Karl Orff is an outstanding German teacher and composer, author of the world-famous cantata "Carmina Burana". Orff is the author of a unique methodology of musical education.
Karl Maria Orff was born into the musical family of Munich in 1895, July 10. The head of the family masterfully mastered string instruments, perfectly played the piano. Mother also superbly possessed the last skill.
Becoming
Noticing the son’s giftedness, the parents began teaching the child music. He played from the age of five. From nine, the boy wrote works for performances of the puppet theater. From 1912 to 1914, Karl was a student at the Munich Academy of Music. After her education continued with Herman Zilcher.
From 1916, Orff worked in the local chamber theater as bandmaster. In 1917, the future famous composer went to the front. In 1918, Orff was invited as bandmaster to the National Theater of Mannheim. From there, he moved to the Darmstadt Palace Theater.
In 1920, the young man married. His chosen one Alice Zolsher gave her husband a daughter, daughter Godel. When she grew up, she chose an artistic career. The marriage broke up in 1925. After that, Orff repeatedly tried to start a family.
In 1924, the collaboration was offered to the composer by the popular gymnast, famous writer and dance teacher Dorothea Gunther. Together they opened the Guntershule School of Music, Gymnastics and Dance. The kids in it were taught music by a unique system, which quickly gained recognition all over the world.
Karl himself, before the closure of the school in 1944, led the creative department.
Unique system
The composer suggested combining music, speech and movement. With this unity, he ensured the primacy of music by combining singing with play, movement and improvisation. The system is currently called "Orff-Schulwerk" or "school work." In the early thirties, a training manual came out under the chosen name, which won international recognition in the circles of teachers and musicians, Most of the publication is devoted to notes in the simplest instrumental processing. It made it possible for children, even not yet trained in music, to perform all parts of the work. The goal of “Music for Children” was to reveal the creative abilities of the child through motor and musical improvisation.
Orff suggested that children will be brought up on their own in the process of mastering the game on the simplest instruments, for example, maracas, xylophone, bells. The composer designated the synthesis of movements, melodies of the game and improvisation with the concept of "elementary music-making." The material offered by Orff could be varied, improvised with children on its basis.
Pupils were stimulated to fantasize, to write, to improvise. The task of the music education system is to develop the child creatively. Musical creativity First of all, Orff is known as the creator of the cantata "Carmina Burana" or "Songs of Boyern."
An eighteenth-century manuscript was found in the Benedictine monastery of the same name in 1803. It was written poems of stray actors. Orff put them on his own music. The libretto includes works written in Latin and Old German. Topics of the past centuries raised in essays remain clear to contemporaries.
They talk about the quick passing of luck and wealth, the transience of life, the joy of spring, the pleasures of delicious food. The structure of the composition is subject to the rotation of the wheel of Fortune. The manuscript was supplemented by his image.
It rotates within the entire action. Therefore, there is a dramatic change of state of mind: happiness is changing sadness, and hope is replaced by hopelessness.
In addition to Carmina Burana, the trilogy includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite.
The creator called the work a holiday of spiritual harmony, finding a balance between flesh and spirit.
