Saturday 7 September 2013

MUSIC SATURDAY - DER MOND

“You can be the moon and still be jealous of the stars.” - Gary Allan
 

For Music Saturday, the beginning of “Der Mond” (The Moon), an opera by Carl Orff. He is better known for his “Carmina Burana” (1937) – and rightly so, but he has also written some other wonderful works. “Der Mond” is one of these favourite works of mine, a beautiful, tragicomic work with some fantastic music.
 

Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 – March 29, 1982) was a 20th-century German composer. In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential approach of music education for children. His works “Der Mond” (1939) and “Die Kluge” (The Wise Woman, 1943), he referred to as “Märchenoper” (fairytale operas). Both compositions feature the same "timeless" sound in that they do not employ any of the musical techniques of the period in which they were composed, with the intent that they be difficult to define as belonging to a particular era. Their melodies, rhythms and, with them, text appear in a union of words and music.


1 comment:

  1. Must hunt it out and have a listen to the whole thing.

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