O Fortuna

Carl Orff encountered the collection in 1934 and worked with a Latin and Greek enthusiast, Michel Hofmann, to select and organize 24 of the poems into a libretto.

"[2] O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris.

O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing ever waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes playing with mental clarity; poverty and power it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, devoid of security and ever fading to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.

Conductor Marin Alsop wrote that it "begins with all forces at full throttle, then immediately scale[s] back in an ominous warning repetition that builds to a climactic close".

[10] In The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, Clem highlights how the poem's themes like human struggle and fate are commonly divorced from popular usage.

[4] "O Fortuna" has been called "the most overused piece of music in film history",[11] and Harper's Magazine columnist Scott Horton has commented that "Orff's setting may have been spoiled by its popularization" and its use "in movies and commercials often as a jingle, detached in any meaningful way from its powerful message.

[citation needed] The composition appears in numerous films and television commercials[13] and has become a staple in popular culture, setting the mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations.

[15][user-generated source] In 1983, Doors' keyboardist Ray Manzarek released his third solo album, Carmina Burana, which is an interpretation of the piece in a contemporary framework.