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April 21, 2007
Echo's of Job in Carmina Burana
Last night Shirley and I went to the big Spring gala performance of the combined Pomona College Choir and Orchestra. And what a performance it was!
They did Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. The program tells us,
The Carmina Burana, sometimes instead called the Burana Codex, are a set of more than one thousand medieval poems and songs, most of which satirize the Church or celebrate drink, lust, and other earthly pleasures. The volume dates to around 1230, but the individual works in the collection span well over one hundred years, with some having been written down in the 11th century.
Sometime before 1937, Carl Orff put 25 of these poems, most in Latin but a few in German, to music. While the poems are often bawdy, the music is often very majestic, Church like in a satirical sort of way. But sometimes the music turns light. In the context of the poems, it is often very humorous. There were occasions when the audience laughed aloud.
Two passages from the poems seemed to echo themes in the book of Job. In the Fortune Plango Vulnera, the second poem in Orff's work, the choir sings (I follow the translation in the program),
The wheel of Fortune turns:
I go down, demeaned;
another is raised up;
far too high up
sits the king at the summit -
let him fear ruin!
For under the axis is written:
QUEEN HECUBA
The other was from Cour d'Amours; Dies, Nox et Omnia, the sixteenth poem in the work,
O friends, you are making fun of me,
you do not know what you are saying,
spare me, sorrowful as I am,
great is my grief,
advise me at least,
by your honor.
To be sure, in context of these words differ from much that is in Job but the sentiment sure sounds familiar. Even if the parallels with Job are more products of my imagination than real, the Carmina Burana, represent an interesting collection of what Whitehead called "flashes of freedom."
If you get a chance to hear Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, don't pass it up!
Posted by Duane Smith at April 21, 2007 1:26 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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Comments
Thank you. Your observations are important for all. Over and over again it is the artists, the poets, and the musicians that assist the thoughtful scientist and the concerned historian to narrow the gap between reality and appearence that brings forth beauty.
Posted by: loren Fisher at April 21, 2007 2:14 PM
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