A few weeks ago, I heard a radio interview with an acclaimed singer who was asked about her favorite works. The first on her list was Schubert’s Erlkönig – the song that cured her of her opinion that classical German piano lieder are – in her words – “girl/boy scout music.”

Such scandalously unsophisticated sentiments are rarely uttered on a classical radio station. I certainly raised an eyebrow. And I’m sure the other three listeners did as well.

But she wasn’t completely wrong. For me, Franz Schubert is the only true son of God who walked the earth for 30-ish years. But even I will never voluntarily listen to something like this:

It’s not bad, of course, just meh.

My mother played a lot of that stuff when I was ten years old – hogging the stereo that I clearly needed for my Duran Duran CDs. So it’s no wonder that I grew up with a healthy disdain for the whole lied genre.

For me as well, that changed because of one song that instantly blew me away: Erlkönig. It still does that, each time I listen to it.

Especially these three moments never fail to raise at least a few hairs on my arms …

1: The opening: ‘are you scared yet?’

Schubert’s Erlkönig is a setting of a poem with the same name by Goethe, itself based on a traditional Danish ballad called Elveskud. It’s a kind of horror miniature about a boy dying while in his father’s arms. The perpetrator is a fairy king and his alluring daughters, who are all only visible to the son.

Schubert immediately cuts off your breath with these iconic opening measures:

Those octave triplets in the right hand (marked blue) are devilishly difficult to play, especially because you have to keep that up for most of the piece. Unless you do it at half the tempo, of course. The received wisdom is that it represents the galloping of the horse that speeds home with father and son. Its psychological effect is more important: literally hammering home a sense of panic and inescapable doom.

The motif in the left hand (marked red) – simply trotting up and skipping down a minor scale – completes the spooky atmosphere. The stage is all set for the entrance of the narrator, when Schubert inserts these two bars (0:18 in the video above):

Face it, this is put in purely for its effect value. It’s not so much dictated by musical logic, but rather by the need to emphasize to the listener that this is going to be scary – no, really scary – stuff.

2. The true villain is revealed: ‘stop whining, silly child’

Erlkönig is a through-composed song, which means there are no strophes or refrains. One of the main tools Schubert uses to both differentiate the four characters – narrator, father, boy and Erlking – and give a clear direction to the story, is multiple key changes. Watch this excellent video analysis if you want all the details on that.

In the beginning, the narrator gives us the bare minimum of factual details we need to understand the story:

Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind; Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm, Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.

Who rides, so late, through night and wind? It is the father with his child. He has the boy well in his arm, He holds him safely, he keeps him warm.

This whole fragment stays more or less in the home key of G minor, even emphatically landing there on ‘warm’ (0:58 in the video above) Then the boy starts to express his worries in C minor, a key close to G minor:

Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht? Den Erlenkönig mit Kron’ und Schweif?

Father, do you not see the Erlking? The Erlking with crown and cape?

The father casually dispels his concerns:

Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif.

My son, it is a streak of fog.

This is the second hair-raising moment on my list. It’s in B flat major – the first time the music veers to one of the ‘happy’ keys. It fits the idea of the father soothing the boy. To my ears, there’s also something ‘misty’ about the sound of that chord, which fits the text. But that could be just me.

In any case – as all listeners know – the father is dead wrong. Is he admirably comforting the boy? Or is he failing to take him seriously? And if the latter, is he perhaps complicit to the drama that’s about to unfold? Even the real villain of the story? Tellingly, when the Erlking next launches his charm offensive at the boy, it’s in the same key of B flat major (1:42 in the video above):

Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir! Gar schöne Spiele spiel’ ich mit dir; Manch’ bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand, Meine Mutter hat manch gülden Gewand.

You dear child, come, go with me! (Very) beautiful games, I play with you; Many colorful flowers are on the beach, My mother has many a golden robe.

3. No more mister nice guy

The pattern above is repeated a few times in the song: the Erlking tries to seduce the boy, the boy pleads to the father, the father shrugs it off. Then comes the climax of that to-and-fro. First, the Erlking gives the charmer approach a final try with an extra creepy line:

Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;

I love you, your beautiful form excites me;

But then he finally pulls off his mask. (Even though that never fooled the boy nor the listener in the first place):

Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch’ ich Gewalt.

And if you’re not willing, then I will use force.

It’s the timeless story of seducer turning into abuser. The musical translation of this by Schubert (3:22 in the recording above) is obvious yet immensely powerful: a sudden key change from E flat major to D minor. That last one was long considered the most tragic and morbid of all keys. Most famously, it’s the key of Mozart’s 20th piano concerto, Don Giovanni and requiem. Also, compare this fragment to the last comforting words of that useless excuse for a father just a few seconds before:

4. The shock that isn’t

Schubert wasn’t the only composer to set Goethe’s Erlkönig to music. About 100 others preceded or followed him, including very respectable ones such as Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Louis Spohr, and Carl Loewe. Beethoven made a sketch, but never finished it. By no means was Schubert’s Erlkönig the universal favorite. Goethe himself dismissed it because he didn’t like the through-composed format. Wagner preferred Loewe’s setting, because, you know, Wagner.

It’s instructive to compare these different settings. Take the ending of the poem. The father finally realizes his son isn’t acting like a crybaby and speeds to the farm. But when he arrives there, the child is already dead.

Dem Vater grauset’s; er reitet geschwind, Er hält in den Armen das ächzende Kind, Erreicht den Hof mit Mühe und Not; In seinen Armen, das Kind war tot.

It horrifies the father; he swiftly rides on, He holds the moaning child in his arms, Reaches the farm with great difficulty; In his arms, the child was dead.

A lot of composers treat this like a shocking denouement. Take Loewe:

Or Spohr:

Especially in Loewe’s setting, the effect is a little bit comic. Are we supposed to be astonished by this outcome (especially since we can expect something that rhymes with ‘not’?) Schubert treats the ending in the most matter-of-fact way possible: the outcome is recited rather than sung, abruptly followed by the most unsurprising of chord progressions.

Again, this sounds to me like a final reproach to the father. This is the price he pays for his arrogant dismissal of his son’s cries for help. Why spend any more time on this pompous jackass? Next!

Or more likely, repeat!