O Fortuna

I love a Capella singing. It is the ONLY form of music that literally raises the hairs on my neck. I've been following 'The Last Choir Standing' on BBC for the last month or so, soaking up all the good singing, new arrangements of old songs, reminiscing sweetly of my Stella days and how much fun it was to be a part of good (if small) choir. So, last week when I watched Ysgol Glanaethwy perform I was moved to bits - by their singing too(even though it wasn't a capella) but mostly because what they chose to sing was O Fortuna.

It is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. Haunting and powerful. For the last 10 years I have nursed the impression that it was written by Mozart - (no thanks to a wrongly titled torrent ) So when I heard it again on tv, it suddenly struck me that the song had lyrics - presuming they were written for an opera by Mozart because they sounded italian-y, I went a-digging.

Apparently, and this took me quite aback, the music is relatively new - 1935 or someat like that, written by a chappie called Carl Orff. Oh the disappointment (of sorts) - my untrained ears were convinced it was older. And oh, more interestingly, the music was written for the lyrics , a poem from a 13th century collection called Carmina Burana.

Wiki had a translation of this one on its page. And I absolutely fell in love with it. It seems so Roman somehow and yet I feel so much familiarity - almost as though elements of the style have percolated through the centuries (or maybe it's because it's a translation that it sounds like that to me). I've been playing it over and over in my head for the last week and have become quite besotted with it, so thought I'd share, in the hope that it will enchant you as well..

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are constantly changing,
ever growing
and waning;
hateful life
now oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate - monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate, in health
and virtue,
is against me
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!