Carl Loewe’s 'Erlkönig'

Na Sung-in

The author is a music critic and director of the classical music brand Poongwoldang. 

The “Schubert of northern Germany.” The king of the ballad, a type of art song with a strong narrative character. These are perhaps the two best-known descriptions of composer Carl Loewe. Though his name is less familiar to general listeners today, his songs remain striking examples of the special encounter between poetry and music. Loewe's musical setting, composed in 1818, of Goethe’s poem “Erlkönig” (1782), in particular, is a masterpiece comparable to Franz Schubert’s famous version.

Schubert opens his “Erlkönig” (1815) with terrifying, pounding hoofbeats, immediately plunging listeners into menace and fear. Loewe, by contrast, does not overwhelm through intensity or vivid depiction. He focuses instead on a dramatic process of concealment and revelation. The difference is fundamental: Schubert tells us from the outset that something terrible is happening, while Loewe lets dread emerge gradually from what remains unseen.

At first, Loewe merely depicts leaves rustling in the wind. He withholds what lies behind them, allowing anxiety born of uncertainty to settle over the music. Only as Goethe’s words gradually present concrete images does the music begin to portray them. The effect draws the listener’s attention more closely to the poem itself. The contrast is not simply one of musical temperament. It reflects two different ways of reading Goethe’s narrative, particularly the shifting boundary between the child’s terrifying visions and the father’s rational explanations.

Loewe’s treatment of the Erlking’s seduction is equally distinctive. In “Erlkönig” (1818), the supernatural figure soothes the child with a rocking, cradle-like motif. Whenever it appears, sounds from the outside world, including the hoofbeats, disappear. The effect is almost hypnotic.

When the child refuses to yield, however, the Erlking suddenly changes at the final moment. A chilling tone, abrupt leaps and a turn to a dark minor key transform the song in an instant. It is an eruption of violence. Where Schubert uses beautiful melody as the instrument of seduction, Loewe adheres more closely to the dramatic principle of reversal.

By analogy, Schubert might be said to compose from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator, while Loewe adopts that of a third-person observer. To the ear, Schubert’s “Erlkönig” may leave the more immediate impression. Yet if the question is which composer more faithfully captures the poem’s literary effects, it is difficult to say Loewe falls short.

There are many kinds of beauty in the world and each springs from an imagination that cannot be measured by fame alone. That is why Loewe’s “Erlkönig” deserves to be valued as highly as Schubert’s.