- published: 05 May 2010
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Fortuna (equivalent to the Greek goddess Tyche) was the goddess of fortune and personification of luck in Roman religion. She might bring good luck or bad: she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Justice, and came to represent life's capriciousness. She was also a goddess of fate: as Atrox Fortuna, she claimed the young lives of the princeps Augustus' grandsons Gaius and Lucius, prospective heirs to the Empire.
Her father was said to be Jupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful (Copia). As Annonaria she protected grain supplies. June 11 was sacred to her: on June 24 she was given cult at the festival of Fors Fortuna.
Fortuna's Roman cult was variously attributed to Servius Tullius – whose exceptional good fortune suggested their sexual intimacy – and to Ancus Marcius. The two earliest temples mentioned in Roman Calendars were outside the city, on the right bank of the Tiber (in Italian Trastevere). The first temple dedicated to Fors was attributed to the Etruscan Servius Tullius, while the second is known to have been built in 293 BC as the fullfilment of a Roman promise made during later Etruscan wars The date of dedication of her temples was 24 June, or Midsummer’s Day, when celebrants from Rome annually floated to the temples downstream from the city. After undisclosed rituals they then rowed back, garlanded and inebriated. Also Fortuna had a temple at the Forum Boarium. Here Fortuna was twinned with the cult of Mater Matuta (the goddesses shared a festival on 11 June), and the paired temples have been revealed in the excavation beside the church of Sant'Omobono: the cults are indeed archaic in date. Fortuna Primigenia of Praeneste was adopted by Romans at the end of 3rd BC in an important cult of Fortuna Publica Populi Romani (the Official Good Luck of the Roman People) on the Quirinalis outside the Porta Collina. No temple at Rome, however, rivalled the magnificence of the Praenestine sanctuary.
Carl Orff ((1895-07-10)July 10, 1895 – March 29, 1982(1982-03-29)) was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.
Orff was born in Munich on July 10, 1895. His family was Bavarian and was active in the Army of the German Empire.
Orff started studying the piano at the age of five, and he also took organ and cello lessons. However, he was more interested in composing original music than in studying to be a performer. Orff wrote and staged puppet shows for his family, composing music for piano, violin, zither, and glockenspiel to accompany them. He had a short story published in a children's magazine in 1905 and started to write a book about nature. In his spare time he enjoyed collecting insects.
By the time he was a teenager, Orff was writing songs, although he had not studied harmony or composition; his mother helped him set down his first works in musical notation. Orff wrote his own texts and he learned the art of composing, without a teacher, by studying classical masterworks on his own.
Am I but your clockwork hero?
From here in the last ditch
Toe to toe, blow for blow -
You are the enigma
Well nevermind!
The future's already happened
And there is always someone left to fight to the death
With everybreath inside this body -
My dreams are what's keeping me alive!
And it is wise to be careful when the animal shows no fear
Puny human - you are no match for me
For things are never as they appear
Now I've been freed from the ropes that bind
Well who is the puppetmaster?
Dishing out an eye for an eye and spitting teeth
Well you'll never take me alive!
O Fortuna
Am I alone in this darkness we call redemption
Well I could not change you
No more than I could change my shadow
No more than I could fly to the moon