Rob Carlson
English 161-3
Ms. Pecora
December 16, 1996

Carmina Burana: An Analysis of Perfection

Many times, a historic collection or fragment of literature allows us to gain a better understanding of the society that created that work. Sometimes they are found from exhaustive searching, but more often than not they are simply found by the right person at the right time. Of these pearls of historical literature, most were never intended to represent their society, but provide a clear insiders view to future readers. The Benediktbeuren poems, later known as Carmina Burana provided a comprehensive and much needed description of the social and religious attitudes of the thirteenth century and punctuates the similarities between that time and our own.

Carmina Burana is a 13th century manuscript taken from a Benedictine Abbey (Doebber 1). This manuscript was discovered in the year 1803 in Benediktbeuren, South Germany. Carmina Burana was a great find for historians on a multi-social level; it contained several hundred poems, most in Latin, and several in German as well ("Culture" 1). The lengthy manuscript was originally the property of a royal court associated with the church, and then apparently passed on to the monastery in Benediktbeuren for safekeeping (Cross 5).

The poems speak about the history of the times even in their preservation. Cross writes that entertaining a royal court was a respectable way to make a living in that time and helped many a traveling vagrant (4). Any verse enjoyed by royalty could easily become a valuable commodity of the time and by their ability to be performed as song and dance. Carmina Burana, with fast moving latin verses and Bavarian peasant plays in the local dialect fit this bill ("Classical" 4). By the efforts of traveling and court minstrels Carmina Burana remained intact.

Monks saw the verses as protest against religion, pagans saw them as religion, Kings saw them as entertainment, and Johann Andreas Schmeller saw them as history. Schmeller gave the poetry the title of Carmina Burana and published the poems in 1847, almost 45 years after their discovery in the Benedictine abbey ("Classical" 1). Carmina Burana is the most abundant source of information about this time period (Libbey 1). It gives great insight into the lives of the Goliards, intellectuals and monks living then and stands as one of the most important sources for the analysis of Medieval Latin and German poetry (Doebber 1).

Although there is little question about the authenticity of the manuscripts, their exact date is not so clearly recognized. Waddel feels that some of the handwriting in the original work is of an older style than the thirteenth century, which the rest of Carmina Burana appears to be written in (viii). Several of the poems are in "unheighted neumes", which is a rare and outdated method of music for that time ("Classical" 1). These factors might stem from the date that Carmina Burana was written and copied, or simply from the remoteness of the region-- at that time newer methods of transcription may not have yet reached them (Waddel viii).

Even the location of the transcription is under some small dispute. The poems have been known as the "Songs of Beuren" since Schmeller's publishing of them as a complete work. It is now thought that they now did not come from Benediktbeuren but Seckau instead ("Classical" 1).

The poems are always simple and clear, but sometimes very harsh in their clarity. Carmina Burana is often characterized by its lustful and earthy verses in this fashion (Doebber 1).They have a "Christian simplicity" at the surface and a pagan lust buried within them (Hickox 1). Hickox writes, that there is a directness springing from the short life span of the time period (1). Within this short time there is a need to be very direct about what you say.

Since the poems are a group effort, they are hard to separate into individual classes of people who might have written them. Waddel writes, "We cannot often say that this was written by a vagabond and this by an archdeacon" (vii). Carmina Burana contains 250 poems, which are recognized for the most part of being written in low Latin and early German ("Classical" 1). These languages were used by wandering scholars or minstrels in the employment of royalty ("Classical" 1).

Wilhelm writes that the monks responsible for the actual transcription were not necessarily the authors of the work (75). While many of the poems are religious in nature, they were just as likely written by the monks as by practicing clerics who felt the need to protest their faith anonymously. With many people in turmoil at the time, a traveling minstrel might be also a respectable intellectual trying to make a decent living.

It is fair to say that the authors of many of the verses were very familiar with the politics of the time, as well as much of the art of music (Wilhelm 75). Waddel goes even further to suggest that Carmina Burana could even be a paid work, sponsored by a wealthy cleric or philanthropist of the time and not the true Goliards song book as we have come to recognize it (vii).

The collection is dedicated and separated into themes. Love, drinking, gambling and other vices of the flesh figure strongly into the work. There is exuberance and a sarcastic bite of much of the text brought about by the energy of the standard 13 syllable poetry of the Goliards, but there is also a tenderness that occasionally emerges in the midst of the bawdiness (Libbey 1).

That tenderness is demonstrated in verse 43 of the text, titled "Non est crimen amor":

                Love is not wrong because,
                        If it were a crime,
                God would never have used love
                        To bind even the divine . . . (Wilhelm 89)

The verse shows a distinct subtlety, and in true fashion to Carmina Burana quietly ridicules the moral law.

The ostensible authors of the Carmina Burana, the Goliards, were indeed monks and scholars, but not what we may today associate with a religious order ("Culture" 1). The Goliards were individualists in an age where anything but complete faith and obedience to the church was frowned upon (Cross 4). The nickname Goliards, meaning "big mouths", was given by the clergy to describe the "drink and vulgar verse" and went in and came out of their mouths (Cross 4). These monks welcomed the term; it was, after all, completely accurate.

Cross writes that the Goliards adored the basic pleasures of life and believed that the goddess of fortune had complete control over the availability of these enjoyments (5). Their life is best described by the following:

Mixed in with religion, they enjoyed liberal doses of wine, women and medieval song,and this is reflected in the poetry they wrote: among other things, it mocks ecclesiastical authority, praises drunkenness, and requests that God may cause more virgins to succumb to the temptations of the flesh. ("Culture" 1)

The poetry is filled with youth and enjoyment, without a care for moral correctness or following the precept of moderation. The euphoria in the work extends to the body and the spirit of the listener (Hickox 1). Carmina Burana contains testaments to all the aspects of the 13th century life: social conditions such as religion and politics; individual conflicts in morality and eroticism; and food for the mind in verses of satire cover the concerns of that time ("Classical" 2).

An exultant song in praise of Fortune in "O Fortuna" gives voice to the fickleness of fate and fortune and asks that only favorable fortune will come to the performer and performance (Hickox 2). The verse is the essence of the religious overtones of "Carmina Burana". Just as Greek playwrights petitioned the Muses and Christian literature begins with a praise to God, the Goliards petition chance for good favor.

"Estuans Intrinsicus Ira Vehimenti" launches "The Tavern" section with a salute to the power of drink. This section is apparently to be sung by a baritone, musing on the personal use he has put his bottle to (Hickox 2). "In Taberna" then dedicates a hymn to the beneficial amenities and well-being of the tavern (Hickox 2). This concludes the section with a raucous drinking song straight out of a Munich beer hall in which, by the end, the men have drunk healths to the whole of medieval society (Libbey 1).

The funniest of all the verses in Carmina Burana is "Olim Lacus Colueram", also known as The Ballad of the Roasted Swan. It is a macabre setting in which the swan sings about its former life while it turns on the spit. In this verse the performer delivers the swan's lament while interjecting expressions of sympathy for the bird as it cooks (Libbey 1).

The verse of "In Taberna" has been called "the greatest drinking song in the world" (Waddel 233). A verse from poem 36 reads:

                Six hundred coins could not remotely
                Fill the bill, for there's no quota
                To this drink that knows no measure
                And though nothing gives more pleasure,
                Still are some who pick and carp,
                Hoping to make our guilt pangs sharp.
                Let those carpers go depraved--
                Write their names not with the saved! . . . (Wilhelm 84)

Such vehemence against the "moral" and the honor of world's greatest drinking song does not come from just a passing familiarity with the tavern. In the recognizably typical logic of Carmina Burana, the saved ones are no longer the abstinent, but the inebriated!

The satire of the organization of the Christian religions is subtle and swift, particularly in the performed presentation of the works. The verse begins as a hail to the virgin in "Ave, Formosissima":

                Hail, most beautiful and good,
                        Jewel held most dear by us;
                Hail, honor of maidenhood,
                        Virgin ever glorious--
                Hail, thou light above all lights,
                        Hail, rose of the world--
                        Blacheflor
                        And Helen,
                                        Venus,
                                        Venus,
                                        Venus noble-souled!  (Wilhelm 86).

Ends a tribute the three goddesses of love and sex. Wilhelm accuses the poetry of being deceptively basic in order to get complex points across clearly (76). Of the poems he writes, "they are . . . diabolical, no matter how much like schoolbook exercises they may seem" (Wilhelm 76).

In Carmina Burana, one particular verse exemplifies the joyful disdain of the writers for the organized religion. In verse 33 of the text, the speaker reviews his sins, downfalls and shortcomings in a rather exhaustive fashion:

                Down life's open road meandering
                        In the guise of youth,
                Even given to philandering,
                        Never shirven to truth,
                Greedy to try all lustful fare
                        More than health to win--
                Dead in my soul, O God! my care
                        Is only for my skin! . . . (Wilhelm 80)

Wilhelm presents the point that "Estuans Intrinsucus Ira Vehimenti" as a whole could be a confession, but taken in only slightly different light seems arrogant and ennobling of those same actions (76).

In 1935 a composer by the name of Carl Orff took Schmeller's collection and made use of some two dozen texts with new melodies and uses to create a popular 20th century classical work (Libbey 1). This work, Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis takes the essence of the 250 verses of the poetry with a tenth of that number into his full orchestrated performance (Libbey 1).

Carl Orff's masterpiece brought the text of Carmina Burana to the present time and gave it a long-lived significance (Cross 5). The music has a here-and-now quality that captures the attention of modern audiences. Whether it holds a mystical or musical power, Carmina Burana has its share of admirers (Cross 5). It is a puzzle how these humble poems came to gain the popularity in our society so quickly through Orff. Perhaps it could be attributed to our fascination with history, but it is more realistic to think that perhaps the fascination we have is with the striking similarities to the present.

Carmina Burana does not paint the pious and holy picture that the religious leaders of the time may have wanted to pass on. The poetry is simple, resonant and inherent to the life led by the pagan and lower class people of the time. While a religious work might obscure the thoughts of the people themselves, Carmina Burana expresses their true joys and loves in a clear, understandable fashion. Carmina Burana is a valuable look into our bawdy past, and perhaps a looking glass for our own time.

Works Cited

"Carmina Burana". 1996. The Internet Classical Music Reference. Online. 1 Dec 96.

Cross, Lucy E. "Carmina Burana with Leonard Slatkin". RCA Red Seal, 1992.

Doebber, Rachel. "Carmina Burana to Take Weis Center stage". 1996. Bucknellian University News Page. Online. 1 Dec 96.

Hickox, Richard. "Richard Hickox conducting London Symphony Orchestra". 1995. LSO Homepage. Online. 1 Dec 96.

Libbey, Ted. "The NPR Guide to Building a Classical Music CD Collection." 1996. Internet. Online. 1 Dec 96.

"Orff's Carmina Burana". 1996. Culture Finder. Online. 1 Dec 96.

Waddel, Helen. The Wandering Scholars. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1934.

Wilhelm, James J. Medieval Song. New York: Dutton, 1971.

7 Comments | #1643

Unless noted, all content on epistolary.org is © Copyright 1999-2009 to Rob Carlson with all rights reserved. All information is verified when possible, cited as appropriate and applied in the real world at your own risk. Send all feedback to rob@vees.net.