Carl Orff (1895-1982) defined the genre of his most famous work Carmina Burana, which became the “bestseller” of the 20th century, as “Secular songs for singers and chorus with instrumental accompaniment and stage performance” and wrote its title in Latin – “Cantiones profanae Cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis”. This astonishing creation, which made the German composer a worldwide celebrity, provided the impetus for the creation of magnificent music-theatre opuses that remain in his shadow – Catulli Carmina and Trionfo de Afrodite (together with Carmina Burana the three constitute the trilogy Triumphs), the operas The Moon and The Wise Girl, the stage tragedies Antigone and Oedipus Rex after Sophocles/Holderlin, the mysteries The Comedy of the Resurrection of Christ and The Comedy of the End of Time, and the drama-oratorio Bernauerin.
And so it was that in 1934, with the blessing of the Fates, he found a book. “Fortune, playing tricks on me, thrust into my hands a catalogue of antiquarian bookshops in Würzburg, where I found a title that magically attracted my attention: ‘Carmina Burana’,” recalled the composer. Translated from the Latin, it means “Songs of Boierne”, after the medieval Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in Bavaria. There, in 1803, the librarian Johann Christoph von Aretin discovered the original manuscript, a collection of 254 song and poetry texts for entertainment and amusement written in Latin, Middle High German and Old French. Researchers date their composition to the 11th and 12th centuries, with several of the examples dating to the early 13th century. To this day, there is no unanimous opinion on the exact provenance of this valuable anthology of medieval poetry, nor is the path of the manuscript to the monastery clear. Most of the authors are anonymous, believed to be so-called goliards and vagantes – well-educated, free-thinking itinerant students and clerics. Some of the texts are the work of Peter of Blois, Hugo of Orléans, the minnesingers Dietrich von Aist, Walther von der Vogelweide and Heinrich von Morungen, there are signed stanzas by the wandering poet and singer Der Marner, by the vagante poet nicknamed Archippytus… Poems by the ancient poets Ovid, Horace and Juvenal are included.
The first attempt to arrange the scrambled manuscripts of the Codex Buranus was made by Johann Andreas Schmeller, keeper at the Royal Court Library (now the Bavarian State Library), where the manuscript was taken for safekeeping. In 1847 he published the collection. Carl Orff acquired its fourth edition of 1904.
Opening it, the composer saw the famous drawing of the Wheel of Fortune. The Roman goddess of fate, fortune and luck, who directs the course of human life and can inexorably turn it in different twists and turns – rise and fall, prosperity and suffering, allegorically represented by four human figures and the inscription: ‘regnabo – regno – regnavi – sum sine regno’ (‘I shall reign – reign – reigned – I remain without a reign’).
As soon as he read the first poem published by Schmeler, “O Fortuna, you are as changeable as the moon…”, a spark seemed to ignite his imagination. He immediately imagined a stage work with a singing and dancing chorus, with kaleidoscopically contrasting pictures, and the same day he composed the astonishing first chorus, O Fortuna velut luna. It would become a kind of emblem of the work and its most popular fragment, used (even ruthlessly overexposed!) in many films, commercials, computer games, etc.
A day later, Orff sketched the first two choruses. But then came the difficult part – which verses should be selected from the magnificent medieval treasury? The law student Michel Hoffmann, an enthusiast in the study of ancient languages, came to help and he and Orff composed the “libretto”. The Carmina Burana is made up of a Prologue and three pictures in 25 numbers, covering themes relevant to all times: the fickleness of fortune, wealth and power, the fluidity of life, the string of vicissitudes and meanderings between carnal temptations and spiritual highs.
Orff retains the original language of the selected poems (mostly Latin) about spring, love, table and satirical songs, and a few hymn stanzas. Under some of these verses in the manuscript there are melodies written in old musical notation (neumes). I knew about this, the composer notes, -. However, I neither could nor wanted to do the research to decipher the old music notation and left it unattended. What moved me was the gripping, engaging rhythm and picturesque quality of the verses, their lilting quality and the unique brevity of the Latin. For me, it is a means of evoking the soul of the old worlds.
Orff unravels the layers of time with the sounding word. A colourful world opens before us, as distant as it is close, hypnotically sensual and magical. Most of the numbers in Carmina Burana are strophic songs, and the powerful pulsation of the ostinato’s even movement is a major structural element throughout the composition. With the arioso singers-soloists given important roles, the choirs (large, small and children’s) actively participate in the action. The orchestra is dominated by the wind instruments, the exotic arsenal of percussion and the two pianos. Orff also envisaged the participation of dancers, stage sets and lights.
The prologue with the first chorus Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (“Fortuna, Mistress of the World”) powerfully and spellbindingly turns the unyielding wheel of fate.
The first movement, In Spring, unfolds the joy of the rebirth of nature with dynamically shifting shots. The long-awaited Spring also awakens amorous longings. Ritual chants and merry banter complete this picture, a celebration of youth.
In the Tavern, the second movement, features other songs. Loafers and vagabonds indulge with abandon in sweet drunkenness and verbosity. Musical parodies abound here: the baritone’s monologue ‘Estuans interius…’ recalls a trite pathetic aria in which we hear intonations from the medieval sequence Dies irae (‘Day of Wrath’). The mournful Lamento of the roast swan Olim lacus colueram (Once I Swam In lakes), sung in a shrill falsetto, is accompanied in the chorus of each verse by a male chorus and evokes a carnivalesque inversion of Monteverdi’s Lamento of the Nymph. After the abbot’s psalmody sermon (Ego sum abbas… – I am the abbot of the free monastery, my masters are the harlots, my power is over souls given to the dice) in the land of revelry it is the turn of the riotous orgy ‘In taberna quando sumus’.
The third movement, Court of Love, brings a light imagery contrast. Love in all its manifestations: intoxicating passion, curt play, blazing desire, ecstatic reverie, exquisite eroticism culminates in the solemn hymn Ave formosissima – Glory to the fairest. The mythological images of the devoted Blanchefleur from chivalric novels, the ancient Greek beauty Helen and the goddess Venus triumph in the hymn of love. But the mistress of the world once again sets the wheel of fate in motion …
The premiere of Carmina Burana was scheduled for the Berlin Music Festival in 1937, but was thwarted on the grounds of the ideological authorities in Nazi Germany at the time. After much controversy, at the insistence of Hans Meisner, the Intendant of the Frankfurt Opera, it was performed there for the first time on 8 June 1937 with the participation of the Cécilian Chorus – Frankfurt, conducted by Bertil Wetzelsberger. The direction was by Oskar Wälterlin, the sets and costumes by Ludwig Sievert. The premiere caused a furore, but did not receive unqualified approval from the authorities. Criticism included the “incomprehensibility” of the Latin text, the “erroneous return to primitive musical elements”, and “corrupting jazz inflections”…. Positive criticism, however, acknowledged the great potential of the work. It was only with its next performance in 1940 that the triumph of Carmina Burana throughout the world began.
The work’s undoubted staginess, and the author’s lack of precise stage directions, give room for its various staged interpretations in the spirit of allegorical medieval mystery, Bavarian folk theatre or the theatre of masks… Carl Orff described Carmina Burana as his opus 1, the beginning of his collected works. To his publisher Schott he writes: “Now you can destroy everything I have previously created and you have unfortunately printed.”