Benediktbeuern, Germany Summary

BENEDKITBEUERN, 8km north of Kochel on the rail line to Munich, is a small health resort with its back to the Benediktenwand. Its Kloster, which dates back to 789, is chiefly famous for the manuscript known as Carmina Burana, which was compiled and illuminated there in the late thirteenth century, remaining in the monastery library until the Napoleonic secularization, when it was carted off to Munich. Although this anthology of eleventh- to thirteenth-century (mostly Latin) lyrics by itinerant scholars and monks contains some religious pieces, its primary concerns are decidedly earthly, with moral and satirical verses, ribald love laments, and bucolic drinking and gaming songs. In 1935 the Munich composer Carl Orff was inspired to write a technicolour choral and orchestral showpiece on some of the texts, and this remains one of the most popular of all twentieth-century compositions with the paying public – though not with the critics. At the time the cantata was written, the musical notation in the manuscript itself was thought to be indecipherable, but painstaking detective work by musicologists has enabled these hauntingly pure and simple songs to become mainstays of the repertoire of early music groups.