K. Orff “Carmina Burana”: history, video, interesting facts, listen

Even Venus is subject to the almighty Fortune, because the shares of people and gods depend on her. That’s why “Carmina Burana” begins and ends with a hymn to Fortune.

Carmina Burana, from Latin "Songs from Beuern" (abbreviated: Benediktbeuern) is the name given to a manuscript consisting of 254 poems and dramatic texts from the 11th or 12th century, although some of them date back to the 13th century.

The texts are almost entirely written in Medieval Latin; some in Middle High German, some with Old French or Provençal. Many are written using several languages: Latin, German or French, often colloquial.

The songs were written by students and confessors when the Latin dialect was the lingua franca of Italy and eastern Europe among itinerant disciples, students and theologians. Many of the poems and songs were apparently the work of goliards (vagantes), confessors (mostly students) who ridiculed the church. The collection of texts contains the works of several poets of the time, including the French poet and diplomat Peter of Blois, the French writer Walter of Chatillon, and an unnamed poet known to history as Archipite.

The collection was found in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery of Beuern (Bavaria), and is now kept in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Along with Carmina Cantabrigiensia, Carmina Burana is the most important collection of goliard and vagabond songs. The manuscripts reflect the movement of European peoples; manuscript songs originate from Occitania, France, England, Scotland, Aragon, Castile and the Holy Roman Empire.

The Carmina Burana (abbreviated CB) is a manuscript written in 1230 by two different writers in early Gothic minuscule (medieval script) on 119 sheets of parchment. In the 14th century, separate sheets of varying sizes were inserted at the end of the manuscript. During the late Middle Ages, handwritten pages were bound into a small folder called the Codex Buranus. However, during the merging process, the texts were partially mixed, and some pages were apparently lost. The manuscript contains eight graphic miniatures: the wheel of fortune (actually an illustration for songs No. 14–18, but used by the bookbinder as a cover), an imaginary forest, lovers, scenes from the story of Dido and Aeneas, scenes of drinking beer and three scenes of gambling - dice, ludus duodecim scriptorum and chess.

The first studies of the manuscript indicate that the manuscript was written where it was found, that is, in the Benediktbeuern monastery. However, today there is controversy in the community of researchers of the Carmina Burana manuscript about the place of its appearance. It has been reliably determined that the text of the manuscript contains a Middle High German dialect, so the manuscript must come from the region of central Europe in which the Bavarian dialect of German is spoken and which includes parts of southern Germany, eastern Austria and northern Italy. However, Italian features can also be traced in the text, which indicates the southern origin of the manuscript. There are two possible places for its appearance - either in the town of Seckau in Styria, or near the Neustift monastery in South Tyrol.

In support of the first theory: Bishop Henry, who was head there from 1232 to 1232, is mentioned as head of the city of Maria-Saal in Carinthia in CB 6* on the added sheets (asterisk * marks songs from added pages), and it is possible that he contributed creation of Сarmina Burana; marchiones (inhabitants of Styria) are mentioned in CB 219.3 before Bavarians, Saxons or Austrians, probably indicating that Styria was the closest region to the authors of the manuscript; also, most of the church hymns were dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria (CB 12* and 19* – 22*), who was venerated in Seckau.

Proponents of another hypothesis claim that the birthplace of Carmina Burana is the Neustift monastery near Brixen in South Tyrol. Brixen is mentioned in CB 95, in addition, in CB 203a there is written the beginning of a story unique to the Tyrol and called the Eckenlied song about the mythical hero Dietrich of Berne (as the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great was called in the German epic).

It is less clear how Carmina Burana got to the Benediktbeuern monastery. The Germanist Fritz Peter Knapp suggests that if the manuscript was written in Neustift, then it could have arrived there in 1350 along with the Wittelsbach family, who were Vogts (governors) in both Tyrol and Bavaria.

For the most part, the works contained in the Carmina Burana manuscript collection can be divided into four groups according to their subject matter:

1. 55 songs about morality and ridicule (CB 1–55),
2. 131 love songs (CB 56–186),
3. 40 drinking and game songs (CB 187–226)
4. two long works of church theater (CB 227 and 228).

However, there are many exceptions to this principle of separation. Songs 122–134, which are classified as love songs, are not really love songs: their main themes are mourning for the dead and satire, and they also include two cautionary tales about the names of animals. There were probably other groups of ecclesiastical poems included in the Carmina Burana, but they have been lost. The attached sheets contain a set of 21 mostly ecclesiastical songs: a prose prayer to St. Erasmus and four even more ecclesiastical dramas, some of which are only partially preserved. These large thematic groups can also be divided into smaller subgroups, such as songs about the end of the world (CB 24–31), songs about the Crusades (CB 46–52) or reworkings of ancient writings (CB 97–102).

Other frequent themes include: criticism of simony (the sale and purchase of ecclesiastical offices or clergy in the Middle Ages) and the avarice of the church, which immediately became a serious problem with the advent of the money economy in the 12th century; mournful laments in the form of planctus, for example, about the vicissitudes of human fate or about death; a hymn-like celebration of the return of spring; shepherds about the seduction/kidnapping of shepherdesses by knights, students/priests; and a description of love as conscription, topoi known from the elegiac love poems of the ancient Roman poet Ovid. Ovid, and especially his love elegies, were reproduced, copied and exaggerated in the Carmina Burana. In other words, for those unfamiliar with the works of Ovid, the descriptions of sexual encounters in the manuscript will seem frank and even sometimes rude. For example, verse CB 76 uses a first-person narrative to describe a ten-hour love affair with the goddess of love, Venus (ternens eam lectulo/fere decem horis).

Carmina Burana - O Fortuna (Opera & Philharmonic Society - Ancient Theatre, Plovdiv, Bulgaria)

Carmina Burana contains numerous poetic descriptions of a bustling medieval paradise. In this world, the norms for the clergy were oversleeping, overeating, drinking rich wines and regularly playing dice.

Between 1935 and 1936, German composer Carl Orff set 24 poems to new music, creating a work called Carmina Burana. Its most notable part is "Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi (O Fortuna)". Orff's work has been performed by countless ensembles.

Carl Orff was born into an officer's family, where music playing was cultivated. Orff simultaneously showed his talent in music and literature, and studied at the Academy of Musical Arts in Munich. Orff is the creator of a unique system of musical education of children based on folklore (Carl Orff Music Institute in Salzburg), which has received recognition and distribution in almost all European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan. His stage cantatas, the triptych Carmina Burana (1937), Catulli Carmina (1943) and Prometheus, became famous.

Orff is the only one of a number of German composers who responded to the call of the Nazi authorities to compose new music for Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, instead of the banned composition by Felix Mendelssohn. True, Orff made attempts to write music for this play long before the establishment of the fascist regime, back in 1917 and 1927, and the work itself stretched from 1938 to 1962. A production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Orff's music for dramatic actors, chorus and orchestra, translated by A. Schlegel, was finally staged in 1964 in Stuttgart.

In 2005, the German medieval group Corvus Corax recorded the album Cantus Buranus, an entire opera series based on the text of the original Carmina Burana manuscript, releasing a disc entitled Cantus Buranus Werk II in 2008.

Corvus Corax is a musical group from Germany. The group has been playing in the medieval folk genre since 1989 and has recorded many studio albums, one live album and has repeatedly presented compositions on compilations, including taking part in the creation of the soundtrack for the game The Dungeon Keeper. They earned a very special reputation by recording music for all kinds of historical film adaptations.

By 1993 they had cult status as a group performing live medieval music, a ton of performances at festivals across Europe under their belt, and in 1994 they were invited to the Vienna Carnival. Musical instruments are made by one of the group members (from the materials from which they were made in the Middle Ages). In 1996, MCD Tanzwut was released, on which the musicians experimented with mixing medieval sounds and electronics. Satisfied with the result, they organized a side project in 1998, called the Tanzwut album of the same name, which continues the idea of ​​​​crossing medieval music with electronic music, as well as rock, but on the last Schattenreiter album at the moment, a bias towards industrial can be traced. Corvus Corax perform as a separate group and have currently recorded the album Cantus Buranus II (2008), on which the musicians perform medieval music along with a symphony orchestra and choir singing entirely in Latin. A similar experiment was conducted in Cantus Buranus (2005)

Corvus corax Fortuna (wacken 2008)

Cast: soprano, tenor, baritone, choir luminaries (2 tenors, baritone, 2 basses), large choir, chamber choir, boys choir, orchestra.

History of creation

In 1934, Orff accidentally became acquainted with a catalog of Würzburg antiques. In it he came across the title “Carmina Burana, Latin and German songs and poems from the Benedict-Bewern manuscript of the 13th century, published by I. A. Schmeller.” This untitled manuscript, compiled around 1300, was located in Munich, in the royal court library, the custodian of which was Johann Andreas Schmeller in the mid-19th century. He published it in 1847, giving it the Latin title Carmina Burana, meaning “Songs of Beuern,” after the site of its discovery in the early 19th century in a Benedictine monastery in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. The book was very popular and went through 4 editions in less than 60 years.

The title “riveted my attention with magical power,” Orff recalled. On the first page of the book there was a miniature depicting the wheel of Fortune, in the center of it was the goddess of luck, and at the edges were four human figures with Latin inscriptions. The man at the top with a scepter, crowned with a crown, means “I reign”; on the right, hurrying after the fallen crown, “reigned”; prostrate below - “I am without a kingdom”; on the left, climbing up, “I will reign.” And the first to be placed was a Latin poem about Fortune, changeable like the moon:

The wheel of fortune never tires of turning:
I will be cast down from the heights, humiliated;
meanwhile the other one will rise, rise up,
still ascended to the heights by the same wheel.

Orff will immediately imagine a new work - stage, with a constant change of bright contrasting pictures, with a singing and dancing choir. And that same night he sketched the chorus “I mourn the wounds inflicted on me by Fortune,” which then became No. 2, and the next, Easter morning, he sketched another chorus - “Sweet, welcome spring” (No. 5). The composition of the music proceeded very quickly, taking only a few weeks, and by the beginning of June 1934, Carmina Burana was ready. The composer played it on the piano for his publishers, and they were delighted with the music. However, work on the score was completed only 2 years later, in August 1936.

Orff offered to perform the cantata at the Berlin Music Festival the following year, but withdrew his offer after learning of the "destroying verdict of the highest authorities." Perhaps among these authorities was the famous German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, whose statement was repeated everywhere: “If this is music, then I don’t know what music is!” But most likely it was the high ranks of the Nazi party, who kept finding new reasons to ban the cantata. Finally, the head of the opera house in Frankfurt am Main obtained permission, and on June 8, 1937, the premiere took place in stage design. The success was extraordinary, but Orff called the victory Pyrrhic, because 4 days later a commission of important Nazi officials, having visited the performance, declared the cantata an “undesirable work.” And for 3 years it was not staged in any other city in Germany.

The medieval collection Carmina Burana contains more than 250 texts. Their authors were famous poets and fugitive monks, students and scholars who wandered from city to city, from country to country (in Latin they were called vagantes) and wrote in various languages ​​- medieval Latin, ancient German, old French. Orff considered their use a means of “evoking the soul of the old worlds, the language of which was an expression of their spiritual content”; He was especially excited by the “captivating rhythm and picturesqueness of the verses, the melodious and unique brevity of the Latin.” The composer selected 24 texts of varying lengths - from one line to several stanzas, varying in genres and content. Spring round dances, songs about love - sublime, bashful and frankly sensual, drinking songs, satirical, philosophically free-thinking, make up a prologue entitled “Fortune - Mistress of the World” and 3 parts: “In Early Spring”, “In a Tavern”, “Court of Love” .

Music

“Carmina Burana” is Orff’s most popular composition, which he considered the beginning of his creative path: “Everything that I have written so far, and you, unfortunately, have published,” the composer told the publisher, “can be destroyed. My collected works begin with “Carmina Burana.” The author's definition of the genre (in Latin) is typical of Orff: secular songs for singers and choirs accompanied by instruments with stage performance.

The chorus of the prologue “O Fortuna” contains the musical grain of the entire cantata with the composer’s characteristic melody, harmony, texture - archaic and bewitching - and embodies the main idea - about the omnipotence of fate:

O Fortune,
Your face is lunar
Eternally changing:
Arrives
Descending
The day is not saved.
Then you're evil
That's good
Whimsical will;
And nobles,
And insignificant
You change the share.

The bright scene “In the Clearing” (No. 6-10), which concludes the 1st part, depicts the spring awakening of nature and love feelings; the music is permeated with the freshness of folk song and dance patterns. A sharp contrast is formed by No. 11, which opens the shortest 2nd part - the large baritone solo “Burning from within” to the text of a fragment of “Confession” by the famous vagant Archipitus of Cologne:

Let me die in the tavern,
but on my deathbed
over the school poet
have mercy, oh God!

This is a multifaceted parody: of a dying repentance (with turns of the medieval chant Dies irae - Day of Wrath, Last Judgment), of a heroic opera aria (with high notes and a marching rhythm). No. 12, tenor-altino solo with male choir “The Cry of the Roasted Swan” is another parody of funeral laments. No. 14, “When we are sitting in a tavern” - the culmination of revelry; the endless repetition of one or two notes is born of repetitions in the text (over the course of 16 bars, the Latin verb bibet is used 28 times):

The people, male and female, drink,
urban and rural,
fools and wise men drink
spendthrifts and misers drink,

The nun and the whore are drinking
a hundred year old woman drinks
a hundred-year-old grandfather drinks, -
in a word, drinks the whole wide world!

The 3rd part is exactly the opposite in mood, bright and enthusiastic. 2 soprano solos: No. 21, “On the unfaithful scales of my soul,” sounded entirely pianissimo, and No. 23, “My Beloved” - a free cadenza almost unaccompanied, with extremely high notes, broken by a double choir with soloists (No. 22) “Coming a pleasant time,” depicting ever-increasing love fun. A sharp contrast arises between the final chorus (No. 24) "Blanchefleur and Helen" - the culmination of mass rejoicing, and the tragic chorus No. 25 - the return of No. 1, "O Fortuna", forming an epilogue.

A. Koenigsberg

Carmina Burana (Carmina Burana), also known as Codex Buranus, Codex Buranus is an illuminated manuscript, which is a handwritten collection of poetry.

Currently located in Munich. The title of the manuscript is Latin for "Songs of Beuern" (the medieval monastery of Beuern, now in Benediktbeuern, Bavaria, where the manuscript was found in 1803).

This is the largest known collection of poetry by the vagantes, or goliards, medieval wandering poets. Compiled in Southern Germany in the 13th century, it contains 315 texts of varying length.

Collection composition:

Edifying and satirical songs (Carmina moralia et satirica)

Love songs (Carmina amatoria)

Drinking songs (Carmina potoria, lit. Songs while drinking; comic “Worship of the players”)

Theatrical paraliturgical performances (Ludi, lit. "games")

Supplements (Supplementum; songs in German; liturgical dramas, etc.)

The texts of another part (Carmina ecclesiastica, church songs) have not survived.

Carmina Burana - work by Carl Orff

Performers: soprano, tenor, baritone, choir luminaries (2 tenors, baritone, 2 basses), large choir, chamber choir, boys choir, orchestra.

History of creation

In 1934, Orff accidentally became acquainted with a catalog of Würzburg antiques. In it he came across the title “Carmina Burana, Latin and German songs and poems. This untitled manuscript, compiled around 1300, was located in Munich, in the royal court library, the custodian of which was Johann Andreas Schmeller in the mid-19th century.

The title “riveted my attention with magical power,” Orff recalled. On the first page of the book there was a miniature depicting the wheel of Fortune, in the center of it was the goddess of luck, and at the edges were four human figures with Latin inscriptions. The man at the top with a scepter, crowned with a crown, means “I reign”; on the right, hurrying after the fallen crown, “reigned”; prostrate below - “I am without a kingdom”; on the left, climbing up, “I will reign.” And the first to be placed was a Latin poem about Fortune, changeable like the moon:

The wheel of fortune never tires of turning:

I will be cast down from the heights, humiliated;

meanwhile the other one will rise, rise up,

still ascended to the heights by the same wheel.

Orff will imagine a new work - stage, with a constant change of bright contrasting pictures, with a singing and dancing choir. And that same night I made sketches of the chorus “I mourn the wounds inflicted on me by Fortune” (No. 2), and the next, Easter morning, I sketched another chorus - “Sweet, welcome spring” (No. 5). The composition of the music proceeded very quickly, taking only a few weeks, and by the beginning of June 1934, Carmina Burana was ready. The composer played it on the piano for his publishers, and they were delighted with the music. However, work on the score was completed only 2 years later, in August 1936.

Execution history

Orff offered to perform the cantata at the Berlin Music Festival the following year, but withdrew his offer after learning of the "destroying verdict of the highest authorities." Perhaps among these authorities was the famous German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, whose statement was repeated everywhere: “If this is music, then I don’t know what music is!” But most likely it was the high ranks of the Nazi party, who kept finding new reasons to ban the cantata.

Finally, the head of the opera house in Frankfurt am Main obtained permission, and on June 8, 1937, the premiere took place in stage design. The success was extraordinary, but Orff called the victory Pyrrhic, because 4 days later a commission of important Nazi officials, having visited the performance, declared the cantata an “undesirable work.” And for 3 years it was not staged in any city in Germany.

The medieval collection Carmina Burana contains more than 250 texts. Their authors were famous poets and fugitive monks, students and scholars who wandered from city to city, from country to country (in Latin they were called vagantes) and wrote in various languages ​​- medieval Latin, ancient German, old French.

Orff considered their use a means of “evoking the soul of the old worlds, the language of which was an expression of their spiritual content”; He was especially excited by the “captivating rhythm and picturesqueness of the verses, the melodious and unique brevity of the Latin.”

The composer selected 24 texts of varying lengths - from one line to several stanzas, varying in genres and content. Spring round dances, songs about love - sublime, bashful and frankly sensual, drinking songs, satirical, philosophically free-thinking, make up a prologue entitled “Fortune - Mistress of the World” and 3 parts: “In Early Spring”, “In a Tavern”, “Court of Love” .

"Carmina Burana"

“Carmina Burana” is Orff’s most popular composition, which he considered the beginning of his creative path: “Everything that I have written so far, and you, unfortunately, have published,” the composer told the publisher, “can be destroyed. My collected works begin with “Carmina Burana.” The author’s definition of the genre (in Latin) is typical of Orff: secular songs for singers and choir, accompanied by instruments, with performance on stage.

O Fortune,

Your face is lunar

Eternally changing:

Arrives

The day is not saved.

Then you're evil

That's good

Whimsical will;

And nobles,

And insignificant

You change the share.

The bright scene “In the Clearing” (No. 6-10), which concludes the 1st part, depicts the spring awakening of nature and love feelings; the music is permeated with the freshness of folk song and dance patterns. A sharp contrast is formed by No. 11, which opens the shortest 2nd part - the large baritone solo “Burning from within” to the text of a fragment of “Confession” by the famous vagant Archipitus of Cologne:

Let me die in the tavern,

but on my deathbed

over the school poet

have mercy, oh God!

This is a multifaceted parody: of a dying repentance (with turns of the medieval chant Dies irae - Day of Wrath, Last Judgment), of a heroic opera aria (with high notes and a marching rhythm).

No. 12, tenor-altino solo with male choir “The Cry of the Roasted Swan” is another parody of funeral laments.

No. 14, “When we are sitting in a tavern” - the culmination of revelry; the endless repetition of one or two notes is born of repetitions in the text (over the course of 16 bars, the Latin verb bibet is used 28 times):

The people, male and female, drink,

urban and rural,

fools and wise men drink

spendthrifts and misers drink,

The nun and the whore are drinking

a hundred year old woman drinks

a hundred-year-old grandfather drinks, -

in a word, drinks the whole wide world!

The 3rd part is exactly the opposite in mood, bright and enthusiastic. 2 soprano solos: No. 21, “On the unfaithful scales of my soul,” sounded entirely pianissimo, and No. 23, “My Beloved” - a free cadenza almost unaccompanied, with extremely high notes, broken by a double choir with soloists (No. 22) “Coming a pleasant time,” depicting ever-increasing love fun. A sharp contrast arises between the final chorus (No. 24) "Blanchefleur and Helen" - the culmination of mass rejoicing, and the tragic chorus No. 25 - the return of No. 1, "O Fortuna", forming an epilogue.

Folk and folk metal bands such as Corvus Corax, Saltatio Mortis, Djembe, Drolls, Wolfmare, In Extremo, Tanzwut, Therion, Folk Stone, Irdorath, Faun and many others wrote music based on Carmina Burana’s poems and created concept albums. The song "In taberna" has become one of the most popular among modern groups playing medieval folk music.

The popular song “On the French side...” (“Farewell to Swabia”) is a free translation of the Vagants’ song “Hospita in Gallia” from the collection Carmina Burana (author of the translation - Lev Ginzburg, music by David Tukhmanov).

1. Oh Fortune

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable
always creating
or destroying;
you disrupt the movement of life,
then you oppress

then you exalt
and the mind is not able to comprehend you;
that poverty
that power -
everything is unsteady, like ice.

Fate is monstrous
and empty
the wheel has been running since birth
adversity and illness,
prosperity is in vain
and it leads to nothing
fate is on the heels
secretly and vigilantly
behind everyone like a plague;
but without thinking
I turn my unprotected back
to your evil.

And in health,
and in business
fate is always against me,
amazing
and destroying
always waiting in the wings.
At this hour,
without letting me come to my senses,
terrible strings will ring;
entangled in them
and each one is compressed,
and everyone cries with me!

"Carmina Burana" is a unique, interesting and justifiably popular theatrical masterpiece. "Boyern Songs" (this is the translation of the words "Carmina Burana") are a monument to secular art of the Renaissance. Handwritten collection of interest y Carl Orff, was compiled in the 13th century, and found at the beginning of the 19th century in a Bavarian monastery. Basically, these are poems by wandering poets and musicians ov, the so-called vagants, goliards, minnesingers. The collection's topics are very diverse. Parody and satire coexist here ical, love, drinking songs. Of these, Orff chose 24 poetic texts, leaving them untouched mi Old German and Latin, and adapted them for a large modern orchestra, vocal soloists and choir.

Carl Orff (1895 - 1982) is an outstanding German composer who went down in history as a bold reformer of traditional genres. He saw the main task in creating new stage forms. Experiments and searches led him to modern dramatic theater, as well as to mystery plays, carnival performances, folk street theater, and Italian comedy of masks.

"Carmina Burana" was first performed in June 1937 in Frankfurt am Main, starting a triumphal procession throughout Europe. For many years it has remained one of the most popular works in the world repertoire. Most often, the work is presented to the viewer in a concert performance, or as a plotless ballet performed to a soundtrack.

Premiere of the ballet “Carmina Burana” in Kazan

In the evenings, the platform in front of the Opera and Ballet Theater. M. Jalil is full of people - the international ballet festival named after Rudolf Nureyev is taking place in the theater. The premiere, which began the ballet forum, turned out to be somewhat unusual - the public was offered a mystery play.

From the vagants

After the third bell, there was nowhere for an apple to fall in the hall - even the last tier was packed, from which the view of the stage was by no means ideal. There were also people standing behind those sitting on the tiers; this was the audience who got into the hall with entrance tickets without seats. The beginning of the festival plus the premiere - how can you miss this? Over the past three decades, the Kazan public has become accustomed to going to the theater.

The premiere was timed to coincide with the beginning of the festival: a ballet specially created for the Kazan theater to the music of Carl Orff, “Carmina Burana or the Wheel of Fortune.” It was staged by choreographer from St. Petersburg Alexander Polubentsev.

Carl Orff's symphonic cantata, written for choir, soloists and orchestra, became one of the most striking numbers of the gala concert of the Chaliapin Festival. This time Orff's musical text became the basis for the ballet.

« My performance is not a ballet in the usual sense of the word. This is a mystery, a stage action that combines music, words, vocals, and video sequences.”,” the director clarifies. He does not specifically write a libretto; his ideal is a reflective viewer capable of co-creation.

To write this symphonic cantataCarl Orff's featcase: in an antique shop in his native Munich, he came across a bibliographic rarity. Their songs became the text part of the cantata.

Songs- collection of vagants- completely different: funny, sad, philosophical, rough and sophisticated.

The vicissitudes of fate

The performance begins with the sound of rolling waves and the cries of seagulls, as if a window is opening slightly and a breeze seems to rush into the hall. But now the choral prologue “Oh, Fortune, Mistress of Fates” powerfully enters. Fortune, two-faced fate, the fate of a specific person and entire nations, strange turns of history - this is what became the basis of the performance.

Viewers will probably interpret each episode in their own way, and this is interesting. The wheel of Fortune spins, nothing is permanent - fate either lifts a person to transcendental heights, then throws him to the ground, then smiles at him again and begins to lift him up.

A bright, pastoral scene in which cute couples dance - cheerful and carefree. Girls throw wreaths into the river water, prosperity reigns in the world, it’s like eternal spring on earth. I just want to say: “The Holy Spring.” But gradually the picture of the world changes, sinful temptations creep out, and suddenly we see on stage a strange twitching creature in breeches and a high-crowned cap - a dictator. There is a terrible video sequence: the Fuhrer is going berserk, people are dying. This is how the wheel of Fortune turned for humanity one day.

Fortune (Alina Steinberg) has two faces. And it is unknown how she, so changeable, will turn towards us. But the Tempter (this vocal part is performed by baritone Yuri Ivshin) is balanced by angels (a touching children's choir), the Wanderer (Nurlan Kanetov) will not be afraid of the dictator (Maxim Potseluiko), and the bride (Kristina Andreeva) will find a groom.

Grief turns into joy, joy gives way to disappointment, there is no absolute happiness and absolute unhappiness, because the world is constantly changing, every second. And all these ups and downs are watched by a choir - a symbol of humanity.

ForPolubentsev-directorin this work the mystery is more important, it is a street performance, it is nicer and closer to realizing the idea than ballet.

The action is structured as if we were watching stills from a movie, and this video sequence (the set design in the play was done by Maria Smirnova-Nesvitskaya, the lighting master was Sergey Shevchenko) turned out almost perfect.

Text

Orff's work is based on twenty-four poems from a collection of medieval poetry called Carmina Burana. The name Carmina Burana means "Songs of Beuern" in Latin. This is due to the fact that the original manuscript of the collection (“Codex Buranus”) was found in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery of Beuern (lat. Buranum; now Benediktbeuern, Bavaria).

Carl Orff first encountered these texts in John Eddington Symond's 1884 publication Wine, Women and Song, which contained English translations of 46 poems from the collection. Michel Hoffmann, a law student and enthusiast of the study of Greek and Latin, assisted Orff in selecting the 24 poems and putting them into a libretto.

This libretto includes poems in both Latin and Middle High German. It covers a wide range of secular themes relevant both in the 13th century and in our time: the fickleness of luck and wealth, the transience of life, the joy of the return of spring and the pleasures of drunkenness, gluttony, gambling and carnal love.

Orchestration

Vocals

The vocal part is performed:

• soloists (soprano, tenor and baritone),
  • additional short solos: 3 tenors, baritone and 2 basses;
• mixed choir (first, or “big” choir);
• chamber choir (second, or “small” choir);
• children's choir or boys' choir.

Tools

• woodwind instruments:

Structure

Carmina Burana consists of five main movements, each containing several separate musical acts:

• Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi ("Fortune is the ruler of the world")
• Primo vere ("In early spring") - includes the interior scene Ûf dem Anger ("On the stage", "in the meadow" - possibly a quote from Walter von Vogelweide's gnomic song "Ûf dem anger stuont ein boum")
• In taberna ("In the tavern")
• Cours d’amour (“Love gossip”, “courts of love”, literally “Court of Love” - medieval pastimes of the nobility, special courts for resolving love disputes)
• Blanziflour et Helena (“Blancheflour and Helen”; Blancheflour is a character in a Spanish fairy tale, the daughter of a demon, according to another version, an elven queen, and maybe Blancheflour in a similar plot by Conrad Fleck, like Helen of Troy, abducted from her kingdom by her lover)

The compositional structure is largely based on the idea of ​​the rotation of the Wheel of Fortune. A drawing of a wheel was found on the first page of the Burana Codex. It also contained four phrases written on the rim of the wheel: Regnabo, Regno, Regnavi, Sum sine regno ("I will reign, I reign, I reigned, I am without a kingdom").

During each scene, and sometimes during one act, the Wheel of Fortune turns, happiness turns into sadness, and hope gives way to grief. O Fortuna, the first poem in Schmeller's edition, completes the circle, forming the core of the composition of the work.

Notable recordings

• 1968 - conductor Eugen Jochum; soloists: Gundula Janowitz, Gerhard Stolze, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; choir and orchestra of the Berlin State Opera (choirmaster - Walter Hagen-Grohl), Schöneberger boys' choir (chorusmaster - Gerald Helwig).
• 1969 - conductor Seiji Ozawa; soloists: Evelyn Mandak, Stanley Caulk, Sherrill Milnes; Boston Symphony Orchestra.
• 1973 - conductor Kurt Eichhorn; soloists: Lucia Popp, Jon van Kesteren, Herman Prey; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
• 1981 - conductor Robert Shaw; soloists: Håkan Hagegård, Judith Blegen, William Brown; Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
• 1989 - conductor Franz Welser-Möst; soloists: Barbara Hendricks, Michael Chance, Jeffrey Black; London Philharmonic Orchestra.
• 1995 - conductor Michel Plasson; soloists: Nathalie Dessay, Gérard Len, Thomas Hampson; Orchestra of the Capitol of the city of Toulouse.
• 1996 - conductor Ernst Hinreiner; soloists Gerda Hartmann, Richard Bruner, Rudolf Knoll; orchestra and choir of the Salzburg Mozarteum.
• 2005 - conductor Simon Rettle; soloists: Sally Matthews, Lawrence Brownlee, Christian Gerhacher; Berlin Radio Choir (German) Rundfunkchor Berlin ) and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Influence

Notes

Literature

• Michael Steinberg. Carl Orff: Carmina Burana // Choral Masterworks: A Listener’s Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 230-242.
• Jonathan Babcock. Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana: A Fresh Approach to the Work’s Performance Practice // Choral Journal 45, no. 11 (May 2006): 26-40.

Links

• Carmina Burana Web site about the cantata Carmina Burana
  • Carmina Burana in format