Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is one of the most popular modern choral works. It owes its popularity, or at least its familiarity, to a memorable 1970s/1980s advert for Old Spice aftershave, featuring a surfer riding the waves to Orff’s dramatic music.
But what is Carmina Burana actually about? Ride the waves with us as we delve into the work's origins and meaning.
Who wrote Carmina Burana?
Carmina Burana was written by the German composer Carl Orff (1895-1982). Orff was both a composer and a music educator. Although he is best known for Carmina Burana, he also produced the Schulwerk, a developmental approach for children's music education.
Orff composed Carmina Burana during 1935 and 1936. The work received its premiere 8 June 1937, at the Oper Frankfurt on 8 June 1937. It is part of Trionfi, a musical triptych that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite.
Carmina Burana is divided into five sections, and 25 movements across those five sections. The first section of the work is titled 'Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi' ('Fortune, Empress of the World'). It begins with the celebrated movement 'O Fortuna', which featured in the Old Spice advert.
Where does 'O Fortuna' come from?
‘I’ve amused myself making a list of composers who became famous for the least amount of music,’ wrote pianist Marc-André Hamelin on Twitter. ‘So far my winners are Orff (about three minutes, and y’all know which)…’ One could, of course, respond that Orff also wrote the widely familiar ‘Gassenhauer’ from Schulwerk.
However, for all the millions that might recognise this cheery xylophone and timpani piece from the films Badlands, True Romance and countless TV programmes, few know what it is called, let alone who wrote it. Perhaps Hamelin has a point?
The ‘three minutes’ he is referring to is the shattering ‘O Fortuna’ chorus that appears at the start and end of Carmina Burana. Whether you picture its belted-out chords and pounded timpani accompanying an intrepid surfer in an Old Spice advert or Simon Cowell and co striding onto the X Factor stage may well depend on your age.
Others may recognise it from Enigma’s 1999 song ‘Gravity of Love’, though those associating it with The Omen are victims of popular misconception – it never in fact appears in the 1976 thriller’s score.
What is Carmina Burana actually about?
Orff's cantata is based on 24 poems from the medieval collection of the same name, Carmina Burana. Its full Latin title is Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis, which translates as 'Songs of Beuren: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images'.
But what is the action of the cantata actually about?
Well, that name refers to a collection of 13th-century songs and poems found, in 1803, in the southern German town of Beuren. The collection, believed to have come originally from Seckau Abbey in Austria, features more than 1,000 songs and poems in Latin, German and medieval French.
These songs were composed by the Goliards, a band of poet-musicians who liked toast life's earthier pleasures - drinking, nature, lust - in song.
The so-called Songs of Beuren were first published in Germany in 1847. Orff first got to know them in 1934 via an English translation, published in a collection called Wine, Women and Song. The composer chose 24 songs from the cycle, and set them to music - what he called a 'scenic cantata'.
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Orff's Carmina Burana is divided into three sections called Springtime, In the Tavern and The Court Of Love. These three sections are bookended by an invocation to Fortune ('O Fortuna'). Written between 1935 and 1936 for soloists, choruses and orchestra, it was originally conceived as a choreographed stage work.
Here is 'In taberna quando sumus' ('When we are in the tavern') from In the Tavern:
Taking the sections one by one, 'Primo vere’ (Springtime) goes through the traditional vernal routine of saying farewell to winter and welcoming birds, bees, flowers and all before taking us onto the lawn (‘Uf dem anger’) where our thoughts are directed towards what young people like to get up to as the warmer weather arrives, a theme explored in lascivious detail in the third and final part, ‘Cour d’amours’ (The Court of Love).
In between, ‘In Taberna’ (In The Tavern) begins with the solo baritone’s folk-inspired ‘Estuans interius’ before we are presented with the aria ‘Olim lacus colueram’, in which a swan who is being roasted on a spit reflects how it once swam gracefully on a lake – sung either by a very high tenor, often switching in and out of falsetto, or by a countertenor, it’s intentionally gruesome, full of squawks and hoots.
Presumably, the swan is on the menu of the Abbott who, introducing himself in the baritone’s chant-like ‘Ego sum abbas’, explains that he enjoys the company of drunkards and gamblers. ‘In taberna quando sumus’, a drinking chorus par excellence, follows.
Why is Carmina Burana so popular?
The rest of Carmina Burana’s hour-or-so of music for soloists, choir, children’s choirs and orchestra may not share the same level of familiarity as ‘O Fortuna’, but has nonetheless proved enduringly popular since its hugely successful first performance as a choreographed stagework at the Oper Frankfurt on 8 June 1937.
Orff himself knew he’d hit the jackpot, writing to his publisher Schott soon afterwards that ‘Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.’
That said, one wonders if, among the applause and cheers, there were also a few scratched heads at that Frankfurt premiere, as Carmina Burana is an idiosyncratic piece to say the least.
Quirky solos and a large performing forces aside, there is surprisingly little for a conductor to work with in Carmina Burana. Forget intricate polyphony, for a start. Much of the music consists simply of a single vocal line plus orchestral accompaniment, and even when the chorus does sing in harmony, the various voices often double up – even in those grand opening ‘O Fortuna’ chords, the second sopranos and tenors sing the same line, as do the altos and basses.
Orff can be ruthless with his singers, pushing both soloists and chorus members to the very tops of their range. Having being required to scale a top C (two above middle C) in the closing bars of ‘Primo vere’, the sopranos are probably glad of the break as the male singers alone head into the pub for the entirety of ‘In taberna’.
Though there are more restrained moments – the baritone’s seasonal ‘Omnia sol temperat’ solo and the soprano’s deliberations between love and chastity in ‘In Trutina’, for instance – subtlety is not something one immediately associates with Carmina Burana. For that reason, plus the unavoidable fact that it enjoyed cult popularity in Nazi Germany, it has as many detractors as it does devotees.
Which advert used Carmina Burana?
Carmina Burana featured in an Old Spice advert on Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.
What is the music from the Old Spice advert?
Specifically, the Old Spice surfing advert used music from Carmina Burana's first movement, 'O Fortuna'.
Where else has Carmina Burana been used?
Music from Carmina Burana has been used in the movies Excalibur by John Boorman, and Oliver Stone's The Doors.
It also featured, hilariously and somewhat parodically, in this advert for Carlton Draught beer.
'O Fortuna' from Carmina Burana lyrics
O Fortuna
Velut luna
Statu variabilis
Semper crescis
Aut decrescis;
Vita detestabilis
Nunc obdurat
Et tunc curat
Ludo mentis aciem,
Egestatem,
Potestatem
Dissolvit ut glaciem.
Sors immanis
Et inanis,
Rota tu volubilis
Status malus,
Vana salus
Semper dissolubilis,
Obumbrata
Et velata
Michi quoque niteris;
Nunc per ludum
Dorsum nudum
Fero tui sceleris.
Sors salutis
Et virtutis
Michi nunc contraria,
est affectus
et defectus
semper in angaria.
Hac in hora
Sine mora
Corde pulsum tangite;
Quod per sortem
Sternit fortem,
Mecum omnes plangite!
O Fortuna from Carmina Burana lyrics meaning
O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing,
ever waning,
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice
fate – monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy
fate is against me
in health
and virtue,
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
so at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!
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