Luogo e data di registrazione		Amsterdam (Holland) - Oktober 1967
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken - SAWT 9522-A - (1 LP) - durata 45' 23" - (p) 1968 - Analogico
	Edizione "Reference" CD		Tedec - 8.44012 ZS - (1 CD) - LC 3706 - durata 45' 23" - (c) 1988 - AAD
	Cover		"Musizierende Kinder", Porzellan. Modell von M. V. Acier, Meißen, um 1770. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.

Among the most valuable treasures of the Bavarian State Library in Munich is Codex latinus monacensis 4660, comprising the most comprehensive and most important collection of secular Latin lyrics of the Middle Ages (often erroneously generalized under the expression "Goliardic song"), the Carmina Burana. Before being moved to the Royal Court and Central Library during the secularisation of Bavarian Monasteries in 1803, the manuscript was kept in the Benediktbeuren Monastery; hence this collection of poetry was named by its first editor, the librarian Johannes Andreas Schmeller, "Songs from Benediktbeuren". When the manuscript was written, after the moddle of the 13th century, somewhere in South Germany (or Tyrol?), the flowering of secular Latin poetry was already over. Thus the collection is not a textbook of a Goliard but an anthology written on the order probably of a clerical aristocrat who enjoyed this poetry. The manuscript can be compared in kind to the large collections of middle-high German poetry such as the Manesse manuscript. The manuscript brings together over 200 pieces of differing content and character. The order of the pieces (disrupted through binding) was carefully planned according to four main groups: moral and satirical songs (observations and laments on the course of the world or the lowering of morals, love songs, drinking songs, game songs and real Goliardie poetry (no neumes preserved), and sacred plays. poems of subjective sensitivity are found sext to poems of didactic or learned character. The greatest portion sterms from the late 11th and the 12th centuries; the majority of the poetry originated in France. a few German poems are mixed in with the Latin ones. As was the custom in such anthologies, the poets were not named, almost without exceptions; however many poems are lnown through other soucers, and we can thus recognize the work of few known poets as Walther de Chatillon, Petrous de Blois, the archipoeta, etc., while other poems can be arranged in groups. The concordant sources of single poems are particularly important for the reconstruction of the original texts; in codex Buranus the texts are often corrupt. It seems that the inclusion of neumes had been planned for much of the manuscripts, but this was carried out for only a small part, and there only afterwards and rather incompletely. F. Brunhölzl The production in 1965 of the recording Carmina Burana aus der Originalhandschrift (Teldec SAWT 9455-A) was the first attempt to enter the distant realm of medieval Latin lyrics in their original musical settings. The recording was an immediate success, and was winning prizes. The performance style clearly shows the influence of Spanish arab culture on Western musical practice. Now, after three years of further research and publication, this emphasis seems completely confirmed. The present recording not only delves further in that direction but also calls attention to another important and neglected aspect of the musical practice of pre-Fourteenth century Europe: the non-homogeneity of regional sayles. The manuscript Carmina Burana in an excellent choice of subject because it is a collection of European poetry predominantly in Latin, collected long after the poetry itself had been disseminated throughout Europe. This repertory was indeed international and interregional, and yet its performance was bound to regional performance styles. It is important to state that this repertory was regional by intent, except in rare cases such as C.B. No. 47, but was destined to become international quite by natural processes. Our sources for concordances with the Carmina Burana manuscript extend over several countries, including England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. We must insist that the performance given a random selection of this repertory in the provincial Alpine Monastery of Benediktbeuren in the Thirteenth century, where the manuscript was copied, differed very considerably from a performance of that same sampling in Córdoba or Sevilla, major cultural centers in which a Christian minority lived and studied alongside the Sepharic and (dominant) arabic civilizations. Thus a monophonic sequence may have had a ritual choral performance tradition in St. Gall, the monks singing to themselves about themselves near the center of the Christian sphere of influence, whereas in Badejoz it becomes a solo song, carrying a message to the insecure far outpost of Christianity, where ad educated man still practiced his vernacular employing the Arabic alphabet. To a large extent, the differentiated styles of regional performance are documented in musical sources, by commentary of travellers and by theoreticians (especially Juan Gill's Ars musice written in Zamora about this time, 1254, of the establishment at Salamanca of the first university chair in music in all of Europe). We see the regional performance styles as a product of the degree of exotic influence in that region. During the early period, the major cultural center was Córdoba, later Paris. Distance from these and other centers determined to a great extent the influence of these centers of serious art of the regions. Thus the style known as "Provençal" was able to remain intact, being the node between the arabic South and the French North. England and Germany retained a relatively isolated character, while Spain and Italy underwent nearly constant change of cultural equilibrium. The two major poles were the traditional inherited performance styles indigenous to the area and the imported and superimposed Arabic style either as it was introduced before the nineth century, or as it developed in Europe during the following centuries. The classical form of the late Andalusian style is contained in the concept of the "nuba", in the idea of a complete performance with several parts including an instrumental improvisation without rhythm, followed immediately by one with rhythm, then the introduction of song (after the attention of the audience has been attracted), then a change of rhuthm with more instrumental music, then song again, etc., until the conclusion (Ecce gratum). Opposed to this style was a more direcs, less organized song-cum-accompaniment style of the Germanic countries (Dum iuventus floruit). We have discussed the transcriptions, the instruments and the accompaniments elsewhere, and invite the reader to consult the following: - Minnesang und Spruchdichtung, SAWT 9487-A - Weltliche Musik um 1300, SAWT 9504-A - Carmina Burana (I), SAWT 9455-A Thomas Binkley