Music, it has been said, simply fills the void that emotions create deep inside the heart of man. Poetry, on the other hand, is the celebration of those emotions that overflow the heart of man when confronted with or contemplating the ineffable music of life. If both these callings of the soul were to be merged into a harmonious whole, one wonders, what would be the blessing that would follow? Across the musical as well as the poetical canon of Western Europe, the Masters have found causes for marrying these two not-so-diverse-fields to produce some of the greatest works of art. The Romantic era (1750-1830) that is responsible for making all things supernatural and Gothic fashionable in the arts, witnessed the creation of such poetic masterpieces whose life-blood could only be found in the musical pulse. One such was Wolfgang Goethe’s Scandinavian-adapted ballad, “Erlkonig” (Elf King) and which was immortalized by the Austrian composer, Franz Schubert (1707-1828) who set the German ballad for the piano in 1815, at the youthful age of 17 or 18 years. As this edition of “Dotadoodle” invites its reader to delve into the magical world of an enchanted forest, there can hardly be anything more terribly beautiful than this terrifying encounter of the natural with the supernatural.

Goethe composed Erlkonig (1782) as part of a Singspiel which is a form of the German music drama (which explains the musical fascination for the poem); it is no surprise that it has been called Goethe’s most famous ballad” since it partakes of every convention that the lyrical ballad ought to have and to such magnificent effect that it becomes a landmark in ballad history. Beginning in media res as most ballads do, it plunges the listener into the very heart of the tragic scene that confronts a father and his ailing son as they gallop through the nocturnal woods, with the notorious ‘Elf King’ who, unknowable and unseeable to the passionless father, is out to seduce his son to death. Below are excerpts taken from a literal translation (Wikipedia) of the original German. Another, more literary, adaptation by the English poet Edgar Alfred Bowring may also be referred to.


These stanzas, midway through the poem, mark the entry of the “Elf King” into the narrative as he begins his seduction of the clairvoyant child and proceeds deeply and darkly with increasing exigency until he has taken him by force in the penultimate stanza and is threatening to destroy the (child’s) “beautiful form (that) excites me”. Even as the deranged spirit of the “Erlkonig” mounts its murderous assault on the bewildered child; as the antagonist builds his power over his victim, the latter’s supposed protector loses out on his child who is slipping precariously into the hands of death itself.







The helpless father is horrified as the weeping child complaints of the harm the Elf King has already done; all the while the father has drowned his son’s heartrending calls for help by empty reassurances of the “Elf King” being nothing more than “the dry wind sighing through the leaves” and the “old grey willows that shimmer”; in other words, the father dismisses as deluded imaginings the dreadful distress of his infant child being devoured in his own hands.

Schubert’s solo voice piano rendition captures in equal measure the sense of terror that engulfs the boy as the forest demon draws close to his “beautiful form” (his soul) as well as the horror that his father is paralyzed by; the hypnotic sound captures perfectly the ceaseless beating of the gallop of the horses, and which is immediately followed by a strenuous movement in the minor key that gives form to the soul-wrenching cries of “My Father, my Father” repeated five times by the son as every inch that they near their destination, the Erlkonig gains over his soul. Schubert’s piece, however, isn’t lacking in the lyricism that made him a genius. The poignancy of the central human relationship that we hear disintegrating in front of our eyes along with the silken slyness of the villain is utmost clarity to the extent that the music adds an unexpected dimension of realism to the dialogue that comes to no avail and that magnifies the power of the Elf King with as much force as it makes one weep for the father.

The most immersive and enjoyable version is one that the Oxford Lieder Festival, 2014 created under “The Schubert Project” for the festival. The tenor by Daniel Norman, accompanied by Shloto Kynoch on the piano is powerfully evocative of the dangers of the forest as well as of universal human emotion they so generously imply in their performance. What sits atop the poetico-musical, however, is the graphic animation of designer-director, Jeremy Hamway Bidgood; his stark and scarily outlined figures with the gaps in their eyes and mouth opening out into the night, float and swirl around a silver moon that lies static on a black stage surrounded by a hazy-looking audience that is held spellbound by the fierce action the impersonal narrator and tormented pianist pour over, even as a father loses his son in the sight of the well-lighted house, far from the forest, this is revealed to be the fatal destination to which the father was taking his son, so that he could hide him from the Erlkonig that we can presume has haunted the little child since before their ride through the forest. The forest, then, becomes the mirror of the child’s unconscious and which is beautifully brought out by two flawless Masters in their respective creations.