Der Erlk¶nig, or "The Elf King," is based on Johann Goethe's late 18th-century poem of the same name in which a father and his young son ride home on horseback one dark and eerie night. The father tries to calm the increasingly fearful son by explaining everything the boy reports as simply leaves rustling in the wind or willows moving in the fog. Nonetheless, the father rides faster and faster home only to find the boy is dead in his arms when they arrive. Goethe's dark and gothic tale is brought to spine-tingling life in this harrowing, fast-paced tone poem for band. (3:20)