Republished from Vernacular Nicely Said #48
Mum was a piano teacher.
It was the 1970s and her playing for pleasure was a luxury snatched in spare moments between making school lunches, folding tea towels, peeling potatoes, bottling peaches, and other tasks on the bottomless list of a hillbilly household in a far corner of the King Country.
She let me sit beside her on the piano stool so I could watch her fingers flurry and feel the wonderful rush of notes and the music they made. Her right foot would occasionally press the floor pedal to produce a surging crescendo. At other times her right hand would rise from the keys to turn the page of the music book perching on the piano rest. The left hand continued to play with a mind of its own until the fingers that had taken flight returned gracefully to their masterful work – a transition that had no perceptible effect on the music.
When the piano was quiet, we had the radio – the “wireless”. It was set permanently to the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, renamed Radio New Zealand in 1975. Dad turned up the volume for the bird call, broadcast on Morning Report before the 7am news, read by the wonderfully named Philip Sherry.
The concert programme was never far from earshot – organ recitals, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Frédéric Chopin’s Études, an effortlessly manic turn by Rachmaninoff …
But normal standards, I’d had a lifetime’s dose of classical music and bird calls before the age of five. For all the beauty in that pantheon of music and sound, there’s one piece that stood out. I still think about it today.
It is a German lied – pronounced leet (a poem set to music) – called Erlkönig. Composed by Franz Schubert in 1815, Erlkönig is his most famous work, considered by many as one of the greatest ballads ever penned. It is based on a poem of the same name, written by an 18-year-old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1782. Goethe’s poem was so popular that it was set to music by at least a hundred composers.
Strange that this music took a hold on me, its German lyrics a mystery. But there was something about the urgent playing and rising panic in a phrase repeated in later verses.
Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht, || My father, my father, and do you not hear.
Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort || My father, my father, and don’t you see.
Disturbed by these words unfathomed, I asked mum what was happening.
She explained that the young boy was trying to warn his father about a creature that was following them. But his father said the boy was mistaken and ignored his terror.
How terrible, I thought, a father not believing his son. Would my father do the same, this 5-year-old wondered? Anyway, we left it at that.
Years later I got to the bottom of the story.
Erlkönig (pronounced “AIRL-kuh-nekh”) tells a story of a boy galloping home on horseback in his father’s arms. He is frightened when he sees the Erlkönig, a sinister elf flitting between shadows in the woods.
Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht? || My son, why do you hide your face in fear?
Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht? || Father, do you not see the Erlkönig?
The father dismisses the boy’s concerns, suggesting to his son that he had seen a “streak of fog”. Erlkönig gets closer and starts taunting the boy.
Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir! || You dear child, come, go with me
Gar schöne Spiele spiel’ ich mit dir; || Very lovely games I’ll play with you
The boy grows increasingly terrified and pleads with his father. But he can’t see the creature and tells the boy his imagination is playing tricks on him.
In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind. || The wind is rustling through dry leaves
The Erlkönig’s enticement intensifies and the boy cries out to his father again, who continues to discourage his worry.
Eventually the Erlkönig reaches out and touches the boy. He shrieks and his obvious pain spurs the father to ride faster.
They finally reach their home, but the boy in his arms is dead.