Carmina Burana - Carl Orf

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Latin expression that designates a poetic collection of medieval anonymous texts, written in Latin and ancient German, in the first half of the century XIII. German texts are represented, but also, in less proportion, English and French. The carmina burana, “ canticles of Beuron ”, name of the Baviera Benedictine abbey, where this collection was, will have been written by goliardos or anonymous clerics, who were opposed to the ecclesiastical law in force. The poetries in the collection comment on satirical and burlesque subjects, always having under sight the customs and the religious life, privileging an ideal of life , agitating the karpe diem, where sex, alcohol is mixed, etc. In 1937, the German composer Carl Orff it was inspired in these texts for the known opera with the same title.

GOLIARDOS

Medieval literature written by clerics or Bohemian students, who were opting for a disorderly, licentious and stuffed life of reposes. Such revellers were in England, France and Germany, where this type of marginal literature was produced. The name they were known is due to the devotion to a bishop Golias, of whom they were calling themselves followers. They were celebrated goliardos like Huoh Primas of Orleans, Pierre de Blois, Gautier de Châtillon and Phillipe the Chancellor. The favorite subject of his compositions is love, in special love that does not respect social conventions nor any established moral, and the whole sort of sensual pleasures. His couples were not recognizing them like truthful poets and, since it seems obvious, were enjoying little fame between the troubadours of the court and the orthodox clerics. Almost all his compositions are hymns to the free sexual expression or to the ideological, religious and moral tyranny of the Church, without forgetting the papal power.Gradually, the clerical privileges of the goliardos have being withdrawn, up to be losing including the designation itself of goliardos, which comes to happen in the XIV century, when the term is getting confused, then, with near designations like buffoon, minstrel or segrel. The most celebrated compilation of the canticles goliardos is the Carmina Burana, texts written in the XIII century , in Bavária, translated by John Addington Symonds with the title Wine, Women, and Song (1884).