This great ballad like any other exemplifies the dramatic lied with a perfect fusion between poetry and music. Finally, upon reaching home, the child has died. Along the way, the father tried in vain to calm his child and allay their fears, because he tells how a (real or imagined) figure, the Elf King, is strongly persuading him to go with him. The text by Johann Wolfgang Goethe tells us the hurried journey through the forest at night of a father taking his sick son riding back home to assist him. Apart from dynamic details, it contains bars here and there to facilitate the recovery of the singer, added after rehearsals with baritone Johann Michael Vogl for the concert of March 7th, 1821 in Kärtnertortheater (Vienna). It has come down to us in four versions that differ primarily in dynamics details, and it was finally published as op.1 after unsuccessful attempts in the first volume of Goethe Lieder at the end of March 1821. Erlkönig ( The Elf King) was probably composed in October 1815 during Schubert‘s most active composition period (150 songs in just over a year).
