Carmina Burana: the translation

The infatuation with Carmina Burana can largely be attributed to the text. Although we will be singing in Latin and old versions of German, you can find the entertaining translation at this link.There were almost 200 poems in the entire Carmina collection which are classified into categories that are: moralistic and satirical; love songs and songs celebrating spring; songs connected with drinking and gambling.And who doesn’t love a naughty song?  No matter how much things change they stay the same: the topics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries still resonate today. Wandering scholars went from town to town and weren’t too concerned with conventional society of the time--nor were they concerned with offending people. The poetry was written to be shared immediately, to rail against some current offense, and chiefly to entertain.So if you see us singing with a wink and a nudge, it’s because we understand the text!