Erlkönig: One Singer, Four Characters
One singer plays four characters, over a piano that never stops galloping. Franz Schubert wrote Erlkönig in 1815, at 18, setting a poem by Goethe: a father rides through the night with his sick son, and the Erl King, a supernatural being, tempts the boy. The right hand hammers fast repeated triplets almost throughout, a galloping horse and a racing heartbeat; each character has its own sound, from the low, calm father to the high, frantic son and the sweet Erl King, often in major; the boy's cry is pitched higher each time, and at the end the gallop stops. Play our own gallop on G and our own rising cry, and learn to hear who is singing.
In this lesson you'll
- Play our galloping figure for four bars: the right hand repeats G, G, G, three to a beat (triplets, as in lesson 45), over G minor chords in the left hand (Gm · Gm · Cm · Gm), and hear it as a galloping horse and a racing heartbeat.
- Tell the four characters apart by register and key: the narrator in the middle, the father low and calm, the son high and more and more frantic, the Erl King sweet and gentle, often in major (our example: B♭ major, the relative major of G minor from lesson 12).
- Sing or play our own two-note cry three times, a whole step higher each time (D, E, F♯), to hear how a cry pitched higher than before builds rising panic, and notice how the music changes when the gallop stops.
Music in this lesson
- Erlkönig (a poem by Goethe)Franz Schubert · 1815
Remember
The piano's right hand hammers fast repeated triplets almost throughout: three notes to every beat, the galloping horse and a racing heartbeat, famously tiring to play.
One singer, four characters, each with its own sound: narrator in the middle, father low and calm, son high and increasingly frantic, Erl King sweet and gentle, often in major keys; like the leitmotif (lesson 76), a sound for each character.
Each time the boy cries "Mein Vater, mein Vater!" (My father, my father!) it is pitched higher than before: rising panic; at the end the gallop stops and the narrator says, almost spoken, that the child was dead.