As usual, at the Symphony yesterday everyone jumped to their feet for a standing O at the end. Carmina Burana is especially popular in Seattle. The Pacific Northwest Ballet has a Carmina Burana production featuring a giant mechanical wheel, and the Seattle Choral Company always performs it on New Year's Eve.
Considering the subject, and frankly, the fascist reputation of the work, this seems like an odd way to ring in the new year! I read somewhere once that Dale Chihuly blared Carmina Burana at the Boathouse while orchestrating his glass creations. What could be more "Seattle" than that?
Carmina Burana was originally the name given to a manuscript containing 254 medieval Latin dramatic texts, written by wandering students and minstrels during the 13th century. It wasn't "discovered" until 1803, hidden away at a pretty Benedictine monastery in Bavaria.
The poems are mostly bawdy and irreverent with themes of eating, drinking, gaming and lust. Much of it satirizes the clergy. But the over-riding theme is the fickleness of Fortune and Wealth, symbolized by the grim medieval "Wheel of Fortune."
Kloster Benediktbeuern
Original home of Carmina Burana
Original home of Carmina Burana
In the 1930's, German composer Carl Orff composed music for 24 of the Carmina Burana poems and it immediately became popular in Hitler's Germany. Since then, the song "O Fortuna" has been used in hundreds of films and commercials.
Edward Burne-Jones
Wheel of Fortune
The Wheel of Fortune concept is central to ancient and medieval philosophy and refers to 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 misfortune while others gain. In other words, Fate is a blindfolded woman.
There are thousands of depictions of the Wheel of Fortune in medieval art, from manuscripts to the great cathedral rose windows, which are based on the same concept.
The Wheel was used as an allegory in religious instruction. Though Fortune's Wheel could be favorable, medieval writers preferred the tragic aspect, dwelling on downfall of the mighty - serving to remind people of the temporal nature of all earthly things.
Oh Fortune,
like the moon
of ever-changing state,
you are always waxing and waning.
I sat elated,
crowned with the
gay flower of prosperity.
you are a turning wheel;
your position is uncertain,
your favor is idle
and always likely to disappear.
The chance of prosperity
and of virtue
is not now mine;
whether willing or not
a man is always liable
for Fortune's services.
with flowing eyes,
because her gifts
she has treacherously
taken back from me.
I sink, debased;
another is raised up;
lifted too high,
a king sits on the top.
Let him beware of ruin.
Happy Monday! The cheery quotes all from Carmina Burana.
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