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Freethought music: Carmina Burana

We’re going to try to post some more music around here, so for my first entry I’d like to share with you all this recording of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana:

 
This performance is by the University of California, Davis University Chorus and Alumni Chorus, the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, and the Pacific Boychoir Academy, with Jeffrey Thomas conducting, and was made publicly available by University of California TV.

(We also had a performance of the piece this month here in Fort Wayne, when the Fort Wayne Philharmonic performed it as their Masterworks Series season finale, in a joint performance with the IPFW University Singers and the Fort Wayne Children’s Choir, under the direction of music director candidate Andrew Constantine. They did a fine job; the baritone soloist in particular was a joy to listen to. I’m unaware of any public recording of this performance that I can link to; if anyone knows of one, please let us know.)

Lyrics with English translations are available at this companion site to an introductory Latin textbook by Gavin Betts.[1] I recommend following along as you listen.

Carmina Burana is a cantata that Orff, a German composer, premiered in Frankfurt in 1937. The text is taken from a collection of poems from the Middle Ages found in a Bavarian monastery in 1803. (Orff chose 24 of the 228 poems in the larger Carmina Burana collection.) The piece is arranged for choir, children’s choir, woodwinds, strings, piano, brass, and lots and lots of percussion.

The most obvious feature of this piece is its sheer grandiosity. He relies heavily on the percussion section, and every poem, even the silly and trite ones, is belted out with passion. (Maybe he intended it as bathos or parody; I really don’t know, but it doesn’t make the tunes any less catchy or the simple expressions of love and anguish any less endearing.) And he lays his cards on the table at the very beginning with “O Fortuna” as a signal of what you ought to expect.

But what I find most compelling about the work is the Latin and Middle High German text—particularly, that it’s entirely secular. The poets were wandering scholars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when it was common for students to go around from university town to university town, using Latin as their common language, and establishing their own irreverent culture. Betts puts it this way:

The Carmina Burana show attitudes not usually associated with the Middle Ages; we see a quite amoral attitude to sex, a fresh appreciation of nature, and a disrespect of the established church which even today’s society would find hard to tolerate. The Wandering Scholars were very much concerned with enjoying themselves, they were frank and uninhibited, and were not afraid of attacking or ridiculing people and institutions they did not like. Their poetry was written for the immediate present, to express an emotion or experience, to complain of some current abuse, but chiefly, one may conjecture, to entertain their fellows as they caroused.[2]

So in this cantata we have a peek into the minds of the nonreligious intelligentsia of the Middle Ages; people who, were they alive today, would probably be called free thinkers. And would probably have blogs.

Besides several love poems and poems celebrating the beauty of spring, Carmina Burana contains, toward the middle, a section called “In Taberna” (“In the Tavern”), and it’s this section that, before it goes off into a celebration of carousing and making fun of an abbot, contains my absolute favorite of the Carmina, “Olim lacus couleram” (“Once I dwelt on lakes”; it begins at time 32:15 in the video):

Olim lacus colueram,	Once I had dwelt on lakes,
olim pulcher exstiteram,	once I had been beautiful,
dum cygnus ego fueram.	when I was a swan.
Miser, miser!	Poor wretch!
modo niger	Now black
et ustus fortiter!	and well roasted!
Girat, regirat garcifer;	The cook turns me back and forth;
me rogus urit fortiter;	I am roasted to a turn on my pyre;
propinat me nunc dapifer.	now the waiter serves me.
Miser, miser!	Poor wretch!
modo niger	Now black
et ustus fortiter!	and well roasted!
Nunc in scutella iaceo,	Now I lie on the dish,
et volitare nequeo;	and I cannot fly;
dentes frendentes video.	I see the gnashing teeth.
Miser, miser!	Poor wretch!
modo niger	Now black
et ustus fortiter!	and well roasted![3]

 
The tenor soloist sings with pathos in his role in the swan, and it’s entirely, entirely appropriate. It’s a moment when some humane bastard was standing there, watching the hunk of flesh turning on a spit, and he or she was able to get the general gist of what was going on, which was that something beautiful had been killed and subjected to ignominy. Something delicious, no doubt, but still.

Then we get to the general carousing, best exemplified by the poem “In taberna quando sumus” (“When we are in the tavern”; time 40:15), which is happy and bouncy, and ends with a glare at puritanical busybodies:

In taberna quando sumus,	When we are in the tavern,
non curamus quid sit humus,	we do not think how we will go to dust,
sed ad ludum properamus,	but we hurry to gamble,
cui semper insudamus.	which always makes us sweat.
quid agatur in taberna	What happens in the tavern,
ubi nummus est pincerna,	where money is host,
hoc est opus ut quaeratur;	you may well ask,
si quid loquar, audiatur.	and hear what I say.
Quidam ludunt, quidam bibunt,	Some gamble, some drink,
quidam indiscrete vivunt.	some behave loosely.
sed in ludo qui morantur,	But of those who gamble,
ex his quidam denudantur,	some are stripped bare,
quidam ibi vestiuntur,	some win their clothes here,
quidam saccis induuntur;	some are dressed in sacks.
ibi nullus timet mortem,	Here no-one fears death,
sed pro Baccho mittunt sortem.	but they throw the dice in the name of Bacchus.
Primo pro nummata vini;	First of all it is to the wine-merchant
ex hac bibunt libertini;	the the libertines drink,
semel bibunt pro captivis,	one for the prisoners,
post haec bibunt ter pro vivis,	three for the living,
quater pro Christianis cunctis,	four for all Christians,
quinquies pro fidelibus defunctis,	five for the faithful dead,
sexies pro sororibus vanis,	six for the loose sisters,
septies pro militibus silvanis.	seven for the footpads in the wood,
octies pro fratribus perversis,	Eight for the errant brethren,
nonies pro monachis dispersis,	nine for the dispersed monks,
decies pro navigantibus,	ten for the seamen,
undecies pro discordantibus,	eleven for the squabblers,
duodecies pro paenitentibus,	twelve for the penitent,
tredecies pro iter agentibus.	thirteen for the wayfarers.
Tam pro papa quam pro rege	To the Pope as to the king
bibunt omnes sine lege.	they all drink without restraint.
Bibit hera, bibit herus,	The mistress drinks, the master drinks,
bibit miles, bibit clerus,	the soldier drinks, the priest drinks,
bibit ille, bibit illa,	the man drinks, the woman drinks,
bibit servus cum ancilla,	the servant drinks with the maid,
bibit velox, bibit piger,	the swift man drinks, the lazy man drinks
bibit albus, bibit niger,	the white man drinks, the black man drinks,
bibit constans, bibit vagus,	the settled man drinks, the wanderer drinks,
bibit rudis, bibit magus,	the stupid man drinks, the wise man drinks,
Bibit pauper et aegrotus,	The poor man drinks, the sick man drinks,
bibit exul et ignotus,	the exile drinks, and the stranger,
bibit puer, bibit canus,	the boy drinks, the old man drinks,
bibit praesul et decanus,	the bishop drinks, and the deacon,
bibit soror, bibit frater,	the sister drinks, the brother drinks,
bibit anus, bibit mater,	the old lady drinks, the mother drinks,
bibit ista, bibit ille,	this man drinks, that man drinks,
bibunt centum, bibunt mille.	a hundred drink, a thousand drink.
Parum sescentae nummatae	Six hundred pennies would hardly
durant cum immoderate	suffice, if everyone
bibunt omnes sine meta,	drinks immoderately and immeasurably.
quamvis bibant mente laeta;	However much they cheerfully drink
sic nos rodunt omnes gentes,	we are the ones whom everyone scolds,
et sic erimus egentes.	and thus we are destitute.
qui nos rodunt confundantur	May those who slander us be cursed
et cum iustis non scribantur.	and may their names not be written in the
	book of the righteous.[4]

Those two poems typify these scholars’ irreverence. If you have an hour to kill, it’s a sublime experience to follow along to the whole thing.

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[1] Gavin Betts’s companion site to his book Teach Yourself Latin (McGraw-Hill, 2003). (http://www.tylatin.org).

[2] Excerpted from http://www.tylatin.org/extras/index.html.

[3] Translation by Betts at http://www.tylatin.org/extras/cb12.html.

[4] Translation by, as near as I can make out, Robin Stevens at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~rejs/carmlyr.html I chose his translation for this poem because it seems bouncier and freer, and therefore better matched to Orff’s score, than Betts’.

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