The other weekend there was a free concert of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana downtown. Unfortunately they used the piano and percussion arrangement and not a full orchestra, which kind of sucked, but I still read the poems that were in Latin, and that made it well worth it...
They had the lyrics in the guide, and I was able to sightread a lot of them along with the music, even picking out some typos here and there.
One of my favorites was from a song about the tavern:
In taverna quando sumus
non curamus quid sit humus.
Or, in other words (roughly):
When we're at the bar
we don't care about death!
- only, it has a punchy rhyme.
I texted a medievalist friend out of sheer joy, and we started talking about this and that (he has taught some of the poems), and he told me they were composed by wandering Latin scholars who drank a lot, which I immediately identified with.
I also composed my own little ditty and texted it to him:
Quanto bibo in tavernis
tanto dis me do infernis.
Or, in other words (roughly):
However much I drink at bars,
By that much I give myself to the infernal gods.
Only, it has a punchy rhyme!
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