From '' Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo ''
Label: Vanguard -- VSD-7 9119
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Country: US
Released: 1963
Tracklist
A Blend
B1 Carmina Burana Fantasy
Written-By -- Carl Orff
B2 Non Nobis Domine
Written-By -- William Byrd
B3 Little Maggie
B4 Gospel Tune
Banjo, Guitar, Written-By -- Sandy Bull
Drums -- Billy Higgins
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Carmina Burana is a scenic cantata composed by Carl Orff in 1935 and 1936, based on 24 poems from the medieval collection Carmina Burana.
Its full Latin title is Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanæ cantoribus et choris cantandæ comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis (Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magic images).
Carmina Burana is part of Trionfi, a musical triptych that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite.
The first and last movements of the piece are called \"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi\" (Fortune, Empress of the World) and start with the very well known \"O Fortuna\".
Text
In 1934, Orff encountered the text in the 1847 edition of the Carmina Burana by Johann Andreas Schmeller, the original text dating mostly from the 11th or 12th century, including some from the 13th century.
Michel Hofmann (de), then a young law student and Latin and Greek enthusiast, assisted Orff in the selection and organization of 24 of these poems into a libretto, mostly in Latin verse, with a small amount of Middle High German and Old Provençal.
The selection covers a wide range of topics, as familiar in the 13th century as they are in the 21st century: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust.
Reception
Carmina Burana was first staged in Frankfurt by the Frankfurt Opera on 8 June 1937 under conductor Bertil Wetzelsberger (1892--1967) with the Cäcilien-Chor Frankfurt (de), staging by Oskar Wälterlin (de) and sets and costumes by Ludwig Sievert. Shortly after the greatly successful premiere, Orff said the following to his publisher, Schott Music: \"Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.\"
Several performances were repeated elsewhere in Germany.
The Nazi regime was at first nervous about the erotic tone of some of the poems, but eventually embraced the piece.
It became the most famous piece of music composed in Germany at the time.
The popularity of the work continued to rise after the war, and by the 1960s Carmina Burana was well established as part of the international classic repertoire.
Alex Ross wrote that \"the music itself commits no sins simply by being and remaining popular. That Carmina Burana has appeared in hundreds of films and television commercials is proof that it contains no diabolical message, indeed that it contains no message whatsoever.\"
The desire Orff expressed to his publisher has by and large been fulfilled: No other composition of his approaches its renown, as evidenced in both pop culture's appropriation of \"O Fortuna\" and the classical world's persistent programming and recording of the work.
In the United States, Carmina Burana represents one of the few box office certainties in 20th-century repertoire.
