Riding on the success of Carmina burana , Orff composed the Catulli carmina in the darkening years of the war in Then again, in , he composed the final part, the Trionfo di Afrodite. By this time, however, the war was over and the Cold War had already settled in. The Western allies were turning western Germany a bulwark against the Soviets, and deNazification had ceased to be a priority.
The s encouraged the suppression of memory and the avoidance of confrontation with the atrocities of the war within the general population. Why, in this context, did Orff choose to produce another work in the spirit of Carmina burana? Was he nostalgically reviving the appropriated aesthetic, or was he trying to suggest that his aesthetic could remain immune to political manipulation? The young generation of French and German composers after had their own artistic response to the burden of recent history.
They steadfastly embraced radical modernism in a conscious effort to break any connection with the aesthetics favored by the Nazis. Catulli carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite sank into obscurity in the wave of modernism that has only recently loosened its grip on contemporary music.
It is only in our post-modernist and post-post-modernist environment in which a return of tonality, surface accessibility, and romanticism can occur without the political overtones from before That it took nearly fifty years for the connection between modernism and anti-fascism to give way even a bit gives some indication of the strength of that connection.
Now that World War II and its horrors have receded into history, what becomes of the music appropriated by the Nazis? Is it fair to censor any work of music because, whether or not its composer intended it, the music gave voice to sensibilities compatible with a hated regime?
Do Catulli carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite deserve to remain so obscured by Carmina burana , and should we not reflect on why Carmina burana remains so popular? Contemporary audiences continue to enjoy Wagner, for whose personality and music political distaste can easily be mustered.
The argument can be made that our present culture, in which nothing remains in memory for longer than the length of a music video, and in which historical consciousness has been eroded by the increasing pace of information and communication, actually holds the virtue of being able to cleanse the questionable political overtones of art.
That reduction is reminiscent of the way the Nazis hoped to use music: to manipulate the listener into a thoughtless response that does not encourage reflection, resistance, and questioning. To believe that music and art exist independently of ideology and politics is to make it inadvertently work against individuality and the will to dissent. We can surely rejoice in the opportunity we now have to reconsider works like Catulli carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite , now that the present aesthetic climate encourages it.
But we should also be aware that the same emotional response the trilogy triggers in us was part of the cultural fabric of an abhorrent regime. See more Orff Music. Discover Music. See more Orff Album Reviews. We anticipate health and safety protocols to evolve as performances progress.
Ticket holders should expect an email detailing specific protocols for entering DMPA venues closer to the date of their performance s. Please be sure to keep an updated and active email associated with your account to ensure you receive show-related communications. Despite its success and lasting popular appeal, Carmina Burana did not spawn a new form of musical theater. The reasons for this are mainly political; Carmina Burana has the unfortunate distinction of being the only piece of music composed in Nazi Germany to enter the standard repertoire.
Nevertheless, he could not resist the temptation of professional success. Though he had the opportunity to emigrate and start over in the United States in , he chose to remain in Germany where Carmina Burana was already famous, and he enjoyed money, privileges and dozens of performances of his masterpiece throughout the war. At least to a degree, Orff would pay for his Faustian bargain; his reputation never fully recovered after the war.
A younger generation of composers viewed his music as irredeemably tainted and turned to alternative forms of musical modernism instead. Though he would continue to compose, none of his subsequent works would ever duplicate the popular success of Carmina , and his principal post-war legacy is his innovative work in music pedagogy.
Years later in the late s, Carmina Burana would ironically be reinterpreted again as a harbinger of free love and a rebellious, youthful counterculture, associations which it retains today. When Orff first opened his copy of Carmina Burana in , he could not have guessed how the wheel of fortune would ultimately symbolize the course of his own life and the fate of his masterpiece.
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