Everything about Carl Orff totally explained
Carl Orff (– ) was a 20th-century
German composer, most famous for
Carmina Burana (
1937). He was also successful and influential in the field of
music education.
Life
Orff was born in
Munich and came from a
Bavarian family that was very active in the German military. His father's regimental band supposedly had often 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 to return to Munich to pursue further his music studies.
As of 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. Having constant contact with children, this is where he developed his theories in music education.
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 Weiße Rose (the
White Rose), who was condemned to death by the
Volksgerichtshof and executed by the
Nazis in
1943. After
World War II, Orff claimed that he was a member of the group, and was himself involved in the resistance, but 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, 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'd 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 beer-brewing
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 "Märchenoper" ("fairytale operas"). Both compositions feature the same "timeless" sound in that they don't 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 wasn't an opera, rather a
Vertonung, a "musical setting" of the ancient
tragedy. The text is an excellent German translation, by
Friedrich Hölderlin, 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.
Inventory
Bairisches Welttheater (Bavarian World Theatre)
- Die Bernauerin (1947)
- Astutuli, eine bairische Komödie (1953)
Easter Play
- Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1956)
Nativity play
- Ludus de nato Infante mirificus (1961)
De Temporum Fine Comoedia, Vigilia (1973, reworked 1977)
Trionfi (Triumphs)
Treatments
- Claudio Monteverdis Klage der Ariadne, Orpheus (1925, reworked 1940)
- Entrata für Orchester, nach „The Bells“ von W. Byrd (1928, reworked 1941)
Classics
- Antigone (1949)
- Oedipus der Tyrann (1959)
- Prometheus (1968)
Orff-Schulwerk
- Musik für Kinder (with Gunild Keetmann) (1930–35, reworked 1950–54)
Pedagogical work
In pedagogical circles he's probably best remembered for his Schulwerk (1930-35), 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.
References
Further Information
Get more info on 'Carl Orff'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://carl_orff.totallyexplained.com">Carl Orff Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
