In my adolescent mind, that was the coolest work ever written, one that always made my hair stand on end. The powerful opening chorus, “O Fortuna,” is something you hear all the time, and by mid-adolescence I quickly recognized it as the Big Dramatic Scary Music Piece that meant something really bad-ass was about to happen. To begin I want to step back and say a few words about how I came to love the work and its joyous wordplay. They are surprisingly intelligent-and very much worth getting to know. It may surprise you to hear that one of the reasons I enjoy the work so immensely is the wonderful, sardonic wit of its lyrics. I’ve dealt with the work in many ways, over many years, and I wanted to say a few words about it that might help put it in a different light. In fact its popularity has frequently raised the hackles of classical music aficionados, who often look down on it as being an adolescent work-a primal scream with no depth or real interest. Carmina Burana is one of the world’s most popular works of classical music, and has been used in everything from commercials and campaign ads to movie trailers and football commentary.
