If you know your German legends, then you’ve probably heard of the Erlkönig or ‘Erl-King’ – a spooky, supernatural being who haunts forests and preys on young, innocent souls. The Austrian composer Franz Schubert wrote a very famous art song about him, based on an equally famous ballad by Goethe. But the main inspiration behind my new commission for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is more recent: a short story from The Bloody Chamber by the 20th-century English author Angela Carter.

Andrew Aronowicz. Photo © Samantha Meuleman

The bare bones of Carter’s story are faithful to the original. But while Goethe’s Erlkönig is a sinister, spectral goblin, Carter’s Erl-King is a man, seemingly born from the forest’s will: mysterious, captivating, adoring – but dangerously so. And while the victim in Goethe’s poem is a boy who pleads frantically with his father to save him from the spirit’s clutches, Carter’s protagonist is female. She also walks, “willingly”, into the Erl-King’s wooded domain (no galloping on horseback in this story).

Here, she is entranced by the Erl-King’s song, which he uses to call birds from the sky so that they might...