Orff: Carmina Burana

We Say...

Review by John Schaefer

Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” according to the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin, is an awful, perhaps even evil work. He likens it to an empty vessel that we can fill with whatever base emotions and desires we feel. Well, duh! Of course it plays to our base thoughts and feelings. THAT’S WHY WE LIKE IT! Orff was inspired by the original collection of medieval songs known as the Carmina Burana (the “songs of Burana,” referring to the Benediktbeuren monastery in Germany) — in which the monks wrote or collected poems and songs about God and nature, and spring, and a young man’s fancy turning to… well, you know.

Bawdy, lusty and as hard-rockin’ a piece of music as you’ll hear from the 1930s, Orff’s masterpiece begins with “O Fortuna” (“Fortune, Empress of the World”), which has been used in countless movies, TV commercials and film trailers. You know it, even if you know nothing about classical music. So go ahead and download track 1 — but don’t stop there. The really good stuff follows. “Springtime” alternates willowy, pastoral melodies with bruising peasant stomps. “In The Tavern” sports a seriously beautiful melody (“Olim lacus colueram”), in which a swan sings as it dies — just like in the legend, except this swan is roasting on a spit. And “The Court of Love” brings it all back home, returning at the end to a reprise of that famous, infamous opening piece.

Robert Shaw was the Jimi Hendrix of American choral music — he changed everything, and in Atlanta he led a top-flight orchestra that was completely overshadowed by its own chorus. There are many Carmina Buranas out there, but few that sound this good.