The poems are in Medieval Latin, Germanic Latin, Middle-High German, Old French, Provençal, and some of the pieces are even “macaronic,” meaning they are a jumble of different languages. Most of them rhyme and have an irresistibly sing-song quality (they are a delight to recite!) The goliards’ facility with language enlivens all of the poems of Carmina.

(Primogeniture, or the passing of all inheritance to the first born son, meant that there were many second- and third-born sons in the Middle Ages who went to the Church and the Academy, whether or not they were cut out for monastic or scholastic life).

The untitled 13th-century manuscript the poems of Carmina came from is the richest collected source of poetry created by the goliards-groups of itinerant scholars and defrocked priests-learned, literary men who, for whatever reason, fell out with the academic and religious institutions of medieval Europe and made a living entertaining hosts (and each other) with their too-clever words and catchy rhymes. He was instantly entranced:Ĭarmina is a magnificent piece of music, but surely part of its magic of Carmina stems from the pure pleasure of its text-fluid with the beautiful vowels of Latin, dancing in double rhyme (it’s most likely that the poems were sung, though music notation doesn’t survive)-and fully alive with the wit, personality, and emotions of its creators. At a second-hand bookstore, Carl Orff encountered this image in a volume containing some of that manuscripts poetry, in translation, bearing the tawdry title Wine, Women, and Song. In one sense, it began with the page to the left: the first from an untitled 13th-century manuscript, featuring Fortune at her wheel. “Beuern” refers to the Benedictine monastery in Bavaria where, in 1803, a collection of thirteenth-century songs and poems was uncovered. That mouthful of a title reveals several things about Carmina’s origins and its composer’s intent. Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanæ cantoribus et choris cantandæ comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis (“Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magic images”) first came to life in Germany more than eighty years ago, in 1937. May those who slander us be cursed and may their names not be written in the book of the righteous.A thunderous low D, the portentous crash of a gong, dozens of voices crying out, “O! Fortuna:” the unmistakable beginning of one of the most famous and popular choral-orchestral works of the twentieth century, Carl Orff’s cantata, Carmina Burana. However much they cheerfully drink we are the ones whom everyone scolds, and thus we are destitute. Six hundred pennies would hardly suffice, if everyone drinks immoderately and immeasurably. The mistress drinks, the master drinks, the soldier drinks, the priest drinks, the man drinks, the woman drinks, the servant drinks with the maid, the swift man drinks, the lazy man drinks, the white man drinks, the black man drinks, the settled man drinks, the wanderer drinks, the stupid man drinks, the wise man drinks, The poor man drinks, the sick man drinks, the exile drinks, and the stranger, the boy drinks, the old man drinks, the bishop drinks, and the deacon, the sister drinks, the brother drinks, the old lady drinks, the mother drinks, this man drinks, that man drinks, a hundred drink, a thousand drink. To the Pope as to the king they all drink without restraint. First of all it is to the wine-merchant that the libertines drink, one for the prisoners, three for the living, four for all Christians, five for the faithful dead, six for the loose sisters, seven for the footpads in the wood, Eight for the errant brethren, nine for the dispersed monks, ten for the seamen, eleven for the squabblers, twelve for the penitent, thirteen for the wayfarers. Here no-one fears death, but they throw the dice in the name of Bacchus. But of those who gamble, some are stripped bare, some win their clothes here, some are dressed in sacks.

Some gamble, some drink, some behave loosely.

What happens in the tavern, where money is host, you may well ask, and hear what I say. Io io io io io io io io io! English When we are in the tavern, we do not think how we will go to dust, but we hurry to gamble, which always makes us sweat.

Carl orff carmina burana lyrics