Wed, 7. 5. 2025, 19.00 hrs

C7 CARMINA BURANA

Venue: Zlín Congress Centre  |  Organizer: Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinů, o.p.s.  | 

In our final concert in this series we hear a performance of Carl Orff's cantata Carmina Burana, one of the most popular, successful and frequently performed works of the 20th century, with few works enjoying such popularity across the generations and musical genres as this monumental opus by Orff, which has fascinated audiences around the world for more than 85 years.

Carmina Burana is based on a collection of medieval poetry created between 1220 and 1250, known as the Codex latinus monacensis. It was discovered in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery of Beurum in the Upper Bavarian village of Benediktbeuern at the foot of the Bavarian Alps in the area between present-day Styria and South Tyrol. The collection contains a total of 254 religious, moralistic, drinking, love and satirical songs and poems written by itinerant medieval musicians and poets. Many of these songs were very popular in their time, and some of them even became street songs of the common people. They celebrate love, drink, debauchery and communion with nature, and many are borderline obscene in their content. They are written in several languages - Latin, Old French, Italian, Old German and the hybrid mix of “Macaronic”.

Carl Orff discovered the collection while leafing through the catalogue of an antiquarian bookshop in Würzburg, Germany, and ordered it on the basis of its intriguing title. "It was on that memorable Maundy Thursday in 1934 that I received the book,” Orff said later. “I opened it and was struck on the very first page by the then well known image of the Wheel of Fortune turning through life, and below it the verses:O Fortuna, velut Luna, statu variabilis... I was spellbound.” When in 1937 he selected 24 songs from the collection and set them to music in the form of a cantata, he had no idea of the enormous success he would achieve. The O, Fortuna section alone, which has appeared in nearly 100 films and TV shows, has become one of the most frequently used songs in the film industry, as well as a favourite among advertising copywriters, musicians and games producers. It has seen numerous adaptations from pop to metal, remixes, covers by beatboxers, and various combinations of instruments, so our concert has all the makings of a musical epic that will captivate music lovers of all kinds.