Composed by 20th Century German composer Carl Orff between 1935 and 1936, based on a medieval collection of poems discovered in a Bavarian monastery in 1803. The piece is part of Trionfi, a longer composition that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. The best-known movement is “O Fortuna,” which opens and closes the piece, and which has been used in countless advertisements and movie trailers. In 1991, upset that a music group produced a heavily-sampled version of “O Fortuna,” Orff’s estate sued to stop the distribution of the song. Today, new versions of Carmina Burana cannot be purchased.
