Carmina Burana songs originating from Occitania, France, England, Scotland, Aragon, Castile, and the Holy Roman Empire. Twenty-four poems in "Carmina Burana" were set to music by Carl Orff in 1936. His composition quickly became popular and a staple piece of the classical music repertoire. The opening and closing movement "O Fortuna" has been used in numerous films. "Carmina Burana" (CB) is a manuscript written in 1230 by two different scribes in an early gothic minuscule on 119 sheets of parchment. A number of free pages, cut of a slightly different size, were attached at the end of the text in the 14th
Carmina Burana (Orff) approaches its renown, as evidenced in both pop culture's appropriation of "O Fortuna" and the classical world's persistent programming and recording of the work. In the United States, "Carmina Burana" represents one of the few box office certainties in 20th-century repertoire. Orff's disciple Wilhelm Killmayer in 1956 created a reduced version for soloists, SATB mixed choir, children's choir, two pianos and six percussion (timpani + 5). This version, authorized by Orff himself, allowed smaller ensembles the opportunity to perform the piece. The popularity of the work has ensured the creation of many additional arrangements for a variety of performing forces.