Carl Orff

Carl Orff
Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 March 29, 1982) was a 20th-century German
composer, most famous for Carmina Burana (1937). He has also become very
influential in the field of music education for his pedagogic methods, which
survive through Orff Schulwerk.
Life
Orff was born in Munich on 10 July, 1895, and came from a Bavarian family that
was very active in the German military. His father's regimental band had
supposedly played the compositions of young Orff. Moser's Musik-Lexikon states
that Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music until 1914. He then served in
the military during World War I. Afterwards, he held various positions at opera
houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt, later returning to Munich to pursue his
music studies.
As of 1925, and for the rest of his life, Orff was the head of a department and cofounder of the Guenther School for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich,
where he worked with musical beginners. Having constant contact with children,
this is where he developed his theories in music education.

Carl Orff burial location in Andechs

Orff's association with the Nazi party has been alleged, but never conclusively
established. His Carmina Burana was hugely popular in Nazi Germany after its
premiere in Frankfurt in 1937, receiving numerous performances. But the
composition with its unfamiliar rhythms was also denounced with racist taunts.
He was one of the few German composers under the Nazi regime who
responded to the official call to write new music for A Midsummer Night's Dream
after the music of Felix Mendelssohn had been banned others refused to
cooperate in this. But Orff had already composed music for this play as early as
1917 and 1927, long before this was a favour for the Nazi government.
Orff was a personal friend of Kurt Huber, one of the founders of the resistance
movement Die Weie Rose (the White Rose), who was condemned to death by
the Volksgerichtshof and executed by the Nazis in 1943. Orff by happenstance
called at Hubers house on the day after his arrest. Hubers distraught wife
begged Orff to use his influence to help her husband, but Orff denied her request.
If his friendship with Huber came out, he told her, he would be ruined. Hubers
wife never saw Orff again. Wracked by guilt, Orff would later write a letter to his
late friend Huber, imploring him for forgiveness. [1][2]
After World War II, Orff, faced with the possible loss of royalties from Carmina
Burina, claimed to a de-nazification officer that he was a member of the White
Rose, and was himself involved in the resistance. [3] There was no evidence for
this other than his own word, and other sources dispute his claim. Canadian
historian Michael H. Kater made in earlier writings a particularly strong case that
Orff collaborated with Nazi authorities [4], but in his most recent publication
"Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits" (2000) Kater has taken back his
earlier accusations to some extent. Orff's assertion that he had been anti-Nazi
during the war was accepted by the American de-nazification authorities, who
changed his previous category of "gray unacceptable" to "gray acceptable",
enabling him to continue to compose for public presentation.
Orff died at the age of 86 and is buried in the Baroque church of the beerbrewing Benedictine priory of Andechs, south of Munich. His tombstone bears his
name, his dates of birth and death, and the Latin inscription "Summus Finis"
("The ultimate goal").
Musical work
Orff is most known for Carmina Burana (1937), a "scenic cantata". It is the first of
a trilogy that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. Carmina
Burana reflected his interest in medieval German poetry. Together the trilogy is
called Trionfi, or "triumphs". The composer described it as the celebration of the
triumph of the human spirit through sexual and holistic balance. The work was
based on thirteenth-century poetry found in a manuscript dubbed the Codex
latinus monacensis found in a Bavarian monastery in 1803 and written by the
Goliards; this collection is also known as Carmina Burana. While "modern" in

some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the
medieval period in this trilogy, with infectious rhythms and easy tonalities. The
medieval poems, written in an early form of German and Latin, are often racy, but
without descending into smut.
With the success of Carmina Burana, Orff disowned all of his previous works
except for Catulli Carmina and the Entrata, which were rewritten until acceptable
by Orff. As an historical aside, Carmina Burana is probably the most famous
piece of music composed and premiered in Nazi Germany. Carmina Burana was
in fact so popular that Orff received a commission in Frankfurt to compose music
for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was supposed to replace the banned
music by Mendelssohn. After the war, he claimed not to be satisfied with the
music and reworked it into the final version that was first performed in 1964.
Orff was reluctant to term any of his works simply operas in the traditional sense.
His works Der Mond ("The Moon") (1939) and Die Kluge ("The Wise Woman")
(1943), for example, he referred to as "Mrchenoper" ("fairytale operas"). Both
compositions feature the same "timeless" sound in that they do not employ any
of the musical techniques of the period in which they were composed, with the
intent that they be difficult to define as belonging to a particular era. Their
melodies, rhythms and, with them, text appear in a union of words and music.
About his Antigone (1949), Orff said specifically that it was not an opera, rather a
Vertonung, a "musical setting" of the ancient tragedy. The text is an excellent
German translation, by Friedrich Hlderlin, of the Sophocles play of the same
name. The orchestration relies heavily on the percussion section, and is
otherwise fairly simple. It has been labelled by some as minimalistic, which is
most adequate in terms of the melodic line. The story of Antigone has a haunting
similarity to the history of Sophie Scholl, heroine of the White Rose, and Orff may
have been memorializing her in his opera.
Orff's last work, De Temporum Fine Comoedia ("A Play of the End of Time"), had
its premiere at the Salzburg music festival on August 20, 1973, performed by
Herbert von Karajan and the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. In
this highly personal work, Orff presented a mystery play, in which he summarized
his view on the end of time, sung in Greek, German, and Latin.
Musica Poetica, which Orff composed with Gunild Keetman, was used as the
theme music for Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands. Hans Zimmer later
reworked this music for his 1993 True Romance score.
List of compositions

Operas
o Der Mond (1939)
o Die Kluge (1943)

o
o
o

Antigonae (1949)
Ein Sommernachtstraum (1952, reworked 1962)
De Temporum Fine Comoedia (1973)

Bairisches Welttheater (Bavarian World Theatre)

o Die Bernauerin (1947)
o Astutuli, eine bairische Komdie (1953)

Easter Play
o Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1956)

Nativity play
o Ludus de nato Infante mirificus (1961)

De Temporum Fine Comoedia, Vigilia (1973, reworked 1977)

Trionfi (Triumphs)
o Carmina Burana (1937)
o Catulli Carmina (1943)
o Trionfo di Afrodite (1953)

Treatments
o Claudio Monteverdis Klage der Ariadne, Orpheus (1925, reworked
1940)
o Entrata fr Orchester, nach The Bells von W. Byrd (1928,
reworked 1941)

Classics
o Antigone (1949)
o Oedipus der Tyrann (1959)
o Prometheus (1968)

Orff-Schulwerk
o Musik fr Kinder (with Gunild Keetmann) (193035, reworked
195054)

Pedagogical work
In pedagogical circles he is probably best remembered for his Schulwerk (193035), translated into English as Music for Children. Its simple musical
instrumentation allowed even untutored child musicians to perform the piece with
relative ease. Much of his life Orff worked with children, using music as an
educational tool both melody and rhythm are often determined by the words.
Orff's ideas were developed, together with Gunild Keetman, into a very
innovative approach to music education for children, known as the Orff

Schulwerk. The term Schulwerk is German for "school work". The music is
elemental and combines movement, singing, playing, and improvisation.