![]() During the 1920s and 1930s, factionalism was intense, and one’s chosen allegiances, artistic and political, had definite consequences. On the surface, such a move seems like an act of refuge when one thinks of the cultural conditions of the time. He turned away from works by contemporaries and near-contemporaries such as Franz Werfel, Bertolt Brecht, and the poet Richard Dehmel, whom we associate with Schoenberg. ![]() ![]() His attraction for the past was not limited to music he was an avid reader of classical texts, especially of the poet Catullus. He was director of the Munich Bachverein, had a special interest in Monteverdi, and staged Heinrich Schütz’s Auferstehungshistoria in 1933. As Hans Jörg Jans elegantly describes, Orff as a young composer turned to the distant past for inspiration after World War I. At stake in Carmina burana and the sequels is the question of Orff’s explicit aesthetic choices about what musical language was appropriate for the twentieth century. Carl Orff does not deserve to be considered a one-work composer like Leoncavallo. This kind of success for a single work easily evokes two questions: why does Carmina burana continue to thrill modern listeners, and why are the other two parts of the trilogy almost entirely forgotten?īoth the extreme popularity of Carmina burana and the relative obscurity of the sequels have everything to with the historical context from which they came. It is hugely popular among amateur and college choral groups, and is arguably one of the best-known works of the twentieth century. Even if you have never heard a live performance or one of the innumerable recordings of Carmina burana, chances are that this choral work is familiar to you from the films and television commercials in which it has been used ad infinitum. Composed in 19, respectively, both are sequels to a work that perhaps everyone in the audience has heard before, Carmina burana (1937). We present two works that many in the audience may never have heard before, the Catulli carmina and the Trionfo di Afrodite of Carl Orff. Tonight we bring our year-long series examining the relationship between music and memory to an end with perhaps the most difficult and emotionally fraught example. Written for the concert After Carmina Burana: an Historical Perspective, performed on at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.
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