"O Fortuna" in the Carmina Burana manuscript (Bavarian State Library; the poem occupies the last six lines on the page, along with the overrun at bottom right.
In 1935–36, "O Fortuna" was set to music by German composer Carl Orff as a part of "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi", the opening and closing movement of his cantataCarmina Burana. It was first staged by the Frankfurt Opera on 8 June 1937. It opens at a slow pace with thumping drums and choir that drops quickly into a whisper, building slowly in a steady crescendo of drums and short string and horn notes peaking on one last long powerful note and ending abruptly. The tone is modal, until the last nine bars. A performance takes a little over two and a half minutes.
Orff's setting of the poem has influenced and been used in many other works and has been performed by numerous classical music ensembles and popular artists. It can be heard in numerous films and television commercials, and has become a staple in western popular culture, setting the mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations. "O Fortuna" topped The People's Classical Chart in 2009 as the most-played classical music of the previous 75 years in the United Kingdom.[1]
"O Fortuna" is a medieval Latin Goliardic poem written in the 13th century of uncertain authorship.[2] It is a complaint against the goddess of fortune, contained in the collection known as the Carmina Burana.
Carl Orff encountered the collection in 1934 and worked with a Latin and Greek enthusiast, Michel Hofmann, to select and organize 24 of the poems into a libretto. Orff composed his Carmina Burana, using the libretto, in 1935–1936. It was first performed by the Frankfurt Opera on 8 June 1937. The cantata is composed of 25 movements in five sections, with "O Fortuna" providing a compositional frame, appearing as the first movement and reprised for the twenty-fifth, both in sections titled "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" (Fortune, Empress of the World).
Text
Scott Horton wrote in Harper's that the text of the poem highlights how few people, at the time it was written, "felt any control over their own destiny" while at the same time it "rings with a passion for life, a demand to seize and treasure the sweet moments that pitiful human existence affords."[2]
O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem.
Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris.
Sors salutis et virtutis michi nunc contraria, est affectus et defectus semper in angaria. Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite; quod per sortem sternit fortem, mecum omnes plangite!
O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing ever waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes playing with mental clarity; poverty and power it melts them like ice.
Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, devoid of security and ever fading to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.
Fate, in health and virtue is against me, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong, everyone weep with me![3]
Music
Orff was inspired both by the poem and the medieval symbol of the Rota Fortunae, or Wheel of Fortune, which the goddess Fortuna spins at random, causing some people to suffer while others find wealth. The Rota Fortunae appears in a version of the poetry collection known as the Codex Buranas. The repetition of the musical accompaniment draws a comparison to the spinning of the wheel.[4][5]
"O Fortuna" opens at a slow pace with thumping drums and energetic choir that drops quickly into a whisper, building slowly in a steady crescendo of drums and short string and horn notes peaking on one last long powerful note and ending abruptly. Conductor Marin Alsop wrote that it "begins with all forces at full throttle, then immediately scale[s] back in an ominous warning repetition that builds to a climactic close".[6] The tone is modal, with melody built around a tonal center, until the last nine bars. The last syllable of the song shifts in both key and emotional valence, from D minor to D major.[4]
Alsop describes the piece as "a spectacle" which appeals to all of the senses, intentionally defying neat categorization.[7] According to David Clem, "the music signifies the upturn of Fortune's wheel, while the text represents the downturn."[4]
Reception
Carmina Burana was successful from its first staging by the Frankfurt Opera in 1937, propelling Orff's career and becoming his best known work.[2] "O Fortuna" in particular has become one of the most recognizable compositions in popular culture. In 2009, it topped a BBC list of most widely heard classical tracks, with BBC Radio 2 head of programming calling it "a timeless piece of music that continues to be played, performed and loved over 70 years after its composition."[8] A Radio Netherlands documentary attributes its popular appeal to the combination of choruses, large orchestra, interesting instrument combinations, tight rhythm, and the extent to which it is singable and memorable.[9] Horton calls it "a work of brilliance" that "may have been spoiled by its popularization", used "often as a jingle, detached in any meaningful way from its powerful message".[10]
In The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, Clem highlights how the poem's themes like human struggle and fate are commonly divorced from popular usage. He takes as an example the use of the music in an Applebee's advertisement which changes the words to be about a new promotion, drawing on the arrangement simply for its signification of the vernacular concept of "epic" (an "epic deal").[4] Widespread use of "O Fortuna" in advertising and other forms of popular culture may have begun with the trailer for the 1981 movie Excalibur, which uses the song in its entirety.[4]
"O Fortuna" has been called "the most overused piece of music in film history",[11] and Harper's Magazine columnist Scott Horton has commented that "Orff's setting may have been spoiled by its popularization" and its use "in movies and commercials often as a jingle, detached in any meaningful way from its powerful message."[12] Its contemporary usage is often joking or satirical in nature (e.g. its use in the 2009 episode "Gone Maggie Gone" of The Simpsons), owing to its oversaturation in popular culture.[citation needed]
The composition appears in numerous films and television commercials[13] and has become a staple in popular culture, setting the mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations.[14][bettersourceneeded] For instance, it is used to portray the torment of Jim Morrison's drug addiction in the film The Doors.[15][user-generated source] In 1983, Doors' keyboardist Ray Manzarek released his third solo album, Carmina Burana, which is an interpretation of the piece in a contemporary framework.[citation needed]
In the 1970s, the "O Fortuna" music was used for an Old Spice commercial which aired in the United Kingdom. The trailer of John Boorman's Excalibur (1981) featured "O Fortuna" in its entirety.[16] It has been covered, remixed, and sampled in a wide variety of popular musical acts like Therion and Nas.[7][17]
Udo of Aachen (c.1200–1270) is a fictional monk, a creation of British technical writer Ray Girvan, who introduced him in an April Fool's hoax article in 1999. According to the article, Udo was an illustrator and theologian who discovered the Mandelbrot set some 700 years before Benoit Mandelbrot.
Carl Heinrich Maria Orff was a German composer and music educator, who composed the cantata Carmina Burana (1937). The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education.
Carmina Burana is a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces are mostly bawdy, irreverent, and satirical. They were written principally in Medieval Latin, a few in Middle High German and old Arpitan. Some are macaronic, a mixture of Latin and German or French vernacular.
Hecuba was a queen in Greek mythology, the wife of King Priam of Troy during the Trojan War.
Fortuna is the Roman goddess of luck.
Trionfo di Afrodite is a cantata written in 1951 by the German composer Carl Orff. It is the third and final installment in the Trionfi musical triptych, which also includes Carmina Burana (1937) and Catulli Carmina (1943).
The Archpoet, or Archipoeta, is the name given to an anonymous 12th-century author of ten medieval Latin poems, the most famous being his "Confession" found in the Carmina Burana manuscript. Along with Hugh Primas of Orléans, he is cited as the best exemplar of Goliardic poetry and one of the stellar poets of the Latin Middle Ages.
The goliards were a group of generally young clergy in Europe who wrote satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries of the Middle Ages. They were chiefly clerics who served at or had studied at the universities of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England, who protested against the growing contradictions within the church through song, poetry and performance. Disaffected and not called to the religious life, they often presented such protests within a structured setting associated with carnival, such as the Feast of Fools, or church liturgy.
Poetry took numerous forms in medieval Europe, for example, lyric and epic poetry. The troubadours, trouvères, and the minnesänger are known for composing their lyric poetry about courtly love usually accompanied by an instrument.
Naïve is the fourth studio album by German industrial band KMFDM, released on November 15, 1990, by Wax Trax! Records. It was recorded following KMFDM's return from their first visit to the United States and subsequent tour with Ministry. It was also the first record they released after signing directly to Wax Trax! Records.
Fortuna is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least the Renaissance. The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of today's Italian culture, where the dichotomy fortuna / sfortuna plays a prominent role in everyday social life, also represented by the very common refrain "La [dea] fortuna è cieca".
In medieval and ancient philosophy, the Wheel of Fortune or Rota Fortunae is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. The metaphor was already a cliché in ancient times, complained about by Tacitus, but was greatly popularized for the Middle Ages by its extended treatment in the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius from around 520. It became a common image in manuscripts of the book, and then other media, where Fortuna, often blindfolded, turns a large wheel of the sort used in watermills, to which kings and other powerful figures are attached.
Carmina Burana is a cantata composed in 1935 and 1936 by Carl Orff, based on 24 poems from the medieval collection Carmina Burana. Its full Latin title is Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis. It was first performed by the Oper Frankfurt on 8 June 1937. It is part of Trionfi, a musical triptych that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. The first and last sections of the piece are called "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" and start with "O Fortuna".
Cantus Buranus is an album by the German medieval revival band Corvus Corax that employs the medieval text Carmina Burana. Cantus Buranus is a stage opera of eleven poems from Carmina Burana for orchestra, choir and medieval instruments, incorporating medieval, classical and modern musical idioms. It is not the first time Corvus Corax has worked with Carmina Burana; the band Tanzwut used the poems "Fautue" and "Caupona" in their album Ihr Wolltet Spass.
Carmina Burana is the third solo album by Ray Manzarek released in 1983. It is a recording of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.
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Carmina may refer to:
"In taberna quando sumus" is a medieval Latin Goliardic poem, part of the collection known as the Carmina Burana, written between the 12th and early 13th centuries. It was set to music in 1935/36 by German composer Carl Orff as part of his Carmina Burana which premiered at Frankfurt Opera on 8 June 1937. Within Orff's Carmina Burana, this drinking song is the 14th movement in section 2, In Taberna. The poem is largely in trochaic tetrameter.
"Ecce gratum" is a medieval Latin Goliardic poem written early in the 13th century, part of the collection known as the Carmina Burana. It was set to music in 1935/36 by German composer Carl Orff as part of his Carmina Burana which premiered at Frankfurt Opera on 8 June 1937. Within Orff's Carmina Burana, this song is the 5th movement in section 1, Primo vere.
"O Fortuna" is a movement in Carl Orff's 1935–36 cantata Carmina Burana. It begins the opening and closing sections, both titled "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi". The cantata is based on a medieval Goliardic poetry collection of the same name, from which the poem "O Fortuna" provides the words sung in the movement. It was well-received during its time, and entered popular culture through use in other musical works, advertisements, and soundtracks beginning in the late 20th century.
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