Franz Peter Schubert (1797 – 1828) was an Austrian
composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras.
Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast
oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works
(mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred
music, operas, incidental music and a large body of
piano and chamber music. His major works include the
Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout Quintet), the
Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (Unfinished
Symphony), the three last p...(+)
Franz Peter Schubert (1797 – 1828) was an Austrian
composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras.
Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast
oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works
(mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred
music, operas, incidental music and a large body of
piano and chamber music. His major works include the
Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout Quintet), the
Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (Unfinished
Symphony), the three last piano sonatas (D. 958–960),
the opera Fierrabras (D. 796), the incidental music to
the play Rosamunde (D. 797), and the song cycles Die
schöne Müllerin (D. 795) and Winterreise (D. 911).
Page after page has been written about Franz Schubert's
Erlkönig -- it is easily the most familiar single
piece from the German song repertory; yet each hearing
of the work seems somehow to conjure up the same spark
of desperate passion in the listener that it must have
conjured from those Viennese music-lovers who first
encountered the song when it was published in 1821--six
years after being composed--as Schubert's Opus 1.
Erlkönig the poem is a dramatic ballad, part of Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe's 1782 singspiel Der Fischerin. It
tells, in strict meter and regular four-line stanzas,
the tale of a father riding through the woods late at
night with his son. The evil Erl-king (the origin of
the words "Erlkönig" and "Erlenkönig," both of which
forms appear in Goethe's ballad, is complicated and
even confused; some say they are a translation, or
mistranslation, into German of the Danish word for "Elf
King"), visible to the young boy, but not to his
father, calls out to the lad, tempting him with
thoughts of games and dances. Many times the boy cries
out to his father to help him, but the father cannot
see the Erl-king or his minions and writes his son's
horror off as one natural phenomenon or another. Only
when the boy is physically wounded does the father
recognize that desperate measures are called for;
though he rides with all his strength and skill,
however, his boy expires before he reaches safety.
Schubert's setting of Goethe's ballad dates from
sometime during Fall of 1815 -- a fabulously productive
year during which he penned nearly 145 lieder, and
countless instrumental works, while still working as a
schoolteacher. The song's immense fame during the
nineteenth century gave rise to many fanciful stories
of its composition; some have claimed that it was
composed in just a few minutes, in one fell swoop of
passion, while a friend looked on, but such a genesis
seems unlikely. Schubert revised his setting three
times, mostly tinkering with the piano accompaniment
but also altering dynamics in striking ways and
inserting/deleting measures to slightly better the
pacing.
And it is pacing, or motion, in a truly physical sense,
that fuels both Goethe's frantic poem and Schubert's
lied. There is a continuous background of repeated,
triplet octaves in the piano part (very difficult and
physically tiring -- in one of the revisions Schubert
simplified the figuration, asking for duplets instead
of triplets), against which the three characters of the
ballad sing their simple lines. Each persona is given
his own unique tone: the child frantic and impassioned,
the father noble and self-assured, Erlkönig himself
relaxed and attractive as he seeks to trick the child.
The result is an almost demonic fury, and as the drama
unfolds and the child becomes more and more terrified
and sings in a higher and higher register, the harsh
dissonances of his cries, "Mein Vater, mein Vater!"
become ever more bone-chilling. The racing triplets
cease only at the very end of the song, as the narrator
proclaims in a bit of taut recitative that "the child
was dead in his [the father's] arms."
Source: AllMusic
(https://www.allmusic.com/composition/erlk%C3%B6nig-wer
-reitet-so-sp%C3%A4t-song-for-voice-piano-d-328-op-1-mc
0002371024 ).
Although originally composed for Piano, I created this
arrangement of the Erlkönig (D.328 Op. 1) for Oboe &
Strings (2 Violins, Viola, Cello & Bass).