In December, 1932, a down and out Hungarian named Reszo Seress was trying to make a living as a songwriter in Paris, but kept failing miserably. All of his compositions failed to impress the music publishers of France, but Seress carried on chasing his dream nevertheless. He was determined to become an internationally famous songwriter. His girlfriend had constant rows with him over the insecurity of his ambitious life. She urged him to get a full-time 9 to 5 job, but Seress was uncompromising. He told her he was to be a songwriter or a hobo, and that was that.
One afternoon, things finally came to a head. Seress and his fiancée had a fierce row over his utter failure as a composer, and the couple parted with angry words.
On the day after the row - which happened to be a Sunday - Seress sat at the piano in his apartment, gazing morosely through the window at the Parisian skyline. Outside, storm-clouds gathered in the grey sky, and soon the heavy rain began to pelt down.
"What a gloomy Sunday" Seress said to himself as he played about on the piano's ivories, and quite suddenly, his hands began to play a strange melancholy melody that seemed to encapsulate the downhearted way he was feeling over his quarrel with his girl and the state of the dispiriting weather.
"Yes, Gloomy Sunday! That will be the title of my new song" muttered Seress, excitedly, and he grabbed a pencil and wrote the notes down on an old postcard. Thirty minutes later he had completed the song.