Carl Orff

Carl Orff (Munich, July 10, 1895 - Munich, March 29, 1982) was a German composer, whose work can be framed within the current of musical neoclassicism. He is especially known for his work Carmina Burana and for developing a system of teaching music for children, known as the Orff Schulwerk or Orff method.

Early Years

Carl Orff was born in Munich on July 10, 1895. His family was originally from Bavaria and was linked to the German army.

Orff began playing the piano at the age of five and also took organ and cello lessons. However, he was more interested in composition than in the study oriented towards instrumental interpretation. For this reason, from an early age Orff wrote and staged puppet plays for his family, composing music for piano, violin, zither and glockenspiel to accompany his works. In addition, he published a story in a children's magazine in 1905 and began to write a book about nature while, in his spare time, he enjoyed collecting insects.

In 1912, at the age of 16, he began publishing some of his music. Many of his early works are inspired by German poetry. For this reason, they can be classified within the style of Richard Strauss and other German composers of the time, but they already show indications of what would be Orff's distinctive musical language.

In 1911-1912 Orff wrote Zarathustra, Op. 14, an extensive work for baritone, three choirs and orchestra, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In 1913 he composed an opera or musical drama entitled Gisei, das Opfer (Gisei, the sacrifice). Also influenced by the French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy, he began to use unusual and colorful combinations of instruments in his orchestration.

World War I

Moser's Musik-Lexikon notes that Orff studied until 1914 at the Königlichen Akademie der Tonkunst (Munich Academy of Music), now called the Hochschule für Musik und Theater. He later served in the army during World War I. He was badly wounded during an artillery barrage while in a trench. Later he held various positions at the Mannheim and Darmstadt opera houses and eventually returned to Munich to continue his musical studies.^{[citation needed ]}

1920s

In the mid-1920s Orff began to formulate a concept that he called elementare Musik (elementary music) which was based on the unity of the arts, symbolized by the ancient Greek muses (word from which the name Music comes), involving tone, dance, poetry, image, design and theatrical gesture. Like many other composers of the time, he was influenced by the Russian-French émigré (emigrant) Igor Stravinsky. But while others followed the "fresh and balanced" neoclassical style of some of Stravinsky's work, Orff was more interested in other works such as The Weddings, a quasi-folkloric evocation of ancient wedding rites. Then he began to adapt early musical works for theatrical performance in his time, including Claudio Monteverdi's opera Orfeo (1607). Orff's German version, Orpheus, was staged in 1925 in Mannheim, Germany under Orff's own direction and using some of the instruments used in the original 1607 performance. This passionate and recited opera de Monteverdi was virtually unknown in the 1920s; however, Orff's production was met with reactions ranging from incomprehension to ridicule.^{[citation needed]}

After founding the Günther School for Gymnastics, Music and Dance in Munich in 1924 with Dorothee Günther, Orff was head of the department until the end of his life. There he worked with beginning students and developed his theories in music education, having constant contact with the children. In 1930, Orff published a manual titled Schulwerk , where he shared his educational method. Before writing the Carmina Burana, Orff edited operas from the 17th century.

Carmina Burana

Orff's most famous work, Carmina Burana, is based on the eponymous Carmina Burana, a collection of goliard chants from the 12th and 13th centuries assembled in manuscript found in Benediktbeuern in the 19th century. Written by monks and minstrels, this work exemplifies Orff's search for a language that can reveal the elemental power of music, allowing the listener to experience music as a primal and overwhelming force. The poetry of the Goliards, which not only sang of love and wine, but also mocked the clergy, fit perfectly with Orff's desire to create a musical work that appealed to the "fundamental musicality" that, as he believed,, every human being possessed. By eschewing developed melody and complex harmony ^{[citation needed ]} and articulating his musical ideas through easily discernible basic sounds and rhythmic patterns, Orff created an idiom that many found irresistible. Despite the remarkable "primitive" feeling of Carmina Burana, Orff believed that the profound call of the music was not merely physical.

Carmina Burana forms the first part of the trilogy of performed cantatas called Trionfi (Triumphs), all based on Latin texts. The other two parts are Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite.^{[citation needed]} The first performance, in 1937, was a stylistic breakthrough that quickly brought Orff fame. Furthermore, Orff himself ^{[citation needed]} takes Carmina Burana as the real beginning of his career and, therefore, ordered his publisher destroy all his previous works, an order that, fortunately, was ignored.^{[citation needed]}

His relationship with the Nazi regime

Portrait of Orff.

Orff's relationship with German fascism and the National Socialist Party has been the subject of considerable debate and analysis. His Carmina Burana were very popular in Nazi Germany and its premiere in Frankfurt am Main in 1937 was the cause of numerous performances. But the composition, with its unusual rhythms, was also denounced on racist grounds.^{[citation needed]} Orff was one of the few German composers under the Nazi regime who responded to the official call to write new incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream after Felix Mendelssohn's music was banned, while others refused to collaborate on it. Orff's defenders allege that he He himself was already composing music for this work from 1917 and 1927, long before this was a favor to the Nazi government.

The Carmina Burana made Orff's name spread throughout the Nazi cultural milieu. In addition, Orff was a friend of Kurt Huber, one of the founders of the resistance movement Die Weiße Rose (the White Rose), who was sentenced to death by the German People's Court and executed by the Nazis in 1943. Orff serendipitously called Huber at his home the day before the arrest, while Huber's distraught wife begged Orff to use his influence to help her husband, which Orff refused. If his friendship with Huber came to light, he told her, he would be "ruined." Huber's wife never saw Orff again. Later, a guilt-stricken Orff would write a letter to his friend, imploring his forgiveness.

Orff's two best-known operas date from this time, though he was reluctant to simply call them "operas" in the traditional sense. He called his works Der Mond (The Moon, 1939) and Die Kluge (The Cunning One, 1943), as Märchenoper («story opera»). Both compositions show the same "timeless" sound, as they do not use any of the musical techniques of the period in which they were composed, with the intention that they would be difficult to define as belonging to a specific era.

Postwar

According to Orff himself, after World War II he faced a possible loss of copyright to the Carmina Burana, due to a denazification officer who had been a member of the Rosa Blanca and was involved in the resistance. There is no evidence about this other than his own word, as it is contradicted by other sources. Canadian historian Michael H. Kater, however, made decisive arguments that Orff collaborated with Nazi authorities, but then, in Composers of the Nazi era: Eight portraits (2000), Kater revokes to some extent these accusations. In this regard, Orff's claim that he had been anti-Nazi during the war was accepted by the US denazification authorities who changed his previous status from gray unacceptable to gray acceptable , allowing him to continue composing for public performances.

Many of Orff's later works—Antigonae (1949), Oedipus der Tyrann (1959), Prometheus (1968) and De temporum fine comœdia (1971)—were based on texts or themes from antiquity. They extend the language used in the Carmina Burana in interesting ways, but they are expensive to put together and are not operas in the conventional sense of the term. They have only been performed occasionally, and mainly in Germany.

Family and descent

Orff was married four times. His partners were Alice Solscher, with whom he was married from 1920-1925, Alice Willer from 1939-1953, Luise Rinser from 1954-1959, and Liselotte Schmitz in 1960. His only offspring was Godela, the fruit of his first marriage, who was born in 1921. Orff ended up denying his relationship with his daughter. "He had his life and that was it," Godela explains to Tony Palmer in the documentary O fortuna .

Death

Orff's tablet in Andechs.

Carl Orff died at the age of 86 in Munich on March 29, 1982. His life spanned four major historical periods: the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and post-war West Germany. Orff was buried in the chapel of the baroque-style monastery in Andechs, south of Munich. His tombstone shows written his name, the dates of birth and death and the Latin inscription Summus finis (& # 39; The highest end & # 39;).