Carl Orff, Essay Example

Bibliography Information

Orff was born on July 10^th 1895in Munich to a Bavarian family.  At the age of five he started taking organ, piano and cello lessons (Giford). This gave him an introduction to music. The young Orff was however not interested in engaging in composition of original music but rather studying to become a performer.  As a child he enjoyed playing with insect and later decided to write a book about nature. He also wrote as well as entertained his family with puppet shows.

By the time he reached his teenage, he had composed several songs. Composing music seemed to be a talent to him. He could compose songs despite the fact that he had not yet learned composition or studied harmony (Giford). His mother was the only source of inspiration he had at the time. She helped him develop his first works in music. Clearly, he learned and wrote his own music without a proper teacher by studying old pieces of classical works. Though most of the work he performed during this time was songs mostly reflecting German poetry, Orff’s success was undisputable.

He married four times, first to Alice Solscher whom she married in 1920 and divorced five years latter in 1925. His second marriage came in 1954 when he married Alice Willert. The second marriage long compared to the first and it lasted fourteen years to 1953 when ended through a divorce.  He then married Luise Rinser in the following year and divorced her in 1959. He then married Lisolotte Schmitz in1960. Orff also had one daughter that he got from his marriage to Alice Solscher i.e. the first marriage in 1921. He died in 1982 a prime age of 86. At his death he had lived through four different epochs namely the Kaiserreich, weimer republic Nazi third rich, and West Germany after the Second World War.

Carl’s Contribution to Education

Carl took his studies at Munich Academy of Music in 1920 under Heinrich Kaminski. He conduct many musical works of which the most notable included: Carmina Burana, catulli carmina Trionfo di Afrodite, Der Mond, Die Kluge, Die Bernauerin, Antigonae, Astutuli, Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione, Ludas de nato infant mirificus, Oedipus der Tyrann, Ein Sommernachtstaum, pometheus and De temporum fine comoedia.

Despite being a composer and a conductor, Carl was a music teacher who contributed greatly to music education. He published a manual in 1930, titled Schulwer in which he shard his conducting method and just before the writing of Carmina Burana, he edited many of the 17^th century operas. Earlier, in 1924, Carl in conjunction with Dorothee Gunther had founded a gymnastics school.  Carl developed method of teaching young learners about music and by use of group exercises.  He also taught them how to use percussion instruments to produces sweet sounds or rather rhythms (Blades, 398). Orff method of teaching children involves engaging the young minds and bodies in a mixture singing, performing dances, acting and use of percussion musical instruments such as xylophones, glockenapiels and metallophones. The lessons involved element of play which helps children to learn at their own level of understanding.

In developing the teaching method Orff believed that music, speech and movement were not separate entities but rather had common unity which he referred to as the elements of music. He refined his notion of elements of music to mean movement, speech and music .that was created by children which required no kind of specialized training, this, he also translate to mean things that children did subconsciously or did without knowing. Orff’s method of learning was basically based on the idea that historically musical development is re-enacted in the life of each and every person. In this sense, Orff was equating a child to a primitive being in terms of music (Meyer 199). They possess little knowledge about music and basically depend on the natural movements and rhythms to make music.

This theory was disputed by most music teachers despite have provided the foundation for the teaching method Carl was about to elaborately formulate and develop.  Orff’s method or approach was very remarkable to the public at large a factor that made the Garman’s Ministry of Culture recommend the adoption of the experiments that were carried out by Orff and his associate Guenther to elementary schools at that time in Berlin. However, the development of this method was curtailed by the rise of Hitler which led to the rise of the Second World War (Spruce, 51).

Orff’s method assumed that music should be learned by children at an early age the same way a child learns language. Suzuki who also developed a rather different method of learning referred to this as “mother tongue” approach. Every child is born without a language and learns to speak by listening to what other people say and by imitating. As it grows, the child acquires the skills of interpreting symbols and writing. Similarly, in Orff’s method entails children learning music by playing percussion instruments and singing (Shepherded, 51). As they advance their musical knowledge they learn how to write and interpret musical symbols. At such an early stage of life the child learns simple music.

Orff considered rhythm an important part of learning music since it was common in speech, movement and music i.e. it tied the elements of music together.  He emphasized on speech be cause it was rhythmic, and translation of speech to rhythm then to a song was easy and natural to any child. He further considered movement important because children express their feelings through movement and painting. Children are more vivid than adults and therefore, express themselves creatively through movement. The teacher as the controller helps the child coordinate these activities and develop the young learner’s skills.

Works Cited

Blades James. Percussion Instruments and their History. Westport, Conn. Bold Strummer 1992. 43-97

Gifford Katya. Carl Orff: Biography. 23 September 2009 < http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=r&p=a&a=i&ID=757>

Meyer Michael. The politics of Music in the third Reich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005: P 199

Shepherded Antony. Revealing the Mask exotic influence of ritualized performance in modernized Music Theater. New York: Random House. 1998. p 51

Spruce Gary. Teaching music in secondary schools: A reader. New York: Random House 2001. p14