Karl Orff is an outstanding German teacher and composer, author of the world famous cantata Carmina Burana. Orff is the author of a unique method of musical education.
Karl Maria Orff was born into a musical family in Munich in 1895, on July 10. The head of the family was a virtuoso master of stringed instruments and played the piano perfectly. The mother also had an excellent mastery of the latter skill.
Becoming
Noticing their son's giftedness, the parents began teaching the child music. He has been playing since he was five. From nine, the boy wrote works for puppet theater performances. From 1912 to 1914 Karl was a student at the Munich Academy of Music. After her, education continued with Herman Silcher.
From 1916 Orff worked as a bandmaster at the local chamber theater. In 1917, the future famous composer went to the front. In 1918, Orff was invited as conductor to the National Theater in Mannheim. From there he moved to the Darmstadt Palace Theater.
In 1920, the young man got married. His chosen one, Alisa Zolscher, gave her husband a child, daughter Godelu. 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 popular gymnast, famous writer and dance teacher Dorothea Gunther offered cooperation to the composer. Together they opened the Günterschule School of Music, Gymnastics and Dance. The kids in it were taught music according to a unique system that quickly gained recognition all over the world.
Before the closure of the educational institution in 1944, Karl himself headed the creative department there.
Unique system
The composer proposed to combine music, speech and movement. With this unity, he ensured the primacy of music, combining singing with acting, movement and improvisation. The system has now received the name "Orff-Schulwerk" or "school work". By the beginning of the thirties, under the chosen name, a training manual was published, which won international recognition in the circles of teachers and musicians,
Most of the edition is devoted to sheet music in the simplest instrumental processing. She made it possible for children, even not yet trained in music, to perform all parts of the work. The purpose of "Music for Children" was to reveal the creative abilities of the child with the help of motor and musical improvisation.
Orff assumed that children would be brought up independently in the process of mastering playing the simplest instruments, for example, maracas, xylophone, bells. The composer defined the synthesis of movements, melodies of playing and improvisation by the concept of “elementary music making”. The material offered by Orff could be varied, improvised with children on its basis.
Students were encouraged to fantasize, write, and improvise. The task of the music education system is to develop the child creatively. Musical creativity Orff is best known as the creator of the cantata Carmina Burana or Boyerne's Songs.
An eighteenth-century manuscript was found in a Benedictine monastery of the same name in 1803. It contained poems by stray actors. Orff put them to his own music. The libretto includes works written in Latin and Old German. Topics relevant in past centuries, raised in the works, remain understandable to contemporaries.
They talk about the fast passing of luck and wealth, the transience of life, the joy of the arrival of spring, the pleasures of delicious food. The structure of the composition obeys the rotation of the wheel of Fortune. The manuscript was supplemented with his image.
It rotates within the entire action. Therefore, there is a dramatic change in the state of mind: happiness changes with 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.
Artworks
Close in style to the era of the Middle Ages, the work is permeated with elements of Art Nouveau. After its premiere in 1937, the cantata became extremely popular. She overshadowed all the previous works of the famous composer. After the end of World War II, Karl said that he was dissatisfied with the cantata.
The work has undergone a complete rework. The presentation of the result took place only in 1964. Orff's operatic creativity did not want the operas he wrote to be on a par with the traditional works of this genre. Both "The Moon" and "Clever Girl", written in 1939 and 1943, were called fabulous by the composer.
Their main difference from others is in the non-rhythmic repetition of the same sounds. A special technique was also used in writing. Orff called the opera Antigone of 1949 a tragedy set to music. The percussionists have always been the composer's favorites.
Therefore, the orchestration of the piece is distinguished by minimalism. It is believed that the prototype of the main character was the character of the "White Rose" Sophie Scholl. The last work of the composer was the mystical piece 1973 "A Comedy at the End of Times" in several languages.
In a grandiose creation, Orff summed up all life and temporal views. Musica Poetica was created in collaboration with Gunild Ketman. The composition became the leading theme for the film "Desolate Lands" 1973. In 1993, Hans Zimmer reworked the melodies for use in the film "True Love".
Currently, Orff seminars and courses are held, which are dedicated to his work and achievements.
