Carmina Burana – Origin

At Easter 1934, Carl Orff received an antiquarian copy of the medieval songbook Carmina Burana. He was immediately inspired and composed the first pieces that very night. Orff was particularly receptive to the vocal richness, musical sound and rhythmic language of Latin and Middle High German poetry. It allowed him to seamlessly continue his previous experiments with elementary forms of music, language and rhythm.

»Images and words flooded my mind. Although I was only able to familiarise myself with the content of the poetry collection in broad strokes at first, a new work immediately came to mind, a stage work with singing and dancing choirs, following only the images and texts. On the same day, I had sketched out a partial score of the first choir, ‘O Fortuna.’ After a sleepless night, during which I almost lost myself in the extensive collection of poems, a second chorus, “Fortune plango vulnera”, had also been created, and on Easter morning a third, “Ecce gratum”, was put to paper.«

-Carl Orff-

Despite his good knowledge of Latin, Carl Orff needs help with the translation and understanding of the rhythm. He works together with Michel Hofmann, a librarian working in Bamberg. They correspond mainly by letter and postcard until the piece is finally written in August 1936.