The Elfking- Piece Review

Franz Schubert, born January 31^st, 1797, grew up in Austria where he was one of the first composers to put music to poetry. In 1815, Schubert composed Elfking which is based on a poem written by Goethe. In this poem Goethe writes about a father and son running from the Elfking. A single touch can kill a human. The Elfking coheres the son to go with him while the father persuades the son to stay away, alas the Elfking touches the boy and he dies in his father’s arms. In the music there are different repeated rhythms to represent each character that is speaking. In addition to different rhythms portraying each character, there are also different registers assigned. It starts off with a swift pattern in the left hand piano part to represent the horse. When the Elfking speaks the horse rhythms stops and a more smooth rhythm takes over to represent the Elfking persuading the boy to come with him.

This genre of music is called lieder, which is a German song form. They are normally set to poetry. In this piece, Schubert avoids strophic form so that he may create a more dramatic, through composed piece. I personally enjoyed this piece of music and how easily the music set the scene of the poem. It was easy for me to visually follow this piece. I would highly recommend my fellow students to check it out.

Posted below is a recording of this piece, and it is also accompanied with an animated video to show the story.