Carl Orff the Music Educator
Carl Orff the Music EducatorWhile Carl Orff is a very seminal composer of the 20th century,
his greatest success and influence has been in the field of Music
Education. Born on July 10th in Munich, Germany in 1895, Orff refused
to speak about his past almost as if he were ashamed of it. What we
do know, however, is that Orff came from a Bavarian family who was
very active in the German military. His father's regiment band would
often play through some of the young Orff's first attempts at
composing. Although Orff was adamant about the secrecy of his past,
Moser's Musik Lexicon says that he studied in the Munich Academy
of Music until 1914. Orff then served in the military in the first
world war. After the war, he held various positions in the Mannheim
and Darmstadt opera houses then returned home to Munich to further
study music. In 1925, and for the rest of his life, Orff was the head
of a department and co-founder of the Guenther School for gymnastics,
music, and dance in Munich where he worked with musical beginners.
This is where he developed his Music Education theories. In 1937,
Orff's Carmina Burana premiered in Frankfurt, Germany.
Needless to say, it was a great success. With the success of
Carmina Burana, Orff orphaned all of his previous works except for
Catulli Carmina and the En Trata which were rewritten to be acceptable
by Orff. One of Orff's most admired composers was Monteverdi. In
fact, much of Orff's work was based on ancient material. Orff said:
I am often asked why I nearly always select old material, fairy
tales and legends for my stage works. I do not look upon them as
old, but rather as valid material. The time element disappears,
and only the spiritual power remains. My entire interest is in
the expression of spiritual realities. I write for the theater in
order to convey a spiritual attitude.
What Orff is trying to say here is that he does not use "old"
material, but material that is good enough to be used again. If one
eliminates the fact that this material was written many years ago,
then there is nothing to stop that material from being any less
legitimate in recent times.
Orff's work in Music Education has been astounding. In the early
1920's, Orff worked with Mary Wigman. Wigman was a pupil of Emile
Jaques-Dalcroze, another very influential name in Music Education. In
fact, Orff's approach to music is very similar to Dalcroze's, but Orff
focuses on education through percussion instruments. In 1924, Orff
joined Dorthee Guenther and together...
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