Wohl schön bewandt war es

ABOUT THE PROGRAM SONGS OF LOVE, FATE AND FORTUNE

The original production was substantial, with two SATB choirs, boys’ choir, soloists, and a large orchestra including a diverse range of percussion instruments. It is now most commonly performed as a typical cantata, with neither set nor staging, and several accessible versions have been created for limited instrumentation and smaller ensembles, such as the 1956 version meticulously arranged by Orff’s student, Wilhelm Killmayer (performed today). Orff selected the text for his cantata from the eponymous manuscript from the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, which was discovered in a Bavarian monastery in 1803. Filled with satire, eroticism, and vice, the 254 poems in the original manuscript are not what one might expect from Middle Ages literature. Orff selected twenty-four of the original Carmina Burana poems, most of them in Latin but featuring Middle High German (mostly in movements 6–10, “Uf dem anger”), and even Old French (movement 16, “Dies, nox et omnia”). The bookended placement of the famous “O Fortuna” symbolizes the Wheel of Fortune, a common image found in hundreds of manuscripts from the later Middle Ages, including the original Carmina Burana. The image usually depicts the goddess Fortune spinning a wheel with various mortal circumstances attached, demonstrating the uncontrollable nature of fate. The address to Fortune at the beginning of the piece also relates to Orff’s interest in older musical styles, especially those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was during this time that operas often included prologues featuring deities, such as Fortune, Love, and Virtue, with a vested interest in the main drama. In the case of Carmina Burana, Fortune’s temperamentality is central to the cantata’s mortal musings. With its evocative melodies and largely syllabic text setting, Carmina Burana’s music, while considered modern in its time, demonstrates aspects of various styles ranging from Gregorian chant (e.g. the phrasing and modal nature of the movement “Veris leta facies”) to German folk song (e.g. the dance-like rhythms throughout the section “Uf dem anger”). It is interesting to note that several dozen poems in the Carmina Burana manuscript were accompanied by an early form of musical notation, but there is no evidence that Orff used this as inspiration for his own settings. However, Orff succeeds in capturing the timelessness and urgency of these centuries-old texts for contemporary audiences in his eclectic masterwork.