Carl Orff's choral/orchestral work, Carmina Burana, has become justly famous and popular all over the world ever since its premiere in 1937. It's a good example of that peculiar artistic phenomenon known as the "one-hit wonder." The number of performances and recordings of all of Orff's other works combined will not come close to equalling the total for this one work.
Today, I'm going to recommend a good starting point if you wish to investigate the music of Carl Orff beyond his single greatest hit. In fact, that starting point -- Der Mond ("The Moon") -- is nearly contemporary with Carmina Burana, being written immediately after the more famous work and premiered two years later, in 1939. Despite some obvious differences in approach, the musical language of Der Mond is sufficiently similar to the more famous work that anyone who is comfortable with Carmina Burana will likely feel right at home here. I certainly did, the first time I sampled a recording from the public library as a young 'un.
Orff did not at first wish to call Der Mond an "opera." He called it a kleines Welttheater ("Little World Theatre"), a term which he himself coined to describe his ideal vision of a theatre piece which combined movement, music, and drama to illustrate or illuminate the condition of the world. It all sounds suspiciously like Richard Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk, but the result is spectacularly anti-Wagnerian in scope, in sound, and in the form of storytelling. Later on, he labelled the work a "fairy-tale opera."
Song, solo or choral, is mated regularly with spoken dialogue, some of which is given a precise rhythmical scheme to be followed. The music is supported by a similar orchestra to that in Carmina Burana, but with the addition of an onstage orchestra as well as the main band in the pit. Orff uses the same style of strophic song based on little rhythmic ostinato figures repeated multiple times. Melodies are mainly diatonic, and rhythms dominate -- with the familiar trick of inserted bars every so often adding an extra beat or two. A wide array of percussion instruments dominate the musical texture, but never is the same combination used in two successive sections.
There's a detailed description of how the stage should appear for Der Mond. The set is divided into an upper and lower level. The lower level should represent a vaulted cellar stretching back apparently into infinity. The upper level is to be divided into left and right halves by a hazel bush, and each half is a mirror image of the other -- a tavern with an oak tree outside. A staircase leads down from the upper to the lower level. There also needs to be a higher point, near (one presumes) the top of the proscenium, which overlooks the entire stage. By now, you may already have guessed that these three levels represent heaven, earth, and the underworld. Bingo.
The plot line of Der Mond is based on a story of the same title in the Brothers Grimm. A narrator describes a country where no light shone at night, and all was blackness. Four young men from this land journey to another land where a bright light shines out in an oak tree. Asking about it, they are informed that this is the "moon," and that the mayor bought it for three thalers and hung it in the tree. Hearing this, the four young men steal the moon and take it back to their own land to hang in their own oak tree, leaving the land where they found it in darkness.
In due course they get old, and express a wish that they each be buried with one-quarter of the moon in his casket. When the mayor cuts the first quarter with shears, the moon turns blood red and the people cry out in dismay. Eventually, all four quarters are buried, one by one, leaving the land dark again. The four men wake up in the underworld, and reassemble the moon. The unexpected light rouses all the sleeping dead people, and they begin carousing, drinking, gaming and whoring, much as when they were alive.
Peter, the guardian of heaven, hears the racket and looks out to see what is happening. To still the clamour of the dead, he hurls a comet from the sky down among them, and silence falls. Peter then descends into the underworld to find out what is happening. The four men proudly explain to him about the moon, and the party resumes. Peter drinks with the dead until they fall into a drunken stupor, then -- to terror-stricken, portentous music -- he announces that they will party no more, but only sleep, and he takes the moon away, concealed inside his cloak.
Peter hangs the moon up in the heavens. On earth a child sees it, and exclaims, "See there! The moon!" The people on earth stare up in amazement at the light. In the underworld, the dead snore.
The narrator role is assigned to a high lyric tenor voice, and right away the reference is clear to the Passions of Bach and other Baroque masters. But the numerous spoken sections just as obviously relate back to the traditional German singspiel. The various vocal and choral numbers are easily related to the style of Carmina Burana, both musically and in the overt raunchiness of some of the texts. The music during the carousing in the underworld contains brief quotations from popular songs, drinking songs, Verdi, Puccini -- and Carmina Burana. The final quiet scene where the child sees the moon is accompanied by a zither and violin, a distinctly Bavarian sound (Orff lived and worked in Munich). Any performance of course has to include numerous sound effects, not least a whistling scream for the comet, and these are doubly important for a recorded performance.
Although it's easier to follow the action with a full libretto, even a moderately detailed synopsis will allow the listener to get the main gist of what's going on in an audio recording.
In the end, the biggest single point of resemblance between Der Mond and Carmina Burana is that they are both fun -- fun to listen to, likely even more fun to watch, and with no lack of entertainment value for the adventurous music lover. Ready?
Vorzeiten, gab es ein Land, wo die Nacht immer dunkel,
und der Himmel wie ein schwarzes Tuch darüber gebreitet war....
"Once upon a time, there was a land where the night was always dark,
and the sky was spread over it like a black cloth...."
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