The wildly popular Carmina Burana by Carl Orff will usher in spring for music lovers on March 27 at Benaroya Hall in a gala performance by the Kirkland Choral Society and three local music groups.
Orff begins and ends Carmina with the powerful “Oh, Fortuna,” a pulsating hymn to the Goddess of Fate. This strong opening grips both performers and audience, creating a shared rhythmic impulse that builds throughout the cantata to the dramatic return-to-the-beginning finale.
Thirteenth century wandering minstrels and defrocked clerics penned Carmina’s fanciful and bawdy lyrics. These minstrels sing again, seven hundred years later, in Orff’s decidedly 20th century musical composition, depicting young girls delighting in innocent spring dance and song, building to men reveling in debauching drink and prurient pleasures. The secular tone of the lyrics ridiculed the fervent religious faith of the Middle Ages.
A sympathetic soul stashed away these banned manuscripts in a Bavarian monastery, where the lyrics, written in Latin and Low German, survived five centuries of desuetude, war and religious turmoil. Brought to light in 1847, they slumbered unsung another century until Carl Orff composed Carmina in 1936, deftly adapting 13th Century plainsong chant to twentieth century tonal modes. By this time, on the eve of World War II, secular, rebellious lyrics were no longer risqué but a pervasive mind set popular today.
In addition to the Kirkland Choral Society, this performance will feature the Bellevue Chamber Chorus, the Cantare Vocal Ensemble, and Northwest Associated Arts Youth Choir, with the Sammamish Symphony Orchestra under the direction of R. Joseph Scott. Each performing group will also individually present several numbers. Kirkland Choral Society, with Dr. Glenn Gregg conducting, will sing eight Johannes Brahms Lovesong Waltzes. The concert begins at 2 p.m. in S. Mark Taper Auditorium at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. For tickets, go to kirklandchoralsociety.org or phone 425-296-0612.
