Carmina Burana

Happy New Year and may I wish all good things in 2025 to my readers.

Given the current state of the world and the uncertainties of one sort or another in so many countries and institutions we need our wits about us as we negotiate the path ahead.

It was certainly not consciously, and I doubt if it was unconsciously with that in mind either, but over Christmas I sought out on the Internet the 1975 production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. This was made to mark the composer’s eightieth birthday. Ponnelle worked closely with Orff to realise his vision of a combination of music, dance, and movement. This is a much more effective way of presenting the piece than a concert version, however well or beautifully sung.

It was my introduction to Carmina Burana and I vividly remember seeing it on television when it was new and it remained in my memory. 

It can be seen at Orff’s Carmina Burana: the 1975 Jean-Pierre Ponelle TV production (with English subtitles)

The varieties of Fortuna, with her ever turning wheel, lies at the heart of Carmina Burana, and it is a fact of life, both public and private, that we forget at our peril.

Having replayed this several times and thoroughly enjoyed it with its verve and style

I then found that there is a second costumed film version with singers and dancers which was made in 1996. It can be seen at Carl Orff: Carmina Burana (Daniel Nazareth) 1996

This is very similar in many ways to the Ponnelle version, but is a film using locations for some scenes rather than being entirely studio based gives it a different feel. There is however very clear artistic homage in it to the earlier version.

The opening sequence and its reprise at the conclusion is perhaps less satisfactory than the rest of the film although one can see what the intention was of those who made it. Don’t let them put you off the rest of this visually striking and very entertaining production.

The rustic fertility rite in the second section brought to my mind a passage in that outstanding historian Norman Cohn’s Europe’s Inner Demons where he provides a critique of the highly individualistic ideas of the nineteenth century French historian Jules Michelet about ‘alternative religion’ in the medieval centuries.

Watching both of these versions made me wonder if they could be seen as “Montaillou - The Musical” or “Breughal: The Musical”?

That led me to pose the question to myself, and to my readers: Is your vision of the middle ages “Braveheart” or “Carmina Burana”, “Game of Thrones” or Boccaccio and Chaucer?

Whatever your answer enjoy these two splendidly joyful and splendidly earthy versions of Carmina Burana, its Goliard humour and its immensely tuneful score.