A fine mixture of gothic, medieval and modern music and words . You will know some of the themes - it will repay study . This is a superb rendition .
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None
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
”Si puer cum puellula moraretur in cellula, felix coniunctio. Amore suscrescente, partier e medio avulso procul tedio, fit ludus ineffabilis membris lacertis labiis”
I decided to try my hand at a review of a piece of classical music. My CD library has a fair smattering of conventional pieces by Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikowsy and Brahms. Of course you will have known by now my interest in Gilbert and Sullivan, but I have chosen instead to look at this sensational work from the 1930s by Carl Orff “Carmina Burana” (Songs, secular and profane). It is one of those works that has been subject to “borrowing” from the mass media and its main theme will be extremely well known. However, the whole work does repay some study and is well worth a listen.
It has a curious history with shades of dissolute monks, lusty wenches, inns filled with peasant fare and mugs overflowing with wine. For many years its words were not translated from the original language because of their lewd nature. It has acquired shadows from the most sinister forces of the last century. It is now a prized part of the orchestral repertoire. There is also a stage performance (part theatre, part ballet) – which is being revived in the UK later this year.
Give this one a try. Be patient. I think you will come to like it.
WHO WAS CARL ORFF?
Born in Munich in 1895, Carl Orff was late in developing his own musical style. Although he had composed many minor pieces – even before he had any formal training – it was not until he was thirty that he started to attract any attention. He was appointed as conductor to the Munich Bach Society in 1931.
There are many rumours that Orff was a Nazi or at least a Nazi sympathiser. This is a stigma which still attaches to him. Given the date and place of his writings this is not surprising. However Orff, (unlike Herbert von Karajan or Elisabeth Schwarzkopf) never belonged to the Nazi Party. He was one of only twelve composers to receive a full military exemption from Goebbels's propaganda ministry. It is possible that his cantatas can be considered the only remaining music of the Third Reich.
His cantata “Carmina Burana” took many years of experimentation before it received its premiere in Frankfurt in 1937. He took the poems – often in their original language - and converted them into a choral work, a piece of theatrical spectacular. He used a remarkable admixture of classical, romantic, church and plainsong and rumbustuous peasant musical themes. His own description “Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicus” translates into secular songs for soloists and choruses accompanied by instruments and magic images.
The form of “Carmina Burana” is cyclical. The overpowering imagery is of the Fates, the Wheel of Fortune – ever changing, bringing alternately good and bad luck; the concept that Man is a mere pawn held ransom to darker, higher powers. It starts and ends with an invocation to the Goddess of Luck. In between there are three sections loosely describing Man’s encounters with Nature and the awakening of Spring; Man’s encounters with the pleasures of Drink and Drunkenness and Man’s encounters with the pleasures of Love and Lust.
WHERE DID “CARMINA BURANA” COME FROM?
The name “Carmina Burana” means “Songs from Benedict-Beuern”. A series of scrolls of over 200 medieval poems and songs were discovered in the library of the Abbey of Benediktbeurern in Upper Bavaria in the early nineteenth century. To understand where these came from requires a little insight into life in middle Europe in the thirteenth century. Myth, superstition and the Church pervaded every aspect of activity. It appears that many monks and scholars were rebels or drop-outs from the ecclesiastical establishment. They were nomadic, great lechers, drank hard and lived in poverty. The peasants that they moved amongst were earthy individuals, hard working, hard living, delighting in basic and carnal pleasures and always at the mercy of Nature.
The accepted origin is that these poems were written to account for their activities and to earn themselves money for bread and beer. The poems were written in a mixture of languages – high and church Latin, low Latin and dialectic French and German.
CARMINA BURANA
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi
The opening tirade of this work (Fortune, Empress of the World) is so well known that few can have failed to hear it in one guise or another: whether as the incidental music to the “Old Spice” adverts, the background music to the film “Excalibur”, the incidental music to one of Michael Jackson’s tours. Few can have failed to responded to the mighty power of an orchestra and choir in full throat.
Sequences dominated by Marshall drums, crashing cymbals, braying brass and strident voices vie with quieter restrained sinister and rapid paced refrains alternately offer praises to the Goddess of the World and despair over Man’s condition in the word.
“O Fortuna, velut luna, statu variabilis simper crescis aut descrescis” (O luck! Like the moon changeable in state, you are always waxing and waning, hateful life”
Primo Vere
The first part of the cantata is “Spring”.
This starts with a series of quiet understated songs which represent the world welcoming the returning Springtime and Man (represented by a solo baritone) singing a simple melody to the sun. Orff used a whole range of keyboard instruments (including celeste and glockenspiel) and percussion here and restrained the voices to a small chorus with plainsong accompaniment. The section finishes with a grand chorus glorying in the transformation of Spring into Summer and in the fertility and fruits of the earth, animals and man.
Next comes “The Dance” – an instrumental piece featuring a jolly rustic peasant dance with contrapunctal rhythms and discordant themes.
The final section features songs of a more “personal attraction” nature. First we hear from a girl whose lover has walked out on her; then a girl planning her strategy “to get her man”; finally there is a Round Dance which leads to the consummation of the affair.
“Shopkeeper give me the colour to redden my cheeks so that I may catch young men, thanks to you, for love making. Look at me, young men, let me please you”.
“Swaz hie gat umbe daz sint alles megede, die wellent an man allen disen summer gan!” (“Here are the virgins dancing in a circle; they’d like not to be before summer is over!”)
In Taberna
“In the Tavern” tells of the joys of drink and drunkenness.
The tavern life is vividly pictured (like a Breugel painting) by a series of representative images. A drunken Abbot reminisces of his life and is laughed at by his colleagues; an inebriate recounts his slow path to dissolution; a roasted swan (they were eaten in those days!) sings a tragic lament – usually a tenor singing high falsetto.
The section finishes with a “patter song” - a salute to drink, gambling and pleasure in which they toast all manner of people. “Once for the buyer of the wine free men drink out of it, twice they drink for those in jail, after that three times for the living, four times for all Christians, five times for those who dies in the Faith, six times for the weak sisters ….”
Cour D’Amours
The scene now moves to the Court of Love. This encompasses all manner of loves and lusts, innocence and passion. The sentiments of the songs are swapped between soprano and boys choir; baritone and full choir – often in canon form.
At times it seems strange to hear young voices singing some of the words.
“Love flies everywhere he is seized with desire. Young men, young girls, rightly couple together”. “The girl without a lover does without any pleasure; she keeps the last watches of the night alone.”
There next comes the second most well known aria from the work “In trutina mentis dubia”. Many sopranos (Sarah Brightman, Charlotte Church, Barbra Streisand) have included this in their repertories. It is a song agonising over the choice between love and chastity.
“Opposite courses hang in the balance of my wavering mind. Wanton love and chastity. But I choose what I see and bend my neck to the yoke – to the sweet yoke I submit”
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi
The piece is rounded off with a triumphal full orchestral and chorus recapitulation of the wheel of Fortune motif. We hear at the end the desperate pleas “Fortune’s wheel turns: I am cut down and fall: another is raised to the heights: the king sits at its peak.”
THE PERFORMANCES
I had available three sources for comparison.
My featured CD is from the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti with the Philharmonia Chorus and the Southend Boys Choir. The soloists are Arleen Auger (soprano), Janathan Summers (tenor) and John van Kesteren (baritone)
The orchestrations, soloists and choruses are superb. This is a fine rendering of the work and wholly recommended.
It is on the EMI LABEL – CDC 7 47100 – 2 . It is currently listed as unavailable on Amazon (UK) but Amazon (US) have it available at $6.50. Their web site also features playable excepts of the first five tracks. (Web address: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001ZSXC/qid=1053107624/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-2877221-0633462)
My second CD is a very interesting “rock” version of “Carmina Burana”. It has been arranged for a small ensemble by Ray Manzarek (previously keyboard player for “The Doors”) and Phillip Glass a contemporary American composer.
Many of the instrumental sections are longer than the official version but the sound is “cut down” in comparison to the orchestral work. Some liberties are also taken with the order of the songs within the piece as a whole. However it does give a good example pf how classical rhythms and motifs can reverberate in a rock environment.
So often when this type of collaboration is attempted, one idiom will win out over the other. In this case, it is the classical emphasis.
Maybe I shall do a full review of this CD someday.
The third offering is a video performance. Amazon notes that its release on DVD is imminent. My copy is on laserdisc.
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Seiji Ozawa. The soloists are Kathleen Battle, Frank Lopardo and Thomas Allen. The backing is given by the Shin-Yu Kai chorus. It was recorded in December 1989.
This again is another very fine performance. The initial appearance of a Japanese chorus singing Latin plainsong comes as something of a shock. This is short lived however. I suppose though if the Czechs can brew Japanese beer …..
POSTSCRIPT: Translation of the opening quotation: “If a boy with a girl tarries in a little room happy their mating. As love rises and from between them both weariness is driven away, an indescribable playfulness begins in their limbs, their arms their lips.”
Don’t blame me – I didn’t write it. It’s classical!!!
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