Behind The Music : Orff Carmina Burana | Adella

Composed in 1936, Carmina Burana is Carl Orff’s thunderous ode to fate, fortune, and human excess. Drawing from a collection of medieval Latin and vernacular poems, the cantata captures the extremes of the human condition—love and lust, joy and despair, luck and loss. Its infamous opening movement, O Fortuna, has become one of the most recognizable pieces of music in the world, used in films, television, commercials, and even sports arenas to conjure drama and intensity. But behind the bombast lies a bold 20th-century reinvention of medieval material—at once ancient and modern, sacred and profane. This video explores how Carmina Burana became an unlikely cultural juggernaut—and why Orff’s vision still resonates nearly a century later.