Galloping along, the trees bursting into bloom as they pass, the King returning life to the Land…
Damn, that’s entertainment!
My point being that there is nothing inherently “creepy” about a choir singing in Latin. To the contrary, many find that Gregorian chant can be transcendently serene, as the best-selling album Chant showed. And my point being that Catholics of a certain age will associate Latin singing with the liturgy, not with the creepy.
Rather, the other musical factors that pulykamell so well described above make O Fortuna so intensely dramatic. After all, Carmina Burana’s rollicking drinking song In taberna quando sumus is also in Latin.
I second that. (Translation: I was going to post that, but some SOB beat me to it)
The Overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnber, spell checker or no, was used in the Lugosi Dracula and it ain’t scary.
I think the swan singing while he’s being roasted is pretty scary, though.
In *The Black Cat * (1934), Boris Karloff leads a Satanic cult in a black mass and they’re chanting in Latin. Very eerie.
I’m told that, if you listen closely, the phrases include *cum grano salis * and recuctio ad absurdam.
At the climax of The Godfather, during the baptism, the Bach organ music and the priest chanting in Latin combine for a nice, menacing effect for all the murders coming up.
You beat me to it, but thank you anyway. This (for reasons I don’t quite understand) is a huge irritance of mine. I don’t know where this thing comes from, but it’s quite a popular belief.
The problem is that the song is Ave Satani, not Ava. I remember the opening lines, and I’m sure I can find a page somewhere.
Yes, here you go. Translation, as I’ve read (as I do not read Latin) is
Sanguis bibimus
The blood we drink
Corpus edimus
The body we eat
Tolle corpus Satani
Raise the body of Satan
Ave versus cristus
Hail the Antichrist
Ave Satani
Hail Satan
You’ve been whooshed. It was a joke, son. You, in essence, asked what was so creepy about the Catholic church, and I answered “plenty.” Sheesh, it sucks having to explain an unfunny joke.
But there can be something very unsettling about Latin, given the right setting. I’m not quite sure what it is, but there’s a “God’s gonna get you” feel about it.
Yeah, it’s like they knew who put the joint in the Jesus statue’s hand when I was at Catholic High. 
Swan Lake was also used in Karloff’s THE MUMMY- and yeah, far as I’m concerned, it’s creepy music, tho the Dracula/Mummy arrangement is creepier that the standard version.
Btw- I’ll take it in Dracula anyday over the Glass score & I generally like Glass.
RE Ave Satanas/O Fortuna- alas, Goldsmith is no longer around to ask but I would bet my next paycheck that the latter provided some inspiration for the former.
O Fortuna, to me, will always be the Old Spice music, thanks to an old ad.
“The sea, it attracts…”
I used to sing with a symphony chorus, and most of the works we performed were sacred (we did a lot of Requiems). One year we sang Carmina Burana. A couple of members of the chorus (members of long standing, I might add) resigned in a huff when someone passed around a translation. I was pretty baffled by their attitude. I mean, yeah, there are a couple of invocations to pagan deities, a couple of songs about love and/or lust, and a complete disregard for religion. But nothing I thought was sufficiently scandalous to warrant such a reaction.
Now had we been performing Catulli Carmina, also by Orf, I could have understood. Dat’s some nasty stuff.
Bless 'em. Plenty of Renaissance-period composers wrote Missae Fortuna Desperata - mass settings explicitly using a secular song about fate and fortune. Even if their protest was well-meant, it was centuries too late 
I remember this scene, but never this “king returning life to the land” thing never crossed my mind…
Another thing, Orff purposely created the music to speak to the primal in people: basically, it rocks, as opposed to most classical music which is meant to showcase musical virtuosity and express emotions more subtly. When you combine primal with Latin you get Gothic.
“You are the land, and the land is you…”
hm- my subscibing to the thread yielded me the entire thread in my e-mail.
Btw- has anyone ever read any statement by JG on O Fortuna’s influence on Ave Satanas?
I went to a mass in Latin once, many years ago. It was quite clear that the only two people who understood what the priest was saying were the priest and myself - everyone else was doing it by rote.
I go to a Latin mass every Sunday. This sort of statement that “nobody understands it but the priest” is simply not true.
Yeah. Who says the priest understands it?