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Monday, May 24, 2010

Carl Orff's Carmina Burana

On Saturday, we went to a production of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.  We got to enjoy the beautiful singing by the Texas Master Chorale which includes TWO of our homeschooling friends. One of our friends is my piano teacher and she is the one who invited me. I was surprised to see another friend performing. She was born in South Africa and moved here about 2 years ago from Canada with her husband and 3 daughters who are triplets. She used to sing opera and attends my church where she sometimes sings solos.


Anyway, besides the 100 member chorale, there were also a live orchestra (the percussion parts are amazing!) and children's choir. The whole event was phenomenal. The songs are poems that were written in the 11th and 12 centuries in Latin and German. They were found in 1803 and, in 1935 & 1936, Carl Orff put 24 of the poems to music. The entire performance lasts about 71 minutes. A lot of the movements are very lively and the most famous piece is called O Fortuna. I found recordings of the entire performance of Carmina Burana online, but I have included a great recording of O Fortuana here. If you get a chance to see Carmina Burana, I highly recommend it!

2 comments:

  1. I've heard this on a movie before I think! They sing beautifully! Tim and I love to take the kids to concerts...especially the free ones that the Houston Symphony Orchestra does. We had a friend who sang in the Symphony and she was incredible! Thanks for sharing the photos and video!

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  2. I listened to this this afternoon and it was wonderful. I left a long comment in reply to yours about current events on my blog. In short, the mistakes we picked up were obvious. We don't really focus on current events though I've wanted to. But we are aware of the biggies. Now that we've done all of history from Creation to present, current events makes a lot more sense to us. I hope to get something going soon and will be checking out the CNN site you mentioned. I was there this afternoon but had to run an errand.
    Blessings,
    Laurie

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