Mixed choir (STBar) and
instruments (POS1) - easy
SKU: HL.49006279
Sumer is icumen
in. Composed by Carl
Orff. Sheet music.
Edition Schott.
Classical. Individual
part. Composed 1972. 4
pages. Duration 4'.
Schott Music #ED 6412-15.
Published by Schott Music
(HL.49006279).
ISBN
9790001068147. Old
English.
The first
known canon of European
art music, now in the
British Museum in London,
is preserved in a
thirteenth-century
manusript from the
English abbey in Reading:
This is the so-called
summer canon, whose
verses greet the advent
of summer. An
accompanying note
elucidates the artistic
layer-like construction
of the sound structure: a
two-voice foundation of
bell-like, swinging
pendulum tones supports
an upper structure of
four voices which enter
at equal time intervals.
The note terms the canon
rota * round -, which
makes reference to the
turning, circling
movement of the
constantly pulsating
sound. The circular
figure originates in a
vital, ages-old moving
force in music-making,
and it demands a
dance-like execution. But
the canon is also,
through the interaction
of the strictly ordered
voice entries,
convivially bound musical
form. Carl Orff was able
to choose no better
fitting musical form for
the Greetings to Youth at
the Olympic Games 1972 in
Munich than the medieval
rota. In the connexion of
the singing voices with
the Orff instruments,
today in world-wide use,
a testimony of European
tradition sounds in a
living present.