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Day 02. Your least favorite song
Aug. 12th, 2010 10:12 amIf you had asked me any time in the past 30 years, what my least favorite piece of music is, I would have said without hesitation Carmina Burana. Today, I would probably say the same thing, but with more hesitation.
First let me state what is not equivocal. The piece owes a great debt to Stravinsky - almost too great a debt - especially to Les Noces and Oedipus Rex. This is indisputable and can be found in any discussion of the piece. While the two Stravinsky scores are just two of dozens of seminal works of his that spawned imitation, Carmina Burana is the only score of Orff's to hold any such reputation.
Second, my opinion. I'm not fond of the piece, but that's not to say that I think it is 'bad'. It is rather effective. But to me the music is pompous and silly - the musical equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons. It also irks me that 'O fortuna' can be used to sell anything from tractors to pimple gel, while the brilliant Stravinsky scores are generally unknown to even the average musician.
The third reason is where I have trouble. We live in a time in which that horrible phrase 'politically correct' has meaning. Young artists, filmmakers, composers have to pass through this sieve before they can ever have any valid voice in our society. Is this fair?
If it is fair applied to the living, then why not the dead? And if there are things that are 'politically correct' and things that are not, surely on that logic there are things that are even 'more politically correct'. But being 'more politically correct' has never made a work of art any better. Or has it? It certainly gives a new work more cachet in our society.
If there was ever a politically in-correct work of music it is the Carmina. One of the books I read this summer was Michael Kater's Composers of the Nazi Era. While it is clear that Orff was at times a scoundrel, reading about him actually made me a little more sympathetic instead of less. In the past, one of the reasons that I would have given for disliking Carmina would have been its Nazi origin. But, conversely, is this any reason to admire Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima -- to me another silly piece.
Alex Ross writes: Strauss and Orff were assiduously cultivated by the Nazi regime not because they had exceptional sympathies with the Nazi movement, but because they had a self-evident power to affect broad audiences. Their surrender to Nazi overtures is an ineradicable stain on the biography of each; but the music itself commits no sins simply by being and remaining popular. That “Carmina Burana” has appeared in hundreds of films and television commercials is proof that it contains no diabolical message, indeed that it contains no message whatsoever.
I don't know if I totally agree with him. And I honestly do not know what to think about this aspect of Carmina Burana.
First let me state what is not equivocal. The piece owes a great debt to Stravinsky - almost too great a debt - especially to Les Noces and Oedipus Rex. This is indisputable and can be found in any discussion of the piece. While the two Stravinsky scores are just two of dozens of seminal works of his that spawned imitation, Carmina Burana is the only score of Orff's to hold any such reputation.
Second, my opinion. I'm not fond of the piece, but that's not to say that I think it is 'bad'. It is rather effective. But to me the music is pompous and silly - the musical equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons. It also irks me that 'O fortuna' can be used to sell anything from tractors to pimple gel, while the brilliant Stravinsky scores are generally unknown to even the average musician.
The third reason is where I have trouble. We live in a time in which that horrible phrase 'politically correct' has meaning. Young artists, filmmakers, composers have to pass through this sieve before they can ever have any valid voice in our society. Is this fair?
If it is fair applied to the living, then why not the dead? And if there are things that are 'politically correct' and things that are not, surely on that logic there are things that are even 'more politically correct'. But being 'more politically correct' has never made a work of art any better. Or has it? It certainly gives a new work more cachet in our society.
If there was ever a politically in-correct work of music it is the Carmina. One of the books I read this summer was Michael Kater's Composers of the Nazi Era. While it is clear that Orff was at times a scoundrel, reading about him actually made me a little more sympathetic instead of less. In the past, one of the reasons that I would have given for disliking Carmina would have been its Nazi origin. But, conversely, is this any reason to admire Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima -- to me another silly piece.
Alex Ross writes: Strauss and Orff were assiduously cultivated by the Nazi regime not because they had exceptional sympathies with the Nazi movement, but because they had a self-evident power to affect broad audiences. Their surrender to Nazi overtures is an ineradicable stain on the biography of each; but the music itself commits no sins simply by being and remaining popular. That “Carmina Burana” has appeared in hundreds of films and television commercials is proof that it contains no diabolical message, indeed that it contains no message whatsoever.
I don't know if I totally agree with him. And I honestly do not know what to think about this aspect of Carmina Burana.
