Schubert!

Thierry NK 

I would disagree that text was the most important thing to a musician of this time in the context of lieder. One of the most significant characteristics of lieder is that composers began writing piano music that didn't simply support the text as harmonic accompaniment but acted as a psychological window that gave the text deeper meaning. This was often achieved through subversion and subversion relies on established conventions in order for people to recognize the subversion is happening. For instance, when Schubert characterizes death with a major key, he is not changing the conventional meaning of major--he is changing the meaning of death.

"Denial" is certainly more accurate than "lie" for the position of the father, but the word denial implies active disregard or even contempt. There is nothing in the text that indicates that he is in denial. In fact, he listens to his sons concerns and then points out what he perceives to be the cause: "My son, it is a wisp of fog"; "My son, the wind rustles through dry leaves" etc. He simply doesn't see the supernatural threat and assumes the child's imagination is overactive because of the windy night.

If the father were dismissive, or actively denying his child, it would make the tragic irony significantly less potent if not nullify it completely (and this is a textbook example of tragic irony). It would become a story about a father's hubris and his subsequent punishment through his child as an object rather than as a person that had agency. The father thought he was doing the right thing and the son trusted that his father knew best and would keep him safe. The villain here is supernatural and beyond the control of humans. This would have resonated with both the Romantic interest in the fantastic and the reality of very high,  mortality, particularly in children during this time that was beyond their ability to explain medically.

There are definitely four unique characters in this lied. Schubert aids in the distinction by writing differently for each. The narrator stays in the middle register, the father is in the lower register and is more legato, the son is in the upper register which signifies his youth, and the Erlkönig sings with insincere sweetness in the middle register. It is quite a remarkable detail; one can hear the different characters without knowing anything about the text. 

An absolute masterpiece at 18 years old, dashed off in a single afternoon (as the story goes). This piece is the example of Romantic lieder in almost any music history survey course for all the above amazing reasons!

Dustin Anderson 

Good morning 

It is very difficult,  maybe more for me because of the language, to propose ideas that are hypothesis or brain storming without being pedantic and professor-like.  Doubt is my main tool, I do not know certainty. 
I should use more “maybe”…

In 1771-72, there was the trial of Susanna Margaretha Brandt who killed her child.
 

Goethe was fascinated by this trial and was present at the public decapitation of Susanna Margaretha Brandt.

This gave birth to the first version of Faust, Urfaust in 1774, then Goethe worked during 60 years on Faust.

This also gave birth to Gretchen am Spinnrade in 1808.

In 1778, Johann Gottfried Herder, one of Goethe’s mentor, translates a Danish legend where the Elf’s king Daughter tries to seduce Prince Oluf, a horse rider, who resists to the temptation and send him a spell of illness. Oluf dies the next day,  

Johann Gottfried Herder makes a translation error, and Elf becomes Erl in German.

This is the origin of Erlkonig with only 2 characters. 

In 1782, Goethe writes his poem Erlkonig with 2 additional characters, the story teller and the father. 
 

From here, I have the freedom (for me, it is more than freedom, it is a must) to ask:

- is Goethe’s Erlkonig only a supernatural tale? 

- is it a confrontation between the imagination of the son and the rationality of the father?

- is it the huge pain of a father in front of the delusions of his dying son?

- is there a link with Faust and infanticide? And then, are Erlkonig and the father 2 faces of one man?

- is Erlkonig a sexual predator, using other children and a woman to seduce the son, the father denying to see what is happening?

Of course, I have no answer. I like to think that all of this is simultaneously true. But human beings often prefer a unique truth. 
 

The strength and the beauty of the poem Erlkonig are for me its ambiguity, the possibility for everyone to interpret the poem as he feels. 

Thierry NK 

In 1771-72, there was the trial of Susanna Margaretha Brandt.
Goethe was fascinated by this trial and was present at the public decapitation of Susanna Margaretha Brandt.
This gave birth to the first version of Faust, Urfaust in 1774, then Goethe worked during 60 years on Faust.
This also gave birth to Gretchen am Spinnrade in 1808.

This is mostly accurate but a bit confusingly worded. Goethe was fascinated by the trial and it inspired his Gretchen character and the specifics of her descent into madness. The concept of Faust though existed long before Goethe. He just transformed and elaborated on an established legend.

In 1778, Johann Gottfried Herder, one of Goethe’s mentor, translates a Danish legend where the Elf’s king Daughter tries to seduce Prince Oluf, a horse rider, who resists to the temptation and send him a spell of illness. Oluf dies the next day,  

Johann Gottfried Herder makes a translation error, and Elf becomes Erl in German.

This is the origin of Erlkonig with only 2 characters. 

Similarly, the Elveskud Danish ballad existed for centuries before this translation. You are providing good examples of how Romantic fascination with the supernatural led to rediscovery and re-imagining of old legends to align more with Romantic values and aesthetic =)

The supernatural / fantastic cannot really be ignored in this particular poem / lied. The Erlkönig itself mirrors the friction between the values of the Age of Enlightenment and Reason in that the father is always giving practical, logical explanations for what the son describes seeing which reflects the Enlightenments values of logic and rationality. What the son sees represents the terrifying and unexplainable aspects of the natural world. He is encountering a darker side of the romantic Sublime. 

I feel like this has gone off into the weeds a little from my initial response regarding the use of tonality and the tragic irony structure. There are of course alternate readings / perspectives in all poetry. For me, some of your reflections go outside of the Romantic aesthetic and are perhaps anachronistically applying modern fears and meaning to the characters.

A common alternate reading that does still align with the structure and rhetoric of the lied is that there is actually no elfking. The son is simply hallucinating from a deadly fever and the father is trying to calm them and get them home to rest. This is more through a lens of the Age of Reason because it means there is a rational explanation after all - many children succumbed to fever at this time and hallucinated as their sickness claimed them. I feel this view alone weakens the tragic irony and the shock of the father at the end but the ambiguity is precisely why it is and was so captivating. It also mirrors the fact that Goethe himself had a foot in both the Enlightenment and in Romanticism.  

Thierry NK Once again I have written a thoughtful response for you and once again it is pending review but this time I can't figure out why.  

Dominic Cheli would be great if we could discuss music and not be constantly keyword flagged without any indication of what the issue is!