The players, then, should approach their music in a "singing" style. The band arrangement, however, is entirely instrumental in concept, the vocal music having been fully incorporated into the band itself.
The original score of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (Cantiones Profanae) (1936) calls for vocal soli, three choirs, and large orchestra. The work begins and ends depicting the crushing anguish of the victims of Fortune's ruthless wheel (0 Fortuna Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi) the remaining sections are devoted to the joys of spring and nature, the pleasures of the tavern and the gaming table, the delights of love, the irony of Fate. In arranging Carmina Burana for concert band l have attempted to retain the spirit, feeling, and over-all character of the original score, at the same time modifying its length to a duration suitable for programming pur-poses. This is music which mirrors the timeless qualities of human aspi-ration and foible music unique in substance and impact, resplendent with the color and imagination of a truly creative mind. He exhilarates us with throbbing rhythms and battering-ram tunes, and moves us with chaste tenderness and heartfelt simplicity. The whole range that reflects the goliards' way of life - its immense gusto and color, its unaffectedness - has likewise been depicted in musical terms by Carl Orff. But when they touched on tenderness they judged their means of expression with the most sophisticated subtlety. It has been suggested that the goliards often inflated their feelings past credibility, like boastful storytellers. They are frank avowals of the earthly pleasures: eating, drinking, gambling, love-making the beauty of life and springtime the irony and cruelty of fortune (then referred to as "Empress of the World", the ancestor of our own "Lady Luck"!). However, since the goliards tempered their Christianity with secular beliefs, the subjects with which the poems deal are as evident today as they were when the poems were written. The origin of the poems - some of which were definitely intended for singing - is obscure. Con-taining approximately two hundred songs and poems - both sacred and secular - the manuscript ranged in style and content from earthly simplicity to sophisticated symbolism and mysticism, from devotional religious contemplation to unabashed, almost cynical, worldliness. The original manuscript collection was rediscovered in the old monastery, Benediktbeuern, in the Bavarian Alps, by Johann Andreas Schmeller who published it in 1847 under the name Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuern).
Orff derived the inspiration and texts for his score from this anthology of songs and poems written in medieval Latin, German, and French by the "goliards" - the vagrant scholars, vagabond poets, and wandering monks of seven hundred years ago. The Wheel of Fortune, inscribed with this legend on a thirteenth-century manuscript collection, acts as a motto for one of the monumental musical works of our time: Carl Orffs Carmina Burana, subtitled "Profane songs for singers and vocal chorus with instruments and magical pictures".
(At the turn of Fortune's wheel one is deposed, another is lifted on high to enjoy a brief felicity.) Fortune roto volvitur: descendo minoratus alter in altum tollitur nimis exaltatus.