We've all heard it, its appeared in numerous films and is a staple in every gamer den. But these songs, put to music by Carl Orf in 1936 are little more than drinking songs put together by traveling clergy in the medieval period. There are over 250 pieces in the work, but only a quarter of them come with any kind of musical notation; staffless neumes gave an indication on the pitch relative to the note before or after it (these later evolved into the staffed neumes, but that is another tale of woe and deceit).
The songs are love songs, satirical pieces, moral pieces and the like.
These stand in stark contrast to the images that the people of that period left to us; poor peasants, somber clerics praying, knights in armor, virtuous maids, witches being burned, and so on.
Who knew? The people in the middle ages weren't just living in squalid huts with muddy floors being killed by knights or living in cells beating their backs with raw-hide whips? They were just as fun loving and sarcastic as the rest of us.
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