Carmina Burana (/ˈkɑːrmɪnəbʊˈrɑːnə/,Latin for "Songs fromBenediktbeuern" [Buria in Latin]) is a manuscript of 254[1] poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces are mostly bawdy, irreverent, andsatirical. They were written principally inMedieval Latin, a few inMiddle High German and oldArpitan. Some aremacaronic, a mixture of Latin and German or French vernacular.
They were written by students and clergy when Latin was thelingua franca throughout Italy and western Europe for travelling scholars, universities, and theologians. Most of the poems and songs appear to be the work ofGoliards, clergy (mostly students) who satirized theCatholic Church. The collection preserves the works of a number of poets, includingPeter of Blois,Walter of Châtillon and an anonymous poet referred to as theArchpoet.
The collection was found in 1803 in theBenedictinemonastery of Benediktbeuern, Bavaria, and is now housed in theBavarian State Library in Munich. It is considered to be the most important collection of Goliard and vagabond songs, along with theCarmina Cantabrigiensia.
The manuscripts reflect an international European movement, with songs originating fromOccitania,France,England,Scotland,Aragon,Castile and theHoly Roman Empire.[2]
Twenty-four poems inCarmina Burana were set to music in 1936 byCarl Orff asCarmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis. His composition quickly became popular and a staple piece of theclassical music repertoire. The opening and closing movement "O Fortuna" has been used in numerous films, becoming one of the most recognizable compositions in popular culture.
Carmina Burana (CB) is a manuscript written in 1230 by two different scribes in anearly gothicminuscule[3] on 119 sheets ofparchment. A number of free pages, cut of a slightly different size, were attached at the end of the text in the 14th century.[4] At some point in theLate Middle Ages, the handwritten pages were bound into a small folder called theCodex Buranus.[5] However, in the process of binding, the text was placed partially out of order, and some pages were most likely lost as well. The manuscript contains eightminiatures: therota fortunae (which actually is an illustration from songs CB 14–18, but was placed by the book binder as the cover), an imaginative forest, a pair of lovers, scenes from the story ofDido andAeneas, a scene of drinking beer, and three scenes of playing dice,tables, and chess.[6]
Older research assumed that the manuscript was written in Benediktbeuern where it was found.[7] Today, however,Carmina Burana scholars have several different ideas about the manuscript's place of origin. It is agreed that the manuscript must be from the region of central Europe where theBavarian dialect of German is spoken due to the Middle High German phrases in the text—a region that includes parts of southern Germany, western Austria, and northern Italy. It must also be from the southern part of that region because of the Italian peculiarities of the text. The two possible locations of its origin are thebishop's seat of Seckau inStyria andNeustift Abbey nearBrixen inSouth Tyrol.
A bishop named Heinrich wasprovost in Seckau from 1232 to 1243, and he is mentioned as provost ofMaria Saal inCarinthia in CB 6*[8] of the added folio. This would support Seckau as the possible point of origin, and it is possible that Heinrich funded the creation of theCarmina Burana. Themarchiones (people fromSteiermark) were mentioned in CB 219,3 before theBavarians,Saxons, orAustrians, presumably indicating that Steiermark was the location closest to the writers. Many of the hymns were dedicated to SaintCatherine of Alexandria, who was venerated in Seckau, such as CB 12* and 19*–22*.[9]
In support of Kloster Neustift, the text's open-mindedness is characteristic of the reform-minded AugustineCanons Regular of the time, as is the spoken quality of the writing. Also, Brixen is mentioned in CB 95, and the beginning to a story appears in CB 203a which is unique to Tirol called theEckenlied about the mythic heroDietrich von Bern.[10][11][12]
It is less clear how theCarmina Burana traveled to Benediktbeuern.[13] Fritz Peter Knapp suggested that the manuscript could have traveled in 1350 by way of theWittelsbacher family who wereVögte of both Tirol and Bavaria, if it was written in Neustift.[12]
Generally, the works contained in theCarmina Burana can be arranged into four groups according to theme:[5]
This outline, however, has many exceptions. CB 122–134, which are categorized as love songs, actually are not: they contain a song for mourning the dead, a satire, and two educational stories about the names of animals. Another group of spiritual poems may have been included in theCarmina Burana and since lost.[14] The attached folio contains a mix of 21 generally spiritual songs: a prose-prayer toSaint Erasmus and four more spiritual plays, some of which have only survived as fragments. These larger thematic groups can also be further subdivided, for example, the end of the world (CB 24–31), songs about thecrusades (CB 46–52) or reworkings of writings fromantiquity (CB 97–102).
Other frequently recurring themes include: critiques ofsimony and greed in the church, that, with the advent of themonetary economy in the 12th century, rapidly became an important issue (CB 1–11, 39, 41–45); lamentations in the form of theplanctus, for example about the ebb and flow of human fate (CB 14–18) or about death (CB 122–131); the hymnic celebration of the return of spring (CB 132, 135, 137, 138, 161 and others);pastourelles about the rape/seduction of shepherdesses by knights, students/clergymen (CB 79, 90, 157–158); and the description of love as military service (CB 60, 62, and 166), atopos known fromOvid'selegiac love poems. Ovid and especially hiserotic elegies were reproduced, imitated and exaggerated in theCarmina Burana.[15] Following Ovid, depictions ofsexual intercourse in the manuscript are frank and sometimes aggressive. CB 76, for example, makes use of thefirst-person narrative to describe a ten-hour love act with the goddess of love herself,Venus.[16]
TheCarmina Burana contains numerous poetic descriptions of a raucous medieval paradise (CB 195–207, 211, 217, 219), for which the ancient Greek philosopherEpicurus, known for his advocation of the blissful life, is even taken as an authority on the subject (CB 211). CB 219 describes, for example, anordo vagorum (vagrant order) to which people from every land and clerics of all rankings were invited—evenpresbyter cum sua matrona, or "a priest with his lady wife" (humorous becauseCatholic priests must swear an oath ofcelibacy). CB 215 even provides an example of the religious rites of this order, theOfficium lusorum, the"Service", or "Mass", "of the Gamblers". In this parody world, the rules of priesthood include sleeping in, eating heavy food and drinking rich wine, and regularly playing dice games. These rules were described in such detail that older research on theCarmina Burana took these descriptions literally and assumed there actually existed such a lazy order of priests.[17] In fact, though, this outspoken reverie of living delights and freedom from moral obligations shows "an attitude towards life and the world that stands in stark contrast to the firmly established expectations of life in the Middle Ages".[18] The literary researcher Christine Kasper considers this description of a bawdy paradise as part of the early history of the European story of the land ofCockaigne: in CB 222 theabbas Cucaniensis, orAbbot of Cockaigne, is said to have presided over a group of dice players.[19]
Almost nothing is known about the authors of theCarmina Burana. Only a few songs can be ascribed to specific authors, such as those byHugh Primas of Orléans (diedc. 1160), by theArchpoet (diedc. 1165), by FrenchmanWalter of Châtillon (diedc. 1201), and byBretonPetrus Blesensis (diedc. 1203). Additionally, the attached folio contains German stanzas that mention specific authors, so they can be ascribed to GermanMinnesingerDietmar von Aist (diedc. 1170), toHeinrich von Morungen (diedc. 1222), toWalther von der Vogelweide (diedc. 1228), and toNeidhart (diedc. 1240). The only signed poems are contained in the attached folio, and they are by the so-calledMarner, a wandering poet and singer fromSwabia. Many poems stem from works written inClassical antiquity byOvid,Horace,Juvenal, andAusonius; however, about two-thirds of the poems appear not to be derivative works.[20]
The text is mostly an anonymous work, and it appears to have been written byGoliards and vagrants who were either theology students travelling between universities or clerics who had not yet received aprebendary. Presumably these individuals scrounged and begged for a living, which might explain why a good portion of the moral songs are dedicated to condemning those who are not generous alms givers (e.g., CB 3, 9, 11, and 19–21). The authors demonstrate a broad knowledge of ancient mythology, which they employ to rich effect throughmetonymy andallegorical references, and which they effortlessly weave into scenes from the Bible.Lyaeus, for example, the mythical god of wine (Dionysus), casually makes an appearance at theMarriage at Cana in CB 194 whereJesus performed the miracle of transforming water into wine (John 2:1–12).
The manuscript was discovered in the monastery atBenediktbeuern in 1803 by librarianJohann Christoph von Aretin [de]. He transferred it to theBavarian State Library in Munich where it currently resides (Signatur: clm 4660/4660a).[21][22] Aretin regarded the Codex as his personal reading material, and wrote to a friend that he was glad to have discovered "a collection of poetic and prosaic satire, directed mostly against the papal seat".[23]
The first pieces to be published were Middle-High German texts, which Aretin's colleagueBernhard Joseph Docen [de] published in 1806.[24] Additional pieces were eventually published byJacob Grimm in 1844.[25] The first collected edition of theCarmina Burana was not published until 1847, almost 40 years after Aretin's discovery.[26] PublisherJohann Andreas Schmeller chose a misleading title for the collection, which created the misconception that the works contained in theCodex Buranas were not from Benediktbeuern.[27] Schmeller attempted to organize the collection into "joking" (Scherz) and "serious" (Ernst) works, but he never fully completed the task. The ordering scheme used today was proposed in 1930 byAlfons Hilka [de] andOtto Schumann [de] in the first critical text edition of theCarmina Burana.[28] The two based their edition on previous work by MunichphilologistWilhelm Meyer, who discovered that some pages of theCodex Buranus had mistakenly been bound into other old books. He also was able to revise illegible portions of the text by comparing them to similar works.[29]
About one-quarter of the poems in theCarmina Burana are accompanied in the manuscript by music using unheighted, stafflessneumes,[30] an archaic system ofmusical notation that by the time of the manuscript had largely been superseded by staffed neumes.[31] Unheighted neumes only indicate whether a given note is pitched higher or lower than the preceding note, without giving any indication of how much change in pitch there is between two notes, so they are useful only as mnemonic devices for singers who are already familiar with the melody. However, it is possible to identify many of those melodies by comparing them with melodies notated in staffed neumes in other contemporary manuscripts from the schools ofNotre Dame andSaint Martial.[31]
Between 1935 and 1936, German composerCarl Orff composed music, also calledCarmina Burana, for 24 of the poems. The single song "O Fortuna" (theRoman goddess of luck and fate), from the movement "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi", is often heard in manypopular settings such as films. Orff's composition has been performed by many ensembles.Other musical settings include:
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