Goethe / Schubert - Erlkönig (Special for 300 Subscribers) [Norman, Kynoch, Bidgood]

Erlkönig, also called Erl-King or Elf-King, song setting by Franz Schubert, written in 1815 and based on a 1782 poem of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “Erlkönig” is considered by many to be one of the greatest ballads ever penned. The song was written for two performers, a singer and a pianist, and it packs a remarkable amount of tension and drama into a mere four minutes. Its effectiveness is doubly impressive because Schubert was only 18 years old when he composed it.

Inspired in part by his friendship with a number of talented singers, Schubert produced some 600 art songs during the course of his brief career (he died at age 31). “Erlkönig” is by far the best known of these. The poem that provides its text, like many of the supernatural tales that dominated literature in the Romantic era, has its roots in a Scandinavian folktale. Goethe’s poem tells the story of a boy riding home on horseback in his father’s arms. He is frightened when he is courted by the Erl-King, a powerful and creepy supernatural being. The boy’s father, however, cannot see or hear the creature and tells the boy that his imagination is playing tricks on him. The boy grows increasingly terrified by what he hears from the Erl-King, but his father tells him that the things he thinks he sees and hears are only the sights and sounds of nature on a dark and stormy night. When the Erl-King eventually seizes the boy, the father spurs on his horse, but when he arrives home his son is dead.

Goethe’s poem, which is reproduced below, contains a conversation that includes a father, his child, and the evil Erl-King. So as to distinguish among the speakers, the father’s words are in bold and the son’s in double quotation marks, while the Erl-King’s words are in single quotes.

Midi file - http://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/...
Daniel Norman - Tenor
Sholto Kynoch - Piano
Original -    • Franz Schubert: Erlkönig  
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