The apocalyptic chant that opens movie trailers and sports arenas was written in the 1930s, and its lyrics are about gambling away your clothes in a medieval tavern. This episode decodes Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, from his 1934 discovery of an 1847 publication of medieval poems to his collaboration with law student Michel Hofmann to select 24 texts in secular Latin, Old French, and Middle High German. We explain why Orff could not use the original medieval melodies and why every note is his own.

We examine how the Wheel of Fortune illustration on the manuscript's first page became the structural blueprint, bookending 25 movements with O Fortuna, and how Orff replaced polyphony with repeating blocks of sound, massive percussion, and constantly shifting time signatures. We cover the roasting swan tenor solo, Orff's concept of theatrum mundi  ...