Karl Orff: biography, interesting facts, creativity

Karl Orff

This famous composer is called the great Bavarian experimenter. His music, striking in its originality, does sound a bit unusual. Possessing a rare quality - exquisite simplicity, it conquers the audience in all corners of the globe with the magic power of its suggestion. The name of this outstanding maestro, whose work has become a special phenomenon in the culture of the XX century - Karl Orff. The composer's innovation was in his persistent desire to smooth the lines between music and theater. In fact, in his creative heritage there are no works that would correspond to the definition of "pure music". In addition to Orf's outstanding merits, which have received universal recognition in the art of music, the contribution of the composer to the creative development of the younger generation is invaluable. The pedagogical system developed by him is successfully applied in many countries of the world.

A brief biography of Carl Orff, as well as many interesting facts about the composer, can be found on our page.

Short biography of Carl Orff

July 10, 1895 in Munich, on the street Meilingershtrasse, in the family of the hereditary military Heinrich Orff and his wife Paula, nee Köstler, a joyful event occurred: the firstborn was born, the happy parents named Karl Heinrich Maria. From the first days of his life, the kid was surrounded by a creative atmosphere: music was constantly heard in the house. The boy's mother, who in her childhood and youth received a good education, played the piano perfectly well.

From the age of one year old, little Karl was attracted to musical sounds, he loved to sit under the piano and listen to Paula playing music, and at the age of two, the kid begged for hysterics to be allowed to play the piano. Karl was put to the instrument on a highchair, he pressed the keys with two hands and at the same time sang songs in a language he understood only. At four, the boy first saw the puppet theater. The impression was so strong that after this acquaintance his most favorite toys were dolls made of patches. Seeing such a passion for his son, the parents themselves designed and at Christmas gave him a toy theater. At the age of five, Paula began to teach Karl to play the piano, but the boy didn’t like boring exercises at all; he liked to play the instrument more than what he himself was writing. But the kid had to study the music, he quickly realized that with the help of these signs you can record his musical fantasies.

In six years, Karl was sent to a school in which he absolutely did not like. Learned by his mother to read and write, he missed his lessons, and when he came home, he enthusiastically sat down to write poems and stories. Already in ten years, two stories of Karl were published in a children's magazine.

With all the variety of different activities, the boy's fascination with the puppet theater not only continued, but grew more and more. School performances who know how to play musical instruments, as well as a younger sister, were involved in productions of performances to which he composed both texts and music.

When Carl was fourteen his parents took him to the opera house for the first time.

"Flying Dutchman" Wagner he made such an impression on the young man that he stopped going to the gymnasium for whole days, improvising, sitting at the piano. Relatives were unhappy with this behavior of Karl, but Paula, despite the reproaches from close friends, made her decision. She gave her son the clavier of "The Flying Dutchman" and allowed to go to any performance of the opera house. At sixteen, supported by his parents, Karl dropped out of the gymnasium and began to prepare for admission to the Academy of Music, to which he began his studies in the fall of 1912.

Unfortunately, those hopes that the young musician pinned when he entered the educational institution, again did not justify themselves. Karl at that time, being quite a skillful musician, who knew music well, constantly sought out what he considered most important and interesting for himself, since the program that was being taught did not suit him. Studying the scores of Claude Debussy, the young man even decided to leave Munich for Paris and continue studying with the famous maestro there, and only the parent will could stop the young musician. After graduating from the Academy, in 1914, Karl settled as an accompanist with vocalists at the opera house and at the same time began to study the piano diligently, taking lessons from Hermann Zilher. Finally, in 1916, he took the place of conductor in the Kammerspiel Drama Theater. This work was very fascinating to the young composer: he wrote the music for performances himself and could experiment with it the way he wanted. All Orff's plans collapsed in September 1917, when he was drafted into the army and sent to the Eastern Front. After being seriously wounded, Karl was contused, and after the commission’s decision about his unsuitability for military service, he resumed his theatrical activities, first in the Mannheim Theater, and then in the Duke’s court theater in Darmstadt. After a while, Orff returned to Munich, where in 1920 his personal life underwent significant changes. Karl married novice opera singer Alice Solscher, and a year later he became the happy father of little Godely.

In the twenties, Carl Orff begins to attract teaching activities. He is engaged in tutoring, gathering around him young musicians who are preparing to enter the Academy of Music and those who already study there, but were dissatisfied with the teaching methods. In 1923, Karl met the young gymnast Dorothea Gunter, and the following year helped her to open a school of dance and music, Guntherschule, in which he himself soon began to teach. Constant creative communication with the younger generation so fascinated Orff that he developed his own methodology of music education and in 1932 published it under the title "Shulverk". In the second half of the thirties, Karl, seriously taking up the composition, withdrew from teaching.

In the years of the Nazi regime, Orff was quite cautious. His circle of friends was very diverse: from representatives of the top party leadership of Hitler's Germany to the founders of the Resistance movement. Fearing for his life, because he himself had Jewish roots, Karl never made any statements against the ruling party and actively tried to prove his trustworthiness. For example, Orff was the only composer who accepted the offer from the mayor of Frankfurt to compose music for the Shakespearean comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream". In those days, the works of Mendelssohn because of the Jewish origin of the composer were strictly prohibited. Although Orff was not considered a “Nazi” composer, his popularity grew, because “Carmina Burana” was liked not only by Goebbels, but also Hitler himself.

After the war, Karl Orff for cooperation with the Hitler regime was put on the "black list", but he managed to get out of this situation. He stated that he was in the Resistance group, led by his friend Kurt Huber. In fact, this was not the case, but this statement helped Orff avoid reprisals and return not only to composing, but also to teaching. In 1955, Karl settled in a beautiful, creative place - Disseine am Ammersee, and in the sixties he moved to Salzburg, where he headed the institute named after him and taught the basics of his methodology for creative education of children. Orff wrote his last work in 1975, and then engaged in the analysis of preparations for the publication of materials from his archive. The composer died after a severe, long-lasting illness in Munich in 1982 on March 29 at the age of 86, and according to his wishes was buried in the baroque church of the Benedictine monastery of Andex, south-west of Munich.

Interesting Facts

• Orff began his creative experiments with percussion instruments at the age of two. Carl didn’t like the quiet sound that the piano made when the baby touched the keys with his weak fingers. Realizing that if the blow is stronger, then the sound is brighter, he pulled a hammer from the kitchen to beat the meat. Piano can say lucky: the child was immediately disarmed, as soon as he began to beat the beater on the instrument’s keys with all his might. Immediately after this incident, the parents bought the son a drum.
• According to Orff’s biography, when Charles was eight, his parents took him for the first time with them to a concert of symphonic music. The orchestra performed the “Little Night Serenade” by V. A. Mozart and Symphony No. 1 by L.V. Beethoven. The boy's impression of the Beethoven symphony he heard was so great that he began to ask his mother to play this piece on the piano with four hands. This went on day after day, and as a result, the entire symphony was learned by heart.
• Karl Orff's father, who continued the military dynasty, was a musically gifted man and quite skillfully played the piano, viola and contrabass.
• Karl Orff, who completed his education at the Academy of Music in 1914, was so unhappy with the learning process that he did not even go to the prom night. The certificate of graduation was sent to him by mail.
• In 1916, Karl Orff took the place of conductor in the Kammerspiel Munich Drama Theater, but he became so involved in theatrical work that he not only conducted the orchestra, but also performed the roles of illuminator, breather and even working stage.
• Personal life of Karl Orff was quite active. The first time he married at the age of 25 was the singer Alice Zolscher. After five years of marriage, they broke up. From 1925 to 1939 the composer was a bachelor. The second wife of Orff was the doctor Gertrude Willert. She was nineteen years younger than Karl, and perhaps that is why their marital happiness lasted only four years. In 1954, the composer remarried, choosing writer Louise Rinser as his companion. The fourth time Orff married at 65 years old is his young secretary, Lizelotte Schmitz, who spent his last journey.
• Godela - the only daughter of the composer, who was born from her first marriage, later chose the profession of an actress.
• In the biography of Karl Orff there are many mysteries and secrets that he did not entrust to anyone during his lifetime. For example, how having Jewish roots, he, according to some information, became a member of the Nazi party? How could one simultaneously be a friend of Baldur Benedikt von Schirachureuichsjugendführer, the Gauleiter of Vienna and the Obergruppenführer of the SA and Kurt Huber, a member of the Munich Resistance group executed by the Nazis in 1943? As a favorite composer of the Nazi elite, and receiving subsidies and rewards from power, he managed, after the collapse of Hitler's Germany, not only to “cleanse”, but also to become a person revered throughout the world.

• The merits of Carl Orff were appreciated during their lifetime. He was elected an honorary member of the University of Regensburg, the Academy of Fine Arts of Nuremberg, the Bavarian Academy of Arts and the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome. Orff received the title of honorary doctor at the University of Tübingen, as well as at the University of Ludwig-Maximilian in Munich.
• In addition, he was awarded numerous awards, including the Order of Merit for the Federal Republic of Germany and the Bavarian Order of Merit. Also in 1975, the composer became an honorary citizen of the city of Munich, and in 2001, an asteroid was named after him.
• Today, the German city of Salzburg is popular among tourists not only as the city of the great Mozart, it is also of great interest to admirers of Karl Orff’s astounding educational work. His system of musical education gained such popularity that at the Orff Institute only in the first decade representatives from more than forty countries received training.

Creativity Carl Orff

From the biography of Orff, we know that Carl began to get involved in the composition rather early. At the age of nine, he wrote music for performances of his home puppet theater. One of his first works was an improvised opera, which had the name "In the Magic Forest". At sixteen, inspired by the fact that his parents allowed him to enter the Academy of Music, Karl composed more than fifty songs to poems of German poets, of which only six remained. Orff at that time wrote a lot, but he created all his creations of that time without knowing the rules of harmony and counterpoint. Enrolling in the Academy of Music, Karl almost immediately begins to engage in creative experiments, but all of them, unfortunately, are unsuccessful. In the early 20s, Orff became fascinated with the poetry of German expressionists, one of which was Franz Werfel. The young composer composed several vocal works to the verses of this poet, however, the audience, having heard them at the concert, was completely puzzled. More these songs were never performed. Failure in the field of composing pursues Orff one after another, but he does not give up and continues his explorations of new music. In 1927, Karl wrote two notebooks of choirs for Bertold Brecht's poetic texts, but in them the style of the composer was described as too original and very unusual.

In the thirties, Orff began to study folklore material, which later formed the basis of his work. So in the spring of 1934, searching for materials in the Central Court Library of Munich, he came across a manuscript of the XIII century, found in a monastery in Bavaria. It was a collection of verse with the name "Carmina Burana", written by Goliards, wandering poets of the Middle Ages. Studying the texts, Karl immediately introduced that this should be a bright theatrical performance, in which the word, music, vocal and choreography will be closely interrelated. Within a few weeks, having performed his new essay on the piano to the representatives of the publishing house, he received an enthusiastic review. Work on the score of the work of Karl took two years and another year to prepare the premiere, held in Frankfurt am Main on June 8, 1937. After the successful production of the so-called chants with pictures - "Carmina Burana", Orff, who finally believed in himself, told his publisher that he had the right to destroy all the works of the composer that had been printed so far and that it was with "Carmina Burana" begins his collected works.

In 1943, there was a premiere performance of another new work by Orff, a mimic performance with the singing "Catulli Carmina", composed by the poems of the poet Guy Valery Catullah, who lived in the first century BC. By combining "Carmina Burana" and "Catulli Carmina" in a stage cycle, the composer realized that he lacked the final part. In 1951, the composer finished and recreated on stage a third part of the triptych - the “stage concert” with decorations and costumes “Trionfo di Afrodite”. The entire cycle, later called Triumphs, already gives a complete picture of the compositional handwriting of Carl Orff.

However, speaking of the work of Orff, it is necessary to emphasize that it is in one way or another connected with theatrical art, to which the composer devoted about twenty of his compositions. However, the works of Orff cannot be called neither operas nor dramatic performances. This is a special interesting phenomenon representing the reunion of elements of different theatrical forms. The composer consistently and fundamentally rejected the traditional opera aesthetics and created his own new type of performance, bringing together musical and dramatic theater. So Orff, referring to the operatic genre, defines his compositions in it in a new way, as the “Little Theater of the World”. Experimenting and filling with innovations, he creates instructive musical performances based on the works of the tale-tellers of the Brothers Grimm: "The Moon" and "Clever Girl". Also among the writings of Orff there should be especially noted the colloquially musical dramas: - “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, “Bernauerin” and “Sly Men”. Particularly noteworthy are the works of the composer on ancient subjects: "Antigone", "King Oedipus" and "Prometheus". Formed a kind of trilogy, these works are also not constrained by any stylistic or genre traditions. In addition, of great interest are the mysteries of Carl Orff: "The Mystery of the Resurrection of Christ," "The Miracle of the Birth of the Infant," and "The Mystery of the End of Time." The composer wrote his last work "A Piece for a Reader, Speaking Choir and Percussion" based on the poetry of B. Brecht in 1975.

Carl Orff's musical education system

Karl Orff's innovation in the field of theatrical art is difficult to overestimate, but his contribution to musical pedagogy, namely to the creative development of the younger generation, is no less valuable. The basis of the system developed by him, which is now widely used throughout the world, is improvisation, that is, free music. Такая оригинальная модель обучения детей музыке ставит своей целью не профессиональное музыкальное образование, а формирование гармонично развитой личности, способной не только воспринимать различную музыку, но и музицировать в самых разных формах.

Когда Доротея Гюнтер в 1924 году основала "Гюнтершуле" для обучения молодых девушек гимнастике, музыке и танцу, она предложила Орфу занять должность преподавателя. Карл, ещё в молодости охваченный мыслями создать иную методику творческого развития детей, с радостью откликнулся на это предложение, так как посчитал, что это идеальная площадка для его новых идей. In his pedagogical work, he focused on the development of a sense of rhythm, as he considered it the original basis of musical abilities, as well as the reunification of music with movement. Based on this, at first, simple percussion instruments prevailed in the educational process of Karl Orff: various rattles, bells, clappers, tambourines and various drums. However, then pitch xylophones and metallophones were added to them, and a little later recorders. The students were asked to compose their own compositions or to improvise on any given topic. The main purpose of such training was to create a choral group, whose members would know how to dance beautifully. The task was successfully solved and after a while the performances of the pupils of “Gunterschule” were received very cordially. In the thirtieth year, the first manual was released under the heading "Rhythmic-melodic exercises", and two years later the methodical recommendations were printed - "Orff-Shulverk - the practice of elementary music playing". At the end of the Second World War, Guntherschule was closed, and all its property was destroyed during the bombings.

Despite the difficult situation after the war, many German citizens were concerned about the development of child education. Karl Orff’s pedagogical theory was remembered in 1948 and suggested that he make several broadcasts on the radio. Having teamed up with the former pupil, and then the “Gunterschule” teacher Gunild Keetman, he prepared more than ten programs on musical education, addressed to educators, teachers and parents. The success of the radio programs was so great that they lasted more than five years on the air, and the Orff method began to gain popularity throughout Germany. In 1949, classes were organized at the Mozarteum Conservatory of Salzburg, and then in 1963 Orff, the Institute that trains teachers and educators in the methods of the composer and innovator, was opened. From 1950 to 1954, manuals were published periodically, which subsequently comprised a five-volume anthology of Shulverk. Soon, the Orff music system began to spread actively, and Orff began to spread around the world.

The innovation of Carl Orff in the field of musical theater is difficult to overestimate. In the performances of his music, which has a special hypnotic power, plays a special role. Always connected with the movements of the artist, she is an essential element of the action taking place on the stage. At present, the name of Karl Orff is popular all over the world, and his works are successfully put on the stages of theaters in many countries.