Orff was born in Munich and came from a Bavarian family that was very active in the German military. His father's regimental band supposedly often played the compositions of the young Orff. He studied at the Munich Academy of Music until 1914, then served in the military during World War I. Afterwards he held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt, later to return to Munich to further pursue his musical studies.
From 1925 Orff was the head of a department and co-founder of the Guenther School for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich, where he worked with musical beginners. Having constant contact with children, this is where he developed his theories in music education.
While Orff's association, or lack thereof, with the Nazi party has never been conclusively established, his Carmina Burana was hugely popular in Nazi Germany after its premiere in Frankfurt in 1937, receiving numerous performances (although one Nazi critic reviewed it savagely as "degenerate", implying a connection with the contemporaneous, and infamous, exhibit of Entartete Kunst). He was one of the few German composers under the Nazi regime who responded to the official call to write new music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, after the music of Felix Mendelssohn had been banned, which in itself suggests where his sympathies lay; others refused to cooperate in this.
Orff was a personal friend of Kurt Huber, one of the founders of the resistance movement Die Weiße Rose (the White Rose), and who was condemned to death by the Volksgerichtshof and executed by the Nazis in 1943. After World War II, Orff claimed that he was a member of the group, and was himself involved in the resistance, but there was no evidence for this other than his own word, and other sources dispute his claim).
Orff is buried in the Baroque church of the beer-brewing Benedictine priory of Andechs, south of Munich.
Orff is best known for Carmina Burana (1937), a "scenic cantata". It is the first of a trilogy, Trionfi, which also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. These compositions reflected his interest in medieval German poetry. Together the trilogy is called Trionfi, meaning "triumphs". The work was based on a thirteenth-century erotic verse written by the Goliards, found in a manuscript dubbed the Codex latinus monacensis, which had been discovered in a Bavarian monastery in 1803. The term "Goliards" was often used to describe students who wrote secular verse in the Middle Ages. While "modern" in some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the medieval period in this trilogy, with infectious rhythms and easy tonalities. The mediaeval poems were written in an early form of German and Latin.
With the success of Carmina Burana, Orff orphaned all of his previous works except for Catulli Carmina and the En trata, which were rewritten until acceptable by Orff. He was reluctant to call any of his works simply operas. For example, he called Der Mond ("The Moon") (1939) a "Märchenoper" or Fairytale Opera, and placed Die Kluge ("The Wise Woman") (1943) in the same category. About his Antigone (1949), Orff said specifically that it was not an opera, rather a Vertonung, a "musical setting" of the ancient tragedy. The text is a German translation, by Friedrich Hölderlin, of the Sophocles play of the same name. The orchestration relies heavily on the percussion section, and is otherwise fairly simple.
Orff's last work, De Temporum Fine Comoedia ("A Play of the End of Time"), had its premiere at the Salzburg music festival on 20th August 1973, performed by Herbert von Karajan and the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. In this highly personal work, Orff presented a mystery play, in which he summarised his view on the end of time, sung in Greek, German, and Latin.
Carmina Burana: Dies Nox Et Omnia
Carl Orff Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
michi sunt contraria; is against me
virginum colloquia the chattering of maidens
me fay planszer, makes me weep
oy suvenz suspirer, and often sigh
plu me fay temer. and most of all, scares me
O sodales, ludite, O friends, you are making fun of me
michi mesto parcite, spare me,s orrowful as I am
grand ey dolur, great is my grief
attamen consulite advise me at least
per voster honur. by your honour
Tua pulchra facies your beautiful face
me fay planszer milies, makes me weep a thousand times
pectus habet glacies. your heart is of ice
A remender as a cure
statim vivus fierem I would be revived
per un baser. by a kiss
The lyrics to Carl Orff's song "Carmina Burana: Dies Nox Et Omnia" express the singer's despair in the face of a world that seems to be against them. Day and night, everything feels wrong and the chattering of maidens makes the singer weep and sigh. They are most afraid of something that is not explicitly mentioned in the song. The singer pleads with their friends to advise them, to spare them in their sorrow, and to use their honor to help the singer through their difficult time.
The entire piece is a part of the larger work entitled "Carmina Burana," which translates to "Songs of Beuern." The collection of poems was discovered in a Benedictine Monastery in Bavaria in 1803. The lyrics for the work were written in Medieval Latin, Old German and Old French. The manuscript contained a variety of themes, including love, fortune, and morals. The manuscript was eventually translated into German by Michel Hofmann in the 1800s, which is when Orff discovered it.
Line by Line Meaning
Dies, nox et omnia
Day, night and everything
michi sunt contraria;
is against me
virginum colloquia
the chattering of maidens
me fay planszer,
makes me weep
oy suvenz suspirer,
and often sigh
plu me fay temer.
and most of all, scares me
O sodales, ludite,
O friends, you are making fun of me
vos qui scitis dicite
you do not know what you are saying (?)
michi mesto parcite,
spare me, sorrowful as I am
grand ey dolur,
great is my grief
attamen consulite
advise me at least
per voster honur.
by your honour
Tua pulchra facies
your beautiful face
me fay planszer milies,
makes me weep a thousand times
pectus habet glacies.
your heart is of ice
A remender
as a cure
statim vivus fierem
I would be revived
per un baser.
by a kiss
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@FauxWerks
This piece really feels like it should have been in Kingdom of Heaven. Gorgeous music.
@joaodinispinho8668
Absolutely amazing!
@nonsense618
This is how I sound when I’m trying not to yawn and he makes it actually sound good
@DumbWaiters
I haven't understood the joke.
@nonsense618
@@DumbWaiters It’s just that the way he sings sounds like the way I sound when I’m trying to speak through a yawn, but he actually sounds good.
@DumbWaiters
@@nonsense618 Lol, Ok.
@xlrv1
A much better version of Dies nox than some others on YouTube. Please tell us what performance this is from.
@GPXXX
Youtube and Shazam recognize it as Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Richard Cooke
@leomtz1195
El día, la noche y todas las cosas están en contra mía. La chrarla de las doncellas me hace llorar. Con frecuencia suspiro y eso me hace temer más. ¡Oh amigos, jugad! Y ustedes que saben, díganme; compadézcanse de mí, es mi tristeza grande en dolor; al menos por gentileza, aconséjenme. Tu hermoso rostro me hace llorar a raudales, hielo es tu pecho. Para curarme, ahora mismo quisiera, revivir por un beso.
@snufkin789
@smiafly this text isn't entirely latin, just look at it closely. the first three lines of a stanza are in vulgar latin whereas the second three lines are in old french.