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Contents:
DDD 58.58 Recorded: The Sala Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico City, 1988, with kind permission. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is now one of the most popular choral works written in the 20th-century, yet it has only achieved such popularity since the mid-1950s, for all it having beenwritten in 1936, when the composer was 41. Although Orff had written a fair amount of music before this time, almost all of his previous compositions were withdrawn and he came to regard this cantata as his first truly representative score. As he told his publishers in 1937, 'With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.' In its original form, the score was initially intended to be staged, in mime, but nowadays it is more often heard in the concert-hall. During the early 1930s, Orff came across a remarkable collection of medieval poems, which had been discovered in 1803 in the Benediktbeuern monastery in Bavaria. 'Burana' is the Latin name for the region. The poems are written in Latin, Old German and Medieval French, and their subject-matter ranges from the ever-changing fortune of Man to the delights of Spring, physical love and so on - all expressed in an earthy, rather naive, language - and they were selected by Orff together with his colleague, Michel Hofmann. Alongside the text, accompanying and illustrating it, was a group of illuminated pictures, including a miniature of the symbolic Wheel of Fortune. In this way is Carmina Burana framed by a massive chorus to Fortune, which both begins and ends the composition. Much has been of Orff's 'primitivism', but apart from the sheer originality of his adoption of such technical procedures as monotonality and ostinato, it is difficult to see how such unsubtle and occasionally uncouth texts could have been more appropriately set. The power and directness of Carmina Burana speak with a freshness and strength which, once heard, can never be forgotten. The sound-world Orff conjures up here is also virtually unique. The writing for the solo singers is uniformly high, sometimes almost cruelly so, and the use of the orchestra is frequently startling, particularly noteworthy being the makeup of the large percussion section with three glockenspiels and two pianos - but no harp - which emphasizes the harsh and vivid nature of the medieval scenes. Apart from these important characteristics, which contribute to the unique sound-world of the cantata, the musical heart of Carmina Burana is to be found in its choruses: the majority of the twenty-five movements which constitute the work are for chorus (usually without soloists) alone, and Orff's quite considerable resourcefulness and variety in his handling of massed voices enhances the brilliant evocation of medieval peasant life. As one of the leading authorities on Orff's music, Andreas Liess, has said of Carmina Burana: 'The spiritual unity of Europe, as well as the Despite the composer's claim that with Carmina Burana 'my collected works begin', Orff's extant works date from before 1936. His important career as a teacher had begun earlier, for between 1930 and 1935 he had published his collection Schulwerk, an original and successful treatise on aspects of music-teaching, drawing on the inherent ability of children initially to make music through improvisation and dramatic movement (not - essentially - choreography, however). Work on Carmina Burana itself began in 1935, and was completed, as we noted earlier, the following year. The short sub-title of the piece is that of a 'scenic cantata', and in this regard the genre and genesis of the piece - together with momentary aspects of its musical language - owes something to Stravinsky, most notably in the Russian's Les noces and Oedipus Rex. With Carmina Burana, Orff's individual musical character stands before us fully-formed, a character which he immediately revisited in his operas Der Mond and Die Kluge (1938, revised 1950, and 1942-43 respectively), both based upon fairy tales by the brothers Grimm. The description 'scenic cantata' is a short-hand for the full Latin sub-title: 'Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis' ('Secular songs for soloists and choir, with instruments and magic spectacle'). In this regard, Carmina Burana was originally conceived to be staged, with choreography reflecting the action. It was in this guise that the work was first performed, in Frankfurt am Main at the Städtische Bühnen. However, such was the impact of the music that Carmina Burana is almost always performed nowadays as a concert work; it was after the War that Orff brought together Carmina Burana and Catulli Carmina (a second 'scenic cantata' based on writings by Catullus - of a similar 'earthy' nature to those set in the earlier work - and dating from 1943, termed 'Ludi scaenini'), together with the Trionfo di Afroditi (a 'concerto scenico'), as a trilogy, under the generic title Trionfi, which was first heard in full in Milan i n February 1953. As mentioned earlier, Carmina Burana is framed by a large chorus 'O Fortuna' (its first appearance is followed by a second chorus - 'Fortuna plango vulnera' - which sets a similar text); the main body of the work is divided into three parts - I: Primo Vere ('Spring'); Uf dem Anger ('On the village green'); II: In Taberna ('In the Tavern'); III: Cour d'amour ('Court of Love'); Blanziflor et Hélena. In duration, number of movements, instrumentation and vocal settings, the various parts of the work are non-symphonic, but the cumulative impact is remarkable. Orff's structural judgement is quite original, and he uses his gift for the memorably beautiful phrase but rarely - but with enormous effect. For example, 'In the Tavern' uses only male soloists and (mostly) male chorus; the holding-back of the soprano solo until the 'Court of Love' is a masterfully dramatic touch, and although the impact of Carmina Burana is utterly direct, the work is shot through with such tellingly dramatic moments which never fade. Page created 26.06.03 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
