"Carmina Burana" and Carl Orff

Author(s): Jack M. Stein

Source: Monatshefte, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Summer, 1977), pp. 121-130
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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CARMINA BURANA AND CARL ORFF

JACK M. STEIN (t)

Harvard University

Jack Madison Stein died suddenly of a heart attack on October

1976, in Arlington, Massachusetts. He was born in Newark, New J
on April 25, 1914. He received his B.A. (1934) and M.A. (1936) from
Rutgers,.and his Ph.D. (1944) from Northwestern, where he studied
under the distinguished scholar T.M. Campbell.
In 1946 Stein was appointed instructor at Columbia, where he rose
to associate professor and departmental representative in charge of the
undergraduate program in German, which became very successful under
his guidance. In the course of his career he was awarded two Guggen-
heim Fellowships and a Fulbright research grant.
Stein was called to Harvard as full professor in 1958. As coordina-
tor of all language courses he successfully reorganized and reshaped this
crucial sector of the department's program. He served as an able, ener-
getic chairman from 1965 to 1973 and from 1975 to his death. He
developed and taught advanced courses on the Baroque, the German
lyric, and a seminar on Keller; his course "Music and Literature" repre-
sented his central intellectual interest.
The theme of literature interacting with music dominates in his
first book, Richard Wagner and the Synthesis of the Arts, and in its
successor, Poem and Music in the German Lied from Gluck to Hugo
Wolf. Characteristically his publications are marked by originality and a
bold, clear style.
Jack Stein's interests were many and varied; there was hardly a
subject that did not intrigue him. His flair for music was reflected in the
fact that he was president of the Boston Musica Viva. He also made
forays into linguistics and McLuhan's theories, among other fields.
Jack Stein's outstanding personal traits were friendliness and
warmth. These evoked warmth in return; he had many friends.
The following article, Jack Stein's last, was completed and sub-
mitted to Monatshefte shortly before his death. What more fitting epi-
taph for a contributor. colleague, and a friend.

Carl Orff's Carmina Burana was written during the years 1935-36; it was
first performed in Frankfurt am Main in 1937. The first performance outside of
Germany was held at La Scala, Milan, in 1942. Since that time, it has become by
far the most renowned of his compositions. Yet it is a work that is truly under-
stood by relatively few; most musicians and musicologists are not very interested
in it, for reasons which will be developed below; medievalists and some Ger-

Monatshefte, Vol. 69, No. 2, 1977

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 122 Stein

manists a
Burana; an
and specta
firstof a
period of
which mo
Oedipus d
of Aeschy
Orff grou
which is D
given a br
For his Carmina Burana texts Orff used the 1847 edition of the Benedikt-
beuren manuscript, published by Johann Andreas Schmeller in the Literarischer
Verein Stuttgart series.' In 1930 a new and critical edition, still not complete,
was begun by Alfons Hilka and Otto Schumann, and continued in 1970 by
Bernhard Bischoff.2 As Schmeller had already pointed out in his preface, the
unique manuscript is imperfect, the leaves are not always in the right order, and
there were a number of copyists, who gave considerable evidence that they were
not always sure what they were copying. Schmeller did his best by dividing the
songs into two groups, "Seria" and "Amatoria, Potatoria, Lusoria," numbering
the serious songs with Roman numerals and the others with Arabic numbers, in
each case giving also the folio number as well. He copied the often imperfect
texts as he found them, while lamenting that it was not possible for him to
examine other manuscripts which might contain more accurate versions of some
of the poems.
The new editors remedied all these deficiencies. Already in 1901, Wilhelm
Meyer, whose work is acknowledged in the preface of the new edition, had
succeeded in ordering the folios in essentially their original sequence with the
help of seven loose leaves of the original manuscript he found at the Munich
Staatsbibliothek. By careful comparison of the texts with eighteen parallel
manuscripts from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and especially
England (eight of them from there), numerous errors in the original Carmina
Burana have been corrected. The new edition thus represents, not a carefully
annotated edition of the text as it originally appeared, but a corrected version of
the poems. The state of each text and the sequence of the original are recorded
in the apparatus.
A sizeable number of the more than two-hundred poems in the Carmina
Burana manuscript are provided with neumes, an early system of musical
notation which is too indeterminate to allow of reconstructions with any kind of
reasonable authenticity. Recently, painstaking comparison of the neumes with a
later, more precise notation known as square-shaped neumes, found in oc-
currences of the songs in non-German manuscripts (square-shaped neumes were
never adopted in Germany), has at last made a musical reconstruction possible.

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Carmina Burana and Orff 123

Such songs were often accompanied,

have been provided as well, since the r
instruments have made rapid progress
reconstructions can be heard on two
pointed out that approximate reconstru
since there was no definitive form ev
would surely have varied, as indeed the
formance to performance, so that what
later date, can have no claim to being
made more than twenty-five years afte
Though the manuscript is imperfect,
as follows: (1) moralistic and satirical p
(3) drinking and gaming songs; and
quality of the songs runs the gamut fr
from complex to simple, the range of
raucous and bawdy to sensitive and de
heartfelt and moving. Most of the son
varies from eloquence to doggerel; a f
German), and a number of them are en
made a free selection of twenty-odd, a
twenty-five stanzas of the celebrated
and only one, the eighth, "Ave formo
later poem). He rearranges the successio
sub-groups. This kind of selection and
works completing the triptych which c
proceeds in a similar manner in later
aware of the existence of the first volu
of his composition, though it is likely,
the moralistic-satirical poetry was ava
that Orff would nevertheless have stuc
in the original manuscript. In striving
cal document in his own way, as we sh
could have outweighed scholarly accur
Orff conceived his Carmina Burana f
aural terms, as indeed he has done with
though there is only a very loose cont
plot, there is a stage setting, the singe
mime and visual grouping, not the lea
Orff supervised the first performa
formances since, although the require
variation in the visual aspect:

Durch die Tradition zahlloser Auffi

form herauskristallisiert, nachdem m

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 124 Stein

Formen gegeben hatte, so etwa in Hamburg als musikalisch-szenische

Kosmologie, in Wien als monumentales Welttheater, in Dresden und
Stuttgart als liindlich-hdfisches Minnespiel und in Darmstadt als hessisch-
bayrisches Bauernstiick, oder in Berlin als allegorisierendes Mysterium.6

The essential fact to be borne in mind, especially when listening to a recording,

is that the entire performance is visual as well as aural; Orff has conceived
Carmina Burana as an original kind of Gesamtkunstwerk.
The entire work is framed beginning and end, by a section Orff labels
"Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi." In it a full chorus sings the poem which begins:

O fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis...

This is the first poem in Schmeller's edition and is quite clearly associated
an illuminated illustration of the wheel of fortune on the first page o
Benediktbeuren manuscript. A variant of this illustration appropriately app
as a prominent part of the stage setting.8 In the first group, called "Primo V
first a small chorus, then a baritone solo and finally a rousing mixed chorus
of the joys of spring, with love as a strong subsidiary motif:

curramus in amore...
ama me fideliter...
illi mens est misera,
qui nec vivit,
nec lascivit
sub estatis dextera.

It is all-important to attempt to characterize Orffs music, a difficult task,

because it is outside any of the traditions of twentieth-century or indeed of
nineteenth-century music. I know of no other composer who has achieved such
total independence from tradition, in the twentieth or any other century.9
Orff's music is blatantly, aggressively simple by twentieth-century standard
(which is the main reason it does not interest musicologists). It is related to fol
music in that it has an elemental quality which has an extra-musical appe
although I believe the folk quality of Orff's music is often overemphasized. I
is overwhelmingly diatonic, with an unbelievable incidence of tonic subdominan
and dominant, making sparing use of chromatics, although for special effects
often employs dissonance. The melodies are often infectiously singable, while
constructed with very great, if self-effacing, sophistication.
The most extraordinary aspect of the music of Carmina Burana is th
rhythm. It is simultaneously complex and simple; Orff establishes compulsive
rhythmic patterns and then with great daring repeats them in blocks, often

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 Carmina Burana and Orff 125

literally dozens of times with but ve

accumulation of vitality, but above all
and ritualistic. It is the rhythm most
The rhythm alone evokes the concept
degree.
Orffs orchestra is also highly original. In later works his orchestrations
become truly extraordinary. Carmina Burana is the most "symphonic" of all his
works, but even it points in the direction Orff is to pursue consistently.10 Be-
sides the standard instrumentation, his score calls for an unusually large battery
of percussion: timpani, side-drums, bass drum, bells, triangle, cymbals of various
kinds, gongs, sleigh bells, three glockenspiels, xylophone, castanets, ratchet,
celesta, and two pianos. These assertive percussion instruments are used to good
effect, though not ostentatiously, to strengthen the already dominant rhythmic
patterns of the work. Orff's orchestra, even in Carmina Burana, sounds like no
other. Like all the other aspects of his music, it is independent of tradition, and,
like them, it is used to achieve a sense of immediacy which draws the listener
into a strong sense of community within the work performed which, in my own
experience at least, has no parallel.11
In a second section, which he calls "Uf dem Anger," Orff presents five
German songs. To open the section, there is a lively peasant-like dance, but
making use of sophisticated rhythms. The time signature varies in almost every
measure from 4/4 to 3/8 to 2/8 to 6/8 to 12/8 to 2/4. A delightful comic song
follows, first in Latin, then in German, as in the original. A women's chorus
speaking as one girl asks where her friend has gone and a male chorus answers
"Hinc equitavit." The actual syllables as sung are "Hinc, hinc, hinc, hinc, hinc
equitavit, equitavit, equitavit, equitavit, tavit, tavit, tavit, tavit, tavit" as the
sound trails off into the distance, with the timpani executing a riding figure.
The German version uses the words "Der ist geritten hinnen" in the same way.
The girls then sing in parallel thirds and fifths "eia, quis me amabit?" ("owi, wer
soil mich minnen?") to a melody marked "dolcissimo." There follows a bold
folk-like tune to the words, "Chramer, gip die varwe mir" which Orff has ad-
venturously chosen from one of the six ecclesiastical dramas, a song sung in the
longer Passion Play by Mary Magdalene.
Next comes a stately but most delicate round dance, after which a boister-
ous mixed chorus leads into a seductive small chorus of altos singing, "Chume,
chum, geselle min, ih enbite harte din," which then gives way to a repetition of
the boisterous mixed chorus. Immediately thereafter, +with no pause, a brilliant
trumpet and trombone fanfare introduces the final song, sung by full chorus in
unison:

Were diu werlt alle min

von derme mere unze an den Rin,

des wolt ih mih darben

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126 Stein

daz diu
lege an

The relati
is general
no concern
vigorous o
once estab
natural wo
word of t
stress, of
upbeat to
and held f
is there co
an exampl
the entire c

This is a c
by Wagne
independe
well. The
one which
poetic sen
on an elem
kunstwerk
especially
are likely
ments. Th
because of
true in lat
tions is an
history of
Wagner, S
and this m
concert ha
fact the m
become th
The next
exhilaratin
poeta's cel
to the par
poem, as t
as well as
tones, for

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Carmina Burana and Orff 127

himself on a platter staring at the tee

"dentes frendentes video." The music is
solo bassoon in a ludicrously high regi
figure. When the voice enters, the orch
muted violas playing 64th notes in a lo
like the slightly awkward off-balance t
clarinet and trumpet double the voi
sempre ironico," is for tenor solo sung
brief choral refrain.
Orff then turns to the gaming song
sis." The "abbot" is a drinker and gamb
baritone solo as a liturgical plain chant,
The voice is unaccompanied throughou
punctuated by the orchestra. The di
sando, gesticulando e beffardo assai."
quando sumus." The text is sung by th
thirds and fifths are added toward the
almost non-existent. Everything is sub
rhythm. The song moves rapidly, celeb
to thirteen entities and:

Tam pro papa quam pro reg

bibunt omnes sine lege.

There follows a rousing oompah-oompa

and blatant oompah's, a daring touch o
the universality of bibulosity; thirty
bibit clerus . . . bibit soror, bibit frat
reinforced by Orff's mesmerizing rhy
climax on a repeated single-syllable "Io
effect is breathtaking.
The entire boisterous "In Taberna"
tone of the third section, "Cour d'Amo
it is longing, it is slyly sexual, sometim
girl surrenders herself to her desires:

Dulcissime,
totam tibi subdo me!

The first number, "Amor volat undique," is sung by a boys' unison chorus with
the direction, "un poco impertinente." It argues that it is right for men and
women to be joined together ("Conjunguntur"), to which a solo woman's voice
sings "con estrema civiterria fingendo innocenza" of how awful it is for a woman
not to have a man. In the next, a mixture of Latin and French, a baritone

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 128 Stein

laments w
soprano co
a red tun
laments, i
With Num
her achin

In trutina mentis dubia

Fluctuant contraria
lascivus amor et pudicitia.

But she yields to her desires: "Sed eligo quod video . . ." Orffs melody is tender
and delicate, the accompaniment subdued; the intimate struggle of the girl with
her sexuality is sensitively unfolded.
The successiori of numbers 21 to 23 well illustrates the ingenuity as well as
the freedom of Orff's adaptation of these medieval songs. Number 21, which I
have just discussed, is a single brief stanza lifted from a touching dialog between
an ardent suitor and a girl who longs to yield to him, but who is deeply troubled
by all the implications.12 Number 22 is a long choral dialog in which both boys
and girls freely admit their desires: "Tempus est jocundum." After each
exchange there is a refrain in which the men claim, but with equanimity, that
they are perishing from unrequited love. The tone of the whole number, of the
girls' chorus as well as the boys', is playful and sly. This is stereotyped sexual
play. Suddenly, with the very brief Number 23, there is a return to the mood of
Number 21 and we hear the girl with intensely and urgently sexual tones yield
herself totally. It is the final line of the ardent dialog from which Number 21
was lifted: "Dulcissime .. ." etc., as above. Now in a separate sub-section is
heard a choral hymn to Helena and Blanziflor, which leads into a repetition of
the chorus "O fortuna," and the work is at an end.
The frame, to be sure, sings of the fickleness and uncertainty of fortune,
but what is contained within it is clearly a joyful, defiant affirmation of man's
ability to cope with life's problems, the message of both the medieval manu-
script and of Orff's recreation.
In 1943 a kind of sequel to Carmina Burana appeared, Catulli Carmina,
using an orchestra entirely of percussion instruments. There is a more elaborate
frame to this work; two choruses of youths, male and female, and one of old
men argue the eternity of love, the youths passionately, the old men cynically
and mockingly. The men think they will triumph by presenting Catullus' love
affair with Lesbia. This is pantomimed on the stage, while the poems are sung by
an a capella chorus in the orchestra pit. In the end the youths remain uncon-
vinced and continue their praise of eternal love. The frame exchanges are written
in Latin by Orff, the words of the main body are from poems of Catullus.

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 Carmina Burana and Orff 129

Then in 1951 there appeared a thir

time, Orff had grouped all three toge
triumphs of life and love, presumably
Afrodite was as the third part of a co
1953. The orchestra this time consists
strings), though there is also a smalle
strings. Both Latin and Greek poems,
a chorus from Euripides' Philoctetes f
ceremonial rites of an antique wedding
names of the various sections:

1. "Wechselgesang der Jungfrauen und Jtinglinge an den Abendstern, wahrend

man auf Braut und Briutigam wartet," words by Catullus
2. "Hochzeitszug und Ankunft von Braut und Brautigam," words by Sappho
3. "Braut und Brautigam," words by Sappho
4. "Anrufung des Hymenaus und Preislied auf Hymenius," words by Catullus
5. "Hochzeitliche Spiele und Gesange vor dem Brautgemach," words by Catullus
6. "Gesang der Jungvermahlten in der Hochzeitskammer," words by Sappho
7. "Die Erscheinung der Afrodite," words by Euripides
Orff's Carmina Burana is an unforgettable work. It has made the medieval
song collection better known in the twentieth century than ever before. While
retaining its own originality and establishing its own twentieth-century identity,
it transmits in an inimitable fashion the spirit, the verve, the variety, the fresh-
ness and the iconoclasm of the originals in a way that the collection itself can no
longer do, or if at all, to only a tiny number of experts. Orff's recreation cer-
tainly opens doors to that collection for students of German and medieval
literature and culture. To the public at large it offers a spectacle, visual and
aural, which forges a firm link spanning a period of 800 years. It is a master-
piece, the first Gesamtkunstwerk of an experimenter who for the next forty
years went on to create a whole series of them, each in important ways different
from the others.

1 Discovered in the then Benedictine, now Salesian monastery at Benediktbeuren, south

of Munich, in 1803, the unique manuscript of twelfth and thirteenth century Latin songs,
both secular and religious, is now a prized possession of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in
Munich. An excellent facsimile edition was published in 1967, ed. Bernhard Bischoff:
Carmina Burana. Faksimile-Ausgabe des Handschrift Clm 4660 und Clm 4660a (Miinchen,
1967). Until recently, the time period of the assembly of the collection was thought to be
toward the end of the thirteenth century. In the preface to the latest volume (1970) of the
critical edition (see note 2), Bernhard Bischoff argues for a considerably earlier date-
terminus a quo 1217-19. The name Carmina Burana is Schmeller's title (1847).
2L Band: Text 1. Die moralisch-satirischen Dichtungen. II. Band: Kommentar, ed.
Alfons Hilka and Otto Schumann, 1930; L Band: Text 2. Die Liebeslieder, ed. Otto
Schumann, 1941; I. Band: Text 3. Die Trink- und Spiellieder. Die geistlichen Dramen.
Nachtrage, ed. Otto Schumann and Bernhard Bischoff, 1970. (All Heidelberg: Carl Winter.)

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 130 Stein

3Das alte
4The crit
taining rel
5 Schmell
Orff's text
new edition.

6 Karl H. Ruppel, quoted in Andreas Liess, Carl Orff Idee und Werk (Atlantis: Ziirich,
1955), p. 91.
7 Although I have seen staged performances of four of Orff's later Gesamtkunstwerke, I
regret to say I have never seen Carmina Burana staged. I do not believe it has ever been pre-
sented in America staged as Orff intended it to be, although it sometimes appears on ballet
programs. I will consequently have less to say about the visual aspect than I would like.
Some idea of the effect of the staging can be gained from the picture on the jacket of the
Angel recording, personally supervised by Orff (Angel 34515). It is a photograph of the
1937 permiere in Frankfurt and shows the staging of the "In Taberna" section, quite
probably Number 13, "Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis."
8In the new edition "O fortuna" is Number 17. The facsimile shows that the poem
directly below the color illustration of the wheel of fortune is "Fas et nefas ambulant."
"O fortuna" appears at the bottom of the page, in smaller letters and by a different later
hand, apparently in order to have illustration and poem on the same page at least.
9 There is some talk of a Stravinsky influence. I do not take this seriously, in view of
Orff's later development, of the many and diverse phases of Stravinsky's style, and of the.
overwhelming difference in the two composers' conceptions of music and its function.
10Orff began to compose music and also to write poetry as a child. His first pub-
lished compositions, songs, appeared in 1911, when Orff was sixteen; his first opera with
full orchestra was written in 1913. From then on for twenty-two more years, he composed a
large number of works of various kinds, some published, others not. However, after the
performance of Carmina Burana in 1937, he wrote to Schott Verlag, his publishers: "Alles,
was ich bisher geschrieben und was Sie leider gedruckt haben, konnen Sie nun einstampfen!
Mit den Carmina Burana beginnen meine gesammelten Werke." Some of these compositions,
including Catulli Carmina (see below) were later republished in revised versions.
" Orff has achieved world-wide acclaim for his Schulwerk, an extensive musical cur-
riculum for school children. This was begun by him in 1930, six years before Carmina
Burana appeared. In the foreword to the first volume, Orff stated: "Das Schulwerk will als
elementare Musikiibung an Urkrifte und Urformen der Musik heranfihren." It is my con-
tention that the same direction and intent are manifest in Carmina Burana and his other
works.

12The poem, Number 43 in Schmeller, 70 in the new edition, begins: "Estatis florigero
tempore."

THE FOURTH CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRECHT SOCIETY

is offering copies of Material Brecht: Kontradiktionen 1968-1976 (
$3.75) and Brecht/Thomas Brasch: Cityscape (37 contemporary poem
lish translation intended for dramatic reading; 60 regular, 35 stud
as other materials. Orders should be submitted to Betty Nance Webe
ment of Germanic Languages, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
78712. These materials are not available through book distributors.

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