[1] The story is an account of the enigmatic Erich Zann, an elderly musician whose unique and unworldly melodies draw the curiosity of a young university student.

Due to lack of funds, a student studying metaphysics abroad is forced to take up lodging in a cheap apartment building on a street named the "Rue d'Auseil".

The student's curiosity to hear the secret music and look out the window grows, and he begins eavesdropping on Zann while he plays at night.

The unnatural wind sweeps through the room, blowing Zann's unread papers out the window, despite the student's attempts at catching them.

The howling winds and cacophony of elements snuff out the candles in the room, leaving the student and Zann in complete darkness.

Auseil is not a true French word, but it has been suggested that Lovecraft derived it from the phrase au seuil, meaning at the threshold.

Lovecraft considered "The Music of Erich Zann" one of his best stories, in part because it avoided the overexplicitness that he saw as a major flaw in some of his other work.

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia notes that it "might, however, be said that HPL erred on the side of underexplicitness in the very nebulous horror to be seen through Zann's garret window.

"[2] The story was frequently anthologized even during Lovecraft's lifetime, including in Dashiell Hammett's 1931 collection Creeps by Night.

[2] Ramsey Campbell has stated that "The Music of Erich Zann" was "the single Lovecraft story that the late Robert Aickman liked".