OTD in Music History: Composer and pedagogue Carl Orff (1895 - 1982) dies in Germany. A member of "classical" music's ignominious "one hit wonder" club, Orff is remembered today for "Carmina Burana," a secular cantata composed in 1936 and premiered to the following year to great acclaim in Nazi Germany. "Carmina Burana" was an immediate smash hit, and it has lost none of its popularity -- indeed, excerpts remain a ubiquitous feature of modern popular culture. Based on poems from a medieval collection of the same name, the full Latin title of the work is actually "Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis" ("Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images"). Although originally written as a stand-along work, “Carmina Burana” is technically also part of a larger "musical triptych" entitled "Trionfi,” which also includes the cantatas "Catulli Carmina" (1943) and T"rionfo di Afrodite" (1951) – neither of which are regularly performed. In a nod to the "Wheel of Fortune" that supposedly turns across time, both the first and last sections of "Carmina Burana" are entitled "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" ("Fortune, Empress of the World") and start with the words, "O Fortuna.” The work is structured in five major sections, and it contains 25 relatively short movements in total. Musically speaking, "Carmina Burana" stands alone in the pantheon of 20th Century "classical" masterpieces -- Orff was strongly influenced by late Renaissance and early Baroque models including William Byrd (c. 1539 - 1625) and Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643), and accordingly "Carmina Burana" contains little or no development in the traditional sense. PICTURED: A printed score for "Carmina Burana" with a rather interesting history -- it is marked up and it was apparently used in a performance which took place under Orff's supervision in 1963. It has been signed by Orff, as well as several of the performers who were involved in that performance.