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| The Musical Almanac ��by Kurt Nemes |  |
May 15. Carl Orff: �Amor Volat Undique,� �Stetit Puella� and �Dulcissime� from Carmina Burana
Unlike most fans of classical music, for most pieces of classical music, I don�t necessarily compare performers and performances. Usually, whatever recording was the first I heard becomes the definitive performance for me. Of course there were exceptions: I listened to about 10 versions of Beethoven�s Ninth Symphony-by Walter, Solti, Szell, Bernstein, Toscanini and others-before finally choosing one by Karajan. And that wasn�t for any profound reason-I just happened to prefer it because I could hear the oboe and English horn passage in the second movement more clearly than any of the others.
On the other hand, you can�t just pick up any old CD nowadays and expect to find a masterpiece. It used to be a good to avoid such cheap labels as LaserLight, which sometimes releases stuff by obscure orchestras or less than stellar performances by good ones. Two exceptions however are Naxos and Sony Infinity, the latter of which finds good orchestras in Eastern Europe, that they can pay less than Western orchestras therefore keep the costs down.
The definitive performance of Carmina Burana for me is the one with Michael Tilson Thomas, in which the soprano, Judith Blegen sings the above arias. This recording was one of the first ever done in quadraphonic sound, and so they spared no expense to making it a blockbuster. They had a chorus of 250 singers and used some of the best soloists of the day. On the liner notes it says that Blegen was a regular at the Met during this time period, and she was so good that all they needed was one take. The aria, �Amor Volat Unique� (love flies everywhere), requires the soprano to hold a note for a full 30 seconds. For a long time, Blegen�s was the only recording I heard in which the singer could sustain the note for that long. In some recordings, the sopranos actually took a breath midway through.
�Amor volat unique� has to be one of the most beautiful songs on the album. It starts with a musical interlude in which flutes waft along playing a melody that the soprano will sing at the end. A boys� chorus then chimes in and with cherubic delivery sing about the rightness of young men and women joining together. Then comes that chillingly beautiful soprano solo:
she misses all delight;
darkest night is at the bottom
of her heart.
This is the bitterest fate.
There stood a maid
in a red tunic;
when it was touched
the tunic rustled.
Ai!
There stood a girl,
like a rose;
her face was radiant;
her mouth bloomed.
Ai!
Sometimes, however, you can get burned even by a good orchestra and performer. When I lived in Italy five years after first hearing Carmina Burana, my girlfriend bought a copy on Deutsche Gramophon with Eugen Joachum conducting and Gundula Janowitz singing. Not only did Janowitz break the note into two with a huge breath, on the aria, �Dulcissime� where the soprano has to slide up to an impossibly high not, her voice actually cracked. It sounded like a cross between a squawk and a scream.
Depending on your point of view, Carmina Burana may or may not be the perfect music for an adolescent virgin male to listen to in the Spring. Back then I found the songs devoted to love quite poignant and used to just sit around listening to them and dissolve into self-pity. I wonder now at how I could have missed the exhortation in the words to just go out and get on with it. There I was living in a dorm among women who shared similar tastes in music, art and literature, and I was still too tongue-tied to do anything about it. Perhaps it goes back to having formed a warped notion of Romantic love from reading too much Dostoyevsky. Remember, a number of his women characters are fallen women, whom the protagonist worships from afar and sees the means to salvation.
They really should teach you these things in school.
| Orff Bio | Description of work | Sound sample | Recording with Thomas |
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