It can be heard in numerous films and television commercials, and has become a staple in western popular culture, setting the mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations. Orff's setting of the poem has influenced and been used in many other works and has been performed by numerous classical music ensembles and popular artists. A performance takes a little over two and a half minutes. The tone is modal, until the last nine bars. It opens at a slow pace with thumping drums and choir that drops quickly into a whisper, building slowly in a steady crescendo of drums and short string and horn notes peaking on one last long powerful note and ending abruptly. It was first staged by the Frankfurt Opera on 8 June 1937. In 1935–36, 'O Fortuna' was set to music by German composer Carl Orff as a part of ' Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi', the opening and closing movement of his cantata Carmina Burana. It is a complaint about Fortuna, the inexorable fate that rules both gods and mortals in Roman and Greek mythology. ' O Fortuna' is a medieval Latin Goliardic poem which is part of the collection known as the Carmina Burana, written early in the 13th century. 'O Fortuna' in the Carmina Burana manuscript ( Bavarian State Library the poem occupies the last six lines on the page, along with the overrun at bottom right. For the Rhydian Roberts album, see O Fortuna (album).
