The King of the alders (Lied)
the King of the alders (Der Erlkönig) , COp 1 (D. 328), is a Lied of the type-setter Franz Schubert.
History
Der Erlkönig was composed with the autumn 1815, according to a poem of Goethe. Schubert found an editor to publish his Lied only six years later, in 1821, after several rehandlings. Sung for the first time in public by the baritone Johann Michael Vogl on March 7th, 1821, work accepted a triumphal reception.
Analyzes
The topics developed in the poem are typically romantic: death at night the fantastic one, the fear, nature, etc the music feels some, in tonality of ground minor, serious, deep and tragic.
A single singer interpret alternatively four different characters: the narrator, with the first and last stanzas, the child, the king of the alders, and the father of the child. To distinguish the various characters, the type-setter played on the mode, the Ambitus (height of the sung part) and each part moderates it:
- the narrator is sung in voice of Baryton, in minor mode. It is him which announces the death of the child,
- the child is sung in voice of Ténor (acute notes), in minor mode, and always strong , to mean the distress, the suffering and the fear,
- the king of alders is sung in the process of tenor (average notes, sung almost in the process of head), in major mode, on a soft melody and suave, pianissimo , in agreement with the tempting words of the fantastic character,
- the father sings in low voice of , in major and minor mode. It represents the bond with reality, the reassuring help of the child.
The piano plays a big role in work: the octaves and the agreements in triplets of the right hand appear the gallop of the horse, whereas the ascending ranges (of six notes only) of the left hand appear the wind in the branches.
Famous interpreters
The Lied Erlkönig , like besides most of the Lieder of Schubert, found interpreters of value in the people in particular of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006) of Jessye Norman (born in 1945) or of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (born in 1925).
External bonds
The text of the poem.