CARL ORFF - CARMINA BURANA (1937)

Metal? Really?
You mean to tell me you haven't evolved beyond that childish, chest-pounding foolishness yet?
There are vaster, brighter horizons to behold, aural transmissions far deeper and more meaningful. Metal is dead, Orff has murdered it.

Bows will chug, gutteral roars will erupt from battle-weary lungs. The clanging of sabre on iron shield, a challenge issued to God Himself. Thunderous screams as hammer strikes string, fists clenching weapons as Death marches forth on a winter tempest.

Metal? Orff scoffs at the idea.


Wikipedia: "In the mid-1920s Orff began to formulate a concept he called "elementare Musik", or elemental music, which was based on the unity of the arts symbolized by the ancient Greek Muses (who gave music its English name) and involved tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture. Like many other composers of the time he was influenced by the Russian-French émigré Igor Stravinsky. But while others followed the cool, balanced "neoclassic" works of Stravinsky, it was works like the composer's Les noces (The Wedding), a pounding, quasi-folkloric evocation of prehistoric wedding rites, that appealed to Orff. He also began adapting musical works of earlier eras for contemporary theatrical presentation, including Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo (1607). Orff's German version, Orpheus, was staged in 1925 in Mannheim, Germany, under Orff's direction, using some of the instruments that had been used in the original 1607 performance. The passionately declaimed opera of Monteverdi's era was almost unknown in the 1920s, however, and Orff's production met with reactions ranging from incomprehension to ridicule.

Orff's relationship with German fascism and the Nazi Party has been a matter of considerable debate and analysis. His Carmina Burana was hugely popular in Nazi Germany after its premiere in Frankfurt in 1937. Given Orff's previous lack of commercial success, the monetary factor of Carmina Burana's acclaim was significant to him. But the composition, with its unfamiliar rhythms, was also denounced with racist taunts. He was one of the few German composers under the Nazi regime who responded to the official call to write new incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream after the music of Felix Mendelssohn had been banned – others refused to cooperate in this. Defenders of Orff note that he had already composed music for this play as early as 1917 and 1927, long before this was a favour for the Nazi government.

Orff was a friend of Kurt Huber, one of the founders of the resistance movement Die Weiße Rose (the White Rose), who was condemned to death by the Volksgerichtshof and executed by the Nazis in 1943. Orff by happenstance called at Huber's house on the day after his arrest. Huber's distraught wife begged Orff to use his influence to help her husband, but Orff denied her request. If his friendship with Huber came out, he told her, he would be "ruined". Huber's wife never saw Orff again. Wracked by guilt, Orff would later write a letter to his late friend Huber, imploring him for forgiveness."



Carl Orff: Nazi-sympathizing douchebag asshole? Yes. Genius? Yes. More METAL than Cannibal Corpse fistfucking the mesh-shirted corpse of Dave Vincent? You better fucking believe it, Nancy.

O Fortuna, despite its omnipresence in modern society/pop culture, remains one of the most METAL pieces of music to ever exist before the actual existence of "metal" (see Excalibur), and the larger work from which it is taken, Carmina Burana (more info on the original artifact HERE), is a fist-pumping, overtly Satanic ode to all things violent, epic, and brutal.

Metal? I fart in your general direction.

(Then again, if you must bask in that lowly genre, I suggest you go check out ARCHSPIRE.)

"circle pit"

Get Orff's best-known (and most powerful) work, Carmina Burana, here:

O Fortune,
variable
as the moon,
always dost thou
wax and wane.
Detestable life,
first dost thou mistreat us,
and then, whimsically,
thou heedest our desires.
As the sun melts the ice,
so dost thou dissolve
both poverty and power.
Monstrous
and empty fate,
thou, turning wheel,
art mean,
voiding
good health at thy will.
Veiled
in obscurity,
thou dost attack
me also.
To thy cruel pleasure
I bare my back.
Thou dost withdraw
my health and virtue;
thou dost threaten
my emotion
and weakness
with torture.
At this hour,
therefore, let us
pluck the strings without
delay.
Let us mourn together,
for fate crushes the brave.

Amen.



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