{"id":179,"date":"2005-12-10T23:04:29","date_gmt":"2005-12-11T06:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/carmina-burana-by-carl-orff\/"},"modified":"2005-12-10T23:05:16","modified_gmt":"2005-12-11T05:05:16","slug":"carmina-burana-by-carl-orff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/carmina-burana-by-carl-orff\/","title":{"rendered":"Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merri and I had a couple of nights out on the town this week. Thursday night, we went to hear <\/p>\n

Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff, performed in Popejoy Hall. From the mezzanine, crowded with friends and family of the performers, we looked <\/p>\n

down on the densely packed stage, including bleachers spanning the entire stage and half its depth for about two hundred singers from the <\/p>\n

UNM University Chorus and Concert Choir.<\/p>\n

I’m not much of a concert-goer, but it is amazing to be in such a context, united with <\/p>\n

many strangers by something beautiful and uplifting.<\/p>\n

Even if you don’t recognize the names Carmina Burana or Orff, you know the <\/p>\n

opening and closing of this piece. It may be the best or most rousing 5 minutes of music ever. Even if that is hyperbolic, it has to be <\/p>\n

on the short list of greatest choral pieces of the 20th Century. Oddly, I first heard it in the stunning-at-the-time movie Excaliber. <\/p>\n

Since then, we’ve heard it once before at UNM Popejoy and we have a couple of recordings of it.<\/p>\n

To me, Carmina bridges pre-20th <\/p>\n

Century and 20th Century music. It has long moments seeming plainly classical and then punctuates those with a more modern dissonance and <\/p>\n

cacophony. Strings are plucked instead of stroked. There’s a xylophone, two gongs, bells, etc. The 5 percussionists work their asses <\/p>\n

off.<\/p>\n

My knowledge of music isn’t sufficient to be sure, but it seems full of humor — something Frank Zappa might have liked. <\/p>\n

Surely Orff despised some tenor enough to require him to be on stage for over an hour and sing not 5 minutes, indeed, singing the part of <\/p>\n

a roasted swan (O miserable me. Now I am roasted black!) Then there are the two grand pianos which don’t seem to play in more than two <\/p>\n

of the 25 sections.<\/p>\n

In the midst of this, I had an epiphany about what an extraordinary programming language musical notation is. <\/p>\n

One can write a page of black dots and lines to control the simultaneous operation of hundreds of individuals. Though there must be <\/p>\n

variations intentional and accidental, a music “program” runs the same anywhere, anytime — across centuries. The same cannot be said <\/p>\n

about any other human-written programming language.<\/p>\n

The story of the libretto seems fictional. A collection of poems and songs <\/p>\n

written by defrocked priests between the 11th and 14th Centuries. Yeah, OK. The Latin lyrics are well-worth translating; much of the <\/p>\n

non-musical humor is there.<\/p>\n

And yet, again, that opening and closing (which was played a third time as an encore) is stunning <\/p>\n

musically and lyrically:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

O, Fortune!
\nLike the Moon
\nEverchanging
\nRising first
\nThen declining;<\/p>\n

Hateful life
\nTreats us badly
\nThen with kindness
\nMaking sport with our desires,
\nCausing power
\nAnd poverty alike
\nTo <\/p>\n

melt like ice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

mjh<\/span>
\nPS: Two little tangential items about me and music, one of which no <\/p>\n

one else knows. First, I was the Data Processing Manager for the National Symphony Orchestra over 20 years ago. My office in the Kennedy <\/p>\n

Center had been a broom closet which I shared with an IBM System 34. The other is that over 30 years ago I took a Music Theory class and <\/p>\n

wrote a piece of music in a strictly mechanical manner — I don’t play any instrument. I called it “The Cacophonous Cavalier” (after the <\/p>\n

University of Virginia’s namesake) and sub-titled it “Mund voll Kartofeln” (I was a German Major; that’s literally “mouth full of <\/p>\n

potatoes” and an old-fashioned way to call someone dim. The TA wrote “quatscherei” (nonsense). I don’t recall the grade; I never heard <\/p>\n

it played.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merri and I had a couple of nights out on the town this week. Thursday night, we went to hear Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff, performed in Popejoy Hall. From the mezzanine, crowded with friends and family of the performers, we looked down on the densely packed stage, including bleachers spanning the entire stage and … Continue reading Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}