Orff - Composers - Classic FM Classic FM Carl Orff (1895-1982) was a German composer best known for Carmina Burana. Life and Music Orff’s family were army officers by profession but they loved music. Carl began to learn the piano, organ and 'cello aged five. His musical influences were as diverse as Debussy, Schoenberg and Renaissance period music. He was conscripted into the army in 1917 and nearly died when a trench caved in. He was declared unfit for active service and spent the rest of the war at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim and then the Hoftheater in Darmstadt. In 1924, Orff founded the Günther School of gymnastics, dance, and music with Dorothee Günther. He also published the Orff-Schulwerk and developed various percussion instruments, which have been widely used in education. Carmina Burana, premiered in Frankfurt in June 1937, was Orff’s first composition success. He ordered his publisher to destroy all his previous works.

The Carmina Burana is an important collection of Latin and German 11th-, 12th- and 13th-century poems, which were discovered in a Benedictine monastery in Bavaria in 1803. Orff selected some of the poems to set to music in his scenic cantata. Orff has been accused for cooperating with the Nazis. Carmina Burana was hugely popular in Nazi Germany. The Nazis banned Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream because Mendelssohn was a Jew. Orff was the only composer to answer their call for Germans to write new incidental music for the play. However, Orff was not a member of the Nazi party, nor is there evidence to suggest that he had close friends within the regime. Increasingly, Orff drew on fables and ancient Latin texts in his works. Did you know? Carmina Burana has been used in films, adverts and television programmes, including Natural Born Killers, the advertising campaign for Old Spice aftershave and The X-Factor.

Carl Orff Biography - Facts, Childhood, Family Life & Achievements of German Composer Musicians Carl Orff Biography Carl Orff was a legendary German composer best known for his operas and dramatic works. Check out this biography to know about his childhood, family life, achievements and other facts related to his life. Quick Facts Munich Spouses/Partners: Alice Solscher (m. 1920, div. 1925), Gertrud Willert (m. 1939, div. 1953), Luise Rinser (m. 1954, div. 1959), Liselotte Schmitz (m. 1960) Image Credit Carl Heinrich Maria Orff was a German composer remembered as much for his dramatic works and operas as for his innovations in music education. Born into a musically oriented family that also had a long tradition of military services, he grew up witnessing a lot of music making at home and began to show his musical aptitude early in his childhood. Recognizing his talent, his mother started teaching him piano from the age of five. Thereafter, he started having his lessons in cello from the age of seven and organ from the age of twelve.

Soon he began to try his hand at composition and published his first work when he was around sixteen. At twenty, he graduated from the Academy of Music, Munich, and thereafter began experimenting with music, finally experiencing financial success with âCarmina Buranaâ at the age of forty-two. Setting up the GÃ¼nther School was another milestone in his career. The âSchulwerkâ he produced for the pupils of the school has now become a model for music education all over the world. Childhood & Early Life Carl Orff was born on 10 July 1895 in Munich, Germany, into a Bavarian family with long tradition of services in the military. Originally Jewish by faith, they became Roman Catholic, when his parental grandfather, Carl von Orff, converted to Christianity. Carlâs father, Heinrich Maria Orff, was a dedicated officer in the Imperial German Army. He was a good pianist and played a variety of string instruments. His mother, Paula Koestler Orff, was also a trained pianist. Apart from Carl, the couple had one daughter Maria, three years his junior. He remembered his mother as the life and soul of music-making in the house.

She was also the first person to recognize his talent. Later he had said, âMy mother possessed quintessentially artistic nature and was a fundamentally intelligent woman.â Young Carl grew up in a musical environment. Apart from the music-making at home, he experienced it in other ways too. For example, there was a house opposite to their home, where the regimental band held their rehearsals and the sound flowing in pursued him even in his dreams. Around 1900, as he turned five, his mother started giving him piano lessons. Two years later, he was introduced to the cello and then from 1903, he started visiting concerts and theatres. He also enjoyed holding puppet shows at home. Writing stories and collecting insects were also his favorite pastimes. In 1905, Carl began his formal education at the Ludwigs gymnasium. Thereafter in 1907, he was shifted to Wittelsbach Gymnasium, where he was immediately selected to the church choir. His soprano voice soon gained him solos. This was also the year he started playing the organ. However, he showed little interest in academics.

Ancient Greek was the only subject which he found interesting. Instead, he devoted his entire energy to music, publishing his first composition in 1911. Most of his works of this period show a strong influence of Richard Strauss. His first major work, âAlso sprach Zarathustraâ (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), was based on a passage from a philosophical novel written by Friederich Nietzsche. In 1912, he left school to join the Akademie der Tonkunst (Academy of Music) in Munich, graduating from there in 1914. Although he received individualistic training at the academy he found the teachings to be over-conservative. Eventually he began to study Schoenbergâs harmonic theory as well as the works of the French impressionist composer, Claude Debussy. In 1913, inspired by the latterâs tonal language, he wrote âGisei, das Opferâ (Gisei, the Sacrifice), a musical drama based on his own text.

Life After Akademie der Tonkunst In 1915, soon after receiving his degree from Academy of Music, Carl Orff began to take piano lessons with Hermann Zilcher. In the same year, at Zilcherâs recommendation, he was employed as the assistant Kapellmeister at the famed Muenchener Kammerspiele. Although he enjoyed working at the opera, he soon left his job. At this point, all he wanted to do was to study more. Many of his initial works of this period highlighted the on-going experimental musical trends. Later, he changed his direction but before he could make much progress, he was drafted into the army. Thus he joined the World War I in 1917. But while fighting in the eastern front, he was trapped in a shelter and was seriously injured. He spent the rest of the war years recuperating. In 1918, after being released from his war duties, Orff began to work freelance. He held the position of assistant Kapellmeister first at the Nationaltheater (National Theatre) in Mannheim and then at the Landestheater (State Theater) in Darmstadt.

In 1919, he returned to Munich to teach music. Concurrently, he began to study with German composer Heinrich Kaminski. Slowly he started developing an interest in Renaissance-era music and began to study the works of old masters. Until now, his compositions were perceptibly influenced by the style of Richard Strauss. From now on, he began to develop a style of his own, a process that continued for over a decade. In 1921, his interest was drawn to the works of Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi, a seventeenth century Italian composer. Several of the masterâs arrangements had profound impact on his musical language. Later in 1925, he produced âOrpheusâ, an adaption of Monteverdi's 1607 opera âL'Orfeo.â Another person to draw his attention in the 1920s was Russian-French musician Igor Stravinsky. It was his works like âLes nocesâ a pounding evocation of prehistoric wedding rites that appealed the most to Orff.

Gunther School & Elementare Musik In 1924, Carl Orff entered a new phase in life. Along with Dorothee GÃ¼nther, Orff founded the GÃ¼nther School for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich and remained its head until it was closed down in 1944. Concurrently, he continued with his work on old masters and produced a number of operas based on 17th century classics such as âKlage der Ariadneâ (Ariadne's Lament), âTanz der Sproedenâ (Dance of the Merciless Beauties), etc. However, none of them were financially successful. Working with children at the GÃ¼nther School, he developed new theories on music education. Later known as 'elementare musikâ, it included all aspects of the art; dance, music, language, theatrical gestures, etc. In 1930, he published a manual titled âSchulwerkâ and in it he shared his methods. He also provided a curriculum of songs and activities for the teachers, most of which were based on German folk songs and poetry.

To go with the programs, he also developed easy to learn percussion instruments. Under the Nazi Rule Also in 1930, Carl Orff was named conductor as well as the director of Munich's Bach Society. But when in 1934 the society came under the control of the Kampfbund, a government agency set up to weed out Jewish or modernist tendencies from arts, he resigned from his post. In the same year, he came across the 1847 edition of the âCarmina Buranaâ by Johann Andreas Schmeller and decided to rework it. First staged on 8 June 1937 by the Frankfurt am Mainâs Opera in Frankfurt, the work was hugely popular with the Nazis and earned him financial bounty. At that time, German musicians living in the country were expected to celebrate German traits in their works. âCarmina Buranaâ met the directives, but because of its unfamiliar rhythms, it also faced racist taunts. Therefore, with financial success, it also earned him criticism.

Around this time he accepted the governmentâs offer to write new incidental music for âA Midsummer Night's Dream.â With that he became closer to the Nazi regime. Many of his friends now took him to be a Nazi collaborator. However, later he claimed that he was always anti-Nazi but few took him seriously. Later when the de-Nazification process began, his file was initially marked âGray Unacceptableâ but eventually the American authorities shifted it to âGray Acceptable.â In other words, although he was allowed to receive royalties from his work, he was never above the suspicion. After World War II In 1943, Carl Orffâs friend Kurt Huber was arrested and condemned to death for organizing anti-Nazi resistance. Maybe because of Orffâs Jewish connections, he did not dare to intervene. Later in 1946, he wrote a letter to Huber, then deceased, imploring him for forgiveness. In 1947, it was published in a memorial collection for Huber. Meanwhile he continued his work on old topics or texts.

Some of his major works of post WWII era were âAntigonaeâ (1949), âOedipus der Tyrannâ (Oedipus the Tyrant, 1958),â Prometheusâ (1968), and âDe temporum fine comoediaâ (Play on the End of Times, 1971). Concurrently, he also continued working with the children. In 1948, he was requested by Annemarie Schambeck, the head of department for school broadcasts, to write music that could be played by the children themselves. The first Schulwerk program was broadcast on 15 September 1948. It was sort of a pioneering work. The initial reaction was highly positive and it grew with subsequent broadcasts. Later the model began to be followed in other countries as well. From 1950 to 1960, Carl Orff began to hold master classes for composition at the Munich Music College. Many of his pupils of that time later became well-known composers.

Also in 1949, he was appointed an instructor at the School for Music at the Mozarteum Academy for Music and Dramatic Art in Salzburg, Austria. Later he became its director, a post he held until his death in 1982. Major Works Carl Orff is best remembered for his 1937 work âCarmina Buranaâ, a secular oratorio based on 24 poems from the medieval collection âCarmina Burana.â First staged in Frankfurt, its popularity increased with each performance and by the 1960s it became an integral part of the international classic repertoire. He is also remembered for his âSchulwerkâ (School Work). Originally composed and published for the small batch of students at the GÃ¼ntherschule (GÃ¼nther School), it was later followed by music teachers all over the world. Incidentally, the title was also used for his works based on the 1949 radio broadcasts.

Awards & Achievements Carl Orff received several awards in the post WWII period; some of the more significant prizes being Munich Music Prize, 1947; New York Music Criticsâ Prize, 1954; Bremen Music Prize, 1956 and Mozart Prize, 1969. He had also been honored with Order pour le Merite for Science and Art in 1956, Cross of Merit in 1959 and Great Cross of Merit in 1972 by the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, he had received honorary doctorates from the University of Tuebingen in 1955 and University of Munich in 1972. Personal Life & Legacy In 1920, Carl Orff married Alice Solscher. The couple had one daughter, Godela, born in 1921. The marriage did not last long and they obtained their divorce in 1925. However, he kept in contact with their daughter, who later grew up to be an actress. He was known to have composed several pieces for her. Contrarily, his daughter had described their relationship as difficult.

In an interview she had said, âHe had his life and that was that." After the breakup of his first marriage Orff married thrice more, none of which produced any offspring. Gertrud Willert, whom he married in 1939, was his second wife. The marriage ended in a divorce in 1953. In 1954 he married Luise Rinser and divorced her five years later in 1959. Finally in 1960, he married Liselotte Schmitz and remained together until he died on 29 March 1982 from cancer. He was buried in the Baroque church of the Benedictine priory of Andechs, south of Munich. Translate this page to Spanish, French, Hindi, Portuguese Pictures of Carl Orff Carl Orff - the German educator and composer of 'Carmina Burana' Carl ORFF 10 July 1895 - 29 March 1982 (age 86) As a composer Carl Orff is best known for O Fortuna from his cantataCarmina Burana.

Besides composing he had a strong interest in music education and developed the 'Orff Schulwerk' or 'Orff Approach' of teaching music to children, a method which is used in many countries. Born: 10 July 1895, Munich, Germany zodiac: cancer Father: Heinrich (1869-1949), military officer, played piano and various string instruments Mother: Paola (Koestler) (1872-1960) a talented pianist.

Siblings: Maria (Mia) sister Wife 1: Alice Solscher, (1920 - 1927), singer Children: Godela (daughter), actress and elocution teacher Wife 2: Gertrud Willert (1939 - 1953), founder of Orff music therapy Wife 3: Luise Rinser (1954 - 1959), writer Wife 4: Liselotte Schmitz (1960 - ) Director of the Carl Orff Foundation Died: 29 March 1982, Munich Germany, see findagrave Grave: Klosterkirche, Andechs, nr Munich, Germany Cause of death: unspecified (age 86 so probably of old age!) Works Orpheus (adaptation of Monteverdi's Orfeo) Astutuli Orff-Schulwerk: an approach to music education still used worlwide. Writings: 5 volumes of his 'Music for Children' published in 1950.

Favorite Composers in Art - Carl Orff A fascinating collection of images - art, portraits, caricatures, cartoons, album covers and postage stamps. Quotes - "Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play." - "Tell me, I forget, show me, I remember, involve me, I understand." - "Experience first, then intellectualize." - " Elemental music is never just music. It's bound up with movement, dance and speech, and so it is a form of music in which one must participate, in which one is involved not as a listener but as a co-performer." Life and career Age 5: First piano lessons. Age 7: First cello lessons Age 16: Some music published. Age 17 - 19: Studies music at Academy of Music, Munich. Age 21: Musical Director of Munich Chamber Theatre Age 22: Military Service. (First World War). Severely injured in the trenches.

Age 23: Musical director in Mannheim and Darmstadt Age 29: Co-founded Günther School of Music in Munich. Age 31: Begins collaboration with Gunild Keetman, co-originator of the Orff Schulwerk system of music education. Age 41: Music for the 1936 Berlin Olympics 'Entrance of the Children'. Age 42: First performance of Carmina Burana. Age 49: (1944) Günther School closed by the Nazis Age 55-59: Publisher Schott publishes "Orff Schulwerk. Musik für Kinder" Age 67,68 and71:lectures abroad on 'Schulwerk' Age 80 - 86: Works on his 8 volumes of 'Carl Orff and his Works' O Fortuna - Carmina Burana A complete performance (1hr 11min) of Carmina Burana here "Gassenhauer " See Carl Orff himself performing Orff and Nazism Opinions on Orff's relationship with fascism and the Nazi regime are divided. There are those that condemn him as being a supporter and collaborator and others who strongly defend him.

This is a debate which I do not wish to enter into here in any depth. It does appear though that as a man his behaviour was determined by his own interests and that his personal life was 'unhappy' as evidenced from his four marriages and his disowning his only daughter. Documentary films In 2009 Tony Palmer, the British film maker, made a controversial documentary 'O Fortuna' on the life of Orff and his 'Carmina Burana'. Here is a Guardian review of the film. There is also a 55min documentary (in German with English subtitles) here on YouTube. The Jenkins Orff Ensemble Performs for Music Educators in San Antonio Music for 1936 Olympics by MissDaviesMusic Orff-Schulwerk Together with his colleague Gunild Keetman Orff developed an approach of teaching music to children which is still used today all over the world. It uses the child's sense of play using song, dance, acting, movement and the use of simple percussion instruments in the belief that children can learn music in the same way that they learn a language. See links below for more information.

Links, sources and where to go for more information: Answers.com a selection of reference sites including Wikipedia Carl Orff | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Rovi Staff Although his fame rests on the success of a single work, the famous and frequently commercially mutilated Carmina Burana, Carl Orff was in fact a multi-faceted musician and prolific composer who wrote in many styles before developing the primal, driving language which informs his most famous work. In addition to his fame as the creator of Carmina burana, Orff enjoyed international renown as the world's pre-eminent authority on children's music education, his life's work in that area represented by Musik für Kinder, five eclectic collections of music to be performed by children, eventually developing into a more extensive series known as Orff Schulwerk. Born in 1895 to an old Bavarian family, Orff studied piano and cello while still a young boy. He later studied at the Munich Academy of Music, graduating in 1914. The music that he composed during this period shows the influence of several composers, including Debussy and Richard Strauss .

In 1914, Orff was appointed Kapellmeister at the Munich Kammerspiele, where he remained until joining the military in 1917. Discharged from service the following year, Orff continued to work as a conductor, accepting further positions in Mannheim and Darmstadt during the 1918-1919 seasons. Returning to Munich in 1919, Orff studied composition privately with Heinrich Kaminski while supporting himself as a teacher. In 1924, he founded the Güntherschule for music and dance with Dorothee Günther, dedicating himself to making musical performance accessible to children. Under his guidance, an entire orchestra of special " Orff instruments" was designed, enabling children to play music without formal training. The following year, Orff made three stage adaptations of works by Monteverdi . Continuing his work in the area of Baroque music, Orff became conductor of the Munich Bach society in 1930, a position he held until 1933.

The experience of performing Baroque music, particularly sacred works for the stage, convinced Orff that an effective musical performance must fuse music, words and movement, a goal no doubt partly inspired by his work with the Güntherschule. Orff embodied his conception of music in the fabulously successful Carmina Burana (1937), which in many ways defined him as a composer. Based on an important collection of Latin and German Goliard poems found in the monastery of Benediktbeuren, this work exemplifies Orff 's search for an idiom that would reveal the elemental power of music, allowing the listener to experience music as an overwhelming, primitive force. Goliard poetry, which not only celebrates love and wine, but also pokes fun at the clergy, perfectly suited Orff 's desire to create a musical work appealing to a fundamental musicality that, as he believed, every human being possesses. Eschewing melodic development and harmonic complexity, and articulating his musical ideas through basic sonorities and easily discernible rhythmic patterns, Orff created an idiom which many found irresistible. The perceived "primitivism" of Carmina burana notwithstanding, Orff believed that the profound appeal of music is not merely physical.

This belief is reflected by many other works, including musical dramas based on Greek tragedies, namely, Antigonae (1949), Oedipus der Tyrann (1959), and Prometheus (1966). These works, as well as some compositions on Christian themes, followed the composer's established dramatic and compositional techniques, but failed to repeat the tremendous success of Carmina burana. His last work, De temporum fine comoedia (A Comedy About the End of Time) premiered at the 1973 Salzburg Festival. Nine years later, Carl Orff died in Munich, where he had spent his entire life. Carl Orff for Piano - Guides Carl Orff (10 July 1895, Munich - 29 March 1982, Munich) Carl Orff was a German composer best known for his operas and dramatic works and for his innovations in children music education. At the age of 5 he started to study the piano, and also took organ and cello lessons. Soon after, he found that his interest in composing was far greater than in studying to be a performer.

His first compositions were for staged puppet shows that he regularly gave for his family, the music that was meant to accompany these shows was composed for piano, violin, zither, and glockenspiel. Although he never studied harmony or composition, by the time he was a teenager Orff was writing songs, and with the help of his mother, learned musical notation in order to write down his works. Largely self-taught, he learned the art of composing by studying classical masterworks on his own. This may have laid the foundation of the development of his musical education methods. His first works were published in 1911, at the age of 16. Many of his youthful works were songs, often settings of German poetry. They fell into the style of Richard Strauss and other German composers of the day, but with hints of what would become Orff's distinctive musical language. In 1911/12, Orff wrote Zarathustra, Op. 14, an unfinished large work for baritone voice, three male choruses and orchestra, based on a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel Thus Spake Zarathustra.

The next year, he composed his opera Gisei, das Opfer (Gisei, the Sacrifice). The colorful and unusual combinations of instruments used by the French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy influenced Orff so much that he began to incorporate such combinations in his orchestration. He studied at the Munich Academy of Music, graduating in 1914, and with the German composer Heinrich Kaminski. Afterwards, he held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt, later returning to Munich to pursue his music studies. In 1930 he published his Schulwerk, a manual describing his method of conducting. Another noteworthy influence was the Russian-French émigré Igor Stravinsky, who at that time was an inspiration to many other composers. Orff edited some 17th-century operas and in 1937 produced his secular oratorio Carmina Burana. Intended to be staged with dance, it was based on a manuscript of medieval poems.

This work led to others inspired by Greek theatre and by medieval mystery plays, notably Catulli carmina (1943; Songs of Catullus) and Trionfo di Afrodite (1953; The Triumph of Aphrodite), which form a trilogy with Carmina Burana. His other works include an Easter cantata, Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1956); a nativity play, Ludus de nato infante mirificus (1960); and a trilogy of “music dramas”—Antigonae (1949), Oedipus der Tyrann (1959), and Prometheus (1966). These works, as well as some compositions on Christian themes, followed the composer's established dramatic and compositional techniques, but failed to repeat the tremendous success of Carmina Burana. His last work, De temporum fine comoedia (A Comedy About the End of Time) premiered at the 1973 Salzburg Festival. Nine years later, Carl Orff died in Munich, where he had spent his entire life.

Although his fame rests on the success of a single work, the famous and frequently commercially mutilated Carmina Burana, Carl Orff was in fact a multi-faceted musician and prolific composer who wrote in many styles before developing the primal, driving language which informs his most famous work. Orff’s system of music education for children, largely based on developing a sense of rhythm through group exercise and performance with percussion instruments, has been widely adopted. Here you can find a list of compositions by Carl Orff. Carl Orff music | Composers XX age Biography Carl Orff is a very famous German composer and is widely known for his work in music education and his exploring work in finding a specific connection between music and its movement. Exploring it Carl found a similar connection between the dramatic and the musical movements while composing his personal music style. Thus after finding this similarity, Carl Orff started repeating di patterns of notes and compelling rhythms. No doubt, Carl Orff is a naturally gifted musician, who was always unmotivated as a performance student. He always put attention in creating original music for piano, violin, zither, and glockenspiel. Carl also wrote many puppet shows and staged them especially for his own family.

Orff Carl was born in Munich on 10th of July, 1895, and belonged to a Bavarian family that was very active in the German military. Carl’s father was working in a regimental band and also served in the military in World War I, during which he was severely injured and nearly killed in a trench cave. Orff‘s mother helped him while composing his first works in musical notation. Later on, he started writing texts himself without joning an educational establishment or attending composition lesson. He started studying piano at a very young age, when he was just five years old. In the same age he also started to take organ and cello lessons. In the beginning of his early career, Carl Orff first wrote a short story and then published it in a children's magazine, in 1905. Later he started to write a book about the nature. In his teenage Carl Orff was also found of collecting insects in his leisure time. Carl composed many popular songs, although he had never studied harmony or composition. Similarly, he learned the art of composing not from a teacher but by studying the great works of classical music. Some musical works of Carl Orff were published, when he was 16 years old.

Most of his creative work that he composed in his youth was based on songs, which often showed the texts settings influenced by canonical German poets. After the death of his father, Orff got a prominent position at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt respectively, but later on, he returned to Munich to pursue his music studies. In 1912, Carl Orff wrote a large choral work that includes; Also Sprach Zarathustra (meaning: Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and an opera namely Gisei, Das Opfer (meaning: The Sacrifice). After that he was impressed by impressionistic musical style of a French composer, Claude Debussy and started to cultivate the use of unusual combinations of instruments in his orchestration. Carl Orff is also best known for his large scale work namely, “Carmina Burana”. This work is based on Medieval Latin and Old German lyrics found at the monastery of Benediktbeuern. The first part of Carmina Burana was based on Latin texts while the other two parts of Carmina Burana are Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite.

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana was based on an important collection of Latin and German Goliard poems, which were composed in 1803, and were discovered by the library of the Benedictine monastery of Beuron, near Munich. These poems, which appealed to Orff because of its variety of moods like humor, sadness, pleasure, wishes and suggestive nature of verses were written by Monks and Minstrels. Orff selected about twenty poems for featuring the wheel of fortune and arranged them into bawdy songs for soloists and chorus, with the help of different instruments and magic images. “Carmina Burana” was his first performance, which later became the start of Orff’s career. Carl’s Carmina Burana became even more popular among unmusical audiences by the use of its elements for advertising and films. Elementare Musik or Elemental Music was a new musical term formulated by Carl Orff in the mid-1920s. Elemental Music was based on the unity of the arts symbolized by the ancient Greek Muses and was involved in tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture.

Initially Carmina Burana was generally performed as a form of secular oratorio, in the concert hall, rather than performed on the big stage such as Catulli Carmina (Catullus’s Songs), but later on, it was again intended for theatrical presentation. Orff's Carmina Burana was hugely popular in Nazi Germany after its premiere in Frankfurt. He got much honor in Nazi culture due to Carmina Burana and his creative musical work. In the Nazi newspaper, Orff’s musical work was described as "the kind of clear, stormy, and yet always disciplined music that our time requires". Orff was a very close friend of Kurt Huber, who was condemned to death by the Volksgerichtshof and executed by the Nazis, in 1943. Carl Orff was the only one among the German composers under the Nazi regime who responded to the official call to write new incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. But Orff had already composed music for this play, long before this was a favor for the Nazi government in 1917 and 1927.

Many critics mentioned that composing music for Nazi’s plays in those years, when the Nazis were not in power, was not an easily job, and later it followed with racist attacks because Carl Orff was a Jew. Carl Orff also began adapting musical works of earlier eras like Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, in order to present contemporary theaters. Similarly, Carl’s German version Orpheus, which was staged in 1925, was based on some of the instruments that had been used in the 1607 performance. Since 1925 to the end of Carl’s life, he was serving as the head of a department and co-founder of the Guenther School, which was popular for its gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich. In the beginning Carl Orff also worked with musicals as a musical teacher and performed many music constant contacts with children. Guenther School had great importance in Carl’s life, as it was the place, where he developed his different theories for music education.

Most of Orff's later musical works includes Antigonae (1949), Oedipus Der Tyrann (1958), Prometheus Desmotes (1967), and De Temporum fine Comoedia (1971). Carl’s all work was based on texts or topics from antiquity. All these operas were occasionally performed in Germany, as these ere expensive to stage and are not true operas in the conventional sense. Carl Orff died in 1982 at the age of 86 and was buried in the Baroque church of the beer-brewing Benedictine priory of Andechs, south of Munich. His tombstone bears a Latin inscription "Summus Finis" (meaning: the ultimate goal) and presents his name, birth and death dates. Music and the Holocaust: Orff, Carl Music and the Holocaust Und es sind die finstren Zeiten ♫ Carl Orff remains something of an enigma in the musical history of Nazi Germany. As an artist, the odds seemed stacked against him when the Nazis came to power: it was expected that the composer would become yet another victim of the Third Reich’s oppressive cultural policies.

Yet Orff managed to establish a place for himself and his music within Nazi Germany. Like that of Paul Hindemith and Ernst Krenek , Orff’s music was often categorised as ‘degenerate’. But the artist’s attempts to ingratiate himself with the regime paid dividends. By the early 1940s, his music was celebrated by many Nazi elites, and his Carmina Burana was one of the most popular pieces in Nazi Germany. Yet, later on, by means of a misleading representation of his own ‘resistance activities’ during the Nazi years, and by judiciously emphasising negative Nazi opinions of his music, he managed to secure a clean slate to perform and work in post-war Germany, untainted by his accommodationism throughout the Hitler years. Carl Orff was born in 1895 into an upstanding Munich family of officers and scholars. His mother was an accomplished pianist who taught him when he was a child. While still a teenager he enlisted, but returned home in 1917 after a near-lethal case of shell shock. After several years of experimentation, sampling various musical career possibilities, Orff became a partner in the Munich Günther School, an educational institution that united music and movement.

The composer maintained a life-long interest in music education. By the late 1920s, Orff had established himself as a significant figure in the small but important modernist musical oasis in otherwise conservative Munich, the League for Contemporary Music. Founded in 1927, it presented works by Bartók, Hindemith, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, among others. The young musician also collaborated briefly with Bertolt Brecht, and participated in the innovative new Bach Club in Munich, all of which solidified his reputation for being outside the mainstream, even avant-garde. Nonetheless, his star was slowly rising by the early 1930s, when Hitler came to power and the reality of making music in Germany was to change dramatically. Like many other artists of the time, Orff was considered a leftist. He had many Jewish friends, including Kurt Weill and the poet Franz Werfel, and collaborated extensively with well-known Marxists like Brecht. There are also reports that Orff was a quarter Jewish, a fact that could only have added to his insecurities. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Orff never either overtly or covertly resisted or opposed Nazi policies.

Recognising the precariousness of his status in the new Nazi Germany, throughout the 1930s he tried to establish his loyalty to the regime. Awarded a job composing music for schools, he developed his theories on music pedagogy, trying to integrate his ideas into the music policies of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), sometimes tailoring them specifically to Nazi demands. Choosing to forget all associations with Jewish, leftist, or modernist artists, Orff emphasised his hatred of jazz music and the atonality of Schoenberg and his disciples, and emphasised his own sincere and deep-seated appreciation of folk music. For years Orff had been targeted by the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Fighting League for German Culture, KfdK) as a cultural bolshevist. This dangerous reputation was initially confirmed at the controversial premiere of what was to become his best-known work, the Carmina Burana, in 1937. Despite Orff’s increasing contacts with Nazi officials, and his well-regarded work in music pedagogy, the premiere was met with a stinging critique by the influential Nazi musicologist Hans Gerigk.

According to Gerigk, Carmina Burana suffered from a 'mistaken return to primitive elements of instrumentalism and a foreign emphasis on rhythmic formulae'. For most, such a damning review would have signalled the end of the piece, if not of the career of the composer. However, his positive contacts with high-ranking figures, and the sheer popularity of the piece with the public, gradually transformed it into a hit. Despite its exotic sounds and sexual themes, the piece came to be perceived as 'a celebration of the power of an uninterrupted life instinct' and its elemental melodies and rhythms were said to bear witness to 'the indestructible and always re-emerging power of the ways of the common people'. The success of Carmina Burana led the mayor of Frankfurt to ask the composer to write alternative music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream: his Carmina Burana exhibits exquisite beauty, and if we could get him to do something about his lyrics, his music would certainly be very promising. After the war, along with most artists who had continued to be active under the Nazis, Orff was placed on a blacklist, as someone in potential need of denazification. However, he managed to clear his name with the help of an American friend.

Suddenly afraid of being ‘too Nazi’, rather than not Nazi enough, Orff fabricated an elaborate account of his involvement in the Munich resistance group, the White Roses, organised by his friend Kurt Huber . (In fact, he had never had any involvement with the group). In addition, despite Carmina Burana’s success under Hitler, he repeatedly represented the piece as covertly anti-Nazi. Orff died in Munich in 1982 as one of 20th century Germany’s most prominent composers. Kater, M.H., 2000. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levi, E., 1994. Music in the Third Reich, London: Macmillan. Meyer, M., 1993. The Politics of Music in the Third Reich, New York: Peter Lang. Prieberg, F.K., 1982. Musik im NS-Staat, Frankfurt/M.: Fischer. Carl Orff --� Kids Encyclopedia | Children's Homework Help | Kids Online Dictionary | Britannica Carl Orff. © Fidula Publishing House, Boppard, Germany (18951982).

The most famous work of German composer Carl Orff is the secular oratorio Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuren), a high-spirited spectacle based on a set of bawdy medieval student songs about love and drinking. In this and other dramatic choral works, he used bare harmonies and emphasized percussion and the repetition of forceful rhythmic patterns. Orff was also an influential teacher noted for his innovations in elementary music education. Orff was born on July 10, 1895, in Munich, Germany. He studied at the Munich Academy of Music and with German composer Heinrich Kaminski. He later conducted in Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt. His Schulwerk, a manual describing his method of conducting, was first published in 1930. Orff edited some 17th-century operas before producing his Carmina Burana in 1937. Although Carmina Burana was originally intended to be staged with mimed dramatic action, it is usually performed as a concert piece.

This work led to others inspired by ancient Greek theater and by medieval mystery plays, notably Catulli carmina (Songs of Catullus, 1943) and Trionfo di Afrodite (The Triumph of Aphrodite, 1953), which form a trilogy with Carmina Burana. His other works include an Easter cantata, Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1956); a nativity play, Ludus de nato infante mirificus (1960); and a trilogy of music dramasAntigonae (1949), Oedipus der Tyrann (1959), and Prometheus (1966). In 1924 Orff and German gymnast Dorothee Günther founded the Günther School for gymnastics, dance, and music in Munich. Orff's system of music education for children, largely based on developing a sense of rhythm through group exercise and performance with percussion instruments, has been widely adopted. Orff died on March 29, 1982, in Munich. Page 1 of 1 "Orff, Carl." Compton's by Britannica.

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Question: What is the best known work by German composer Carl Orff?
Answer: Carmina Burana