Carl Heinrich Maria Orff (; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982) was a German composer and music educator who is best known for composing the cantata Carmina Burana and formulating concepts of his Schulwerk (), which became influential for children's music education.
Born in Munich, Orff was raised in a military family that was scholarly and musical, and later attended the Munich Academy of Music. After composing a number of Lieder and other orchestral works, he completed his Carmina Burana for voices and large orchestra in 1936, setting poems from the medieval poetry collection of the same name. Its première was an immediate great success and Orff considered it the first time he had done exactly what he wanted, although he did not have his previous works destroyed as sometimes claimed. While the cantata was initially hampered by a small group of critics and officials, its popularity dramatically rose throughout and after World War II, Orff never received nearly as much recognition or attention for his later works, like the latter two parts of his triptych Trionfi, of which Carmina Burana is the first installment.
Orff was also an influential pedagogue who, along with colleagues like Gunild Keetman, developed an approach (the "Orff Schulwerk") to teaching children, which is a collection of fundamental principles to ensure every child learns music, much like a new language, in a comfortable environment. It involves tools like elementary forms of instruments and specifically composed music (the original form of the Schulwerk).
A member of the Reichsmusikkammer but not the Nazi Party, Orff's relationship with the Third Reich has been analysed by many as he was considerably successful (musically and financially) under its rule, and his work was well-liked by contemporary critics. Having concealed his part-Jewish ancestry throughout his life, Orff underwent denazification and was rated "'Grey C', acceptable" by psychiatrist Bertram Schaffner, who characterized him as a passive anti-Nazi. He was granted an unrestricted license with no further prohibitions from public musical activities, and continued to compose stage works and rework previous compositions until his death in 1982.
Life
Early life Carl Heinrich Maria Orff was born in Munich on 10 July 1895, the son of Paula Orff (; 1872–1960) and Heinrich Orff (1869–1949). His family was Bavarian and was active in the Imperial German Army; his father was an army officer with strong musical interests, and his mother was a trained pianist. His grandfathers, (1828–1905) and Karl Köstler (1837–1924), were both major generals and also scholars. His paternal grandmother, Fanny Orff (née Kraft; 1833–1919), was the daughter of Jews who had converted to Catholicism before her birth, Heinrich Kraft (1784–1866) and Barbara Kraft (née Neustädtl, 1797–1872). His maternal grandmother was Maria Köstler (née Aschenbrenner; 1845–1906). Orff had one sibling, his younger sister Maria ("Mia", 1898–1975), who married the architect Alwin Seifert (1890–1972) in 1924.
Despite his family's military background, Orff recalled in 1970: "In my father's house there was certainly more music making than drilling." (English translation from ) Original language: "In meinem Vaterhaus ist sicher mehr musiziert als exerziert worden." For reprint, see . At age five, he began to play piano, and later studied cello and organ. He composed a few songs and music for puppet plays. He had two vignettes published in July 1905 in Das gute Kind, the children's supplement to Die katholische Familie. For the vignettes, see Das gute Kind, vol. 8, no. 10, 9 July 1905 (Augsburg: Schmid, 1905), pp. 76–77 and 79–80. They are reprinted with English translation in . He began attending concerts in 1903 and heard his first opera (Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman) in 1909. The formative concerts he attended included the world premiere of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in 1911 and Richard Strauss conducting his opera Elektra on 4 June 1914.
In 1910–12, Orff wrote several dozen Lieder on texts by German poets, including the song set Frühlingslieder (Opus 1, text by Ludwig Uhland) and the song cycle Eliland: Ein Sang von Chiemsee (Opus 12, text by Karl Stieler). The poet whose work he most frequently used was Heinrich Heine; he also chose texts of Walther von der Vogelweide, Princess Mathilde of Bavaria (1877–1906), Friedrich Hölderlin, Ludwig August Frankl, Hermann Lingg, Rudolf Baumbach, Richard Beer-Hofmann, and Börries von Münchhausen, among others. Orff's songs 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. Some of his songs were published in 1912. These include Eliland, with a dedication to Karl Köstler, who funded the publication. In 1911–12, Orff wrote Zarathustra (Opus 14), a large work for baritone voice, three tenor-bass choruses, winds, percussion, harps, pianos, and organ, based on a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel Also sprach Zarathustra.
Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music from 1912 until 1914. Orff later wrote that his decision to pursue music studies instead of completing Gymnasium was the source of family strife, as the Orff patriarch (his father's older brother, also named Karl Orff, 1863–1942) was against the idea. Orff had the support of his mother, who persuaded his father, and of his grandfather Köstler. Orff's teacher at the Akademie was the composer Anton Beer-Walbrunn, of whom he later wrote with respect but said that he found the academy overall to be "conservative and old-fashioned" (konservativ und altväterlich). At this time, he studied the works of Arnold Schoenberg, and one of his most important influences at this time was the French composer Claude Debussy. These influences can be heard in his first stage work, the music drama Gisei: Das Opfer (Gisei: The Sacrifice, Opus 20), written in 1913 but not performed until 2010. Orff's source material is a German translation of part of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami, specifically "Terakoya" ("The Village School") in Act IV. In 1914 Orff wrote Tanzende Faune: Ein Orchesterspiel (Opus 21). The work was to be performed at the Akademie – his first performance by an orchestra – but conductor removed it from the program following an unsuccessful rehearsal; it was first performed in 1995. In 1915, he began studying piano with Hermann Zilcher. Writing to his father, he called the studies with Zilcher his most productive teacher relationship to date. Around this time he also came to know theater director Otto Falckenberg, and saw plays by August Strindberg and Frank Wedekind.
World War I Orff was forced into the German Army in August 1917, which was a great crisis for him. In a letter to his father dated 3 August 1917, he wrote:
The coming fall, he was severely injured and nearly killed when a trench caved in, suffering amnesia, aphasia, and paralysis of his left-side. During his difficult recovery, he wrote to his father: After Orff's death in 1982, his daughter wrote that she believed this experience "made him think and rebel yet more revolutionarily."
Weimar Republic After recovering from his battle injuries, Orff held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt, later returning to Munich to pursue his music studies. Around 1920, Orff was drawn to the poetry of Franz Werfel, which became the basis for numerous Lieder and choral compositions. In the mid-1920s, he began to formulate a concept he called , or elemental music, which was based on the unity of the arts symbolized by the ancient Greek Muses, and involved tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture. Like many other composers of the time, he was influenced by the Russian-French émigré Igor Stravinsky. But while others followed the cool, balanced neoclassic works of Stravinsky, it was works such as Les noces (The Wedding), an earthy, quasi-folkloric depiction of Russian peasant wedding rites, that appealed to Orff. (note in this source that the description of Die Bernauerin on p. 259 in fact matches Astutuli.)
Orff came to know the work of Bertolt Brecht in 1924, which had a profound influence on him. The same year, he and Dorothee Günther founded the Günther-Schule for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich. He developed his theories of music education, having constant contact with children and working with musical beginners. In 1930, Orff published a manual titled Schulwerk, in which he shares his method of conducting. He was involved with the Schulwerk and its associated institutions throughout his life, although he retired from the Günther-Schule in 1938.
Orff also began adapting musical works of earlier eras for contemporary theatrical presentation, including Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro Striggio's opera L'Orfeo (1607). Orff's shortened German version (with Günther's translation), Orpheus, was staged under his direction in 1925 in Mannheim, using some of the instruments that had been used in the original 1607 performance, although several of these were unavailable and had to be replaced. Orff revised the score a few years later; this version was first performed in Munich in 1929. Orff's adaptations of early music brought him very little money. The passionately declaimed opera of Monteverdi's era was almost unknown in the 1920s, and Orff's production met with reactions ranging from incomprehension to ridicule. He told his mentor Curt Sachs, who had led him to study Monteverdi and supported his Orpheus, that the Munich press was against him: "I am made out to be not only a violator of corpses (see Monteverdi), but also a youth-seducer, who systematically corrupts our good youth with exotic perversities."
Nazi era Orff's relationship with German National Socialism and the Nazi Party has been a matter of considerable debate and analysis, sometimes colored by misinformation. Eleonore Büning inaccurately wrote that Orff joined the Nazi Party in 1940.Although this article makes no claim Orff was in the Party, it refers to him as a "Nazi composer" and "Nazi monster", despite reviewing a film in which Michael H. Kater emphatically stated that "Orff was never a Nazi" . (Link from the Wayback Machine.) J. Mark Scearce wrote that Carmina Burana "became the backbeat to Hitler's rise to power", despite the fact that Hitler became chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 and the premiere of Carmina Burana did not take place until 8 June 1937. The author wrote that "leaders of the Third Reich commissioned neoclassical composers to create a music that reflected healthy conservative values", including Carmina Burana, and that Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra was "among the compositions written for the Nazis." These claims lack citation. Carmina Burana was not written on a commission of any kind, and Also sprach Zarathustra was composed in 1896 rather than in 1936, the year given by the author. Historian Michael H. Kater, nevertheless wrote that "Carl Orff's name to many has become synonymous with fascist art and culture, frequently by way of a rather cavalier prejudgment" but also that Orff "thoroughly disliked most of the things that National Socialism and the Third Reich came to stand for, before and after Hitler's takeover".