#national philharmonic
Catch the last National Philharmonic Chorale performance of the season this Saturday and Sunday at Strathmore! We’re performing Carl Orff’s rousing Carmina Burana as well the Washington, DC premiere of Witold Lutoslawksi’s Trois Poèmes d'Henri Michaux.
In 1962 Lutoslawski was commissioned by Slavko Zlatić, director of the Zagreb Radio Choir, to compose a musical presentation of Trois Poèmes d'Henri Michaux, an eclectic Belgian-born poet famous for his exploration of the darker sides of human emotion and conflict. The three-part work follows the principles of a classical tragedy. Choral parts range from entrances containing every note of the chromatic scale to approximated speaking, whispering, and shouting.
The first poem, “Pensées,” a skeptical reflection on human thinking, is followed by “Le grand combat,” presenting a bloody fight of two people and constituting the climactic act of the struggle. The third poem, “Repos dans le malheur,” brings melancholy, resignation, and relief. The work premiered in 1963 conducted by both Zlatić, leading the orchestra, and Lutoslawski, leading the 40-voice chorus.
Orff’sCarmina Burana confronts issues similar to the issues we face today: love, sex, drinking, gambling, fate, and fortune. Because of their intended use as a means of entertainment by and for the monks, the text was written in vernacular Latin and medieval French and German so as to be easily understood and accessible. Carl Orff selected 24 of the poems and arranged them by thematic content: Fortuna,Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World), Primo vere(Springtime),In taberna (In the tavern), and Cours d’amour (The Court of Love).
The dark side of the bawdy and free-wheeling Carmina Burana, in its devil-may-care treatment of social interactions and mores, became Orff’s catapult to international fame as a composer, but it also made Orff’s name in Nazi cultural circles. After some initial official discomfort about the work’s frank sexual innuendos, Orff’s cantata was elevated to the status of a signature piece in Nazi circles, where it was treated as an emblem of Third Reich “youth culture.” The Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, once pointed to Orff’s cantata as “the kind of clear, stormy, and yet always disciplined music that our time requires.”
TheCarmina Burana is a fantastic introductory piece for anyone just getting their feet wet with classical music (plus it is one of the most well-known works in music). Here are some examples of the Carmina Burana in pop culture:
