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Updated: May 27, 2025
It was two years later that his special creative function found exercise in the production of the two great songs, the "Erl-King" and the "Serenade," the former of which proved the source of most of the fame and money emolument he enjoyed during life.
The rapidly repeated note, now rising to a roar and now falling to a subdued murmur, in "The Erl-king" was an entirely new thing in music; and in "The Wanderer" piano fantasia, the working-out of the Unfinished symphony, and even in some of the chamber music, he invented things as fresh and as astounding.
Come with me into the music room. You remember the musical setting I once made you for the Lay of the Jabberwock? I was trying it over the other night, long after you were in bed, and I decided it was quite as fine as the Erl-King music. How I wish I could give you some of the cake that Alice ate and make you a little girl again.
Thyrsis found himself thinking of that most terrible of all ballads, "The Erl-King". How he had shuddered once, hearing it sung! "Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind!" All through the night he seemed to hear the hammer-strokes of the horse's hoofs echoing through his soul. The child lived through the night, but the crisis was not yet over.
I know that many cynical and sentimental readers will ask if there is no danger of the pair of lovers taking cold on an evening in January, whilst thus mutually discovering the 'eternal passion' in the presence of the 'Erl-king. Rowland and Freda seem to ask the same question, for, loosening that close grasp of hands, and without one word of love, they walk hastily towards the house.
For two years, he fought a losing fight, giving lessons to stolid youngsters, playing at cheap concerts wherever he could get an engagement, and all the time slowly dropping deeper and deeper into debt. One night, he fainted in the middle of the accompaniment to The Erl-King, and it looked as if the King had claimed him.
Remember the fate of the father in the Erl-King! He thought, I dare say, that he was doing a fine thing for his child, to hurry it along to a nice, warm, dry, safe place!" Judge Emery broke in, impatient of this fantastic word-bandying. "Oh, come, Melton, I can't stand here while you spin your paradoxes. I've got to get home before young Hollister leaves or my wife won't like it."
Probably her best song is the setting of W.E. Henley's fine poem, "Dark is the Night." It is of the "Erl-King" style, but highly original and tremendously fierce and eerie. The same poet's "Western Wind" is given a setting contrastingly dainty and serene. "The Blackbird" is delicious and quite unhackneyed. "A Secret" is bizarre, and "Empress of the Night" is brilliant.
The song I loved best to hear him sing was Schubert's "Erl-King," which thrilled me with a sense of terror and mystery and made me tremble like a harp-string in response to his piercingly clear tones. Ever and anon, as I listened to the child's cry of "Oh, father, my father!" I was clutched by the icy hand of the awful phantom he had invoked.
The musical idea was obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erl-king." In each we have the same rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, and Wagner's bars are simply a variant of Schubert's. The curtain rises on Hunding's hut; the door is burst open, and Siegmund tumbles in exhausted, and falls before the fire. Sieglinda gives him mead, and one sees it is a case of love at first sight.
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