2023-2024 CONCERTS

The Canterbury Choral Society’s mission since its founding in 1952 has been to perform the finest music, with appropriate orchestral accompaniment, in a sacred space. That space, and our home since our founding, has been Church of the Heavenly Rest.

We are delighted to be back, in person, performing with a live orchestra. Our final performance of the season will be Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. We are happy to offer 3 options for ticket purchasing: credit cards through EventBrite, no-fee bank transfer through Zelle, and cash at the door.

Tickets are available through EventBrite here;

OR

If you use Zelle, just scan the QR code brlow from your banking app to pay online with no service charge.

Tickets are $30 general admission and $25 for seniors.

Please use the “note” section to indicate how many tickets you would like.

Concerts

Sunday, April 21, 2024 at 4:00pm

Carl Orff - Carmina Burana

Carl Orff

“I am an old Bavarian, born in Munich, and this city, this country, this landscape have given me a lot and helped shape my nature and my work." – Carl Orff

Carl Orff was born in 1895 in Munich, Germany to a Bavarian family of officers and scholars. Music was played regularly in Orff's parents' house. His father Heinrich, an officer, played the piano and various string instruments, his mother Paula was a trained pianist. Above all, she recognized and encouraged her son's musical talent. Music education for children was to be a lifelong pursuit, as was composition, and he was strongly influenced by Monteverdi and Stravinsky.

“Fortuna meant well for me when she handed me a Würzburg antiquarian book catalog in which I found a title that magically attracted me: Carmina Burana,” wrote Carl Orff about the discovery of the Benediktbeuren manuscript became the basis of his most famous work. The selection of love, lust for life and drinking songs that Carl Orff made from them and set to music as a scenic cantata became one of the most successful composition in contemporary music theater.

According to Wikipedia, In 1934, Orff encountered the 1847 edition of the poems that comprise Carmina Burana by Johann Andreas Schmeller, the original text dating mostly from the 11th or 12th century, including some from the 13th century, which he selected and organized into a group of 24 of these poems into a libretto mostly in secular Latin verse, with a small amount of Middle High German[1] and Old French. The selection covers a wide range of topics, as familiar in the 13th century as they are in the 21st century: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of spring and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling, and lust. Carmina Burana premiered in Frankfurt in 1937, and is divided into three sections: In Spring, In the Tavern, and The Court of Love with an opening prologue and finale.