Carl Orff

Composer

• Born: July 10, 1895
• Birthplace: Munich, Germany
• Died: March 29, 1982
• Place of death: Munich, Germany

German classical composer

As a composer, Orff created the widely performed and recorded choral work Carmina Burana. As an educator, he produced an influential elementary music curriculum that emphasized the elements explored in his compositions.

The Life

Carl Orff was born in Munich, Germany, in 1895. Music played an important role in his parents’ household, and Orff began lessons in organ, piano, and violoncello at the age of five. He studied at the Munich Music Academy from 1912 through 1914, and he became conductor at the Munich Chamber Theater in 1916. Orff enlisted in the army in 1917, at the height of World War I, but he was discharged after being buried alive in a trench.

In 1924 Orff helped found Munich’s Güntherschule, which combined the studies of music and movement, and in the following years he produced a body of theory and instructional material for children involving singing and playing simple instruments. His visit to Italy in 1930 nourished his interests in the classical world and the music of the Renaissance, interests that he continued to develop as director of the Munich Bach Society. His well-recognized scenic cantata, Carmina Burana, premiered in 1937. Although apparently apolitical, Orff willingly cooperated with the Nazi regime during World War II and subsequently sought to obscure the extent of his accommodation. He died in Munich in 1982.

The Music

Orff passed through a series of contemporary influences, but he eventually turned to the music and literature of the past, particularly the works of seventeenth century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. In his mature compositions, Orff eschewed many of the most familiar elements of music and instead relied on ostinato (the repetition of a motif or phrase at the same pitch) and the most basic harmonies. His interest in combining music with dance and visual spectacle resulted in a small body of intensely dramatic and compelling works.

Carmina Burana.During the 1920’s Orff became acquainted with a collection of anonymous thirteenth century songs and poems known as the Carmina Burana (songs of Beuern), once thought to have originated in the Benediktbeuern Abbey near Munich. During 1935 and 1936 he arranged some two dozen of the pieces to create his own Carmina Burana, a choral work involving music and dance that is often described as a scenic cantata.

The pieces Orff chose are in Latin and Middle High German and deal with physical and spiritual love, the joys of eating and drinking, the approach of spring, and the ephemeral nature of life. The central image of the work is the ever-turning wheel of fortune, which raises men and women to the heights, only to dash them shortly after to the depths. The short but dramatic invocation to Fortune that opens and concludes the piece has been used frequently in films and television commercials, and it is far more familiar to listeners than the name of its creator.

Although Orff scored Carmina Burana for chorus and large orchestra (with a larger-than-usual percussion section), the music is stripped to its most basic qualities and is hypnotic in performance. After its successful premiere in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 8, 1937, Orff is said to have urged his publisher to destroy all his previous works.

Song of Catullus.Orff had written choral settings for poems by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus in 1930. Thirteen years later he prepared a new musical framework for the pieces, utilizing his own (explicitly erotic) Latin text, four pianos, and a large array of percussion instruments. The work dramatizes the poet’s passion for his lover Lesbia, who deserts him for one of his friends. When she later attempts to return, Catullus rebuffs her.

Songs of Catullus contrasts the passion and impetuosity of youth with the hoary, cynical wisdom of old age. In the central section of the work the chorus and two soloists representing Catullus and Lesbia sing a capella (unaccompanied), while the opening and closing sections are set to an instrumental accompaniment. In Orff’s original conception, a company of dancers enacts the story on a center stage.

Songs of Catullus recalls Carmina Burana in many ways, but it is written in even sparer musical language. It premiered in Leipzig, Germany, on November 6, 1943.

Triumph of Aphrodite.For the text of Triumph of Aphrodite Orff turned once again to Catullus, adding fragments from the Greek poet Sappho and the Greek dramatist Euripides. The work reenacts in stylized form a wedding celebration in Mediterranean antiquity, and it is a fervent musical paean to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Like Carmina Burana, it is scored for chorus and a large orchestra with augmented percussion, and it culminates in an ecstatic finale.

Triumph of Aphrodite was commissioned by La Scala opera house of Milan, Italy, and premiered on February 13, 1953. The program also featured performances of Carmina Burana and Songs of Catullus, which Orff now grouped with Triumph of Aphrodite in a musical triptych he called Trionfi. The title is a reference to the elaborate triumphs, or spectacles, staged by the ancient Romans to celebrate their military victories.

Musical Legacy

Orff’s method of elementary music education, presented in Orff-Schulwerk, enjoys an international following. However, Orff the composer is known outside Germany primarily for a single work, Carmina Burana, which has established itself as a pop cultural artifact. It and Orff’s other compositions rely for much of their power on harmonic and rhythmic repetition with carefully modulated variation, and they paved the way for the minimalist movement of the late twentieth century. In addition, Orff’s interest in the most archaic elements of music was shared by such contemporaries as Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla, marking him as a pioneer of the early-music movement.

For some, the integrity of Orff’s music was damaged by the composer’s actions during World War II, behavior that has been examined in detail by historian Michael H. Kater. Although the sexual content of Carmina Burana initially created difficulties for Orff, the work soon won wide acceptance throughout Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and Orff subsequently enjoyed an exalted status under the Nazi regime.

Principal Works

ballet:Tanz der Spröden, 1925 (Dance of the Coy Maidens; based on Monteverdi’s ballet Il ballo della ingrate).

choral works:Carmina Burana, 1937 (Songs of Beuren; cantata for soloists, choruses, and orchestra); Catulli Carmina, 1943 (Songs of Catullus; cantata for soloists, chorus, and orchestra); Trionfo di Afrodite, 1953 (Triumph of Aphrodite; cantata); Comoedia de Christi resurrectione, 1956 (for soloists, choruses, and orchestra).

operas (music): Klage der Ariadne, 1925 (based on Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Lamento di Arianna); Orpheus, 1925 (based on Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo); Der Mond, 1939 (The Moon; based on the story by J. L. Grimm and W. C. Grimm); Antigonae, 1949 (based on Sophocles’ tragedy); Ein Sommernachtstraum, 1952 (A Midsummer Night’s Dream; based on William Shakespeare’s play); Die Kluge: Die Geschichte von dem König und der klugen Frau, 1943 (The Story of the King and the Wise Woman; based on the story by J. L. Grimm and W. C. Grimm); Die Bernauerin: Bairische Stück, 1947 (The Tragedy of Agnes Bernauer; libretto by Orff); Astutuli: Eine bairische Komödie, 1953 (libretto by Orff); Oedipus der Tyrann, 1959 (based on Sophocles’ tragedy); Ludus de nato Infante mirificus, 1960 (libretto by Orff); Prometheus, 1966 (based on Aeschylus’ trilogy); De temporum fine comoedia, 1973 (A Comedy About the End of Time; libretto by Orff).

orchestral work:Orff-Schulwerk, 1935 (Music for Children; with Gunild Keetman; a five-volume instructional work).

Bibliography

Goodkin, Doug. “Orff-Schulwerk in the New Millennium.” Music Educators Journal 88, no. 3 (November, 2001): 17-23. Analyzes Orff’s educational method in the context of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Play, Sing, and Dance: An Introduction to Orff-Schulwerk. New York: Schott, 2002. Survey of Orff’s pedagogical method, including a history of its inception and its development.

Gurewitsch, Matthew. “Cosmic Chants.” The Atlantic Monthly 276, no. 2 (August, 1995): 90-93. Readable survey of Orff’s compositions and educational activities.

Kater, Michael H. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Devotes a chapter to Orff’s activities before and during World War II and details his largely successful efforts to efface his Nazi past.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Discusses Orff’s activities within the context of Nazi Germany’s musical establishment.

Liess, Andreas. Carl Orff. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966. Summary of Orff’s life followed by analyses of his works. Includes illustrations, musical examples, a short bibliography, and an index of works.