Carmina Burana

What does Old spice, LOTR, Enigma, matrix, have in common?
Ans: Carmina Burana, particularly O Fortuna!

Wondering what it is, Carmina Burana is a manuscript collection of latin songs. Music for these songs was composed by Carl Orff. The first and last song of the collection is O Fortuna. It is this song that is heard in the Old spice ad, in Enigma's album and used as background scores in the movie LOTR and matrix.

A bit of history:
In 1847, a musicologist called Johann Andreas Schmeller discovered a collection of 13th Century songs called Carmina Burana, meaning 'Songs of Beuern', in the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in southern Bavaria, Germany. (Beuern is the name of the village where the monastery was situated.) Most of the songs were in Latin, but some were in an archaic form of German. The songs were about drinking, love, sex and the overbearing burden of fate. They appear to have been the work, not of the Benedictine monks, but of a roving band of monks and clerics known as the Goliards, who were rebels against the authority of the Church. They were more interested in drinking and debauchery than in prayer and sanctity. They lived by the principle, 'Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die'. The Goliards were outlawed by the Church in a series of edicts and laws over the course of the 13th Century, culminating in them being 'defrocked'; that is, stripped of any official status, in 1300 at Cologne.

Schmeller published the songs, but nothing much further was heard of them for nearly a century. In 1935, the German composer Carl Orff (1895-1982) came across the collection and was immediately intrigued by the songs. Reading through the words was a revelation. Orff decided to write a massive work for choir and orchestra with a selection of these songs as the basis. Rather than using the melodies from the manuscript, he wrote his own new ones to fit the words, and orchestrated the whole piece for a 20th Century orchestra.

Plagiarized from here.

O Fortuna (Chorus)

English translation

O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem. Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris. Sors salutis et virtutis michi nunc contraria, est affectus et defectus semper in angaria. Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite; quod per sortem sternit fortem, mecum omnes plangite!

O Fortune, like the moon you are constantly changing, ever waxing and waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice. Fate - monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy. Fate is against me in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!

Complete translation can be found here : http://web.comhem.se/hansdotter/carmina.html