Carmina Burana and Beyond Program Notes, Lyrics, and Translations

March 28, 2024

Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Orchestra

Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80

How do you normally say 'thank you' to people? Johannes Brahms said it in music in 1880 to the University of Breslau, (now the University of Wrocław in Wrocław, Poland), which had given him an honorary doctorate.

Apparently, he initially wrote them a simple thank you note, but the conductor Bernard Scholz—who had nominated him for the degree—convinced him that protocol required him to make a grander gesture of gratitude. The University expected nothing less than a musical offering from the composer. 'Compose a fine symphony for us!' Scholz wrote to Brahms.

The work was composed in 1880 and first performed on January 4, 1881. No doubt the premiere was intended to be a solemn occasion. As an unspoken reciprocation of their award, the University of Breslau had anticipated that Brahms, one of the greatest living composers (albeit one who had not attended college), would write a suitable new work to be played at the award ceremony. There is little doubt that what he provided confounded his hosts’ expectations. Rather than composing some ceremonial equivalent of Pomp and Circumstance—a more standard response—Brahms crafted what he described as a “rollicking potpourri of student songs,” in this case mostly drinking songs. It is easy to imagine the amusement of the assembled students, as well as the somewhat less-amused reaction of the school dignitaries, to Brahms’s lighthearted caprice.

The Academic Festival Overture showcases four beer-hall songs that were well known to German college students. The first, “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus” (“We Have Built a Stately House”), was proclaimed in the trumpets. “Der Landesvater” (“Father of Our Country”) followed in the strings, and the bassoons took the lead for “Was kommt dort von der Höh’?” (“What Comes from Afar?”), a song that was associated with freshman initiation. Lastly, the entire orchestra joined together for a grand rendition of “Gaudeamus igitur” (“Let Us Rejoice, Therefore”), a song later beloved by operetta fans for its appearance in Sigmund Romberg’s The Student Prince (1924). It was the first melody, however, that was most notorious in the composer’s day. “Wir hatten gebauet” was the theme song of a student organization that advocated the unification of the dozens of independent German principalities. This cause was so objectionable to authorities that the song had been banned for decades. Although the proscription had been lifted in most regions by 1871, it was still in effect in Vienna when Brahms completed his overture. Because of this ban, police delayed the Viennese premiere of the Academic Festival Overture for two weeks, fearing the incitement of the students.

Concert Choir

J’entends le moulin

I hear the millwheel (tique tique taque)
My father is having a house built.
It's being built with three gables.
There are three carpenters building it.
The youngest is my darling.
What do you have in your apron?
It's a pie made of three pigeons.
Let's sit down and eat it.
While sitting down they all leapt up,
Causing the sea and fish to tremble,
and the stones on the bottom of the sea.

O Salutaris Hostia

O, Saving Victim, who expandest the door of heaven,
Hostile armies press, give strength; bear aid.
To the One and Triune Lord, may there be everlasting glory;
may he who gives life without end to us give in our homeland.
Amen.

Wind Orchestra

Flourish for Wind Band

This short work was scored for military band with numerous clarinets, cornets, saxophones, euphoniums and timpani. Having been written as an overture to a pageant in the Royal Albert Hall, the score was then lost -- only to reappear in 1971. Upon its discovery the work was adapted twice by Roy Douglas -- first for brass band and then for symphony orchestra. The orchestral version is scored for wind instruments, together with double basses, timpani and percussion. This version had its first performance by the Tunbridge Wells Symphony Orchestra in 1974. The original and the adaptations have all been published by Oxford University Press, although no recordings are known.

- Program Note by Steve Schwartz

On Shores of Endless Sea

On Shores of Endless Sea is a lyrical wind band composition based on a verse from the hymn entitled “Called by Earth and Sky.”

Precious these waters endless seas, deep ocean’s dream,
Waters of healing, rivers of rain, the wash of love again.

This composition depicts feelings of serenity, while longing for a paradise of immense beauty and majesty. A place where endless seas and endless peace abide.

- Program Note by Kevin Day

Concerto for Bassoon and Wind Ensemble

The Concerto for Bassoon and Wind Ensemble was written in 1999 and dedicated to the female Dutch bassoonist Dorian Cooke.

- Program Note from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Wind Ensemble, 3 June 2017

March of the Belgian Parachutists

While he was serving his year of military duty at the end of World War I, Leemans's regimental commander asked him to compose a march; it was begun but never finished. Near the end of World War II, he was having dinner with a group of paratroopers and was again asked to compose a march. As the group commander, Maj. Timmerman, drove him home that night, the march theme came to mind, and he wrote out all of the parts after reaching home.

The trio of the march originated from a march written for an N.I.R. radio contest. After only winning the consolation prize, the march was abandoned and is known with the competition designation V. A quiet, unaggressive essay in the easy-paced European style, it is set in the form of a “patrol”; the music marches on from the distance, plays, and passes.

- Program Note from Program Notes for Band

Laurier Chamber Orchestra

As a young boy, Benjamin Britten was a precocious musical talent. By the age of 14, he had composed over 100 works scored mostly for voice and solo piano. In his last year as a student at the Royal College of Music in London, Britten used themes from his childhood years to compose his Simple Symphony (1934). The symphony is a work for string orchestra in four movements with playful alliterative titles: “Boisterous Bourrée," "Playful Pizzicato," "Sentimental Sarabande," and "Frolicsome Finale". There is a certain neo-baroque flavour here – the sarabande and bourrée being common French baroque dance forms.

The first movement is a vigorous dance and set in sonata form. The second movement delights with a sailor’s song and requires the players to pluck the strings as fast as possible for the entire movement. The sarabande third movement is the most introspective part of the work. A heavy swelling theme is balanced here with more tender reflections and ends with a mysterious muted coda. The last movement is more intense than its frolicsome title would suggest. Here, Britten provides a lot of energy and drama set in D minor, driving the players hard to a D Major final cheer.

- Program Note by Dr. Jeremy Bell

Carmina Burana

Program Notes

Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff, was written between 1933 and 1936, and premiered in 1937 at the Frankfurt Opera to a standing ovation and great applause. The piece is based on some 25 poems from the thirteenth century Codex Buranus, a collection long romanticized as the products of the goliards, or wandering scholars. The activities described therein— exuberant drinking, blatant love-making, gambling, and criticism of the Church, made the manuscript and Orff’s composition attractive to burgeoning student and youth groups.

Orff’s Carmina Burana is intended as a parody of the oratorio genre and its devotion to a benevolent God or saint. In Orff’s hands, the object of praise is not a worthy God but a pagan ‘goddess of fate’ who spins the wheel at whim, causing grief, misfortune, and fear (‘O Fortuna’). Rather than exhort audiences to “join in prayer” as an oratorio would, ‘O Fortuna’ adopts the musical style of a litany or penitent song asking us to “weep” and “join in lamentation.” The initial expression of deep pathos gives way to a simple unison chant conjuring up the processional song of flagellants as they enter a medieval village. The subject’s narration of their fall from grace (‘I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune’) continues in this style of penitent song.

The poems in ‘In Springtime’ focus on the arrival of spring and invitation to love. ‘The Merry Face of Spring’ imitates the gentle sounds of plainchant from the Mass, opening with a rising motif that alludes to the famous Easter ‘Kyrie eleison,’ ending with a sustained ‘Ah,’ a humorous truncation of ‘Amen’ or ‘Alleluia.’ ‘Behold the Pleasant Spring’ also suggests medieval sacred chant by gesturing with a deliberate ‘reciting tone’ before moving into a buoyant hymnlike setting with characteristics of a motet. By drawing on some of the symbols and styles of sacred medieval music, In Springtime ironically suggests that love is an object worthy of worship.

The theme of love continues in the next section, On the Lawn, taking up the conventions of Minnesinger love poetry. Here, love is sentimental, false, and hyperbolic. In ‘The Woods are Burgeoning,’ the subject pines desperately for her lover in a musical style saluting a Bavarian dance: “Who will love me? Now that my lover has ridden away?” The maiden’s vanity is put on display in ‘Merchant give me rouge, let me please you young men,’ its saccharine harmonies answered with the voices’ languorous humming, bocca chiusa (with closed mouth). ‘Those Who Go Round and Round’ move us into ‘hunting’ territory characterized by cheeky use of fanfare, timpani and cymbal; ‘Come, Come my Beloved’ alludes to the popular Volkslied (German folksong) making use of drone as backdrop for the flirtatious proposition. The final song in this section, ‘Were the World all Mine’ states the desire for love in the most hyperbolic of terms: “I would yield all of my lands from the Rhine to the sea to embrace England’s Queen.” Here (and elsewhere), Orff alludes to the nineteenth century ‘chivalric’ style - an excessive and sentimental characterization of love. Introduced with the pomp of a fanfare, Orff described this number as “a completely brash chorus,” an intentional and garish handling, that ultimately lacked originality in favour of bombast.

Orff lived through the Nazi period and WWII. He did not support Nazi ideologies and was never a member of the Nazi party. However, during the 1940s, Carmina Burana was programmed and performed in both private and state-sponsored events. Its mass choruses, simple melodies, repetitive rhythms, and orchestra heavy in brass and percussion helped align it with National Socialist music, making it an attractive tool for Nazi propaganda. There is no doubt that Orff benefitted financially from the regime’s programming of the piece. Though it was not written for these purposes, and was even described by his peers as critical of the kinds of blatant posturing that accompanied regimes of power, Nazi appreciation of Orff’s work reminds us that musicians and composers may not always control how their music is used.

- Program Note by Kirsten Yri

Translations

Fortune, Empress of the World

O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing and waning;
hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it;
poverty and power it melts them like ice.
Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent,
well-being is vain and always fades to nothing,
shadowed and veiled you plague me too;
now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.
Fate is against me in health and virtue,
driven on and weighted down, always enslaved.
So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!

I bemoan the wounds of Fortune

I bemoan the wounds of Fortune with weeping eyes,
for the gifts she made me she perversely takes away.
It is written in truth, that she has a fine head of hair,
but, when it comes to seizing an opportunity she is bald.
On Fortune's throne I used to sit raised up,
crowned with the many-coloured flowers of prosperity;
though I may have flourished happy and blessed,
now I fall from the peak deprived of glory.
The wheel of Fortune turns; I go down, demeaned; another is raised up;
far too high up sits the king at the summit - let him fear ruin!
for under the axis is written Queen Hecuba.

The merry face of spring

The merry face of spring turns to the world,
sharp winter now flees, vanquished;
bedecked in various colours Flora reigns,
the harmony of the woods praises her in song. Ah!
Lying in Flora's lap Phoebus once more smiles,
now covered in many-coloured flowers,
Zephyr breathes nectar-scented breezes.
Let us rush to compete for love's prize. Ah!
In harp-like tones sings the sweet nightingale,
with many flowers the joyous meadows are laughing,
a flock of birds rises up through the pleasant forests,
the chorus of maidens already promises a thousand joys. Ah!

Behold the Pleasant Spring

Behold, the pleasant and longed-for spring brings back joyfulness,
violet flowers fill the meadows, the sun brightens everything, sadness is now at an end!
Summer returns now withdraw the rigours of winter. Ah!
Now melts and disappears ice, snow and the rest, winter flees,
and now spring sucks at summer's breast:
a wretched soul is he who does not live or lust under summer's rule. Ah!
They glory and rejoice in honeyed sweetness who strive to make use of Cupid's prize;
at Venus' command let us glory and rejoice in being Paris' equals. Ah!

The woods are burgeoning

The noble woods are burgeoning with flowers and leaves.
Where is the lover I knew? Ah!
He has ridden off! Oh! Who will love me? Ah!
The woods are burgeoning all over, I am pining for my lover.
The woods are turning green all over, why is my lover away so long? Ah!
He has ridden off, oh woe, who will love me? Ah!

Shopkeeper, give me colour

Shopkeeper, give me colour to make my cheeks red,
so that I can make the young men love me, against their will.
Look at me, young men! Let me please you!
Good men, love women worthy of love!
Love ennobles your spirit and gives you honour.
Look at me, young men! Let me please you!
Hail, world, so rich in joys!
I will be obedient to you because of the pleasures you afford.
Look at me, young men! Let me please you!

Those who go round and round

Those who go round and round are all maidens,
they want to do without a man all summer long. Ah! Sla!
Come, come, my love, I long for you,
I long for you, come, come, my love.
Sweet rose-red lips, come and make me better,
come and make me better, sweet rose-red lips.
Those who go round and round are all maidens,
they want to do without a man all summer long. Ah! Sla!

Were all the world mine

Were all the world mine from the sea to the Rhine,
I would starve myself of it
so that the queen of England might lie in my arms.