Carmina Burana - why hate it??

[Cellini]

Can't people just accept that it's orfful musak?

[Uncle Monty]

Can't people just accept that it's orfful musak?

Ouch!

[aeolium]

There's a BBC4 documentary film on Orff tonight at 11 pm, for those who want to find out more of the background:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z8v3d

[Roehre]

There's a BBC4 documentary film on Orff tonight at 11 pm, for those who want to find out more of the background: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z8v3d

Good documentary. Is a repeat from a couple of months ago.
A pity of the voice-over here and there, as subtitles would have been more appropriate what exactly is said.

[Ferretfancy]

There were an awful lot of people who went along with the Nazis in 1936, when Orff's Carmina Burana was first performed; a few of them lived here!
Most of them had only a hazy premonition of the horrors to come, if that.

I hardly think that the musical picture of bawdy eroticism painted in the work would have appealed very much to the regime's leaders with their rural vision of hard work and demure motherhood, even if the tunes were catchy.

[Roehre]

But where exactly is the Blubo in Carmina Burana, Roehre? I just don't hear it. I would have thought it was far too lyrical and subtle for community singing at the Nuremburg rallies. Strongly rhythmical, eh? Stravinsky? Nazi, clearly. Massive? Mahler, another obvious Nazi. Uplifting? I shall listen to Vaughan Williams in a more critical political light.

I have marked this part of my message as a quote.

I referred implicitly to a radio speech broadcast 1-8-1937 Die Bedeutung des Chorgesangs im nationalsozialistischen Gemeinschaftsleben, and explicitly to two Goebbels speeches made for the 1st (1938) and especially the 2nd Reichs-musiktag (1939, both in Düsseldorf), explicitly defining what had to be understood as "real" music, to confirm Germany being the one and supreme universal land of music ("Deutschland sei das auserkorene Musikland der Welt").

What was told the German public then, was internally published by the Reichsmusikkammer in 1934/'35 already and applied to all commissions , including the Carmina Burana.

[If you are interested and do understand German, it is CD3 ("Deutsche Musik") from a 4CD-set released in 1988 Entartete Musik. Eine Tondokumentation zur Düsseldorfer Ausstellung von 1938 , A Zweitausendeins production re the famous exhibition regarding Entartete Kunst in Düsseldorf that year, which was such an eclatant succes, contrary to what the Nazis expected. The number of this set is 57265033]

As far as Stravinsky is concerned: his music was performed very regularly until the outbreak of the war, and Igor with his son Soulima performed the Concerto for two pianos as well as other piano-four-hands pieces of his in Baden-Baden (IIRC) in 1936.

I'm sorry to labour the point, but aren't you arguing backwards?

No.

You dismiss mention of Wagner, but since his was the music the Nazis most cherished, surely to be consistent you should be applying a health warning to him as well, because whatever it was they approved of, he clearly had it?

Why drawing Wagner into this discussion, as he was dead for half a century the moment the Nazis came to power? Btw, antisemitism was rife in 19C Europe, even more so in France than in Germany, and even in very liberal quarters as well.

[Cellini]

There's a BBC4 documentary film on Orff tonight at 11 pm, for those who want to find out more of the background:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z8v3d

Ouch!!

I won't watch because I've been put Orff ... (And I don't have one of them TV thingies ...)

[Mahlerei]

Cellini

Buggah orff :)

[Cellini]

That's orffully nice of you!

[Nick Armstrong]

There's a BBC4 documentary film on Orff tonight at 11 pm, for those who want to find out more of the background:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z8v3d

Sounds like a number here will find it a complete turn-orff...

[Pianorak]

Sounds like a number here will find it a complete turn-orff...

I would orff thought so too.

[Mr Pee]

Oh dear. These puns are truly orrful.

[Uncle Monty]

There's a BBC4 documentary film on Orff tonight at 11 pm, for those who want to find out more of the background:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z8v3d

This is another in the series of Tony Palmer films. I don't know why they're showing it late tonight rather than the Friday 7.30 slot, not that I mind.

Intriguingly, in the listing of his films on TP's website, this one is shown as "Censored by Schott".

[Uncle Monty]

I have marked this part of my message as a quote.

I referred implicitly to a radio speech broadcast 1-8-1937 Die Bedeutung des Chorgesangs im nationalsozialistischen Gemeinschaftsleben, and explicitly to two Goebbels speeches made for the 1st (1938) and especially the 2nd Reichs-musiktag (1939, both in Düsseldorf), explicitly defining what had to be understood as "real" music, to confirm Germany being the one and supreme universal land of music ("Deutschland sei das auserkorene Musikland der Welt").

What was told the German public then, was internally published by the Reichsmusikkammer in 1934/'35 already and applied to all commissions , including the Carmina Burana.

[If you are interested and do understand German, it is CD3 ("Deutsche Musik") from a 4CD-set released in 1988 Entartete Musik. Eine Tondokumentation zur Düsseldorfer Ausstellung von 1938 , A Zweitausendeins production re the famous exhibition regarding Entartete Kunst in Düsseldorf that year, which was such an eclatant succes, contrary to what the Nazis expected. The number of this set is 57265033]

As far as Stravinsky is concerned: his music was performed very regularly until the outbreak of the war, and Igor with his son Soulima performed the Concerto for two pianos as well as other piano-four-hands pieces of his in Baden-Baden (IIRC) in 1936.



No.



Why drawing Wagner into this discussion, as he was dead for half a century the moment the Nazis came to power? Btw, antisemitism was rife in 19C Europe, even more so in France than in Germany, and even in very liberal quarters as well.

Thanks, it's interesting to have it set out. My German is functional rather than legalistically precise, but I have the Entartete Musik set, if you mean the Decca one.

I'm sure the Nazis, on the other hand, would always have been ready to lay down very precise requirements! But music is pretty hard to pin down in that way, and the only point I was suggesting was that CB's atmosphere -- "hedonistic, one moment exuberant and boisterous, the next intimate and conspiratorial", as I saw it described, and indeed the precise notation on the page, seem to me at least to be far removed from the Blubo-type stipulations, loud, bombastic, and heroic, you list. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I just am not hearing the kind of philistine, literal-minded, in-your-face inhumanity one associates with Nazism and Nazi "art".

My suggestion re "backwards" reasoning was contesting what you yourself said, i.e. "the background of the CB (fully independent from the work's musical/artistic qualities) should be known before appreciating them". I have never been a believer in structuralist notions of "the sanctity of the text", etc., and I believe in stressing that works of art are the products of human beings rather than bloodless laboratory specimens, but I do think we should at least begin by listening to and appraising the music itself before that appraisal gets tainted by knowledge external to the music. If we don't do that, I don't see how you can avoid dragging Wagner in too, since he was presumably the fons et origo of the Nazis' model of what music should be like, and while they didn't commission work from him, obviously, they certainly would have done, because he ticked all their boxes! Knowing that is bound to have some effect, isn't it? While I can't help knowing that he was a horrible bloke, I have tried manfully over the years not to let that obscure my admiration for a lot of his music, even though, as you say, a bunch of idiots also revered him fifty years after his death. I wish I hadn't known that, but there it is: for me it's regrettable, but for you it seems to be necessary.

[Don Petter]

Poor old Kingfisher! Sometimes an innocent thread can blow up in your face.

Among all the moralising I don't think I've seen mention of the Ormandy recording, which has always been my favourite. I remember the excitement of first hearing the work in that performance on LP in Philips Modern Music Series, which had such wonderful varied artworks on the covers.

I still think this version holds up against others, such as the Jochum.


P.S. I've never heard CB in an advert either, for which I am extremely glad. I hate any worthwhile music being cheapened by such repetition out of context. It has always been happening, since the days of Borodin/Kismet, but I suppose commercial interests can't ignore a good thing when it is readily available to them.