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Der Erlkönig

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"Der Erlkönig" (often called just "Erlkönig") is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It depicts the death of a child assailed by a supernatural being, the "Erlkönig" (roughly translated as "evil spirit", but see the discussion of the legend below). It was originally composed by Goethe as part of a 1782 ballad opera entitled Die Fischerin.

The poem has been used as the text for lieder (art songs for voice and piano) by many classical composers; a list appears here Of these, the most famous is undoubtedly the one by Franz Schubert, his op. 1 D. 328 (see section below). It was Schubert's most popular song during his lifetime. There have been many other adaptations (at least, 22 versions), notably by Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Carl Friedrich Zelter, Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Ludwig Spoh and Johann Carl Gottfried Löwe; Beethoven attempted to set it to music but abandoned the effort. More recently, the poem has been reinvented by the German band Rammstein as the song "Dalai Lama". Later contemporary musical interpretations of the poem have been done by other German artists: Christian Brückner, who is a well-known actor and voice in Germany, lent his voice for a track called Earlkings legacy which was produced in cooperation with BAD EGGZ in 2002. Another version was done by Hypnotic Grooves (featuring Jo Van Nelson).

In his celebrated novel Le Roi des Aulnes (1970), Michel Tournier identified the Erlkönig with his protagonist, and in turn with the German people during World War II, in the deliberate appeal the Nazis made to youth, ultimately sending them to their deaths in battle. The 1996 film The Ogre, directed by Volker Schlöndorff and starring John Malkovich, is an adaptation of this story.

In the 1988 film Burning Secret, Baron Alexander recites the final lines of Goethe's poem while holding the boy Edmund in a swimming pool (water itself being a symbol of birth and death). This moment represents the high point of their affection, whereafter the baron turns his attentions elsewhere. Here the quote also suggests the death of a child as such, on the way to maturity.

Summary

Goethe's poem begins with a young boy being brought to his home by his father. The meaning is somewhat ambiguous, as the word "Hof" has the rather generic meaning of "yard" or "place." ("Platz" is a synonym.) In this case it could mean a "courtyard" or "farmyard" (though "der Bauernhof" is the literal word for a farmyard). The ambiguity about the father's social rank is quite acceptable because any father would have similar feelings about a son (or daughter) so ill and in pain.

The poem begins by giving the impression that the child is simply dying from a vague, unspecified ailment and sees death as a figment of his imagination. As it proceeds, the poem takes an ever darker twist, and ends with the child's death.

One story has it that Goethe was visiting a friend when, late one night, a dark figure carrying a bundle in its arms was seen riding past the gate at high speed. The next day Goethe and his friend were told that they had seen a farmer taking his sick son to the doctor. This incident (along with the legend) is said to have been the main inspiration for the poem.

Some readers, visualizing the father's embrace of his ailing son, may assume that the child is sick and in need of medical attention. However, the poem's characterization of the child's condition is ambiguous.

Text

Original German English Translation
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.

"Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?"
"Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?
Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif?"
"Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif."

"Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir;
Manch' bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand,
Meine Mutter hat manch gülden Gewand."

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,
Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht?"
"Sei ruhig, bleib ruhig, mein Kind;
In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind."

"Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir gehn?
Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön;
Meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen Reihn,
Und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein."

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort
Erlkönigs Töchter am düstern Ort?"
"Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh es genau:
Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau."

"Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt."
"Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!"

Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind,
Er hält in Armen das ächzende Kind,
Erreicht den Hof mit Müh' und Not;
In seinen Armen das Kind war tot. 		Who rides so late through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the little one well in the arm
He holds him secure, he holds him warm.

"My son, why hide your face in fear?"
"See you not, Father, the Erlking?
The Erlking with crown and flowing cloak?"
"My son, it is a wisp of fog."

"You sweet child, come along with me!
Such wonderful games I'll play with you;
Many lovely flowers are at the shore,
My mother has many golden garments."

"My father, my father, and do you not hear,
What the Erlking promises me so softly?"
"Be quiet, stay quiet, my child;
The wind is rustling the dry leaves."

"Won't you come along with me, my fine boy?
My daughters shall attend to you so nicely;
My daughters do their nightly dance,
And they will rock you and dance you and sing you to sleep."

"My father, my father, do you not see there,
Erlking's daughters in that dark place?"
"My son, my son, I see it definitely:
It is the willow trees looking so grey."

"I love you; I'm charmed by your beautiful shape;
And if you are not willing, then I will use force."
"My father, my father, now he has taken hold of me!
Erlking has hurt me!"

The father shudders, he rides swiftly,
He holds in arm the groaning child,
He reaches the farmhouse with effort and urgency;
In his arms, the child was dead.

The Franz Schubert composition

Franz Schubert composed his lied Erlkönig in 1815 for solo voice and piano, with text from the Goethe poem. Schubert revised it three times before publishing his fourth version, in 1821, as his Opus 1; subsequent to his death, it was cataloged as D.328, using the system devised by Otto Erich Deutsch. It was first performed in concert on December 1, 1820, at a private gathering in Vienna, and received its public premiere on March 7, 1821, at Vienna's Theater am Kärntnertor.

Four characters — narrator, father, son, and the Elf King — are all sung by one vocalist normally, but the work has been performed by four separate singers on occasion. Schubert has placed each character in largely a different vocal range and each has his own rhythmic nuances; in addition, most vocalists endeavor to use a different vocal color for each one.

  1. The Narrator lies in the middle range and is in minor mode.
  2. The Father lies in the low range and sings both in minor mode and major mode
  3. The Son lies in a high range, also in minor mode, representing the fright of the child.
  4. The Elf King's vocal line undulates up and down to arpeggiated accompaniment resulting in striking contrast and is in the major mode. The Elf King lines are typically sung pianissimo, portraying a sneaky persuasiveness.

A fifth character, the horse, is implied in rapid triplet figures played by the pianist throughout the work, mimicking hoof beats.

Erlkönig starts with the piano rapidly playing octaves to create a horror theme and triplets of a repeated note to simulate the horse's galloping; this motif continues throughout. Each of the son's pleas grows louder and higher pitched than the previous ones. Near the very end of the piece the music quickens (as the father desperately tries to spur his horse to go faster), slows down (as he arrives), and the piano stops before the final line, "In seinen Armen das Kind war tot" (In his arms the child was dead). The piece then ends with a dramatic perfect cadence.

The piece is regarded as extremely challenging to perform due to the vocal characterization required of the vocalist as well as its difficult accompaniment, involving the playing of rapidly repeated chords and octaves to create the drama and urgency in the poetry.

The Carl Loewe composition

Loewe's setting was published as Op 1 no 3 and composed in 1817-18, in the lifetime of the poem's author and also of Schubert, whose version Loewe did not then know. Collected with it were op 1 no 1, Edward (1818), (a translation of the Scottish ballad), and no 2, Der Wirthin Töchterlein (1823), (The Innkeeper's daughter), a poem of Ludwig Uhland. Inspired by a German translation of Scottish border ballads, Loewe set several poems with an elvish theme; but although all three of Op 1 are concerned with untimely death, in this set only the Erlkönig has the supernatural element.

Loewe's accompaniment is in semiquaver groups of six in nine-eight time (as against Schubert's quaver triplets in common time) and marked Geschwind. The vocal line evokes the galloping effect by repeated figures of crotchet and quaver, or sometimes three quavers, overlying the binary tremolo of the semiquavers in the piano. In addition to an unusual sense of motion this creates a very flexible template for the stresses in the words to fall correctly within the rhythmic structure.

Loewe's version is less lyrically melodic than Schubert's, with an insistent, repetitive harmonic structure between the opening minor key, and answering phrases in the major key of the dominant, which have a stark quality owing to their unusual relationship to the home key. The narrator's phrases are echoed by the voices of father and son, the father taking up the deeper, rising phrase, and the son a lightly undulating, answering theme around the dominant. These two themes also evoke the rising and moaning of the wind.

Into this structure issues the very ghostly voice of the Elf king, who sings always pianissimo and diminuendo, in rising figures in the home key, but in the major, over an una corda tremolo. This very simple figure, rising from the dominant through the major triad, repeated four times with very minor variation in each of the three calls of the Elf king to the child, has an eerie and elfin quality like the very distant blowing of a horn. As he and the child become more urgent the first in the groups of three quavers are dotted to create a breathless pace, which then forms a bass figure in the piano driving through to the final crisis. The last words, war tot, leap from the lower dominant to the sharpened third of the home key, this time not to the major but to a diminished chord, which settles chromatically through the home key in the major and then to the minor.

This is a dynamic, dramatic and original setting of the full text, considered by some to rival the Schubert version. Loewe performed his own songs, and the original in G minor was for his tenor voice.

Sources

for this section:

  • Hans Joachim Moser. Das deutsche Lied seit Mozart (Atlantis verlag, Berlin & Zurich 1937).
  • Carl Loewe, Lieder (Peters Editions (Leipzig)): Max Friedlaender and Hans Joachim Moser recensions.

Legend

The legend of the Erlkönig appears to have originated in fairly recent times in Denmark, and Goethe based his poem on "Erlkönigs Tochter" ("Erlkönig's Daughter"), a Danish work translated into German by Johann Gottfried Herder. It appeared as "The Elf King's Daughter" in his collection of folk songs, Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (published 1778).

The Erlkönig's nature has been the subject of some debate. The name translates literally from the German as "Alder King" rather than its common English translation, "Elf King" (which would be rendered as Elfenkönig in German). It has often been suggested that Erlkönig is a mistranslation from the original Danish ellerkonge or elverkonge, which does mean "elf king."

According to German and Danish folklore, the Erlkönig appears as an omen of death, much like the banshee in Irish mythology. Unlike the banshee, however, the Erlkönig will appear only to the person about to die. His form and expression also tell the person what sort of death he or she will have: a pained expression means a painful death, while a peaceful expression means a peaceful death.

Another interpretation suggests that Erlkönig is based on the legend that whoever is touched by the king of the elves must die.

Trivia

  • The Rammstein song Dalai Lama from the album Reise, Reise is a modernized version of the poem, taking place on an airplane.
  • The Heavy Metal band Pagan Altar's song "The Erl-King" was inspired by the Goethe poem.
  • The neofolk band Forseti has a song called Erlkönig that uses the poem as lyrics.
  • The PlayStation Portable game Work Time Fun features a mini-game based on Franz Schubert's composition.
  • The Volker Schlöndorff film The Ogre is a 20th Century adaptation of the poem. The film tells the story of a French soldier in World War II, John Malkovich, who is taken prisoner by the Germans and begins recruiting young peasant boys for the Hitler Youth.
  • The song "Erlkoenig" by Waldorf is a lyrical adaptation of the poem, with minor changes to fit within a song. Unlike the poem- which ends with death- the song ends with the child being taken away by the Elf King's daughters, where they dance and sing him to sleep for all eternity.
  • The British classical crossover singer Sarah Brightman released the song "Figlio Perduto" (Lost Son) in 2000 in her album "La Luna." The song is an Italian translation by Chiara Ferrau of Goethe's poem.
  • Singer/songwriter Josh Ritter translated and set the poem to music under the name "The Oak Tree King" for his concert series with violinist Hilary Hahn
  • The E Nomine song "Die Schwarzen Reiter" begins with the line "Who rides so late through the night and wind?" (but in German), an obvious reference to the poem.
  • A short story entitled The Erl-King written by Elizabeth Hand is inspired by the Goethe poem but is set in modern day. It first appeared in the anthology Full Spectrum 4 in 1993.
  • Theatre de Complicite use the poem in The Street of Crocodiles, a piece of theatre based on the stories of Bruno Shultz
  • Jim Butcher's novel Dead Beat refers to a fictitious "Die Lied Der Erlking" (sic!), a fictitious recollection of poems about the Erlkönig carrying an incorrect German title, as a part of its central plot.

External links



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