C’mon! Orff?

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Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana ranks up with Enya’s “Book of Days” and Patrick Doyle’s score to Henry V as the most overused movie trailer music in the entertainment industry.

Carmina Burana’s simple quarter-note hook is total dramatic fodder. Hence, movie marketing forces have comandeered the powerful choral work to render apparent points absolutely redundant.

Oh my. What drama.

Enigma mastermind Michael Cretu aspires for a loftier aesthetic than most of his music actually achieves. When bits and pieces of Orff’s one-hit wonder leaks its way onto the tracks of The Screen Behind the Mirror, it’s easy to groan at the sheer obviousness of the reference.

Had he used a slightly more obscure reference by pop culture standards — something from Igor Stravinsky, perhaps? Maybe even Gustav Holst’s The Planets? — his cleverness would have been taken more seriously.

But Orff?

That’s perhaps the only blunder in an otherwise relatively cohesive Enigma album — but it’s a big one.

MCMXC a.D., Enigma’s debut, casts a very long shadow over Cretu’s subsequent Enigma albums, but The Screen Behind the Mirror does a fine job of standing on its own two metaphorical feet. Cretu writes for voices on many of The Screen’s tracks, and while he seems to be using the same electronic gear since 1989, the dreaminess of his older works is finally waking up.

Let’s hope next time Cretu digs into his music collection rather than rely on Hollywood.