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A review by balletbookworm
Selections from the 'Carmina Burana' by Anonymous
3.0
Back when I used to sing, I learned some of Orff's Carmina Burana (In Trutina especially, since that's a solo piece) but I'd never read any of the original poems.
Jump forward 25+ years and my dad surprised me with a book for Christmas (books as presents are tricky since it's likely I might already own it, lol) and got me the Penguin Classics selections from the Carmina Burana.
It's a really information volume, with a lot of notes about the sources, who may have written some of the original pieces, etc. Except, and this is kind of a complaint that I have about a lot of translated poetry, is that only a couple of lines of the original are listed as the header for each poem. I'd love a side-by-side translation because having to translate to English and then make it rhyme - because these pieces are often meant to be sung, in particular the ones meant for the local pub - causes a lot of massaging of the text. I also wish this employed footnotes in the text as opposed to only endnotes. I had flipping back and forth.
But I read these a bit at a time starting at Christmas and finished up during the #transrightsreadathon, so not really a book "for" the readathon but since many of the writers of these songs are unknown, who knows? Might not be 100% straight, cis people.
Jump forward 25+ years and my dad surprised me with a book for Christmas (books as presents are tricky since it's likely I might already own it, lol) and got me the Penguin Classics selections from the Carmina Burana.
It's a really information volume, with a lot of notes about the sources, who may have written some of the original pieces, etc. Except, and this is kind of a complaint that I have about a lot of translated poetry, is that only a couple of lines of the original are listed as the header for each poem. I'd love a side-by-side translation because having to translate to English and then make it rhyme - because these pieces are often meant to be sung, in particular the ones meant for the local pub - causes a lot of massaging of the text. I also wish this employed footnotes in the text as opposed to only endnotes. I had flipping back and forth.
But I read these a bit at a time starting at Christmas and finished up during the #transrightsreadathon, so not really a book "for" the readathon but since many of the writers of these songs are unknown, who knows? Might not be 100% straight, cis people.