth of the reality of a dumb scrubbing sound being interpreted as scary. Let us allow that Lovecraft would defer in the interest of well-researched fact and not accidental humor. The narrator of The Music of Erich Zann is a philosopher. He is not stupid and is guilty of no more than a slight lack of awareness of the difference between a viola and a viol. We know that the author of the Music of Erich Zann loved anachronistic words for known objects. The author of Zann put a poetic-sounding anachronism, and not a mistake, into his characters mouth. Erich Zann plays the viola. I have already written key sketches to my theater piece based on this short story. The mood for the curtain rise is set.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 02:51:38 +0000
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