12 contemporary settings for choir from the "Carmina Burana"
When they hear the name “Carmina Burana”, it is not only fans of choral music who automatically think of Carl Orff’s world famous setting of parts of the collection of mediaeval songs from Benediktbeuern. What is less well known is that the “Carmina Burana“ may possibly have their origins in Seckau Abbey in Styria, and that this collection contains more than 200 medieval songs, poems and prose texts.
This formed the basis on which the Vocalforum Graz, a chamber choir specialising in a-cappella music, and one that has already given first performances to numerous compositions, commissioned a tailor-made work for the thirtieth anniversary of its founding, and with it brought a very special project to fruition. From among this wealth of texts, the German author, director and dramatic advisor Thomas Höft chose twelve poems and, by adding spoken text inserts, combined them to form a continuous narrative. He makes clear just how highly relevant these “texts of resistance”, as he calls the “Carmina Burana”, still are in the present day.
Twelve internationally renowned European composers, men and women, accepted the invitation and have each composed a setting of one of the chosen texts. 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.
“New Carmina” is thus not only a very special birthday present for the Vocalforum Graz and their director, Franz M. Herzog, but also an outstanding gift for the entire modern choral scene. The first performance of the “New Carmina” in the Helmut List Halle in Graz on Sunday 21st May 2017 was a huge success.