Orff - Carmina Burana | Konwitschny, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (Memories, 1951)

Описание: Composed in 1936, three years after Hitler assumed power, Orff viewed Carmina Burana as a compositional rebirth, writing to his publishers, “Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.” He discovered the texts of the Codex Buranus while browsing a used bookstore and was drawn to its poems of lust and eroticism, drinking and gambling, decadent depictions of spring, and irreverent descriptions of church leaders, as well as traditional medieval sacred mystery plays. Rediscovered in a Benedictine monastery in Bavaria, the codex is a collection of Goliards writings from the 11th–13th centuries.

Goliards were young clerics during the Middle Ages, many living a monastic life, whose writings satirized the Church. Primogeniture was the legal right of the firstborn male to inherit his father’s estate and titles. Second and third-born sons of aristocratic classes were frequently sent into religious life to train as scholars and clergy to secure their financial future. These men, who often did not seek this lifestyle, comprised the Goliards who traditionally lived as un-vowed clerics in Catholic monasteries, using ribald poetry as an outlet for their disaffection. Some chose the itinerant lifestyle of the traveling minstrel who sought the pleasures of life while wandering across what is now England, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy.

Composed as a dramatic scenic cantata for chorus, children’s choir, soloists, and orchestra, Carmina Burana unfolds in three acts.5 The identical opening and closing movements bemoan the miseries dealt by the Rota Fortuna. The Wheel of Fate belonged to the goddess Fortuna who arbitrarily spun it to create immoderate suffering or blissful ecstasy for her subjects. It is only fitting that Orff titles this opening prelude Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Empress of the World). The mercurial Wheel grinds mercilessly at the conclusion of O Fortuna! and movements throughout the cantata, characterized by driving and repetitive orchestral melodic fragments.

The movements within the first scene, Primo Vere (In Spring), portray the decadence of spring. Invoking the Roman gods of Springtide, Primo Vere begins with intimate chant-like melodies in Vera leta facies (The joyous face of Spring) and baritone solo Omnia sol temerat (All Things are warmed by the Sun) only to erupt in ecstatic rejoicing upon the arrival of April’s blossoms in Ecce gratum (Behold the pleasant spring). Orchestral folk dances accompany texts of young men and women chasing each other in carnal love (Tanz and Reie). The final movement of Primo Vere, Were diu werlt alle min (If all the world were mine) is a bawdy mockery of English royalty, “If all the world were mine from the sea to the Rhine, I would do without it if the Queen of England would lie in my arms. Hey!” Orff only delves deeper into the crude humor and debaucherous poetry of the Goliards and Codex Buranus in the second scene of Carmina Burana.

The drama of In Taberna within scene two unfolds within a rowdy tavern full of drunken men carousing. The Rota Fortuna apportions agony in Estuans interius as the baritone tells of his anger, burning, and wretchedness. He invites other aggrieved compatriots to join him in vice, “I am eager for the pleasures of the flesh more than for salvation, my soul is dead, so I shall look after the flesh.” A drunken tenor in the tavern compares his suffering to a swan roasted alive on a rotating spit in Olim lacus colueram (Once I lived on lakes) only to have his brethren cajolers ridicule his misery, “Miser, miser! modo niger et ustus fortiter!” (Misery, misery, now black and roasting fiercely). A third reveler declares himself the Abbot of Cockaigne and pronounces that anyone who seeks him will be stripped naked and turned away.

The final movement, In taberna quando sumus (When we are in the tavern), begins as a militaristic recounting of the immoral acts of the inebriated crowd: gambling, fornication, and crapulence with no fear of death. The march transforms into a comedic ‘kickline’ where the intemperate merrymakers list those who join their mischief. Included are mistress, master, priest, pauper, men, women, white, black, the pope, old ladies, mothers, children, merchants, Christians, the smart, and the lazy.

The final scene of Carmina Burana, titled Cour d’amours (The Court of Love) invokes the gods of love and sensuality, Cupid and Venus, to depict divine and licentious passion. Amor volat undique (Cupid Flies Everywhere), sung by the soprano soloist, laments that women without a lover miss the pleasures of life, while Dies, nox et omnia (Day Night and Everything is Against me) recounts the misfortune of a man with unrequited love. The promiscuous and concupiscent thoughts of men pining to deflower virgins and the women who delight in the chase are depicted in Circa mea pectora (In My Heart).