Biographies of Carl Orff Composers Highest Rated Carl Orff ( 1895 - 1982 ) Category ( Composers ) [ suggest a correction ] Carl Orff was a twentieth-century German composer, most famous for his stirring interpretation of the Medieval German manuscript, Carmina Burana. One portion of that work, entitled "O Fortuna" remains popular with Hollywood moviemakers who have used it as a way to build suspense in a movie's soundtrack. He was also prominent in the field of music education. Born in Munich, Orff came from a Bavarian family that was very active in the military. According to family tradition, his father's regimental band often played the young Orff's early compositions. Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music until the start of the first World War in 1914. He served in the military during the war, and then held various positions at German opera houses. Later he returned to Munich to resume his music studies. In 1925, and for the remainder of his life, Orff was the head of a department and co-founder of the Guenther School for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich.

He enjoyed encouraging a love and appreciation of music in children, and it was at the school that he developed his theories in music education. Orff's efforts in music education are best exemplified in his "Schulwerk," translated into English as "Music for Children." Providing a simple musical instrumentation, even untutored child musicians could perform the piece with relative ease. "Schulwerk" music is intentionally elemental and combines movement, singing, playing, and improvisation. His Carmina Burana premiered in Frankfurt in 1937 and was hugely popular with the Nazi movement. Scholars continue to debate Orff's association with the Nazi party, but nothing has been proven. What is known is that he was a close personal friend of Kurt Huber, one of the founders of the German resistance movement. Orff later claimed that he was a member of that same group, though there is no other evidence for this. Orff died at the age of 86 and is buried in Munich. Image: Carl Orff About Carl Orff and the Orff Music Education Program - Alberta Chapter of Carl Orff Canada About About Orff Music Education Orff Schulwerk is an approach to music education developed by Carl Orff.

Using percussion instruments, movement, games, singing, and movement, children learn of their own innate musical talents in a way that is immediately successful and rewarding. Imitation and exploration lead to improvisation and music literacy. Orff Schulwek is built on the idea that a child must be able to feel and make rhythms and melodies before being called on to read and write music. Orff believed that a child internalizes and develops ownership of a concept by experiencing the concept before it is put into words. In the same way that a child learns to speak before learning to read and write, he or she must have a musical language in which to feel at home before technical knowledge is introduced. Experience first, then intellectualize. ﻿ - Carl Orff Elemental music is never just music. It is 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. - Carl Orff About Carl Orff Carl Orff (1895 – 1982) was a German composer who created an approach to music education that is now used around the world.

Between 1950 and 1954, Orff and his collegue, Gunild Keetman, wrote the five-volume Music for Children that is the basis of Orff program used by teachers today. Orff viewed rhythm as the basic element inherent in music, dance, and speech and created 'one language' based on this common element. Improvisation and creation were at the center of his teaching. He used the voice as the first and most natural of instruments and made the ostinato (a repeated rhythmic, spoken or sung pattern) serve as the form-giving element in all improvisations. At the core of Carl Orff's work is a kind of musical expression that is able to speak to children without the loss of musical integrity. Therein lies its significance and its genius.

Carl Heinrich Maria Orff (1895 - 1982) - Genealogy Carl Heinrich Maria Orff Share your family tree and photos with the people you know and love Build your family tree online Share photos and videos Munich, Upper Bavaria, Bavaria, Germany Death: in Munich, Upper Bavaria, Bavaria, Germany Immediate Family: Added 2013-05-17 22:48:00 -0700 by Carl Gustav Verbraeken Collection: NewspaperARCHIVE.com Text: ... and body Poyner still faces trial for Davis death Composer Carl at 86 MUNICH West Germany AP Carl Orff the German composer who wrote ......

Date: Added 2013-05-17 22:48:04 -0700 by Carl Gustav Verbraeken Collection: July 10 1895 - München, Deutschland Death: Mar 29 1982 - Unterhaching, Bayern, Deutschland Ex-wife: Cause of death: Cancer - Mar 29 1982 - Munich Wife: Alice Solscher, Gertrud Willert, Luise Rinser, Liselotte Schmitz Daughter: July 10 1895 - Munich, Germany Death: About Carl Heinrich Maria Orff Wikipedia Biographical Summary: "...Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 – March 29, 1982) was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential approach toward music education for children..." "...Orff was married four times: to Alice Solscher (m. 1920, div. 1925), Gertrud Willert (m.

1939, div. 1953), Luise Rinser (m. 1954, div. 1959) and Liselotte Schmitz (m. 1960). His only child Godela, from his first marriage, was born in 1921 (and died in 2013)..." Great Composers of the Old Schools of Classical Music (XI - XIX Centuries) Great Composers of the Old Schools of Classical Music (XI - XIX Centuries) Virtuosi Top Surnames George Gershwin (1898 - 1937) George Gershwin From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Born Jacob Gershowitz on September 26, 1898(1898-09-26), Brooklyn, New York Died July 11, 1937(1937-07-11) (aged 38), Hollywood, Californ... history Historically Significant Composers of Classical Music [born before 1850].

To add a composer to this project, please include access to musical pieces by the composer (YouTube or sound only, etc.). * Enjoy: 10,000 singing Beethoven - Ode an die Freude / Ode to Joy Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period. European music is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century. Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music and popular music. The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to "canonize" the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age.

The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836. Music of ancient Egypt. In a culture as full of religious rituals as ancient Egypt, music tends to be a significant part of every day life. With countless wall murals showing musicians playing while dancers danced and others stood off and watched. Instruments have been unearthed as well. But, despite knowing how they played, the ancient Egyptian music itself -- the notes, the composition -- is wholly unknown to us. * "Hymn for the Sunrise" musical tribute to ancient Egypt. Early medieval music (before 1150) Medieval music was both sacred and secular. During the earlier medieval period, the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant, was monophonic. The Jewish Synagogue tradition of singing psalms was a strong influence on Christian chanting. Chant developed separately in several European centres. Although the most important were Rome, Hispania, Gaul, Milan, and Ireland, there were others as well. These chants were all developed to support the regional liturgies used when celebrating the Mass there. Much of the music from the early medieval period is anonymous.

Some of the names may have been poets and lyric writers, and the tunes for which they wrote words may have been composed by others. Attribution of monophonic music of the medieval period is not always reliable. Columbanus of Sint-Truiden (c.780-815) Composer and Abbot of Sint-Truiden, Belgium near the residence of Charlemagne in Aachen, Germany. "Planctus de Obitu Karoli (814 AD)" ("Lament [on the Death] of Charlemagne") Notker the Stammerer (c. 840 – 912) Musician, author, poet, and Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall in modern Switzerland. Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179) German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath.

"O frondens virga" ; "Caritas abundat in omnia" ; "Ave generosa" Guillaume IX, the first Troubadour (1071-1126) IX Duke of Aquitaine and VII Count of Poitou. Troubadour and composer of lyric poetry. High medieval music (1150 – 1300) The flowering of the Notre Dame school of polyphony from around 1150 to 1250 corresponded to the equally impressive achievements in Gothic architecture. This was the period in which rhythmic notation first appeared in western music, mainly a context-based method of rhythmic notation known as the rhythmic modes. The motet, one of the most important musical forms of the high Middle Ages and Renaissance, developed initially during the Notre Dame period out of the clausula, especially the form using multiple voices. The music of the troubadours and trouvères was a vernacular tradition of monophonic secular song, probably accompanied by instruments, sung by professional, occasionally itinerant, musicians who were as skilled as poets as they were singers and instrumentalists.

Adam de la Halle (1237?-1288) French-born trouvère, poet and musician. "Qui a droit veut amours servir" ; "Se li maus c'amours envoie" Alfonso X 'el Sabio' ('The Wise'), King of Castile and León (1221-1284) Enthusiastic patron of learning and the arts. Commissioned and compiled the Cantigas de Santa Maria, some of which he composed. The following are attributed to him, “Bailemos nós ja todas tres”; “Quantas sabedes amar”; “Todos los santos” Late medieval music (1300 – 1400) France: Ars nova. The beginning of the Ars nova is one of the few clean chronological divisions in medieval music, since it corresponds to the publication of the Roman de Fauvel, a huge compilation of poetry and music, in 1310 and 1314. The Roman de Fauvel is a satire on abuses in the medieval church, and is filled with medieval motets, lais, rondeaux and other new secular forms.

While most of the music is anonymous, it contains several pieces by Philippe de Vitry, one of the first composers of the isorhythmic motet, a development which distinguishes the fourteenth century. The isorhythmic motet was perfected by Guillaume de Machaut, the finest composer of the time. Italy: Trecento. Most of the music of Ars nova was French in origin; however, the term is often loosely applied to all of the music of the fourteenth century, especially to include the secular music in Italy. There this period was often referred to as Trecento. Italian music has always, it seems, been known for its lyrical or melodic character, and this goes back to the 14th century in many respects. Italian secular music of this time (what little surviving liturgical music there is, is similar to the French except for somewhat different notation) featured what has been called the cantalina style, with a florid top voice supported by two (or even one; a fair amount of Italian Trecento music is for only two voices) that are more regular and slower moving.

This type of texture remained a feature of Italian music in the popular 15th and 16th century secular genres as well, and was an important influence on the eventual development of the trio texture that revolutionized music in the 17th. Germany: The Geisslerlieder were the songs of wandering bands of flagellants, who sought to appease the wrath of an angry God by penitential music accompanied by mortification of their bodies. There were two separate periods of activity of Geisslerlied: one around the middle of the thirteenth century, from which, unfortunately, no music survives (although numerous lyrics do); and another from 1349, for which both words and music survive intact due to the attention of a single priest who wrote about the movement and recorded its music. This second period corresponds to the spread of the Black Death in Europe, and documents one of the most terrible events in European history. Both periods of Geisslerlied activity were mainly in Germany. Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376 – 1445 in Meran) German poet, composer and diplomat.

"Es fügt sich" (2/2) ; "Nu alrest lebe ich mir werde" . Renaissance music (1400 – 1600) Renaissance music is music written in Europe during the Renaissance. Consensus among music historians – with notable dissent – has been to start the era around 1400, with the end of the medieval era, and close it around 1600, with the rise of the Baroque period, therefore commencing the musical Renaissance about a hundred years after the beginning of the Renaissance as understood in other disciplines. As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments which define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of ancient Greece and Rome; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprise; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school. Heitor Villa-Lobos (Mar. 5, 1887 – Nov.

17, 1959) Brazilian composer: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1 (I. Introduction), cello ensemble ; Arthur Moreira Lima interpreta "Trenzinho Caipira e Polichinelo" Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (Apr. 11, 1891 – Mar. 5, 1953) Russian composer, pianist and conductor. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Paul Hindemith (Nov. 16, 1895 – Dec. 28, 1963) German composer, violist, violinist, teacher and conductor. Notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben (1923) and opera Mathis der Maler (1938). Carl Orff (1895 – 1982) 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential approach toward music education for children.

Carmina Burana, UC Davis Symphony & Chorus Francisco Mignone (1897 – 1986) George Gershwin (Sept. 26, 1898 – Jul. 11, 1937) American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known.

Other Composers Music For Children Volume 1: Preschool by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman - WWBW write a review {"product":{"id":"H87969","stock":"backorderable","price":"29.95","name":"Music For Children Volume 1: Preschool by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman","download":false,"sku_id":"H87969000000000","rep_id":"site8prodH87969","sku_rep_id":""},"category":"Music Education for Children","pageName":"product_detail","subcategory":"Theory & Notation Education for Children","dept":"Books, Sheet Music & Media"} {"id": "H87969", "skuOrProductId": "H87969000000000", "categoryId":"site8JTC", "name":"Music For Children Volume 1: Preschool by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman", "pageUrl":"/Schott-Music-For-Children-Volume-1-Preschool-by-Carl-Orff-and-Gunild-Keetman-H87969.wwbw

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His pioneering work continues under the guidance of teachers and educators in many countries. The five basic German volumes of <i>Music for Children</i> by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman were published between 1950 and 1954. The considerable growth of Orff-Schulwerk in the United States led to the publication of the <i>American Edition</i> (1977) to satisfy the requirements of a different educational system and national heritage.<BR/><BR/><i>Music for Children</i> is a stimulating source of material for music teaching. The American Edition assembles works by all the leading contributors to the Orff movement. In three volumes, the techniques of &#34;knowing&#34; and &#34;doing&#34; are used to teach music through rhythm, melody, texture, and form. It&#39;s an unbeatable resource for music teachers.

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 For Children Volume 2: Primary by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman","download":false,"sku_id":"H87974000000000","rep_id":"site8prodH87974","sku_rep_id":""},"category":"Music Education for Children","pageName":"product_detail","subcategory":"General Music Collections","dept":"Books, Sheet Music & Media"} {"id": "H87974", "skuOrProductId": "H87974000000000", "categoryId":"site8JTK", "name":"Music For Children Volume 2: Primary by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman", "pageUrl":"/Schott-Music-For-Children-Volume-2-Primary-by-Carl-Orff-and-Gunild-Keetman-H87974.wwbw", "thumbnailUrl":"", "addToCartUrl":"/Schott-Music-For-Children-Volume-2-Primary-by-Carl-Orff-and-Gunild-Keetman-H87974.wwbw", "hasFeatures":"0", "isAccessory":"0", "message":"Carl

 Orff devoted much of his life to music for children.

His pioneering work continues under the guidance of teachers and educators in many countries. The five basic German volumes of <i>Music for Children</i> by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman were published between 1950 and 1954. The considerable growth of Orff-Schulwerk in the United States led to the publication of the <i>American Edition</i> (1977) to satisfy the requirements of a different educational system and national heritage. <i>Music for Children</i> is a stimulating source of material for music teaching. The <i>American Edition</i> assembles works by all the leading contributors to the Orff movement. It&#39;s an unbeatable resource for music teachers!

Volume 2 Primary is made for grades 1-3, and is 248 pages.", "value":"47.95", "priceMin":"47.95", "priceMax":"47.95", "priceSavingsMaxPrice":"0.00", "priceSavingsMaxPercent":"0", "inventory":"1", "brand":"Schott", "reviewStarImageUrl": "", "reviewStarRating":"0.0", "reviewStarRatingInteger":"0", "reviewHowManyReviews":"0", "usedOrNew":"new", "discontinued":"0", "onOrder":"0", "clearance":"0", "canBeSold":"1", "accessoryCategories":"", "stickerText": "", "priceVisibility": "1"} {"pageName":"[wwbw] pdp: schott music for children volume 2 primary by carl orff and gunild keetman","reportSuiteIds":"wwbwprod","prop2":"[wwbw] shop: books sheet music and media: music education for children","prop1":"[wwbw] shop: books sheet music and media","events":"event3,prodView","evar51":"default: united states

","prop5":"[wwbw] shop: books sheet music and media: music education for children: general music collections","prop6":"[wwbw] shop: books sheet music and media: music education for children: general music collections","prop3":"[wwbw] shop: books sheet music and media: music education for children: general music collections","prop4":"[wwbw] shop: books sheet music and media: music education for children: general music collections","products":";H87974","linkInternalFilters":"javascript:,wwbw.com","channel":"[wwbw] shop","prop7":"[wwbw] product detail page"} Music in Naziland by Dana Mack - The New Criterion Music in Naziland by Dana Mack Books A review of Musik im NS-Staat by Fred K.

Prieberg. Share Share Until now, the subject of Nazi cultural policy and its effect upon German musical life has been relatively ignored. The reasons are obvious: there have been international repu tations to protect, and there has been a general reluctance to endanger the high regard in which German musical life has been held for two hundred and more years. But recently a German musicologist has published a book that attempts to correct this historical amnesia. In Musik im NS-Staat, [1] Fred K. Prieberg has brought into focus both the methods and the results of the Nazis’ attempt to wed music to totalitarian politics. Prieberg, who is the author of several publications dealing with the theme of Musikpolitik, is no stranger to the consideration of musical life under totalitarianism. Among his past works are studies entitled Musik in der Sowjetunion (1965) and Musik im anderen Deutschland (1967). His new work, the product of twenty years of source gathering, is based on 329 interviews and letters and research in 192 archives. It has received considerable attention in Germany and Austria. The Nazis came to power at a time when German musical life was particularly rich.

Interwar Germany enjoyed the talents of such native composers as Richard Strauss, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, Carl Orff, and Hans Pfitzner; and it attracted such Austrians as Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Schreker. German concert life, graced by such performers as Otto von Klemperer, Bruno Walter, and Erich Kleiber, was the most envied in Europe, and extended from the great opera houses of Berlin and Frankfurt-am-Main to the modern music festivals of Baden-Baden and Donaueschingen. Most important, Weimar Germany boasted a cosmopolitan audience unsurpassed in cultural sophistication. Yet the musical culture of interwar Germany was not without its problems. First inflation and then depression affected the economic prosperity of concert life. The rapid rise of political and social anti-Semitism permeated the cultural arena where so many Jews had achieved prominence. In a purely aesthetic area, large sections of the audience and even of the professional community were vocal in their hostility toward the avant-garde music increasingly thrust upon them in German concert halls and opera houses and on German radio. Into this situation entered Hitler and the Nazis in January of 1933.

The Nazis soon set about coordinating every aspect of German life under the direction and management of the state—a process which they called Gleichschaltung: literally, “putting into the same gear.” As Prieberg shows, the overriding initial aim of Nazi musical policy was Entjudung, the removal of Jews and their music from German concert halls and academic institutions. But Entjudung was not all the Nazis had in mind; the process of Gleichschaltung did not end with the dismissal of Jews from musical posts and the blacklisting of Jewish composers’ music. The Nazis lost no time in establishing administrative institutions designed to integrate German music and musicians for the purposes of the National Socialist state. The chief of these institutions was the Reicbsmusikkamnier (State Music Chamber), a division of Josef Goebbels’ Reichsmusikkammer. Policies initiated on behalf of the Musikkammer were meant to be official government policies. As such, they radiated to provinces, towns, and villages where the regime built a hierarchically organized bureaucracy which busied itself with concerns ranging from concert management and musical repertoire to the choosing of artistic personnel, the setting of salaries, and the establishment of ensembles and schools.

Private performing institutions thus lost their independence and musicians were induced into Party membership under the threat of losing their livelihood. The state, which had long played a prominent role as a patron of music, now began to assume a ubiquitous presence. One effect of the regime’s bureaucratic intrusions upon musical life was to increase the quantity of music being performed. Through the proliferation of government-sponsored festivals, competitions, stipends, commissions, music conservatories, and symphony orchestras (some of them uniformed), the state satisfied the demand from some German musicians for both bread and art. According to Prieberg, in June of 1933 from 43 to 46 percent of those professionally engaged in music were unemployed, as compared with a general unemployment figure of 28.9 percent; by 1936, however, the number of unemployed musicians had decreased from 23,889 to 14,547. And better times were still to come for the employment prospects of German musicians, with the war and its demands on the male population. It might be assumed that only a monolithic administration could have been responsible for the musical plentitude which Hitler’s regime supported in the Thirties.

Indeed, in the context of Hitler’s racial, aesthetic, and national stands, one would expect the regime to have laid thorough cultural siege to Jews, modernists, and non-German music and musicians, all of which the Nazis claimed had unfairly profited during the Weimar years. In reality, the Nazis were far from being so consistent. To judge from Prieberg’s account, the official Nazi music administration was without a coherent policy; in its place were the random workings of a bureaucracy in which personal whim and considerations of political advantage held sway. For example, Prieberg shows that Goering protected selected Jewish musicians, among them the renowned Berlin opera conductor Leo Blech. Anton Webern, frequently attacked as a cultural bolshevist and a decadent, received a small subsidy from the government because, in the words of a functionary, “even if [Webern] was a Social Democrat before the revolution . .. he is ...

politically now not suspect.” (Webern’s son-in-law was a Nazi storm trooper.) Stravinsky’s works were tolerated until February of 1940, when he was finally blacklisted—not because he was modern, or even because he was Slavic, but because he was discovered to be a French and not a Soviet citizen. The most frequently performed opera in Germany during the Nazi era was, by popular demand, Puccini’s Tosca; by comparison, the operas of Hitler’s adored Wagner fared rather badly. Prieberg’s account of composer Paul Hindemith’s problems with the regime provides some deeper insight into the character of the Nazi music administration. For several years, the regime’s official attitude toward Hindemith was cautious. Though as a modernist Hindemith had his enemies within the Nazi Party, his world stature made him a political asset. As early as November 1933, Hindemith had participated, as a member of the executive council of the Guild of German Composers, in the work of the Reichsmusikkammer. But his official position did not ensure his invulnerability to persecution.

This was immediately apparent in the fall of 1934, when the projected Berlin premiere of his opera, Mathis der Maler, was canceled on orders from none other than the Führer himself. The conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler attempted to reverse this decision, first by publishing an open letter in defense of Hindemith’s music in the November 25 edition of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and then by resigning the next week his posts as musical director of the Staatsoper and Berlin Philharmonic and his position as Vice-President of the Reichsmusikkammer. But Furtwängler’s sacrifices came to nothing. Hitler, who had been offended by the bubble-bath scene in a 1929 Berlin production of Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage, harbored a deep-seated aversion to the composer. And Goebbels, who until then had been an outspoken supporter of Hindemith in Party circles, perceived that the affair might affect the prestige of his cultural empire: the public was taking Furtwängler’s side and the majority of the Party, Hitler’s.

Scrambling to assert the power of the state over cultural matters and to secure the good will of the Führer, Goebbels delivered a speech on December 6 in which he deprecated Hindemith’s work with specific reference to the “obscene” and “kitsch” scene in Neues vom Tage that had so troubled Hitler. It is not clear from Prieberg’s discussion when or why the regime at last categorically prohibited the performance of Hindemith. Probably the final decision was made following Hindemith’s emigration in 1938. One thing is certain: by 194; his music was un-performable. That year, the director of the Linz Bruckner Konservatorium lost his job for programming Hindemith works in a June concert, and was even threatened with being sent to a concentration camp for his crimes. That the regime’s musical decisions could not be attributed to ideological consistency was a fact not lost on many enthusiastic Party members within the musical cornmunity. Some of the most interesting revelations of Prieberg’s work concern the unwelcome pressures that these zealots exerted upon a government that seemed much more tolerant than their standards of ideological purity would allow.

Take, for example, the Entjudung of cultural life. There were those who would not be satisfied with the mere removal of Jews and their compositions from the concert hall. Inspired by the Party’s leading ideologist and cultural expert, Alfred Rosenberg, these enthusiasts produced and commissioned new texts for those Handel oratorios written on Old Testament themes. One favorite, bearing the suspect name “Judas Maccabeus,” was often reworked, reappearing in several guises, among them, Battle and Victory Song of the Fatherland, Hero-Folk, and Freedom Oratorio. There were even efforts to re-set those Mozart operas whose texts had been written by the Jewish-born Lorenzo da Ponte. Despite protests from Goebbels, such scrupulosity could not easily be stopped. Finally, in 1940, the state brought these deviations under control through the establishment of yet another special government office. In the battle against modernism, it was again not the state but rather enthusiastic Party members who took the initiative.

Their argument was, of course, that modern music was a product of “Jewish influence.” An officially sanctioned performance of Alban Berg’s Lulu-Symphonie, conducted in November of 1934 by Erich Kleiber, the General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera, provoked severe reactions from the press. Prieberg quotes a fanatic music critic: An ungratifying, in part abominably atonal music, with saxophone and vibraphone, with “movie music” and other outdated forms. An enraged member of the audience shouted, “Heil, Mozart!” Opposition was stifled by the hooting and clapping of the Kleiber-clique, in which the Jewish element is conspicuous. Perhaps the strongest anti-modern force in the Nazi era was Rosenberg’s NS Kultur-Gemeinde (National Socialist Cultural Association), the most significant of the Party’s apparati. Its musical activities included not only the staging of concerts and opera, the building of musical ensembles, and the arranging of boycotts, but the issuing of commissions, the printing of scores, and the making of records.

In 1935, the Danish twelve-tone composer Paul von Klenau, disappointed with the way the audience received his work, wrote to Friedrich W. Herzog, editor of the influential NSKG journal, Die Musik, protesting the critic’s statement that Klenau’s opera Michael Kohlhaas was a “rancid swamp”: I start from the assumption that you knew I was once married to a Jewess. However, I have been separated from her for nine years now, and correspond neither with her nor with her family. Please do not compel me to speak of this bitter episode. You know my position on the racial question. Klenau was actually in no danger of being blacklisted by the Reichsmusikkammer, where Goebbels, the arch-enemy of Rosenberg, tended to accommodate some of the demands upon the government that came from avant-gardists in the Hitler-Jugend. In fact, Klenau’s work was generally praised by the press, and he enjoyed no less than three opera premieres between 1933 and 1939. Still, support from the NSKG unforthcoming, he.played it safe.

He took to claiming that his compositional style was not really twelve-tone at all but rather a “totalitarian system” of twelve tones inspired by “Tristan harmony.” That the Nazi regime resisted Party pressures and allowed a certain amount of modern music to penetrate concert life was not simply a result of political machinations. It was also an indication of the poverty of Nazi ideology, which, as Prieberg shows, proved unable to provide an aesthetic theory to justify the regime’s music policies. In fact, Nazi ideology was actually a powerful obstacle to any fruitful thought on the subject of aesthetics. The obsession with race, for instance, led many loyal musicologists to attempt a definition of the racial foundation of the German musical classics. In this way they thought to stigmatize the supposedly Jewish characteristics of Mendelssohn’s music and, further, to establish a basis for the aesthetic of the “New Order.” The intellectual dead-ends reached here were discouraging. Even more discouraging must have been the knotty problems that emerged in discussions about the future of “National Socialist” music. One thinker solved these problems with this declaration: … young composers should not forget that in the struggle for a national revolution in music one must take for a model...

political National Socialism, which precisely because it is national, is also socialist. This means that as revolutionary musicians they can create new music, as national musicians only German music, but as socialist musicians they must make a beginning—a music which every capable and willing German ear, though it be unschooled and uncultivated, can pick up. This statement captures the essence of the regime’s dilemma in the active sponsoring of new music. It is not surprising that the government’s main goal in this area was to reach the masses through kitsch, a superficial music based on familiar styles. But such admissions of ideological impotency—and there were many—also explain the increasingly confused politicization of culture that marked the regime’s wartime initiatives. Laboring still under the conviction that music must reflect the state, Nazi music administrators paid heed to the war cries of Hitler’s army, blacklisting music, both contemporary and past, that was written by nationals of enemy or conquered nations. By 1942, this rash of blacklisting had excised from the repertory most French, Russian, English, and American music.

And even where the blacklisting had not yet occurred, the Nazis had no qualms about demonstrating their fears that enemy-alien music was subversive: a Czech music critic was stomped to death by Gestapo officials for praising Smetana’s Má Vlast (My Fatherland) following a Prague performance near the end of the war. Indeed, so much music was removed in one way or another from circulation that it might be surmised that had Italy not been a Nazi ally, German opera houses would have had to close even before the massive Allied bombing raids. Some attempts were made, of course, to save a few of music’s greatest names from blacklisting. There was a great deal of tedious genealogical research done to prove Chopin’s and César Franck’s Aryan ancestry. And the regime took a much more liberal stand toward the repertoire in occupied France, where encouraging collaboration was the order of the day. But all such initiatives did was to underscore the vulgarity of the regime’s attitude to cultural affairs. Indeed, Goebbels himself did not shrink from candidly displaying his own inability to appreciate serious music.

Though the Minister of Propaganda addressed the opening of the Brichskulturkammer, in 1933, by saying “we have in mind an ideal: the marriage of a heroic conception of life with the eternal laws of art,” he made sure that Germany’s soldiers and civilians were sent to their deaths with an increasing amount of military marches and Unterhaltungsmusik (entertainment music). In June of 1941, Goebbels publicly answered criticism by defenders of serious music of the state’s lowbrow radio programming: We do not want to gain the reputation of seeking to impair the high standing of Germany’s musical culture. We also know the value of a serious concert, or even of a great opera. That we must dispense with these things because in wartime we lack the time, the rest and the inclination, is for us, too, a renunciation. After the war, both serious music and entertainment music will, in sufficient measure, have their chance on German radio.

This statement was made to a nation that had produced Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms, whose intellectuals had long hailed music as the most spiritually ennobling of all the arts and as a reflection of the loftiest of human aspirations. Despite the utter corruption of German musical culture, many of the lights of German musical life willingly joined Goebbels’s propaganda circus. Some, like Herbert von Karajan and Karl Bohm, seemed to have been converted to National Socialism. Prieberg tells us that Karajan registered himself as a Party member twice in 1933, once in Austria (while it was still a republic) and once more, a month later, in Wurttemberg. Böhm enthusiastically assumed the role of Musikpolitiker in March of 1938, when he praised the arrival of Hitler’s troops into Austria with the following fanfare: National Socialism has placed before the musician a goal and a task for which it is worthwhile to pledge all his abilities and productive strength: to serve the German Volk and its highest cultural property.

But for that [service] the new state repays the artist in that it incorporates him in the mighty work of reconstructing Germany, and elevates him to equal partnership in the totality of all its [creative] enterprise. Böhm’s call to action in respect to the Anschluss plebiscite of April 10, 1938 was even less high-minded: Whosoever does not ratify the Führer’s action with a 100 percent “yes” does not deserve to bear the honorable title of “German.” Carl Orff went so far in cooperation with the Nazis as to compose a substitute—so longed for by the Nazis—for Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream music. The commissions had been rejected by both Hans Pfitzner and Werner Egk (two otherwise loyal Party members) in deference to the greatness of Mendelssohn’s work.

Orff, however, did the deed with earnestness and industriousness: “Most honorable Herr State Council,” he wrote, on June 10 to Doctor Fritz Krebs, District Leader of the Nazi Party in Frankfurt, and a member of the Reichskammer presidium: Today I received, with great joy, the commission . . . and I thank you profusely for this further indication of your faith in me .... Devotedly yours, Heil Hitler! And in early October of 1939, when the rehearsals for the premiere of this new work were in progress, Orff addressed his Maecenas once again in writing: I hope that I have been lucky enough to have composed this music as you have imagined it should sound…. No such self-effacement characterized the behavior of Richard Strauss, who was only too happy to become the first president of the Reichsmusikkammer. It seems that Strauss felt his collaboration was the sine qua non of the high quality of German musical life. In a letter to his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig, of June 17,1935, Strauss explained his position vis-à-vis the Nazis: Who told you that I have compromised myself politically?

Because I have conducted a conceit in place of that greasy louse-rag, Bruno Walter? That I did for love of the orchestra. Because I substituted for another “non-Aryan,” Toscanini? That I did for love of Bayreuth. These things have nothing to do with politics. What the greasy press says is nothing to me, and neither should you bother yourself about it. That I act the part of the Reichsmusikkammer president? In order to do some good, and to prevent greater misfortune . . . simply out of the consciousness of artistic duty! I would have accepted this vexsome office under any regime. But neither Kaiser Wilhelm nor Mr. Rathenau offered it to me. A few weeks later, Strauss was to find himself the victim of his own naivete. Owing to the interception of this letter by the Gestapo and the scandal that attended the late June premiere of Die Schweigsame Frau—Strauss threatened to absent himself should the name of Zweig as librettist be withheld from the program—the composer was forced to resign his presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer. Further, Die Schweigsame Frau was encouraged to disappear from the repertoire.

At first these punishments demoralized Strauss, who wrote to Hitler asking to explain himself in a private audience. (The letter went unanswered.) But it soon became clear that the Nazis were as convinced as was Strauss himself of his pre-eminent position in German musical life. The disagreements were painted over. Strauss continued to receive large royalties from the performance of Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Arabella, Feuersnot, and Intermezzo. He retained the presidency of the Permanent Commission for the International Cooperation of Composers, the official replacement (organized, naturally, along the lines of the Führer-Prinzip) for the defunct German Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. And he was able to secure protection for his daughter-in-law, a Jewess. All of this came as reward for behavior that was at least in part contemptuous. True, Strauss was not above accepting the state’s commission for an “Olympic Hymn,” in 1936, or above setting to music the nationalist texts of Weinheber.

(His attitude in these matters was that “idleness is the root of all evil.”) But he also took advantage of every opportunity he had to irritate his official admirers. In 1943, for example, Strauss refused to place his nineteen-room villa in Garmisch at the disposal of evacuees and victims of Allied bombing. No soldier need fight on his behalf, he said at the time—the war was no concern of his. Hitler was so angered by this recalcitrance that he sent out orders forbidding Party officials any further contact with Strauss and ordered the press to refrain from paying the composer any attention. It was not long before Hitler was brought to heel, however. On his eightieth birthday, Strauss received a note of congratulations from the Führer. In a letter to Hitler, Furtwängler had warned him of the international repercussions that would attend the neglect of so august a musician. On that same occasion, in 1944, two SS officers arrived in Garmisch bearing champagne and best wishes from Hans Frank, Governor-General of occupied Poland, and an avid patron of music in his eastern realm.

Upon taking their leave, the officers were asked by Strauss to do him the favor of conveying to Herr Frank the names of certain of Strauss’s friends whom he would like released from “these dumb KZs [concentration camps].” Admittedly, it took some nerve to make such a request. But the flippant way in which it was made and the slowness with which Strauss finally reacted to Nazi criminality epitomize his tendency to belittle the great moral and political issues of the day as unworthy of the artist’s concern. At issue here was the conviction that artistic matters must take precedence over moral and political issues. This was a conviction that even Furtwängler—for all the courage he displayed in several challenges to the regime’s cultural policies—shared. It certainly informed the tone of his open letter to Goebbels of April, 1933, in which he appealed the dismissal of Otto von Klemperer and Bruno Walter from their musical posts: If the struggle against Jewry is directed, in the main, against those artists who—themselves rootless and destructive—seek effect through Kitsch and dry virtuosity, that is only in order.

The struggle against them and the personification of that spirit, which, by the way, possesses some Germans also, cannot be led emphatically or consistently enough. If this struggle, however, is also directed against true artists, it is not in the interest of cultural life. The futile retreat from moral and political responsibility evident in this defense of Jewish artists is but one justification for Prieberg’s lament, at the end of his work, that: music and musicians let themselves be misused again and again. For the historian, the establishment of this fact is as boring as it is bereft of consolation, for it contains the answer to the question: Do musicians learn anything besides music? It is certainly easy enough to sympathize with such a sigh of Weltschmerz; musicians, alas—like everyone else—often behave badly. But is this statement a conclusive judgment upon Germany’s musicians—citizens of a nation whose political tradition rendered to the state a pernicious moral authority? And within the scope of a book entitled Musik im NS-Staat is Prieberg’s conclusion appropriate?

Prieberg runs the risk of shifting the responsibility for Naziism’s cultural offenses from the totalitarian state to Germany’s musicians, many of whom had no choice but to conform and obey the dictates of Germany’s leadership. In his effort to make the case of complicity and to confront the German nation with its unpleasant past, Prieberg has leveled a rash accusation. And he pays for it, for there are some disappointments in this work. Prieberg’s concern with the problem of collaboration prompts him to concentrate so fully on personality and incident in relating Nazi Germany’s music history that we miss an organized discussion of the creation and proliferation of the state music bureaucracy. (This information is scattered throughout the book.) Further, Prieberg’s style—often so chatty that it approaches the gossipy—betrays a particularly mean spirit when he speaks of Germany’s great artists. He refuses to acknowledge that even for famous musicians, like Furtwängler, who had the choice of emigration, love of homeland and family may have been the regime’s allies in enforcing obedience.

In this connection, one would have welcomed from Prieberg—given his past work on the Soviet Union—some comparison of the situation of musical life in the two great totalitarian dictatorships of our time. Soviet musicians, it might be said, have collaborated on a grand scale, first with Lenin, then with Stalin, and more recently with less brutal although still totalitarian rulers. Is such collaboration to be despised? How are we to judge these men? Perhaps all we can do, when faced with this terrible dilemma of individual responsibility, is to comment that totalitarianism’s abuse of culture is only an extension of its vicious attack on the individual. Prieberg’s book is one more melancholy reminder that the enemy is not simply human weakness. That, after all, is always with us. In our time the enemy is the all-powerful state, and its use to enforce policies and interests that cannot survive the healthy give-and-take of a democratic society. Musik im NS-Staat; by Fred K Prieberg. Fischer Taschenbruch Verlag, 499 pages Go back to the text.

Question: What was the first forename of the German composer Herr Orff?
Answer: CARL