It's Music Dedication Time!
It's Music Dedication Time!
We go from the sacred to the profane. “Carmina Burana” is a New Years Eve tradition in parts of Europe.
Carl Orff (1895-1982) was one of the leading scholars of medieval music in the German-speaking world, who worked out of Munich at the city’s Academy of Music. Orff’s source material came out of a lucky find in German archeology.
In 1847, research at the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in southern Bavaria turned up manuscripts of college songs from the medieval period when the monastery had been a university. These songs, as expected, were about wine and women, and were written in medieval forms of Latin, German and French.
In 1935, Orff ran across this rare find and began setting many of them to music to form a “scenic cantata”. He scored it for soprano, tenor, baritone, oversized chorus, and a huge orchestra to include two pianos and a massive percussion section. Many directors and choreographers tried their hands over the years at the “scenic” part, but most performances today are simply done concert-style without scenery or dancers.
Orff’s style of music emphasizes rhythm, and places melody, harmony and counterpoint as secondary. In many respects, his music is like medieval rock and roll. This is what prompted music critic Jim Svejde (SHVAY-da) to label “Carmina Burana” as “one of the most popular pieces of musical trash in the world.” I beg to differ.
Orff tried to keep a low profile during the Nazi years, but this became impossible when Hitler attended the first performance of “Carmina Burana” in 1937 and became ecstatic over what he saw and heard. Composers whose music offended Hitler’s sensibilities were sentenced to attend a concert of “Carmina Burana”, and Orff was embarrassed by the whole thing. Hitler’s cultural godfather, the late German opera composer Richard Wagner, would not have been amused.
Orff changes time signature so many times that he places the signature above the stave for legibility, rather than on the stave.
At the end of most songs he places the instruction “attacca”, which means go right into the next number. This means there are only a few places where he wants the music to come to a cold stop. But at the end of some songs, he places a caesura, which looks like a double-quote, or a fermata, which looks like a horizontal parenthesis, vertex up, with a dot under it. Both of these mean a pause, with the fermata designating a longer pause than a caesura. This conflicts with the “attacca”, and some conductors emphasize the pause instead of charging ahead. This stops the flow, especially at the end where Orff builds it into a frenzy. Only once did I see this piece performed with the attacca emphasized, and it was done by an opera conductor from Berlin who led the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 1980. It was absolutely hair raising.
I’ll be posting this piece in segments, which breaks the flow, but at the end I’ll link to a complete uninterrupted performance, which lasts an hour and a quarter. Unfortunately this performance emphasizes the pauses, not the flow.
This first song is one of the best known pieces of music in the world. It is used in countless commercials and countless movie trailers when the film’s soundtrack is not ready.
Several years ago “The Simpsons” had an episode, a takeoff on “The Da Vinci Code”, where a church full of nuns sang this. The writers should have been rapped on the knuckles by real nuns with yardsticks for that stunt, because this is one song you will never hear sung in church!
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Luck, Empress of the World) (Latin)
O Fortuna, (O Fortune,)
velut luna (like the moon)
statu variabilis, (you are changeable,)
semper crescis (ever waxing)
aut decrescis; (and waning;)
vita detestabilis (hateful life)
nunc obdurat (first oppresses)
et tunc curat (and then soothes)
ludo mentis aciem, (as fancy takes it,)
egostatem, (poverty,)
potestatem (and power)
dissolvit ut glaciem. (it melts them like ice.)
Sors immanis (Monstrous fate)
et inanis, (and empty,)
rota tu volubilis, (you whirling wheel,)
status malus, (you are malevolent,)
vana salus (well-being is vain)
semper dissolubilis, (and always fades to nothing,)
obumbrata (shadowed)
et velata (and veiled)
michi quoque niteris; (you plague me too;)
nunc per ludum (now through the game)
dorsum nudum (I bring my bare back)
fero tui sceleris. (to your villainy.)
Sors salutis (Fate is against me)
et virtutis (in health)
michi nunc contraria, (and virtue,)
est affectus (driven on)
et defectus (and weighted down)
semper in angaria. (always enslaved.)
Hac in hora (So at this hour)
sine mora (without delay)
corde pulsum tangite; (pluck the vibrating strings;)
quod per sortem (since Fate)
sternit fortem, (strikes down the strong man,)
mecum omnes plangite! (everyone weep with me!)
This leads directly into:
Fortune plango vulnera (I bemoan the wounds of fortune)
stillantibus ocellis, (with weeping eyes,)
quod sua michi munera (for the gifts she made me)
subtrahit rebellis. (she perversely takes away.)
Verum est, quod legitur, (It is written in truth,)
fronte capillata, (that she has a fine head of hair,)
sed plerumque sequitur (but when it comes to seizing an opportunity)
Occasio calvata. (she is bald.)
In Fortune solio (On Fortune's throne)
sederam elatus, (I used to sit raised up,)
prosperitatis vario (crowned with)
flore coronatus; (the many-colored flowers of prosperity;)
quicquid enim florui (though I may have flourished)
felix et beatus, (happy and blessed,)
nunc a summo corrui (now I fall from the peak)
gloria privatus. (deprived of glory.)
Fortune rota volvitur: (The wheel of Fortune turns:)
descendo minoratus; (I go down, demeaned;)
alter in altum tollitur; (another is raised up;
nimis exaltatus (far too high up)
rex sedet in vertice – /i> (sits the king at the summit –)
caveat ruinam! (let him fear ruin!)
nam sub axe legimus (for under the axis is written)
Hecubam reginam. (Queen Hecuba.)
Here we come to one of the few cold stops in the score.
Miraculously, I managed to locate a Youtube segment that is from a staged, choreographed production. It’s quite impressive.
Happy New Year to Bob 'the first new baby' Hope! !