It's like if the only thing that survived from our time was church music

... and then one day someone discovered the collected works of Eminem.
- Daniel, describing the Carmina Burana (Cantiones Profanae)

Other bits from yesterday's choir rehearsal:

• Soprano 1: (reading translation of the lyrics) Huh. Yielding gratifies me; refusing makes me grieve.
  Soprano 2: Yup. My maidenhood excites me.
  
  
• Director: Sopranos, that was beautiful. The Brahms choir will be bringing in some German speakers, though. So it's going to be important that there be words. Your vowels were wonderful. But you'll want consonants.
  
  
• Soprano: Ouch. Page 41, third system: Soprano Roadkill. (AKA we hit a high C)
  
  
• Director: (summing up the lovely, gentle second song) So this is the 'chanting monks' song--
  (Two of the men immediately bonk their foreheads with their scores, a la Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

(Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, btw, is a cantata based on twenty-four of the poems found in the medieval collection of Carmina Burana. They are in Latin, German, and French, and deal with "the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust," says Wikipedia. More info here)