Carmina Burana – History From The Middle Ages To Today

Introduction

In this article, I would like to talk to you most practically and concisely possible about the work Carmina Burana, one of the most famous by Carl Orff (1895-1982). This orchestral masterpiece follows an ancient tradition: let’s take a step back and explore the origins of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.

The Carmina Burana In The Middle Ages

The title Carmina Burana refers to a collection of medieval traditions of the same name, dated between the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth. The medieval Carmina Burana were a collection of secular poetic texts written in Latin. Some of these compositions were accompanied by a musical track that suggested singing. The expression Burana comes from -beuren, that is from the final part of the name with which we call the Benedictine complex in which the collection was kept (Benediktbeuren).

The Clerici Vagantes

Just as today students from all over Europe travel through Erasmus programs, so in the Middle Ages there were students who moved from one city to another for university reasons. The difference with today’s students is that often those of the Middle Ages led a real life as vagabonds. The Clerici Vagantes loved to build a poetic text on the model of a traditional or pre-existing melody: today we know that they were the authors of the carmina.

Carmina Burana By Carl Orff

The German composer Carl Orff wrote the cantata for soloists, choir and orchestra between 1935 and 1936: the situation was very complex in Germany. On the political level, the ideology of National Socialism was emerging; on the musical level, many composers started walking the path of atonality (including Arnold Franz Walther Schönberg, persecuted for racial reasons). Orff, while not basking in tonal traditionalism, did not adhere to the new atonal research and sought a new language that could be proposed as an alternative to the avant-garde.

Macrostructure

The compositional macrostructure of the Carmina Burana is very simple: a prologue followed by three sections containing twenty-four texts taken from the medieval Carmina Burana.

Microstructure

The writing procedure chosen by Orff is clearly tonal, but rejuvenated so to speak by the introduction of popular motifs and compositional procedures, with movements between the voices that follow anti-contrapuntal intervals: we think, for example, of the great use of parallel intervals normally prohibited by the severe contrapuntal style. The use of parallel scenes with archaic intent will also be very successful in the production after Orff: even today it happens very often to hear in a film or a documentary about the Middle Ages a sequence of parallel scenes rebutted, even though they were definitely not in use at the time; the archaic feeling was probably transmitted to us more by The work of Orff than by medieval songs, more precisely by the successful juxtaposition of texts and motifs of the medieval tradition with the new, rich orchestration of the twentieth century. Let’s think about the rhythmic incisiveness of the first piece of the orchestral work, O fortuna, which I sang for you below:

Given the difficulty of Orff’s score, remember that if you want to deepen the musical analysis, the reading of music and your compositional skills, there is our special individual online course: you can find the program in the online courses section > the course program, or book an individual lesson online by consulting the availability calendar directly here.

Conclusions

For today’s article we stop here: continue to follow us, in a next page we will continue this very interesting speech, analyzing in detail similar scores in the Musical Analysis section. You can subscribe to the e-mail form so as not to miss the next updates and receive a notification to each new article published: we will see you in tomorrow’s one!