Catulli Carmina


Catulli Carmina is a cantata by Carl Orff dating from 1940–1943. He described it as ludi scaenici. The work mostly sets poems of the Latin poet Catullus to music, with some text by the composer. Catulli Carmina is part of Trionfi, the musical triptych that also includes the Carmina Burana and Trionfo di Afrodite. It is scored for a full mixed choir, soprano and tenor soloists, and an entirely percussive orchestra – possibly inspired by Stravinsky's Les noces – consisting of four pianos, timpani, bass drum, 3 tambourines, triangle, castanets, maracas, suspended and crash cymbals, antique cymbal, tam-tam, lithophone, metallophone, 2 glockenspiels, wood block, xylophone, and tenor xylophone/low xylophone.

Dramatic structure

The piece is divided into three parts: a prelude with Latin text by Orff, the central dramatic story using Catullus' poems, and a short postlude which recalls the music of the prelude.
In the prelude, groups of young women and young men sing to each other of eternal love and devotion, along with quite explicit statements of the erotic activities they intend with each other. A group of old men interrupts with sarcastic comments and charges the young people to listen to "the songs of Catullus".
The story proper tells of Catullus, a lovesick young man who falls in love with Lesbia, a woman who does not remain faithful to him. The tenor and soprano soloists portray Catullus and Lesbia respectively. This story is based loosely on the factual relationship between Catullus and Clodia, with a text mostly constructed from the poems of Catullus, in which he did address Clodia by the pseudonym Lesbia. Catullus wrote many poems about this relationship and the ones selected for the cantata take the audience through its several phases.
In this listing, the poems are given the standard numbers. Subject to occasional textual variants, the poems are as written by Catullus, except for some interpolations in Latin and the curious extra words in poem 109.

Act 1

  • "Odi et amo"
  • "Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus"
  • "Ille mi par esse deo videtur"
  • "Caeli! Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa"
  • "Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle quam mihi"

    Act 2

  • "Jucundum mea vita"
  • "Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri"

    Act 3

  • "Odi et amo"
  • "Amabo mea dulcis Ipsitilla"
  • "Ameana, puella defututa"
  • "Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire"
  • "Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam"
  • "Nunc est mens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpa"
This selection and sequence of poems is apparently intended to tell the young people on stage that love will not last forever.
However, in the postlude, the young people have clearly decided to ignore the message and the cantata ends with their continued exclamations of "eis aiona", to the exasperation of the old men.

The music

The orchestra only plays in the prelude and postlude, whereas in the Catullus play itself, the soloists are only accompanied by the chorus, which takes the part of a Greek chorus. The piece experiments with repeated phrases and syncopated rhythms even more so than Carmina Burana. Scholars have debated the reason why this is such a lesser-known work, compared to its predecessor. It has been suggested that, with the fall of Nazi Germany and the depressed feeling of Europe in the aftermath of World War II, for a long time it simply did not have the opportunity to be presented to any large audience.

Recordings