Orff’s “O fortuna”
Carl Orff (1895 –1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJC-_j3SnXk
While German composer Carl Orff (1895 –1982) called his work, Carmina Burana, a “scenic cantata,” I consider it a prime example of a twentieth-century secular oratorio. A subtitle to the work, composed in 1937, reads “secular songs for solo singers and chorus with the accompaniment of instruments and magical tableaux” –i.e., with mime and dance. The title, Carmina Burana, means simply “Songs of Beuern.”
Orff ran across a manuscript from the old monastery of Beneditbueren in Upper Bavaria (Germany) dating back to the 13thcentury. The songs were written in a mixture of Ecclesiastical Latin, Middle High German, and Old French. According to Richard Freed,who wrote the album notes, the collection of poems comprised “dozens of songs notated over a period of a hundred years or more, originally sung by students passing through from various parts of Europe. The verses are earthy and unpretentious, some ribald, some erotic, some sardonic, some even tender.” From these songs, Carl Orff selected about two dozen for his musical work.
Carmina Burana is organized into five sections: a prologue entitled “Fortune, Empress of the World”(“O fortuna”). Here is a translation of some of the lyrics to the stunning opening song:
O fortune!
Like the moon
Ever changing
Rising first
Then declining
Hateful life
Treats us badly
Then with kindness
Making sport with our desires,
Causing power
And poverty alike
To melt like ice.
