Considering it’s morally ambiguous past, Carl Orff’s Scenic Cantata Carmina Burana, can be heard by the general public everywhere from Ozzy Osbourne, Old Spice ads, and even Domino’s Pizza Commercials. Premiered in 1937 by the Frankfurt Opera and Bertil Wetzelberger and supercharged with conflicting undertones, Orff’s explanation of Carmina Burana created lots of conflict between the Axis and Allied powers of the second world war regarding Orff’ political standings.
Part of the reason Carmina Burana was such a success was because of it’s accessibility. Orff utilized a large modern orchestra, full chorus, and solo voices. The music has been shown to emulate and be derived from Stravinsky with maximalist Wagnerian features. Originally Orff was accused of using undesirable jazz-like rhythms in a Stravinsky-esque style, but Nazi Officials overlooked this fact once they realized the piece’s potential for propaganda. Another reason this was overlooked was by the common folk and dance elements also found in the piece.
One interesting tidbit of this history is that Orff was supposedly one quarter Jewish, making his political stance in the Nazi party particularly interesting. He was known to be friends with prolific Jews such as Kurt Weill and Franz Werfel while living in German. The most common explanation is that Orff simply took advantage of his popularity among both sides and used it to make money, and an interesting example of this can be seen in Frankfurt when Orff was documented in taking a commission to rewrite Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream score. He later denied this when the Allied powers were determining his employment status after the war ended. By believing his lies, his status was made “Gray-Acceptable”, and made him eligible for work in the Allied military government. Another way Orff’s employment status was hazy during the war was his actual employment in the Nazi regime. For multiple years, he was awarded a job composing music for the Hitler Youth and teaching music. He tailored the curriculum and music to align with the Nazi ideals, stressing folk music and emphasizing the negative impacts of jazz and atonality.
Finally, the most ambiguous part of Carmina Burana is the music itself and the undertones presented within the score and text. The title translates to Songs of Beuren (a Benedictine Monastery in Bavaria). The entire scenic cantata contains a total of 24 songs set to music, the text itself came mainly from the Burana Codex, a compilation of medieval poetry, speaking of sin, passion, lust, and even gambling and drinking. This is the first layer of of confusion as to why the Nazi’s used it as propaganda. The reason ties into a deeper meaning below the surface. The music contains many folk melodies and dance rhythms making it very easy to listen to. It also describes pastoral images of the forest and the Earth in a Wagnerian manner similar to that of the Ring Cycle. Hitler was a supporter and fan of Wagner’s music because it appealed to his ideology of the ancient forest and timeless German landscape for the perfect Aryan soldiers. While this was obvious to Hitler and the Nazi’s, it was not obvious to everyone, and Orff never clarified what his intent behind the piece was. In the end it seems like Orff was just an opportunist who slyly got away with appeasing both sides of the war depending on who was in power.
In quite a different situation and a different time, Colin Kaepernick has been doing quite the opposite of Orff in his stand against standing for the anthem. While Orff shied away from the fact that he was potentially part Jewish and still made money off of the Nazi’s when he might not have believed in their ideas, Kaepernick has taken a stand against the ideas he disagrees with and openly risks his career and public image for it. Perhaps Orff had a little more on the line, but racism in America now has become violent, so perhaps Kaepernick is risking more now than ever.
Initially I was like, what is this song that is used everywhere? Then I listened to it and realized I had used it myself in a skit I did during high school. I think personally for me and most of America, the reason we remain largely unphased by the questionable past of Carl Orff and this particular piece is because as American’s we remain completely ignorant to history. Most people recognize classical pieces when heard and could probably sing them, but have no idea who the composer was, what the piece is called; they couldn’t guess the year within a century, nor do they know anything about any other contextual history related to a tune. In many ways this ignorance is freeing for the composer, as their music is forced to stand on its own with out any backstory of the composer, the context or anything. On the other hand, some argue the more you know about a subject, the better it becomes. In the case of Carl Orff and this song in particular, I believe it has come to represent the sound of epic drama, often used ironically for the sake of humor, and when people hear it, that’s all they think: “Ooo drama song, but this is pizza? oh haha, pizza isn’t dramatic, but they are making it overly dramatic, oh haha i’ll buy pizza.” Is my quote perhaps mocking the simplicity and continual dumbing down of our culture? Perhaps. Is it also spot on for many Americans? Sadly Yes.