Carl orff carmina burana
Knowing that anyone who might contradict him was likely to be dead, he told Jenkins that he had co-founded Die Weisse Rose with his friend, Kurt Huber. The American asked Orff if he could think of a single thing he had done to stand up to Hitler, or to distance himself from the policies of the Third Reich? Orff had done nothing of that kind. That would allow Orff (among other things) to collect the massive royalties from Carmina Burana. Two years later, after Germany’s surrender, Orff himself was interrogated – by an American intelligence officer who had to establish whether Orff could be “denazi-fied”. If his friendship with Huber came out, he told her, he would be “ruined”. But Orff’s only thought was for his own position.
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Huber’s wife (whom Palmer tracked down for his film) begged Orff to use his influence to help her husband. Orff happened to call at Huber’s house the day after his arrest. In February 1943 he and other Resistance members were arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and publicly hanged. During the war he founded the Munich unit of Die Weisse Rose (The White Rose), the German resistance movement. Orff had a friend called Kurt Huber, an academic who had helped him with librettos. “Just like Orff himself,” his biographer notes.Īll this, and an act of treachery hidden until now, is revealed in an exceptional film by Tony Palmer, fittingly called O Fortuna, that’s just out on DVD and will be broadcast on Sky Arts 2 in late January. He was obsessed by the myth of Orpheus, the musician who descended into the Underworld. Yet, as another wife puts it, “all his life he wanted forgiveness” for the guilt that consumed him.
CARL ORFF CARMINA BURANA FULL
Yet one of his wives says that he himself was full of “demonic forces” and would “wake up screaming at night”. It is still used around the world, particularly (and paradoxically) to help children with cerebral palsy, who would probably not be alive if Hitler’s Germany had triumphed.Ī connoisseur of Greek drama, and a perceptive scholar who edited and performed Monteverdi long before the rest of the world rediscovered the Baroque genius, he talked eloquently about the need for people to express themselves through art if they were to become “complete” human beings. Yet he was (and, in some quarters, still is) adulated in educational circles for his Schulwerksystem of teaching music to young children through rhythm and gesture – a system he originally intended to flog to the Hitler Youth movement. “He didn’t want me in his married life,” she recalls sadly. He turned his back on his own teenage daughter, who adored him. Yet in Carmina Burana he created the world’s jolliest musical celebration of boozing, feasting and generally enjoying the sins of other people’s flesh. Yet he rose to become one of the Third Reich’s top musicians.Īccording to one of his four wives, he “found it impossible to love” and “despised people”.
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Far from espousing the hounding of “inferior races”, he was fascinated by jazz and by what today we would call world music. He was never a diehard Nazi indeed, he looked with disdain on their oafish cultural values. Few composers felt themselves more at the mercy of capricious gods and twists of fate than its composer, Carl Orff.
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The rhythmic impulses of Stravinsky are obvious, but the subtler, post-Romantic colors of Richard Strauss are also evident, particularly in the soprano's aria "In trutina." For anyone stymied by the number of recordings available, this CD is a terrific choice.The opening line of Carmina Burana – “O Fortuna!” – could hardly be more apt. Additionally, this lucid performance reveals Orff's influences more plainly than most. All the parts can be heard distinctly, and the variety of timbres gives this repetitive music some much-needed points of interest. One feature that may give this recording an edge over others is its clarity. The bawdiness of the texts is sufficiently brought across, and the orchestra's brilliant effects are stunning. Christian Thielemann's performance with the choir and orchestra of the Berlin Opera is certainly on par with the fine recordings of André Previn and Seiji Ozawa, and the recorded sound is as superb as Deutsche Grammophon's technology can make it.
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Direct and sturdy, this popular cantata is almost indestructible and hard to misinterpret, though to make it sound fresh and distinctive is a challenge. Since Carmina Burana is such a mainstay of the repertoire, it is difficult to think of any ensemble that has not performed it or of any major label that does not have multiple recordings to offer.