"O Fortuna" (Great Music)

"O FORTUNA" (Carl Orff, German, 1935-36)

The first time I heard "O Fortuna" was in an intense scene in the film Excalibur. Its words are part of the text of a Latin poem finished by the early 13th century, about the changeability of Fortune (and the hardships caused by Fate). Given the setting of King Arthur's story, the use of Latin, and so on, I could be forgiven for thinking it was a medieval composition. In fact Orff wrote it in 1935-36 as part of the opening and closing movements of his cantata Carmina Burana (meaning "Songs of Beuern," a village in Bavaria, Germany). The whole cantata is based on the idea of the turning the Wheel of Fortune. The full piece runs a little over an hour; that first section (part of "Fortune, Empress of the World") is about three minutes of soul-shaking escalation. Marvelous.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)