20060524 KDDC 1937 Carl Orff Carmina Burana Boudreaux
Program Notes by Margaret Boudreaux
http://www.masterworksofcc.org/
Carmina Burana (1937)
Carl Orff (1895-1982)
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Carmina Burana premiered in 1937, between the two world wars and on the rising wave of horrors that defined the 20th century. Orff subtitled the work “Cantiones profanae” (secular cantata), placing it in the realm of worldly life, bewildered by fortune’s whims, yet searching for love and beauty.
Orff used a medieval text found in the monastery of Benediktbeuern in 1803 and attributed to wandering students and goliards (for the most part, defrocked priests).
The text is German and Latin reflecting both the homeland and the education of the writers. The Latin texts parallel sacred texts the writers would have known, but with secular twists reflecting their disillusionment with a world they had ceased trying to understand.
The German texts depict love and springtime, parallel to the troubadour songs of nearby France. The music contains driving rhythms and jarring dissonances that then abruptly melt into beautiful harmonies and calming melodies.
Tonight’s performance interprets those mood swings with dance, a full battery of percussion, two pianos and both adult and children’s choruses. The percussion and pianos bring the timbres originally envisioned by Orff, best known for his percussion methods for teaching children music.
The dance illustrates the search for love, complete with despairing frustration, and finally optimism in the cycle of love and spring’s return. The mix of adult and children’s voices encompass life itself, from the very early to the later stages of our human drama.
Carmina Burana is in three main sections: Spring, In the Tavern and The Court of Love. Two identical “bookends,” the famous “O Fortuna” choruses, frame those three sections.
These address “Fortune” as a deity that arbitrarily rolls the dice of fate. The meaning of those texts is strangely in the shape of a reverse arch.
The first section depicts springtime with beauty, youth, and the promise of love.
The middle section depicts the emptiness and despair found in those who try to drunkenly drown away their perplexing existence.
The music of that section ranges from the hopeless cynicism and abandonment in the baritone solo that opens the section, “Estuans interius” (burning inside), to the bizarre satirical song of the roasted swan, once beautiful and white swimming gracefully on a lake, and now roasted for the feast, to the raucous “In Taberna,” humorously exposing the total mindlessness of the drinking crowd.
The beauty of love’s promise, ever present in the human heart evaporates the darkness of the tavern. The optimistic nature of the final section is underscored with the use of children’s voices reminding us of hope in the future however bleak the moment may appear.
Ultimately love triumphs in the spectacular soprano solo “Dulcissima,” at which point the chorus returns with the opening chorus reminding us of each day’s unpredictability.
Though Orff lived through one of the most terrifyingly challenging eras in history, the message he chose to portray in Carmina Burana is not new.
Consider this biblical passage: “There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this is also vanity. So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 8:14–15).
Mozart’s contemporary, Voltaire, expressed a similar sentiment at the end of his scathing satire, Candide. After his futile quest for the “best of all possible worlds,” he reminds us that ultimately “we must cultivate our garden.”
The question then remains to each individual—what to do? Give in to despair . . . or . . . find a path to hope, meaning and love for others even in the brutal face of evil and darkness.
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—Margaret Boudreaux
