Carmina Burana#
Carmina Burana: Collection of 318 mostly anonymous poems in Latin and German; written around 1225-1230 in the areas of Tirol, Styria, Carinthia (probably at the court of the Bishop of Seckau). Fully preserved in the Codex Buranus, a gospel book containing neumes and miniatures; it was discovered 1803, when the monastery of Benediktbeuern was secularized, and handed over to the Bavarian State Library. Includes a wide range of songs and poems, mostly of secular content (moral and satirical poetry, spring and love songs, drinking and gamblers´ songs) as well as six religious plays; Carmina Burana represents the largest medieval collection of poetry. Some of the poems were set to music by C. Orff (premiere 1937).
Editions: A. Hilka and O. Schulmann, Carmina Burana,
2 vols., 1930; B. K. Vollmann, Carmina Burana, Texte
und Uebersetzungen (texts and translations), 1987.
Literature#
Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters (lex.)