Medieval influence

Schola Cantorum plans to stage a lively fall production, full of earthy themes and dramatic rhythms.

The volunteer vocalist group will join the Waynesboro High School concert choir Nov. 15 at the high school in the performance of “Carmina Burana,” a collection of musical medieval folk poetry from all over Europe.

Monks carefully preserved the words with an oral tradition of songs and verses, popularized by troubadours in a variety of languages, and German composer Carl Orff wrote the music in the 1930s, Schola’s director Maureen Drumheller said.

Drumheller said Orff had an ambiguous relationship with the Third Reich, raising questions in some quarters and enjoying patronage in others. She said Nazi officials deplored the earth-centered sentiments of some of the poems, but failed to censor them. Orff, who had been a child prodigy himself, developed a beginning piano method for children, a way of teaching that is still in use today, Drumheller said.

The subjects of the poems are universal: the fickleness of fate, the innocence of young girls, the beauty of spring, the wanderlust of the traveler and the loneliness of those left behind.

Carl Orff chose 24 of the 150 or so poems preserved by the Benedictine monks in a Bavarian Monastery, said Lou Dolive, Schola’s president. “The poems were about a variety of topics, everyday life rather than religion.”

Many of them were written by goliards, a word for students of the ministry. “One of their favorite topics was satirizing the church,” Dolive said.  He said the widespread criticism of the church at the grassroots level set the stage for Martin Luther and religious revolt centuries later.

“These are all secular themes,” Drumheller said, “ but the monks wrote them down and preserved them.”

Dolive said, “They thought of the monasteries as libraries and themselves as the librarians.”

Moods flow from bitterness to joy with the seasons and with the cycle of life, presented as the wheel of fortune in the beginning of the musical with “O Fortuna,” a dramatic piece that has seeped into popular culture, Drumheller said.

“Most likely all of us have heard it without knowing it,” she said.

Dolive explained that much of the compositional structure is from the idea that human lives turn like a wheel, one stage into the next.  A drawing of the wheel found on the first page of the original text is duplicated on the program for the Schola Cantorum concert, he said.

It includes four phrases around the outside of the wheel. The English translation: “I shall reign,” “I reign,” “I have reigned” and “I am without a kingdom.” 

“That pretty much says it all,” Dolive said.

It’s the kind of music heard in films when the space ship lands, or knights march into battle.

“I know it’s even been in a hockey commercial,” Drumheller said.

She called it an extremely dramatic chorus, full of emotion, expectation and the consciousness that something very weighty is at hand. Different people find it either ominous or inspiring. Guest soloists will include Waynesboro native Penelope Shumate, a soprano; tenor Jeff Prillaman and baritone David Newman.

Other poems are more pastoral. Spring approaches and lovers find and lose each other.

Drumheller said “Carmina Burana” is often performed with a whole orchestra. With a production on that scale being out of reach financially for the Cantorum, she decided to use a range of percussion instruments to bring the piece to life. Besides the pianos, there are chimes, gongs, a tympani and xylophone. Since the collection of poems spans medieval Europe, the work has bits of German and French, Drumheller said, but the singers will sing mostly in Latin.

It’s a huge undertaking, with more than 100 singers on the stage, including the high school concert choir, Drumheller said.

“It has just been wonderful working with the young people.”

She said youth outreach

is an important part of Schola Cantorum’s mission.

“We want to introduce the community to the works of the masters and this includes not only the audience, but young singers who may not be familiar with the classics,” she said.

In addition to relying on volunteers, Schola hires professional singers to sing certain parts. Drumheller said each production costs from $5,000 to $8,000.

A reception will follow the 3 p.m. performance.

“With a piece like this, we wanted to give the audience a chance to question the performers afterwards,” Drumheller said.