Roast Swan

Not long ago, the Oakland Symphony Chorus performed Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. For those of you who don't know about the 13th century manuscript collection this is based on, there's a Wikipedia article. Carl Orff wrote the modern piece, based on the manuscripts, in Germany in the middle 1930s, and that's what we did. Three times, which is a lot. And under two different conductors, which was interesting, as they didn't interpret it the same way at all.

Whenever you spend 5 months rehearsing something and then most of a solid week doing concert prep, after the concert the music doesn't necessarily stop running through your head right away. Or for a while. But there's one part of it that's stuck in my head for nothing directly to do with the music. Of the 5 parts of Carmina Burana, the long middle section is about drinking and taverns, sung by the men; and it contains an extremely weird little solo piece called, alternatively, Cignus ustus cantat or Olim lacus colueram (the first line) - which is usually referred to as "The Roast Swan."

It's significant for 2 reasons: musically it's one of the higher tenor pieces in the repertoire, the tenor has to hit a high D; and textually it's the story of a roast swan being served up for dinner, from the swan's point of view. Unless the text is published in the program or they've looked it up, the audience usually misses this, because it's sung in medieval Latin, which is less common than it once was. Here is the text, in the excellent translation provided by classical.net:

Olim lacus colueram,        Once I lived on lakes,
olim pulcher extiteram,       once I looked beautiful
dum cignus ego fueram.       when I was a swan.

(Male chorus)
Miser, miser!            Misery me!
modo niger             Now black
et ustus fortiter!         and roasting fiercely!

(Tenor)
Girat, regirat garcifer;      The servant is turning me on the spit;
me rogus urit fortiter;       I am burning fiercely on the pyre:
propinat me nunc dapifer,      the steward now serves me up.

(Male Chorus)
Miser, miser!            Misery me!
modo niger             Now black
et ustus fortiter!         and roasting fiercely!

(Tenor)
Nunc in scutella iaceo,       Now I lie on a plate,
et volitare nequeo         and cannot fly anymore,
dentes frendentes video:      I see bared teeth:

(Male Chorus)
Miser, miser!            Misery me!
modo niger             Now black
et ustus fortiter!         and roasting fiercely!

You can see where they might not always print the translation. The chorus, sung by the basses and tenors, is one of the best known parts of Carmina, it's very exciting.

In the first two concerts, the tenor stood in the usual stiff concert pose. He had a beautiful if rather light voice and hit all the notes correctly, but he didn't try to do any physical interpretation. The soloist in the third concert (under the second conductor) chose to act out the story. (He's an opera singer; in fact, his name is Brian Staufenbiel, and he's the head of the opera program at U.C. Santa Cruz.) As he sang the first verse, he waved his arms as if flying, and looked around. As he sang the second verse, he stood with his hands locked behind his back, as if trussed up. As he sang the last verse, he stood straight and stiff with his hands at his side.

It made the swan quite uncomfortably real, and I can't get it out of my head.

It didn't help that, at the dress rehearsal, the soprano and bass soloists were sitting over to the side during the solo, making synchronized cranking motions, as if turning a spit. It was funny in a very black way. From what I know about the middle ages, all of this would have been hilarious to them; so maybe this is just a measure of how much we've changed in 700 years.

But I still can't get it out of my head.