Though there are Christian prayers -- and even a passion play -- in this manuscript, the one now called the Carmina Burana, the pagan spirit inspiring most of the poems reminds us that the rough, intense world of medieval Europe was anything but a Sunday School picnic. Did some wealthy ecclesiastic piece together this anthology of (mostly-Latin) songs because of their literary grace, or their musical interest? Or, despite his ecclesiastical functions, was he seduced by the hard-nosed satire, the raw sensuality of so many of the poems?
In any case, we can only be grateful, for Carmina Burana is probably the most important source of secular, medieval Latin poetry that we now have. The songs were collected, somewhere in Germany, from many places and sources, most likely in the early decades of the thirteenth century. (Surprisingly, perhaps, to those who already know the Carl Orff oratorio, with its 1930's German-nationalist subtext, the original compiler(s) had international, "European" tastes. Most of the Carmina pieces with known authors are of French origin-- and we have recovered a number of the tunes from French and Provençal manuscripts.)
Despite their markedly secular content, most of the songs were written in the shadow of the Church. A number of them in fact deal with church politics, and corruption in the hierarchy. The Latin they generally employ (there are some in medieval German and even one, Doleo quod nimium, in a mixture of Latin, French, and Provençal) was an ecclesiastical language, learned by all in the church hierarchy, high -- refined poets like Philip the Chancellor -- and low -- the anonymous "wandering scholars" or goliards who presumably penned the many lusty songs to Bacchus and Venus. Much has been written about these clerks, who entered the service of the Church to gain financial and material advancement; it was a good path to take for a bright, literate young man from a modest background. Furthermore, once in orders, a scholar was exempt from civil law, and could only be tried by an ecclesiastical court. This rule kept any number of tonsured troublemakers safely out of reach of the local police.
How were these brilliant, scabrous, touching, vivacious songs sung? Most of them appear in the manuscript source without music -- and the ones that do have an accompanying tune use a notation system so maddeningly imprecise that scholars have been fighting about the "correct" solutions for generations. Carl Orff wrote his own tunes. We, more modestly, attempt to reconstruct the original melodies whenever possibe, or to reconstruct/borrow plausible tunes from other medieval sources. But then, what style of performance would be appropriate? We can, of course, never know for sure. All of the songs, even the ones with the most scurillous subject matter, show considerable learning -- they are not simply folksongs. And yet, the refined and courtly manner of the troubadours many not be appropriate for texts that describe the best way to bribe an official, or a stomach upset, or adolescent dating behavior. Perhaps a mix of musical approaches may be most appropriate: just as the manuscript itself contains elements of both "high" and "low" art, our performances seek to draw out the different expressive possibilities inherent in, and suggested by, the original material.
