The Art Song Is a Genre That Typically Involves Voice and Piano True False

The Erlking by Albert Sterner, ca. 1910

Erlkönig

" Erlkönig " (also called " Der Erlkönig ") is a verse form by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Information technology depicts the expiry of a child assailed past a supernatural existence, the Erlking or "Erlkönig" (suggesting the literal translation "alder king"). It was originally composed past Goethe every bit function of a 1782 Singspiel entitled Die Fischerin .

The poem has been used as the text for Lieder (art songs for voice and piano) by many classical composers.

Summary

An broken-hearted young boy is being carried home at night by his father on horseback. To what sort of dwelling is non spelled out; German language Hof  has a rather broad pregnant of "yard," "courtyard," "subcontract," or (royal) "court." The lack of specificity of the father's social position allows the reader to imagine the details.

As the poem unfolds, the son seems to see and hear beings his father does not; the male parent asserts reassuringly naturalistic explanations for what the child sees – a wisp of fog, rustling leaves, shimmering willows. Finally the child shrieks that he has been attacked. The father makes faster for the Hof . In that location he recognizes that the boy is dead.

Text

The Fable

The story of the Erlkönig derives from the traditional Danish ballad Elveskud: Goethe's poem was inspired by Johann Gottfried Herder'south translation of a variant of the carol (Danmarks gamle Folkeviser 47B, from Peter Syv's 1695 edition) into High german as "Erlkönigs Tochter" ("The Erl-king's Daughter") in his collection of folk songs, Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (published 1778). Goethe's verse form then took on a life of its own, inspiring the Romantic concept of the Erlking. Niels Gade's cantata Elverskud opus 30 (1854, text by Chr. K. F. Molbech) was published in translation as Erlkönigs Tochter .

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). Information technology has often been suggested that Erlkönig is a mistranslation from the original Danish elverkonge , which does mean "male monarch of the elves."

In the original Scandinavian version of the tale, the antagonist was the Erlkönig'southward daughter rather than the Erlkönig himself; the female elves or elvermøer sought to ensnare human beings to satisfy their desire, jealousy and lust for revenge.

Settings to music

The poem has often been set to music with Franz Schubert's rendition, his Opus 1 (D. 328), being the best known. Other notable settings are by members of Goethe's circle, including the extra Corona Schröter (1782), Andreas Romberg (1793), Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1794) and Carl Friedrich Zelter (1797). Beethoven attempted to set up it to music just abandoned the endeavor; his sketch all the same was complete enough to be published in a completion past Reinhold Becker (1897). A few other nineteenth-century versions are those past Václav Tomášek (1815), Carl Loewe (1818) and Ludwig Spohr (1856, with obbligato violin) and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (Polyphonic Studies for Solo Violin). A 21st century example is pianist Marc-André Hamelin'southward "Etude No. 8 (after Goethe)" for solo piano, based on "Erlkönig".

The Franz Schubert Limerick

Hear the Music

	"Erlkönig" Ernestine Schumann-Heink
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Schubert's autograph of a simplified accompaniment to his "Erlkönig", one of several revisions

Franz Schubert composed his Lied, "Erlkönig", for solo vox and piano in 1815, setting text from the Goethe poem. Schubert revised the vocal three times earlier publishing his fourth version in 1821 as his Opus ane; it was cataloged past Otto Erich Deutsch as D. 328 in his 1951 catalog of Schubert'south works. The vocal was offset performed in concert on Dec ane, 1820, at a private gathering in Vienna, and received its public premiere on March 7, 1821, at Vienna'south Theater am Kärntnertor.

The four characters in the vocal – narrator, father, son, and the Erlking – are normally all sung by a single singer; occasionally, however, the work is performed by 4 private vocalists (or three, with ane taking the parts of both the narrator and the Erlking).^{[ citation needed ]} Schubert placed each character largely in a unlike vocal range, and each has his own rhythmic nuances; in add-on, most singers endeavor to use a different vocal coloration for each part.

1. The Narrator lies in the center range and is in modest.
2. The Father lies in the low range and sings both in small-scale mode and major.
3. The Son lies in a high range, also in minor.
4. The Erlking's vocal line, in major, undulates upwardly and downward to arpeggiated accessory: providing the but break from the ostinato bass triplets in the accompaniment until the boy's death. The Erlking lines are typically sung in a softer dynamic.^{[ commendation needed ]}

A fifth character, the equus caballus, is implied in rapid triplet figures played past the pianist throughout the work, mimicking hoof beats.

"Erlkönig" starts with the pianoforte rapidly playing triplets to create a sense of urgency and simulate the horse'southward galloping. Meanwhile the bass adds a horror theme to the piece. These motifs continue throughout. Each of the son's pleas become louder and college-pitched than the previous ones. About the very finish of the piece the music quickens, every bit the father desperately tries to spur his equus caballus to go faster, and so slows down, every bit he arrives. The piano stops before the terminal line, "In seinen Armen das Kind war tot" before ending with a perfect authentic cadence.

The piece is regarded every bit extremely challenging to perform due to the vocal characterization required of the singer as well every bit its difficult accessory, involving the playing of quickly repeated chords and octaves to create the drama and urgency in the poetry.^{[ citation needed ]}

The song was transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt, and the piano accompaniment was orchestrated by Hector Berlioz. Hans Werner Henze created an Orchesterfantasie über Goethes Gedicht und Schuberts Opus ane aus dem Ballett "Le fils de l'air". In that location is also a transcription for solo violin past the violin virtuoso Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, considered i of the most technically hard pieces to play for the instrument.^{[ citation needed ]}

The Carl Loewe limerick

Carl Loewe'southward setting was published every bit Op. i, No. 3 and composed in 1817–18, in the lifetime of the poem'south author and also of Schubert, whose version Loewe did non then know. Collected with it were Op. 1, No. one, Edward (1818; a translation of the Scottish ballad), and No. ii, Der Wirthin Töchterlein (1823; The Innkeeper's Daughter), a poem of Ludwig Uhland. Inspired past a German translation of Scottish border ballads, Loewe set several poems with an elvish theme; but although all three of Op. i are concerned with untimely expiry, in this fix only the "Erlkönig" has the supernatural element.

Loewe's accompaniment is in semiquaver groups of half dozen in nine-viii time and marked Geschwind (fast). The vocal line evokes the galloping effect by repeated figures of crotchet and quaver, or sometimes 3 quavers, overlying the binary tremolo of the semiquavers in the pianoforte. In add-on 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 melodic than Schubert's, with an insistent, repetitive harmonic structure between the opening minor key, and answering phrases in the major cardinal of the dominant, which have a stark quality attributable to their unusual human relationship to the home fundamental. The narrator's phrases are echoed by the voices of father and son, the father taking upwards the deeper, rising phrase, and the son a lightly undulating, answering theme effectually the dominant fifth. These two themes likewise evoke the rising and moaning of the wind.^{[ citation needed ]} The Elf king, who is always heard pianissimo, does not sing melodies, but instead delivers insubstantial rise arpeggios that outline a unmarried major chord (that of the home key) which sounds simultaneously on the piano in una corda tremolo. Only with his last threatening discussion, "Gewalt," does he depart from this chord. Loewe's implication is that the Erlking has no substance, but merely exists in the child's fevered imagination. Every bit the slice progresses, the first in the groups of 3 quavers are dotted to create a breathless pace, which so forms a bass figure in the pianoforte driving through to the final crisis. The last words, war tot , leap from the lower ascendant to the sharpened third of the home key, this fourth dimension non to the major but to a diminished chord, which settles chromatically through the home key in the major and then to the minor.

References

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2008). "The Erl-King". The Poems of Goethe. translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring. Wildside Press. p. 99. ISBN 9781434462480.
• Snyder, Lawrence (1995). High german Poetry in Song. Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Printing. ISBN 0-914913-32-8. contains a selective list of xiv settings of the poem
• "Wer reitet and so spät durch Nacht und Wind?". The Lied and Fine art Song Texts Page. Retrieved 8 October 2008. lists 23 settings of the verse form
• Hamelin's "Erlkönig" on YouTube
• Machlis, Joseph and Forney, Kristine. "Schubert and the Lied" The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening. 9th Ed. Westward. Due west. Norton & Visitor: 2003

• Moser, Hans Joachim (1937). Das deutsche Lied seit Mozart. Berlin & Zurich: Atlantis Verlag.
• Loewe, Carl. Friedlaender, Max; Moser, Hans Joachim, eds. Lieder. Leipzig: Edition Peters.

External links

• Translation past Matthew Lewis
• Translation at Poems Constitute in Translation
• Songwriter Josh Ritter performs his translation of the poem, titled "The Oak Male monarch" on YouTube
• "Erlkönig" at Emily Ezust's Lied and Art Song Texts Page; translation and listing of settings
• Adaptation past Franz Schubert free recording (mp3) and free score
• Schubert'southward setting of "Erlkönig": Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Total score and MIDI file of Schubert's setting of "Erlkönig" from the Mutopia Project
• Goethe and the Erlkönig Myth
• Sound for Earlkings legacy (3:41 minutes, ane.7 MB), performed by Christian Brückner and Bad-Eggz, 2002.
• Paul Haverstock reads Goethe's "Erlkönig" with background music. on YouTub
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