Carmina Burana

Discovered in a Bavarian abbey in 1803, the document known as the Carmina Burana, also called the Benediktbeuern Manuscript, consists of over two hundred songs, poems, and passion plays compiled and written down around 1230 but dating as early as the tenth century. Composed mostly in Latin and touching on subjects including drinking, erotic love, and satirical visions of the Church, the verses were the work of goliards, a class of scholar-singers who wandered western Europe. Though originally sung and accompanied by a type of musical notation in the manuscript, the tunes of many remain undecipherable; German composer Carl Orff’s 1937 cantata based on the Carmina Burana, deemed “the clear, ardent and disciplined music required for our times” by a contemporary reviewer, was largely his own invention.