|
Carl Orff
|
Carmina Burana - Carl Orff (1895-1982)
“In all my work, my final concern is not with musical but with spiritual expression.”
- Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a composer who saw all of his work in the context of theater, even before he wrote Carmina Burana, a piece he subtitled “Secular songs for soloists and chorus with accompanying instruments and magical pictures.” His early career was focused in opera production and choreography, including adaptations of Monteverdi operas. The pre-Carmina compositions show his interest in the elemental relationship of rhythm and movement, as does the Orff-Schulwerk, a participatory method of music instruction for children that continues to be widely used.
Orff’s sense of the theatric, and his desire to create a music that appealed to the spirit rather than the intellect, was stimulated by his acquisition of a book containing the text of a 13th-century manuscript found at the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuren. These Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuren), as they were called, included satires of the church, attacks on moral standards, and songs in praise of sensual pleasures. Most of the poems are in medieval Latin and are of unknown authorship, but the erudition of the texts show that the authors were well versed in politics, church practices, and the poetry of Ancient Rome. In spite of the frankness of the poetry, these goliards – defrocked clerics and dropout students – were not vulgar, hedonistic men. Paul Henry Lang describes them as "the left-wing intelligentsia of the age, who loved to debate all issues with polished and impudent sarcasm. They did celebrate wine, women and song, but as poets, not rowdies. Their love poetry is genuine and delectable. Their drinking songs, however robust, are polished little medieval cameos; the ex-clerics knew their classical ancestors."
Orff was struck by the vivid expressiveness of the poems and immediately began working with them, selecting and arranging texts into a dramatic narrative beginning with songs in praise of spring (Uf Dem Anger), scenes in the tavern (In Taberna), and songs of love and pleasure (Cour d’Amours). Framing the narrative is the first poem found in the manuscript – O Fortuna – humanity’s helplessness at hands of fate.
Shortly before the 1937 first performance Orff told his publisher to destroy all his previous work, and his subsequent works are based on the spiritual goals and musical techniques that Orff fully realized for the first time in Carmina Burana. Originally conceived for the stage, it is now more frequently performed in concert, much like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, another piece that draws on a sense of primitivism and emphasis on rhythm to achieve its effects. But while Stravinsky’s goal was to evoke a time of paganism and hedonistic ritual, Orff wanted to create music that avoided evoking any particular historical era or would seem to have developed from any particular musical style. In a recent New York Times article, Ann Powers notes that Orff "sought to attain a timelessness, and fabricated his own medieval chimera to that end. Although it sounds very little like medieval music, Carmina Burana transports audiences to a dream of the past."
Technically, Carmina Burana is full of simple, straightforward devices. Multi-versed songs are set strophically, each stanza having the same music. Melodies are tonal and often reminiscent of plainchant; repetition takes the place of development. Substantial performing forces are required: a large chorus with children, three soloists, and an orchestra that includes triple winds, a large percussion section and piano. But Orff does not exploit the tone color possibilities that such an ensemble would afford. Instead, individual instrumental colors are de-emphasized in favor of the use of instrumental choirs; Lang wrote "Orff does not use a palette but takes the colors raw from the tubes."
Yet, despite all this simplicity, or perhaps because of it, Carmina Burana remains powerful and effective, remarkable for its immediacy and sense of timelessness. It is a work that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
Program Notes © 2008 by Alan M. Rothenberg
|
