New Carmina, No. 3
Volucres celi is No. 3 from the cycle New Carmina – a project initiated by the Vocalforum Graz and their director Franz M. Herzog. Twelve internationally renowned European composers accepted the invitation and have each composed a setting of one of the chosen texts of the Carmina Burana. In this way, there arose a complex, well-knit, full-length choral work – an impressive symbiosis between the witty text inserts, the medieval texts and the completely innovative, original ways in which the choral music, with its diversity of contemporary musical languages, treated these.
The text set by Anselm Schaufler, Volucres celi (The birds of the heaven), tells of the birds of the sky. Nature is invoked. But in giving it names, it can be subordinated. Thus it is subjugated and harmed by humans.
