The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Carl Orff · a scenic cantata, Cantiones profanae, for soprano, tenor and baritone, large chorus, small chorus, children’s chorus and orchestra, on twenty-four poems in medieval Latin and Middle High German from the Codex Buranus · twenty-five numbers in a prologue, three parts and a closing return · about an hour in performance
Mode
Scenic cantata; secular medieval verse set as chant, dance song and chorus over ostinato and drone, made for the stage and kept in the concert hall
Mythos
Fortune’s wheel built as the form: a rise through spring, tavern and love to an apotheosis and a fall back to the opening chorus; the seasonal rite and a courtly pair evoked within it
Phase
Twenty-five numbers: a prologue to Fortune; Primo vere and Uf dem Anger; In Taberna; Cour d’amours with Blanziflor et Helena; the prologue’s chorus returned whole
Presentation
Concert music; a scenic cantata for three soloists, three choruses and a large orchestra with two pianos and percussion, setting twenty-four poems from the Codex Buranus, scored as one work
Register
From a whispered ostinato and a roasted swan’s strained high tenor to a drunken abbot, a children’s chorus and a soprano at the top of her voice
Scale
One wheel and one year: the sun, the green, the tavern and the court of love under Fortune; soloists, choruses and orchestra; about an hour
Governing Proposition
Twenty-four medieval poems of spring, drink and desire, chosen by Orff from a thirteenth-century manuscript, are set between two statements of one chorus to Fortune, so that a rise through the green, the tavern and the court of love ends where it began. The wager of the work is that delight does not grow but turns, and that a music without development, built of stanza, drone and ostinato, can make the turning heard.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The work begins at full force: chorus and orchestra fortissimo on the name of Fortune, then a sudden drop to a whispered ostinato in D minor, over which the chorus sings of a fortune “semper crescis aut decrescis”
“ever waxing or waning”. Stanza by stanza the same music comes back, louder each time, until it breaks into D major and stops. It lasts about two and a half minutes, and it states the whole work: a fortune that turns like the moon, and a music that turns with it, repeating rather than developing. Fortune plango vulnera follows and tells the wheel’s fall in words. The two numbers are the frame’s first half, and the work will need them again.
Orff composed Carmina Burana in 1935 and 1936, and it was first performed, staged, at the Frankfurt Opera on 8 June 1937; Schott, in Mainz, published it. The texts come from the Codex Buranus, a thirteenth-century manuscript found at the abbey of Benediktbeuern, now in Munich, and first edited by J. A. Schmeller in 1847. From it Orff chose twenty-four poems in medieval Latin and Middle High German, a few with lines of Old French or Provençal mixed in, and set one of them twice as the frame. The words are not his; the choice, the order and the setting are. He later made the work the first panel of a triptych, Trionfi, with Catulli Carmina (1943) and Trionfo di Afrodite (1953); it is scored here on its own.
The turn it made was against the whole German inheritance of development, counterpoint and harmonic process, from Bach to Strauss and Schoenberg. Orff kept none of it: harmony reduced to triad and drone, form to stanza and ostinato, almost no counterpoint, and a cantata meant to be danced and seen. He disowned his earlier work to his publisher and staked his name on the new manner. The stake was real, and the precedent was close. Stravinsky had made the turn in the 1920s, in the pianos, percussion and voices of Les Noces (1923) and the Latin of Oedipus Rex (1927), and Orff’s own teaching and his study of early music supplied the rest. Against Germany the departure is radical; against the decade it is much smaller.
Movement II
After the frame, spring. Veris leta facies is a slow modal procession, the work’s first stillness, and Primo vere goes on with Omnia sol temperat for the baritone and the bright chorus of Ecce gratum. Then Uf dem Anger, on the green: an orchestral dance, Floret silva, Chramer, gip die varwe mir, a round dance with two songs set inside it, and Were diu werlt alle min. The method is plain from the start and holds to the end. Nearly every number is strophic or varied-strophic, its stanzas repeated with changes of scoring and dynamics rather than of material, and the writing is built on ostinato, pedal, drone and block triad.
The seasonal rite is here in its old pattern: the sun returning, Flora, the dance on the green. Chramer gives it a body. In Middle High German a girl buys rouge from a shopkeeper, and the market and the body for sale are set as a bright, dancing song. These are the work’s vivid particulars, and there are more to come: the girl in the red tunic, the abbot, the swan. But the wheel turns over figures, not persons, and the rite is set as a pageant. The particular and the archetype stand side by side without deepening one another, and the myth that bears weight is the frame’s, not the green’s.
Here the subtractive test bites. The numbers are tableaux joined by contrast, not by consequence, and Uf dem Anger could lose Floret silva or Chramer without the whole noticing. Within the three parts the numbers could be reordered without changing what the work says. The parts follow the seasons and the day loosely, and the staging the work calls for, which would give these tableaux their bodies, is seldom given: the work lives overwhelmingly in the concert hall. Repetition is Orff’s chosen law, and it is credited where the law is judged. It is still material the test can remove, and in the interior the work is permitted more than compelled.
Movement III
In Taberna opens with Estuans interius, the Archpoet’s confession of a self divided against itself, given to the baritone as a driving aria. The text is the most inward in the work, and the setting runs straight through it. Energy carries the number, and the division the poem confesses is not heard. Here is the clearest case of the work’s limit in what it discloses: much of what comes into the open is the medieval poets’, and Orff’s setting renders it as mood and force rather than as further meaning.
Then the swan. Olim lacus colueram is sung by the tenor, the only number he has, from the spit, roasted for the feast. The part lies very high and is commonly sung in a strained head voice or falsetto, as written, over a bassoon solo itself pushed high, and the cry, “Miser, miser!”
“Wretched, wretched!”, is the swan’s own. The feast is heard from the side of the eaten, in a voice strained past beauty. It is the work’s deepest disclosure, comic and cruel at once.
Ego sum abbas follows: the abbot of Cockaigne, piety turned into the gambler’s lament, given to the baritone. In taberna quando sumus closes the part with the male chorus in a rush, a list of everyone who drinks, of every rank and kind. The tavern is the work’s one society, and its numbers are vigorous, comic and grotesque rather than high. Its distance from the opening is wide, from dread to farce, and one law governs both: the voice declaiming over a fixed rhythmic ground, stanza after stanza. The law holds across the range, though part of what holds it is how few clauses it has.
Movement IV
Cour d’amours is the longest part, nine numbers, and the soprano is heard for the first time only here, at no. 15; all five of her numbers lie in the love section. It begins with Amor volat undique, a children’s chorus and the soprano, and moves through the baritone’s Dies, nox et omnia, the girl in the red tunic of Stetit puella, Circa mea pectora with the chorus, Si puer cum puellula for male soloists, and the double chorus of Veni, veni, venias. The scoring changes with the subject: celesta and glockenspiel bring a new light, and the brass is held back for the frame.
The heights of the part are the plainest moments in the work. In trutina is a soprano line held over still strings: “In trutina mentis dubia”
“In the wavering balance of my mind”, she weighs desire against modesty, and chooses. Tempus est iocundum runs its stanzas at length with soprano, baritone and choruses, and then Dulcissime, the soprano at the top of her voice: “totam tibi subdo me”
“I give myself wholly to you”. It is ecstasy, and it is the surrender the whole ascent has climbed toward.
The making is complete within its chosen means. The choral writing is singable by amateurs and still overwhelming, the Latin set by accent and syllable, the stanzas varied by scoring with great economy, two pianos and percussion driving the whole as an engine. The narrowness of the means is the cost: harmony that seldom moves past triad and pedal, almost no counterpoint, phrases built by repeating a cell. The ascent itself is longer than it needs to be. Nine numbers carry what six would, and Tempus est iocundum repeats its stanzas past what the climb requires.
Movement V
Blanziflor et Helena is one number, Ave formosissima, the chorus hailing the beloved at full force: the apotheosis of the whole rise. It is cut off. O Fortuna returns, note for note, and the work ends where it began, with the cry to Fortune, the whispered ostinato and the build to D major. The return is the work’s one structural argument and its knowledge: delight does not grow, it turns, and the summit is the moment before the fall. Fortune’s wheel is the Codex’s own image; the ring that enacts it, a rise through spring, tavern and love between two statements of one chorus, is Orff’s.
The work entered the repertory in Nazi Germany and was widely performed there in the war years. After 1945 it spread across the world and became one of the most performed choral works of the twentieth century, and its opening chorus passed into film, advertising and sport, among them John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981). Its later fame is partly as a cliché, the chorus used until it can sound like a parody of itself. The score has outlived its origin and its imitations: it survives whole, and choral societies and orchestras still perform it whole, everywhere, every year. What has been written about it concerns mostly that reception and those politics, and much less its structure, which is given whole on a first hearing, by design.
The desk sets it beside Haydn’s The Creation, at 8.6, the nearest work in kind, an oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra. Orff’s cantata falls short of it on every axis, and the order is sensible on the works: The Creation builds its world by development, counterpoint and the painting of words, where Orff’s circles by design. The wheel, the opening, the swan, In trutina and the cut into the frame are real achievements, and the work’s presence is the widest of any concert work of its decade. What holds it in Tier III is what it asks of the listener after the first hearing: a frame required around an interior that is free, a disclosure carried more by mood than by meaning, and a surface that yields little more on return.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test finds the frame required and much of the interior free. O Fortuna must stand at both ends: its return after Ave formosissima is the work’s one structural argument, and without it the cantata is a suite of springtime, drinking and love. Fortune plango vulnera tells the wheel’s fall in words and is needed beside it. Inside the frame the numbers are tableaux joined by contrast, not consequence. Uf dem Anger could lose Floret silva or Chramer without the whole noticing; Cour d’amours has nine numbers where six would carry the same ascent; Ecce gratum and Tempus est iocundum repeat their stanzas at length. Chosen repetition is credited elsewhere, but it is still material the test can remove. Length is not charged.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: appetite in all its forms, spring, drink, sex, gluttony and piety parodied, runs on one wheel, and the summit of delight is the moment before the fall. The frame says it, and the cut from Ave formosissima back to “O Fortuna, velut luna”
“O Fortune, like the moon” shows it: the apotheosis is not answered but interrupted. Olim lacus colueram discloses most, the feast heard from the side of the eaten. Held below because much of what comes into the open is the medieval poets’, rendered by the setting as energy and mood rather than further meaning: Estuans interius, the Archpoet’s confession of a divided self, becomes a driving aria whose division is not heard.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Height is real, and it comes at the ends. The fortissimo opening of O Fortuna, its drop to a whispered ostinato and the build over its stanzas to a close in D major are elemental and terrifying. Ave formosissima reaches grandeur, and its cutting off is a second, darker height. In trutina is beauty of the plainest kind, a soprano line held over still strings, and Dulcissime is ecstasy at the top of the voice. Between them elevation is less frequent: the spring choruses are bright rather than high, the tavern numbers vigorous, comic or grotesque, In taberna quando sumus a rush. The sublime here is of one kind, the force of rhythm and mass, and it repeats rather than deepens.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The archetype is built, not only evoked. Fortune’s wheel is the Codex’s own image, and Orff makes it the form: the work rises through spring, tavern and love to an apotheosis and is thrown down where it began. The ring is the wheel. Within it stand the seasonal rite, spring returning and the dance on the green, and the courtly pair of Blanziflor and Helena. The particulars are vivid: the girl buying rouge in Chramer, the girl in the red tunic of Stetit puella, the abbot of Cockaigne, the roasted swan. Held below the gate because particular and archetype do not deepen each other: the wheel turns over figures, not persons, and the rite is set as a pageant.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The inheritance is the German tradition of development, counterpoint and harmonic process, from Bach to Strauss and Schoenberg. Orff turned from it completely: no development, almost no counterpoint, harmony reduced to triad and drone, form to stanza and ostinato, a cantata made to be danced and staged. The stake was real. He disowned his earlier work to his publisher, staked his name on the new manner and wrote for a theatre, not a concert hall. What holds the swerve is precedent. Stravinsky had already made the turn: Les Noces (1923) is the model for the percussive ritual of pianos and voices, and Oedipus Rex (1927) had set Latin as stone. The departure is radical against Germany and much smaller against the decade.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Substitute a developmental form and the work loses part of what it knows. Its claim is that nothing develops: delight turns, it does not grow, and the wheel comes round. Material transformed and resolved would deny that claim; stanzas repeated without transformation and ostinatos that circle and do not arrive are the claim made audible. The return of no. 1 as no. 25, note for note, is form as knowledge. The cost is the interior. The three parts follow the seasons and the day loosely, but within them the numbers could be reordered without changing what the work says, and the staging that would give the tableaux their bodies is seldom given. The frame is form as instrument; the middle is closer to a container.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Evidence counts over promise, and the work is returned to constantly; but return in performance is not yield. Its musical surface is fully present on first hearing, by design: there is little hidden counterpoint, harmonic process or motivic network for a later hearing to find. The literature it has sustained is mostly about its reception and its politics, its place in the Third Reich, its appropriation by mass culture, its debt to Stravinsky, rather than its structure. The texts give more on return than the music: the Codex poems, the Archpoet, the macaronic love songs and Orff’s choice and order of them. Performance has long been settled; conductors argue tempo and weight, not reading. A work this famous that yields this little more on the tenth hearing is scored here.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The field is the concert music of the 1930s. The intrinsic force is bounded. The work did not reorganise what was possible, since Stravinsky had done that; it proved that a new choral and orchestral work could hold a mass audience by rhythm and repetition without development, and it made a German alternative to both late Romanticism and the Second Viennese School. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: very wide, and mostly outside composition. Within the concert field it founded Orff’s own line of stage works and fed the choral repertory. Outside it, the massed choir, the pounding ostinato and the Latin chant became a stock idiom of epic in film and advertising, from Excalibur (1981) to trailer music: presence and imitation more than reorganisation.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Survival is weighed over eighty-nine years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form survives whole, in score and in continuous performance; nothing is lost or doubtful. Presence is the widest of any concert work of its decade: choral societies and orchestras perform it everywhere, every year, and its opening is known to people who have never heard a cantata. That presence is itself charged. The work entered the repertory in Nazi Germany, and its later fame is partly as a cliché, the opening chorus used until it can sound like a parody of itself. It has outlived both and is still performed whole. The charges hold it from the widest figure; the evidence holds it above the usual figure for its age.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Within its chosen means the command is complete and the making bears weight. The orchestration is brilliant and exact: two pianos and percussion as a rhythmic engine, celesta and glockenspiel in the love section, the bassoon’s high solo over the swan, the brass held back for the frame. The choral writing is singable by amateurs and still overwhelming, a real achievement. The Latin is set by accent and syllable, and stanzas are varied by scoring with great economy. What holds the axis is the narrowness of the means: harmony that seldom moves past triad and pedal, almost no counterpoint, phrases built by repeating a cell. Craft confined to so few resources cannot be read at the anchors of Bach or Schubert, whose making carries far more in every bar.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the whispered terror of O Fortuna and the drunken abbot of Ego sum abbas, or the roasted swan and Dulcissime. One law governs them: ostinato, stanza and triad, the voice declaiming over a fixed rhythmic ground. The Middle High German dances and the Latin love songs, the comic numbers and the sacred parody, obey the same physics across a range wide in mood: grief, farce, lust, ecstasy, dread. The frame’s return states the law outright, and that is credited. But narrowness is not coherence, and part of the unity here is the narrowness of the means: one law is easy to keep when it has so few clauses.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Several orders are named: the natural order of sun, spring and the green; the body and its appetites; the society of the tavern, the abbot, the gambler and the drinker of every rank; love from courtship to consummation; and Fortune over all, the nearest the work comes to the sacred and to history. What holds the axis here is absence and arrangement. Labour, the family, the state and the inner life beyond appetite are absent or touched in passing; Estuans interius names a divided self, but the setting does not hold it. The orders arrive in sequence as tableaux, more listed than integrated, and only the frame holds them in one structure. The world is wide in appetite and narrow in everything else.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.1, then The Sublime and The Made at 8.2. A score whole and in continuous performance for eighty-nine years, its presence the widest of any concert work of its decade though charged with its origin and its cliché; height at the ends, in the opening’s drop and build, in In trutina and Dulcissime, and in Ave formosissima and its cutting off; and a command of orchestra and chorus that is complete within narrow means and bears weight throughout.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.8: nature, the body, the tavern and love under Fortune, presented in sequence as tableaux, with labour, the family, the state and the inner life beyond appetite absent. Then The Bottomless Well at 7.0, a surface given whole on first hearing and a literature mostly of reception; The Inevitable at 7.2, a required frame around a free interior; and The Unconcealment at 7.4, much of the disclosure rendered as mood.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.2 falls short of the threshold of 7.5 by three tenths. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.9, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 8.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.1 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Archetypal Deep at 8.1, The Swerve at 7.8, Pressure on Tradition at 7.8 and The Unconcealment at 7.4 fall short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Bottomless Well, 7.0, The Inevitable, 7.2, and The Unconcealment, 7.4, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.8. Two of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.8, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the score of Carmina Burana as Schott publishes it, and its performance tradition, read from knowledge under the desk’s convention for concert music; no score, text or recording was in hand. The unit is the scenic cantata in its standard performing version: twenty-five numbers in a prologue, three parts and a closing return, with the medieval Latin and Middle High German poems Orff chose from the Codex Buranus as part of the work. The numbers are not scored separately. The staging the work was written for and its life in the concert hall are both read, and no single production, performance or recording is the unit; Trionfi, the triptych of which it became the first panel, is not the unit. The words are not Orff’s, but their selection, order and setting are, and every axis is judged on the original. Latin is quoted only in the titles of numbers and in phrases of four words or fewer; every English gloss is the desk’s own, plain and literal, and none is taken from a published translation. The order of numbers, the sections, the languages and the numbers with soloists were counted by script. The running time is given as about an hour, a range across the recorded tradition, not a measurement. Facts that could not be verified, among them the full Latin subtitle, the conductor of the first performance, the manuscript’s shelfmark and its pictures, the modern edition of the poems, the exact orchestral and percussion forces, the reduced version for two pianos and percussion, the soprano’s highest note, the wording of Orff’s letter to his publisher and the detail of the work’s first official reception, are not given; the disputed record of Orff’s own conduct in the Nazi years is left aside. The sound of the work as heard is beyond this reading and is neither credited nor charged.