How Schubert Portrays the Three Characters in Setting of The Erlking

   The first character who sings in the piece is the narrator. Schubert uses a very simple rhythm in the opening narration, and the melody is very much conjunct (see quote A). The key is G minor initially, but modulates to D major shortly after the narrator begins to sing. This represents the fact that the other characters have nothing to fear from the narrator, and the simple rhythms show that the character himself is ‘simple’ with regards to the threat towards the other characters. The first time that the narrator speaks, antecedent and consequence phrasing is used to show that the narrator is telling a story.

  The range of the narrator is very much in the middle of the stave, which shows that although the narrator is essential to the story, he is very much ‘in the middle’ and not particularly involved with the storyline itself.

  At the end of this song, the rhythm sung by the narrator becomes a little more complex, with his last two sung bars being composed of mainly quavers and semiquavers. This is to show that the story is not as ‘clean’ as it had been the first time that the narrator spoke, as when the melody line had been made up of simpler rhythms, nothing bad had yet happened in the story. This last couple of bars differ however, as the child, who was the main subject of the story, was now dead.

  When the Erlking is singing, there are two different styles in which he sings. The initial style of song is a disjunct melody, see quote B, which Schubert uses so that the melody sounds childish, as the Erlking is trying to relate to the child at this point. Also, the pitch is rather high, again because the Erlking is attempting to talk to the child, so is using a similar pitch to him. The rhythms that Schubert gives to the Erlking are rather simple, as he is trying to come across as a nice, kind character who is trying to befriend the child (see quote B).

  When the child is singing, the notes are generally of a high pitch, as a child’s voice is normally higher than an adult’s voice. The main characteristic of the child’s singing is in the repeated line ‘My father, my father’ in which the child’s pitch raises at each time of singing, see quote C. The rise in pitch represents the growing anxiety of the child. As the pitch rises, we get the sense that the child is getting closer and closer to screaming. The second time that the passage reoccurs, the tune is raised by a tone, however on the final time of singing, it is raised only by a semitone, which could show that the child is getting too weak to shout much louder.

  At the beginning of the piece, at the first point that the son sings, his rhythms are simple, using mainly crotchets and minims. As he gets more and more anxious however, a couple of different note values appear in his tune, such as quavers, which allow him to sound more urgent.

  The final character, the father, sings in a much lower tone than all of the other characters. This could be mainly because he is an adult male, who generally speak lower than children. Later on in the song, however, in bar 81, his pitch is a little higher. This could be for two reasons. The first reason could be that he is getting anxious as he is worried about his son. The second reason could be that he is trying his best to speak in a more reassuring tone, in an attempt to calm his son, as he is getting more and more anxious. Another way that Schubert shows the anxiety of the father is when the key modulates to C# minor, which, with regards to the circle of fifths, is the furthest possible away from the home key of G minor. This is subtle word painting, as the modulation shows that the father is still worried about his son despite his calming words.

  Overall, these are the ways in which Schubert uses rhythm, pitch and articulation in order to portray the different characters.