Sacred Sarcasm
The Paradoxes of the Carmina Burana
Ut aliquantulum huius cantus ludum
secolarium vocum deleret.
(May this type of song be at least somewhat trimmed of worldly echoes.)
Otfried von Weisenburg
Sentit tela Veneris, et Amoris ictus: non est tamen Clericus mater et
afflictus!
(He feels the darts of Venus and the arrows of Love: the cleric is
not necessarily a dark and emaciated ascetic!)
Carmina Burana, «De Phyllide et Flora»
For the average opera lover, the Carmina Burana is probably the
best known example of 'Medieval Music'. We might even go so far as to
say that the songs of the Carmina are in fact the only
widely known examples of the medieval repertoire, appropriately labeled
and fragmented by a fanciful congeries of anonymous, pleasant melodies.
For this, we are without a doubt beholden to Carl Orff (though we
should perhaps apologize at this point to those listeners who have
imprudently bought our CD in the hopes of enjoying a new and sweeping
version of that grandiose choral fresco).
Yet, in a certain sense, the good fortune which Orff unwittingly
brought to this amazing medieval collection has at the same time sealed
it within the first and most fundamental of the paradoxes which
continue to imprison it. The average opera lover mentioned above has
developed a clear idea concerning this repertoire: the chansons
of the troubadours were gracefully warbled by distinguished
songwriters; Gregorian responsories were austerely thundered by austere
monks; and the Carmina Burana? These songs were obviously
belted out between belches and jokes by that undefined social category
- known as 'goliards'!
(Unfortunately not a great deal has been done by contemporary revivals
of medieval music to correct this inane impression.)
In truth, modern musicology is in no way responsible for the facile
equation Carmina ='Belches in the Tavern'. For years, the Codex
Buranus has been studied and compared to a series of magnificent
international parallel sources. Indeed, ecclesiastical manuscripts of
the highest quality, the contents of which are fantastically eclectic,
are actually quite common.
From the celebrated Parisian Codex Pluteus 29.1 to the Carmina
Cantabrigensia (despite its name, the older of the two manuscripts
was compiled in Canterbury but is in fact a copy of a Rheinland
original); from the essential Scottish collection (now in
Wolfenbuttel), to the English miscellanea belonging to the abbots of
Reading and the bishops of Bath (Harley 978 and Beckyngton Miscellany,
respectively), as well as to dozens of others. Europe was swarming with
collections containing many of the same pieces present in the Codex
Buranus: secular songs, sacred songs, and songs which are a bit of both
- veritable 'evergreens' spanning nearly two centuries of time. And
among the authors represented, again and again we find the names of
three intellectuals who straddled the ecclesiastical and political
spheres: Philip the Chancellor, Peter of Blois, and Walter of Chatillon.
Here, then, is another paradox surrounding the Codex Buranus, for
without this brigade of international players (who in a certain sense
add to its mystery), the music of the manuscript would be to us
entirely mysterious. As we will in fact explain below, the scanty and
unusable melodic indications in the Buranus are only intelligible and
playable thanks to the dozens of parallels which exist between its
songs and the vast and well known group of similar manuscripts. Alone,
excluded from the wider panorama of a very specific era with very
specific aesthetics, our codex would be merely beautiful - and irremediably
devoid of music. This fact seems almost implicitly to raise new
questions concerning the complexity and inconceivable permeability of
medieval culture.
In his discussion of the technical and conceptual characteristics of
such a group of exquisitely refined and yet rather immodest florilegia,
John Stevens writes (in reference to the Carmina Cantabrigensia,
though his thoughts perfectly apply to the Burana): «[...] the
presence of more than one text scribe in just a few pages argues a
community at work, a community of clerics, perhaps the teachers or
students of a cathedral or monastery school[...]. The intelarding of a
mainly sacred repertory with lively, though never gross, secular songs,
supports this opinion».
The question is thus where (and the journey from where
to how is never very far) were these «lively, though
never gross» songs sung? Chock full of spicy classical citations
as well as moral invectives in the vein of proto-Lollards or
proto-Patarines, where indeed were the Carmina Burana really
enjoyed? Probably not (and certainly not only) in
student bars of ill repute in the university towns. On the contrary,
the capital scholae suggested by Stevens obviously come to
mind: those prelatic curiae, those literary circles of
artistically illuminated prelates, including the urbane ecclesiastic
who commissioned the Codex Buranus.
Evidently the Carmina (especially those songs which we might
consider a bit risque or, at the very least, 'subversive'), would have
been sung, as Bruno Stablein theorizes, «extra-liturgically, at
gatherings of high clergy [...] for example during mealtimes and on
social occasions. We have, then, to do with a kind of clerical
entertainment quite parallel to the secular courtly and aristocratic
art of chivalric love-songs».
Moreover, in terms of para-liturgical or even genuinely liturgical
uses, Bernhardt Bischoff, who oversaw the essential edition of 1970,
adds: «the long, rarely interrupted series of love, dance and
spring songs to each of which a German strophe has been added were sung
to the round dances of the clerics». These round dances, as
strange as it might seem today, were known by a perfectly orthodox
liturgical term: Quatuor Tripudia (at the feasts of the
Nativity and of Saint Stephen, the deacons kicked up their heels; at
Saint John's it was the ordinary priests who danced; at the Feast of
the Holy Innocents it was the pueri cantores; and at Epiphany
the dancers were the subdeacons).
Roughly a hundred years prior to the Codex Buranus, these sacred dances
were particularly enjoyed by Honorius of Autun, who took great pleasure
in describing their profound symbolic and cosmological significance.
Dancing in a circle represented the rotation of the firmament; holding
hands symbolized the interconnection of the elements; the sung melody
was the music of the spheres; the rhythmic stomping of feet echoed the
sound of thunder. Shortly thereafter, however, we begin to find
complaints (some from considerably authoritative sources, such as the
1209 Council of Avignon) of such 'extreme' musical practices in the
churches where monks, priests and even nuns behaved with wanton
abandon'. Such complaints indicate that the practices had become rather
widespread, and betray an authentically felt need on the part of the
participants .
It is no coincidence that our homage to the Codex Buranus opens with
the ideological manifest of another codex: the Irish Red Book
of Ossory. Here, the episcopal patron states his desire to gather
together a repertoire «for festivities and for moments of
leisure» (i.e., love songs in the classical style and pleasant or
at least intriguing clerical and moral tunes, as are also found in the Carmina).
The purpose of the collection was intended for those «instructed
in the art of song» (and here, we sincerely believe the reference
is not to goliards but rather to those deacons, subdeacons, priests and
pueri cantores who for two centuries had been yearning for a
little amusement), so that they would not be «contaminated»
by the practice of profane, obscene and vulgar ditties».
Clerical entertainment? Sacred sarcasm? It would seem so: pastimes,
whether sacred or virtuously secular, often pervaded by a thoughtful
and uncompromising irony, and so movingly exemplified by these verses
from the Carmina itself: «O Dialectics, were that I had never
mety ou! It is you that makes of every cleric an exile, a wretch».
This is the third, and perhaps most profound and touching paradox of
the Carmina, that impassive and multifaceted mirror reflecting the
human, cultural and emotional state of an entire stratum of medieval
society: the «exiled and wretched» cleric, an intellectual
estranged by his own intellect, uprooted from affections and homeland.
And yet the cleric, gazing at his simple reflection and complex alter
ego, is not «a dark and emaciated ascetic», but rather one
who «knows how to love a maiden far better than a warrior».
Here, then, is the Carmina Burana: confession, mourning, smirk
and supreme self-congratulation on the part of the ordo of the oratores.
An intellectual
Περιπέτεια ('peripeteia')
which, on the CD as well as in the manuscript, ranges from the darkest
moral pessimism to a refined and coy joie de vivre. Assembled
by a clergy capable of gazing into that aforesaid mirror and
confronting the image of its own moral corruption, its own educated
decadence, its own sensual bewilderment.
It is exactly in this spirit that La Reverdie pays homage to these
songs: slightly «trimming them of worldly echoes» (as the
Carolingian Otfried von Weissenburg desired for the songs of his own
day), but never forgetting that they are laden with 'hot stuff' - now
well concealed, now ostentatiously revealed. La Reverdie has embraced
the aesthetics of a chorus of deacons and pueri, but has never
lost sight of the fact that the 'hot stuff' in the codices that
sometimes burns these clerics was in fact written by others.
These clerics - possibly vagrants, rebels and lechers at some point in
their lives - already embodied, albeit unwittingly, the future
intelligentsia of their time. These same figures, who wrote and
analogous sources), performed the Codex Buranus (and many analogous
sources) had attended the lessons of the greatest masters of classic
literature, theology, philosophy and aesthetics in the universities and
scholae throughout Europe: musically inclined dwarves perched on the
shoulders of the giants of medieval thought.
As so often happens, the average opera lover is perfectly right: the Carmina
Burana, when you get right down to it, is the MiddleAges.
Ella deMircovich
The Codex Buranus:
Origins, Date and Melodic Reconstruction
Our codex was probably copied in the third decade of the 14th century.
At a later date (between the end of the 13th century and the beginning
of the 14th) other elements were inserted in the empty spaces and on
the last pages, and are known as the Fragmenta Burana.
The songs of the Carmina are purposely arranged - albeit in a
relatively vague fashion - by subject matter, and at times fall under a
general title or note to the reader (a characteristic which we have not
found in the group of analogous manuscripts discussed above). The
collection begins with moralizing or religious themes before moving on
to crusade songs, subjects of love (Iubila), philosophy, satire,
chess, and ornithology (there are two very long compositions with
amazing lists of birds); we find liturgical parodies, fragments from
Ovid, secular ditties featuring protagonists of questionable morality
(sophists, prostitutes with classical or floral names), and lengthy
sacred dramas.
The codex, buried under piles of other tomes, was preserved in the
Abbey of Benediktbeuern until its discovery in 1806, at which time it
was transferred to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and catalogued as
Codex Latinus Monacensis (Clm) 4660.
Various hypotheses exist concerning its provenance: Bavaria, Carinthia,
Styria, Tyrol. Most recent studies, based on certain linguistic
elements in strophes written in Middle High German, as well as on
iconographic peculiarities in the miniatures, have suggested the area
of Brixen/ Bressanone (Italy). Perhaps it actually originated in the
Abbey of Neustift, a vital intersection for pilgrims from all over
Europe and a cultural center of great importance already in the 12th
century.
The subsequent transfer of the codex to Benediktbeuern in Bavaria may
have been facilitated by the frequent contact between the Bavarian and
the Tyrolean confraternities (Benediktbeuern was in fact subject to the
bishopric of Brixen). In addition, strong commercial ties existed
between the abbey and the territory of Bolzano, where it owned large
vineyards.
From the moment of its discovery, the manuscript aroused the interest
of scholars. In 1847 Andreas Schmeller oversaw the first complete
edition of the Carmina Burana (as Schmeller himself entitled
the collection), upon which Carl Orff based his celebrated adaptation.
Various other editions and translations appeared before and during the
Second World War, but the entire anthology (containing the Carmina and Fragmenta
Burana) was not completed until 1970 by Berhardt Bischoff.
· · ·
The Codex Buranus (like many of the cosmopolitan analogous collections
mentioned above) is essentially a poetic manuscript. Only 55 of
the 315 pieces are partially or totally notated in German neumes on
unlined paper, without indications either to melodic intervals or to
rhythms, and thus we are faced today with the extremely arduous task of
reconstructing the music.
One must therefore proceed with extreme caution: the only approach is
to carefully analyze the monodic and polyphonic parallel sources which
provide us with the same texts as the Codex Buranus, but are
accompanied by a complete and unequivocally legible musical version.
Lacking parallel sources, another riskier path is represented by the
typically medieval device of the contrafactum, in which a
determined text is set to a pre-existing or contemporary melody which
was originally utilized for a different text.
In our case, when faced with particularly stimulating texts that
unfortunately lack a musical source (tracks 6, 9,16 and 18), we have
carefully examined them from both a literary and metrical standpoint.
We have thus delved into the medieval repertoire on a vast scale,
searching for melodies which fit them like a glove both metrically and
formally (obviously limiting our search to those areas which are
reasonable both chronologically and geographically), and our search has
been successful. The borrowed tunes are all drawn either from the
repertoire notated by the Minnesanger (authors who incidentally
penned many of the verses found in the Codex Buranus), or from the
analogous manuscripts mentioned above which provide a wealth of
additional parallel sources.
A final possible course of action in some cases consists of attempting
a melodic reconstruction based directly on the neumatic notation
occasionally present in the manuscript. This is exactly what was done
for track 3; the patient reader will find further information in the
liner notes.
La Reverdie