Erlkönig Hacks for the Schubertian Pianist

No other composer had such an auspicious Op. 1 as Franz Schubert--his Erlkönig literally stood the lieder tradition on its head. Legions of pianists have tried over the years to overcome its technical challenges, often to no avail.

Hugh Sung recently wrote an article on possible ways to lessen the strain on the right arm with some clever finger substitutions. In addition to listing the traditional 3-2-1 redistribution of the octaves, he figured out what Gerald Moore's solution was (via the embedded Youtube of DFD/GM performing the song). I agree with Hugh's two possible solutions, although I have only tried the more traditional 3-2-1 substitution.

I can't help thinking back to an Erlkönig class that Gwendolyn Koldofsky gave in the summer of 1989 at the Academy of the West. She prefaced her discussion by stating that she didn't know what all the fuss was about--Erlkönig was just another Schubert song! As shocking as that comment may seem in light of the E-King's technical demands, I believe Madame K was totally right in saying what she did. If you fear a song for a purely technical reason and set it apart from all others, you'll have more problems with it than if you were to just learn it, figure out a technical solution, and play the darned thing. And don't forget that the singer's main challenge is how to differentiate the multiple narrators and will need help from the piano in the tonal color department.

My take on all this? The key to playing this song well and a minimum of pain is in the warmup. Ideally, I like to take a full half-hour to warm up before actually playing the song up to tempo. Play the song cold and you're doomed to a tense right wrist and susceptible to possible injury.

Here are some possible warmup ideas:

• Prior to even trying to play the song, do some sort of octave work in the preceding weeks. RCM Grade 10 octave scales in all keys will work, as well as slowly working through the first volume of the Kullak School of Octave Playing. Hanon exercises #51 and 53 are also useful.
• On the day you need to play the song, set aside half an hour before the rehearsal, lesson, or recital to warm up specifically for Erlkönig.
• Start by playing the song at tempo at the dynamic of piano to mezzo-piano, with regular eighth notes in the RH instead of triplet eighths. Keep the wrist as relaxed and loose as possible, with a larger up-down wrist motion than you normally would use.
• Graduate to playing the full triplet figure as you warm up, but at slower tempos. Keep the wrist motion going.
• When you're warmed up, speed up the tempo. You'll need less wrist motion than at slower tempos, but keep the essence of the wrist movements to minimize tension.
• Finally, play the song. I generally move around more than usual playing this song since sitting completely still tends to get me a bit tense in the upper body.

This method works whether you do the 3-2-1 substitution, the Moore substitution, or play octaves all the way through.

My final advice: spend a lot of time on the words and really know the translation. Erlkönig is a Schubert lied, not an etude. Make sure what you do at the piano still fits into the story--it's only another Schubert song, with its characters, story, imagery, and language.

School of Octave Playing, Volume I By Theodor Kullak. For Piano. Piano Collection. Kalmus Edition. 0. Masterwork. Book. 40 pages. Published by Alfred Publishing. (K03597) See more info...

Some Ideas on How to Learn a Song or Aria

From Gwendolyn Koldofsky--University of Southern California

1. Read the poetry or a translation of the poetry. Songs are not abstract pieces, they are poems that have been set to music by a composer. Before even looking at the music, look at the poetry; in the case of a song in a foreign language, look at the translation of the poetry. Better yet, translate it yourself in order to sharpen your language skills. This first step is vitally important because it allows you to interact with the poem on its own terms, allowing you to discover important aspects such as line, syntax, vocabulary, trope, rhetoric, metre, and rhyme that may be transparent in the poem's musical setting.
2. Carefully learn the pronunciation of the poem in the original language. Pay careful attention to all the details of pronunciation that you have so meticulously learned in diction class.
3. In the original language, read the poem aloud. Pay attention not just to the sounds of the language, but to syntax and intonation, trying to sound as idiomatic as possible. Inject meaning into your recitation--don't just recite syllables out loud. Think of how a native speaker of the language would recite the poem. Many famous composers of art song are known to have recited a poem at length as a way into setting it to music.
4. In the original language, read the poem aloud in the rhythm of the vocal line. This will give you clues as to how the composer heard the poetry and how he/she may have wanted to interpret the text musically, ie. what lines of text are repeated, what words are emphasized, how fast or slow is the declamation of text, how important are the poem's line breaks and where they occur in relation to the breath.
5. At the piano, play the vocal line in the right hand and the bass line of the piano part in the left hand. This may take awhile, but is worth the effort. Now that you know something about the composer's setting of the text, this process will give you further musical clues regarding the song's melody, contour, tessitura, harmonic direction, and phrase structure, as well as help you to understand and hear the structure of and relationship between the vocal and piano parts.
6. Now learn the music. You'll be surprised.

From Rena Sharon--University of British Columbia

1. Who is the protagonist?
2. What is the setting?
3. What does each of his/her five senses perceive in the poem?
4. Does the protagonist stay in one place, if not, where does he/she go?
5. Where was the protagonist before his/her present state?
6. Is the narrator speaking to anyone in particular, if so, who is the person, what do they look like, what is their relationship?
7. What impetus causes the narrator to speak?
8. Why has the narrator chosen to speak?
9. What is the narrator's emotional and physical state?
10. Does the narrator change in the process of speaking?
11. Has the narrator's physical and mental condition changed?
12. What happens after the text stops?
13. What happens after the music stops?

Some quotes to remember:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." --Albert Einstein

"Melody is the sensuous life of poetry." --Ludwig van Beethoven

"To be willing to live within the imagination is to commit oneself to the gathering together of the pieces that might begin to form a self. To avoid this territory is to avoid the encounters that might validate, inform, or enhance one's experience." --Deena Metzger, from Writing for your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds

"In art, one has more often to fight against oneself, and the victories one wins are perhaps the most beautiful." --Claude Debussy

"...there are others who welcome the transport poetry provides. They welcome it repeatedly. They desire it so much they begin to crave it daily, nightly, nearly abject in their desire, seeking it out the way hungry people seek food. It is spiritual sustenance to them. Bread and wine. A way of transformative thinking. A method of transfiguration. There are those who honor the reality of roots and wings in words but also want the wings to take root, to grow into the earth, and the roots to take flight, ascend. They need such falling and rising, such metaphoric thinking. They are so taken by the ecstatic experience--the overwhelming intensity--of reading poems they have to respond in kind. And these people become poets." --Edward Hirsch, from How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

"Reading is like writing in beginning in uncertainty and driving toward speculation and experiment. The reader follows, via the poem as a ghostly map, the many paths that were not taken by the author, but whose possibility leaves a shadow like crosshatching on the paths that remain. To read this way keeps a poem always provisional and still in the making, which is how the process of reading absorbs the act of writing to their mutual improvement in terms of skills and understanding." --Mary Kinzie, from The Poet's Guide to Poetry

"The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being." --Edward Hirsch, from How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry