From the Disney film G-Force to the movie trailer from Paul Blart: Mall Cop...from Carlton Beer to Domino's Pizza.
Decades of media appropriation have placed Carl Orff's O Fortuna opening to the scenic cantata Carmina Burana among classical music's greatest cliches. However, hearing the more than 60 minutes of music you may not know from this sprawling work will bring a startling freshness to the experience.
"Girth alone...it's 25 movements!" conductor Kevin Sedatole reminds us. Dr. Sedatole will conduct the MSU Wind Symphony, vocal soloists and an enormous chorus as the Wharton Center on Saturday night at 8:00pm.
Carmina Burana is a collection of 228 secular poems discovered more than 2 centuries ago in a Bavarian monastery. Orff uses two dozen of these in his 1937 composition.
Soloists are soprano Catherine Goode, tenor Isaac Frishman and baritone Brian Major. Backing them are the Wind Symphony, Chorale Union, University Chorale, State Singers and select members of the MSU Children's Choir. Dr. David Rayl has prepared the MSU vocalists for work. Together, they create one of the year's most powerful sounds at the Wharton Center's Cobb Great Hall.
Describing Orff's magnum opus as "incredibly orchestrated and highly varied from movement to movement", Sedatole says that audiences "don't need to understand the words to know the music."
You already know some of it. Come and feast on the rest.