Could someone identify this song for me?

Looking for someone to identify song, possibly from Soviet era

• This has been bugging me for a while. It is a choral song, with a somewhat forbidding mood. It may be a Soviet war/patriotic song. This is all I know. The MIDI file at http://spatter.tripod.com/song.mid will give the first few notes that remember. (Interpret the notes as "words" by a large choir).

• Answer:

  Hello bh2002-ga This is the opening movement from one of my favourite pieces: Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. This section is entitled O Fortuna (Oh Fate). You can listen to it in realplayer or mp3 format at: http://www.albany.edu/music/chorale/listen.htm The original words are in medieval Latin (although some of the other sections have words in Middle High German). If you would like to see the original words of O Fortuna with a translation into English, go to http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmlyr.html The same site has some interesting information about the work in a FAQ at http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmina.html The words come from a 12th century German collection of about 250 poems, some in Latin and some in German. They were written by the "goliards", who were vagabond minstrels, including some defrocked monks. Carl Orff was born in Munich on the 10th July, 1895 and died on March 29, 1982 at the age of 87. Apparently, finding the poems changed his life, because previously he had been known more as a teacher, but Carmina Burana made him famous as a composer. It was first performed as a theatre piece with movement at the Frankfurt Opera in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in June 1937. Carmina Burana has sometimes been cited as being Hitler's favourite piece of music. However, it appears that the truth was more complicated, and that Carl Orff trod a complicated path in the days of the Hitler era. Some information about this can be found in a book review at: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~german/articles/dennis1.html