Cantata composed by Carl Orff
Performed by the Berlin Philharmonic

I came to Carmina Burana late, at least to know it by name. Attending a production of Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, Orff’s music, O Fortuna in particular, punctuated the finale of insane slapstick. While the show was marvelous (tinged by the sadness of knowing that no more Orton’s plays would be forthcoming) I latched onto the music and tracked down a recording in the remainder bin at the Harvard Coop back when remainder bins contained something worth finding (everything was better when we were young).

The Orton connection turned out to be apropos as this most famous of modern classical compositions has that unique history involving questionable language. In case you are unwilling to dig into Wikipedia, let me brief you: the text for the piece comes from a cache of long-buried medieval papers containing the prurient Latin scribblings of youthful monks. Orff saw the text as illuminating the mystical via the sexual, at least if I have my shorthand anywhere near correct.

Ultimately, being just a little bit in the know about the history of Carmina Burana adds a certain humor to seeing an orchestra all dressed to their best with that charming conductor out front. You can feel the rock and roll descendants in the work of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

Mind you, this is the same Carl Orff who laid the groundwork for an approach to scholastic music education that is popular around the world. Then, we add in his confused history with the Nazi regime, which is beyond me to decipher his full culpability. Let’s just clarify that he definitely remained in Germany under Hitler, composed, and came out of it allowed to carry on with his life as adjudged by the DeNazification panels set up by the Allies after the war.

Hitler adored Wagner, another German composer renown for powerful pieces that get the heart pumping. It is difficult to be in a room with an orchestra in full charge with Flight of the Valkyries or O Fortuna and not feel the mad rush of blood. They are not quite the Scots led into battle with bagpipes blaring, but they come mighty close. Orff has long ago been reinstated by the world’s symphonies and his work is played widely. He falls into a convenient place on the bill reserved for melodic and modern with the biggest drawback being the need to add a chorus to the standard orchestration.

Where to go with dead artists who did great work in trying times while making ethical choices that appear difficult to defend (or worse)? Nothing in Orff’s oeuvre exhibits truly offensive ideas. Recent discussions about the great American poet Wallace Stevens have mentioned that he appears to have been a racist curmudgeon for much of his life, while his artistic output reflects none of those prejudices. Do we disdain the art for the man’s failings? To paraphrase another great American poet, we all contain multitudes. Though, when do the failings progress beyond redemption?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 269 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Television Series created by Gene Roddenberry

How does art become a cultural phenomenon? By all expectations, Star Trek should be no more popular now than The Fugitive or Space: 1999.

The original Star Trek was well into syndication when I was young. My older brother turned me on to it, but we could only watch it sporadically. The antenna on the top of the house had to be positioned just so in perfect weather and we could pick up that independent station out of Wheeling that held the rights to broadcast Star Trek. At the start of the show, heated arguments broke out that one or the other of us had no idea how to properly point the antenna. Tears and recriminations began until the snow cleared from the screen and the sight of the U.S.S. Enterprise would magically appear on the screen. Logically or not, I was always afraid to move for the next hour out of fear of rendering the picture unintelligible. Mind you, this was even before the Saturday morning cartoon. Later, local stations picked up the series, but then everyone knew about the show because the movies had begun.

Still, the show is only fifty years old, a mere drop in the bucket for a work of art. I would haphazard a guess (and a small hope) that more people have considered the Mona Lisa or Hamlet in the past year. They all endure, which is to the credit of the artists involved. I can’t say Star Trek seems likely to last another few centuries, but the staying power of current television shows as part of the cultural conversation, or even the general zeitgeist, seems dubious. The idea of high school students being assigned A Separate Peace and an hour of a Nineties drama looks like the downfall of civilization, though it probably signals nothing of the sort. Watching movies in class and learning about that art form hasn’t ended the world.

And would they be assigning Star Trek? The show was remarkable at the time for not insulting your intelligence as much as many others. On the other hand, it was not significantly better at that than Mission: Impossible or The Avengers. In this day and age, when passably intelligent television shows are the norm, the original Star Trek stands out mostly for its general optimism, its world building, and some fortuitous hiring. The writers did outstanding work. The actors turned out to be ideal for myth building.

But it’s the optimism and the world building that have lasted. At a time when we have a glut of dystopian fictions, the overall hope that underlies that original series is what endures. Individual problems have not been eradicated. Everyone does not get along all the time. Lives remain filled with challenges and struggles. But they can make food essentially out of nothing. They can send you someplace instantaneously. And most of all, people retain a hunger for work and endeavor even if you feed and clothe and heal them. The hope of Star Trek is how much people continue to give even when they have what they need.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 270 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Book written by Terry Pratchett

I am a better person because of Terry Pratchett. Ideally, all fiction leaves us a little better off than before the reading. I think most artists intend to reach their audience and impart wisdom, knowledge, understanding,… some message that the creator believes needs to be imparted. Great artists transmit their message in a way that engages their audience and audiences tend to be more engaged when they don’t feel like they are being lectured. Harry Potter books definitely contain messages about inclusiveness, the nature of evil, etc. but they also entertain. Essentially, they bury the lead. It’s been done before… and Terry Pratchett predates J.K. Rowling.

Odds are you know the name because Pratchett is one of the five or six best selling English language authors of the last twenty years. On the other hand, his work has been primarily in fantasy with a smattering of young adult novels, so a lot depends on which parts of the bookstore you were willing to set foot in (back in the day when you had to set foot in a physical location).

The vast majority of Pratchett’s work takes place on the Discworld, a planet filled with most of the fantasy tropes popular before Game of Thrones dominated the genre. From Robert E. Howard to Fritz Lieber (and many, many more) you can find myriad references that even passing notice will bring to mind. Essentially though, the Discworld quickly became a pallet for Pratchett to explore themes of disenfranchisement, prejudice, economic development, police techniques, government, and the meaning of life. Most interesting is the way he has moved away from those really big questions and focused more on the practical details as time has gone by (or rather how pragmatism manifests the really big questions). Maybe the big questions really are only a mug’s game for youthful philosophers… Once you get past them, then you see all the more interesting matters sitting in front of you in the real world… or in Ankh Morpork, the largest city of the Discworld.

As anyone exposed to any of those epic fantasy series on television or in oversized books knows all too well, the basic requirements tend to include disharmony and ultimate evil. Other than a very questionable traveling trunk, ultimate evil rarely appears as such in Pratchett’s world, although Death personified appears frequently. Generally speaking, Death does his best given his social circumstances. Pratchett himself met Death a couple years ago, which might have been where he last crept across your news feed.

The thing is that Pratchett sneaks up on you with the whole wisdom thing, hidden in humorous books wrapped in fantasy. While the concept may challenge your preconceived notions, the ideas always end up with a full vetting. The Night Watch and the Mint all end up with deep dives, sociological and entertaining.

Lastly, anyone who has read any books by Pratchett will have an opinion about where you should begin, but they are not so much in an order. My favorite may be The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, but Thud! is a remarkable achievement, though many, many others match it.

Pratchett wrote over thirty Discworld novels. As a world building achievement, it exceeds virtually all other entries (though Hal Clement receives the nod in the science fiction category). Like the best world building, it mirrors aspects of our reality while allowing for powerful commentary on the happenings in our lives. I don’t consider Pratchett’s forerunner as J.R.R. Tolkien so much as Evelyn Waugh. Waugh might well be aggrieved to be seen in the works of a fantasist and Pratchett always argued that literature was where you found it, exclusive of genre definitions. I would like to think they would see the stinging social commentary delivered with great humor and hard-earned wisdom in each other’s work.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 271 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.