MUSIC EDUCATION: CLASSICAL COMPOSOR CARL ORFF
Orff Approach | Orff Insturments | Orff Speech
Hear Carl Orff: Carmina Burana Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEllLECo4OM
ORFF SCHULWERK
Carl Orff, Gunild Keetman, Margaret Murray - Children's Instrumental Ensemble - Five Ostinato Pieces
"Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They
would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they
play; they will find that
what they have mastered is child's
play
.
"
O Fortuna (Carmina Burana) (Lyrics) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNWpZ-Y_KvU
O Fortuna first verse:
O fortune, like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it.
While being one of the most seminal composers of the 20th century, his greatest success and influence has been in the field of music education.
Orff was the head of a department and co-founder of the Guenther School for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich, where he worked with musical beginners. Having constant contact with children, this is where he developed his theories in music education.
In pedagogical circles he is probably best remembered for his Schulwerk (1930-35), translated into English as Music for Children.
Its simple musical instrumentation allowed even untutored child musicians to perform the piece with relative ease. Much of his life Orff worked with children, using music as an educational tool - both melody and rhythm are often determined by the words.
Founders Orff Schulwerk
Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 - March 29, 1982) was a German composer born in Munich.
Orff's ideas were developed, together with TWO WOMEN Gunild Keetman, and Traude Schrattenecker whose innovative approach to music education for children, became known as the Orff Schulwerk. . The Orff pedagogy teaches music to children using movenment and Dance! The term Schulwerk is German for schooling or school work.
Background; Modern Dance: Artistic freedom and the rise of Hitler.
Mary Wigman- Witch Dance youtube video 1926 German Expressionist Dance - Mary Wigman tells her own story video
Mary Wigman: a dance pioneer with an awkward past Would this modern dance pioneer be better known had she not fallen in step with the Nazis?
The 1937 edict by Goebbels that dance "must be cheerful and show beautiful female bodies and have nothing to do with philosophy" put a halt on her career. Wigman's style was disseminated through Europe and America by students such as Hanya Holm, and even though elements of it can still be traced in the Tanztheater of Pina Bausch, Wigman herself has slipped slightly below the radar. And one reason may be her relationship with the Nazi regime.
Culture in the Third Reich: Disseminating the Nazi Worldview National Socialism represented much more than a political movement. Nazi leaders who came to power in January 1933 desired more than to gain political authority, to revise the Versailles Treaty, and to regain and expand upon those lands lost after a humiliating defeat in World War I. They also wanted to change the cultural landscape: to return the country to traditional “German” and “Nordic” values, to excise or circumscribe Jewish, “foreign,” and “degenerate” influences, and to shape a racial community (Volksgemeinschaft) which aligned with Nazi ideals.
Orff Schulwerk Spreads Across the World
Traude developed the dance pedagogy with Orff and Keetman
Traude Schrattenecker is teaching the Dance component of the #Orff Schulwerk Certification at the Royal Conservatory of Music University of Toronto
"Dance creates and develops rhythmical competency and that is the purpose and intention of using it in the Schulwerk."
My name is
Karen Ellis
I was Traude Schrattenecker's student at
theRoyal Conservatory of Music University of Toronto in 1970
My first #Orff teacher was Mrs. Fannabell Kremins , she had just received her training directly from Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman in the class of 1962 at the Royal Conservatory of Music, University of Toronto.
Mrs. Fannabel Kremens The First American "Orff Schulwerk" Teacher. See the 1963 Student Class Picture of Kremins, Keetman and Orff.
The Orff Approach
Botton Line: If creativity and improvisation is not included in the lesson, one CANNOT call it an Orff approach based music lesson.
Orff Level II presentation performed by adults includes recorder, instruments, dance, singing, chanting.
Lots of body work done with chanting - very exciting to watch and hear.
Recorder owned by
ECP RingLeader Cordley Coit.
"Orff redesigned the recorder to get rid of the English cross fingering used on traditional recorder design. He changed how music was taught. His redesigned recorder did not catch on but his music teaching did."
I was taught the third level by
Jos Wuytack
Printed with Permission
By Jos Wuytack, Orff Levels 2007, University of Memphis
Jos Wuytack is a retired Professor of Pedagogy at the Lemmen-Institute, University of Leuven, Belgium and
internationally renowned authority in Orff Schulwerk. He has taught over 1,000 Orff courses and 46
countries; is author of numerous compositions and books translated into eight languages. He is the 1996
recipient of Pro Merito Award from the Carl Orff Foundation. 2007 is his 36th consecutive year to teach
Orff Schulwerk at the University of Memphis.
When using the Orff approach, every music educator must be aware of some general pedagogical principles.
The most important is the principle of totality: every learning process starts with a total general
impression from which differentiations must then be made. In order to be appreciated, each characteristic
requires the child's personal involvement. Integration follows when the process is completed and the
elements are put back into the organized whole.
Activity is the key to real enjoyment of a music experience.
All good music training is
based on active participation. The children must feel and live the music vocally as well as
instrumentally.
Creativity is the high point of activity.
Everyone must learn to improvise: anyone who
does not speak a language precisely is difficult to understand. Music too is a language which must be
learned. It is not sufficient to simply reproduce music: a language is a means of communication and
personal exchange. If music is creative, it can be the ideal medium for self expression. There exists
an
infinite variety of possibilities, which express a fundamental vitality to experience, to test, and to
take
shape in the new creation.
Community is the pulse of a social experience:
singing, dancing and playing are group
activities. This is not an individual music education aimed at the most gifted. Every child is able to
contribute according to his/her own abilities. Each individual is broadened, learning discipline and
losing
his complexes and shyness.
Theory must not be neglected:
music education has to be a training. Good results
cannot
be obtained without conscious learning. Certainly music is joyful, enthusiastic and interesting but based
on a constantly growing knowledge. There are many lively ways to introduce theory in game form.
Pedocentry is a “condition sine qua non” for successful music education.
Children have
the need to play (ludic element). They play with joy and gravity. The teacher has to know the
psychology
of the child, his points of interest, his dreams, fantasies, feelings, his games, songs, rounds and
dances,
his language, nonsense syllables and his love of animals and nature.
Motricity helps to balance the child's personality!
Body percussion, movement and
instrumental activities provide an equilibrium, developing coordination, new abilities and skills, which
make the child more open to the magic of beauty.
All of these didactics together form the resume of our teaching:
ABC'S
Activity, Artistry, Articulation
Balance between Brains, Breathing, Body in Beauty
Creativity, Compassion and Community
Basic Pedegogy Sustains the most fundemental universal similarities shared by children of all cultures re: World Music.
Folk dance from GHANA called Portripor dancing
"The material is credited to Mary Shamrock, 1986.
In the Orff approach, process refers to the way songs and
accompaniments are taught. The process for the teaching a song is as follows: First, the entire song is
sung, then it is taught gradually, using imitation. The teacher should seek the easiest part in the song
to
have the students imitate first. Then, the rest of the song follows bit by bit. The teachers incorporate
many repetitions and questioning when teaching a song.
The process for teaching an accompaniment involves doing the motion, first as a body percussion
accompaniment to the chant or song. The movements done as body percussion are then transferred to the
instruments.
Below is a general procedure based on the Orff approach for guiding children through several phases of musical development:
First, children are encouraged to explore sounds (body and voice) and movement on their own. Then, through
imitation they develop basic skills in rhythmic speech and body percussion: clapping, finger snapping,
thigh
slapping, and foot stamping. In addition, they develop the ability to do rhythmic and free movement
through
space and skills in singing, in playing Orff pitched and nonpitched percussion instruments, and in playing
the recorder as a melody instrument.
Creation, the last stage involves combining material from any or all of the previous phases into original
small forms such as rondos, and theme and variations. The children can also contribute improvisations to
group activities based on their varying abilities (Shamrock, 1986)."
Creativity by students must
be part of every Orff lesson.
The sequence of instruction is what Shamrock is naming "process." Note that the last stage, is creation by the STUDENT. Creativity by students MUST be part of every Orff process/sequence of instruction. Without the student creativity, it's a sequence of teacher-creativity steps. Lastly, process and sequence are joined at the hip. You can't have one without the other.
Process / Sequence Analogy
by David Thaxton
11/6/05
Here's an analogy I thought of at lunch regarding the "process." It may just be a matter of
semantics, but I happen to be fond of semantics :-) This may have worked better with a healthier food,
but I had a Jonesin' for one, so there you go...
Sequence for a Cheeseburger:
1. Bun
2. Ketchup
3. Mustard
4. Pickle
5. onion
6. lettuce
7. tomato
8. Beef patty cooked to greasy perfection
9. Cheese
10. Top bun
Stack in this sequence, and you will get a cheeseburger every time.
Process for a cheeseburger:
1. Teeth pulverize it
2. Stomach breaks it down into a nutrient rich soup
3. Intestines pull out the nutrients:
Calcium from the cheese becomes bone
Protein from the meat becomes muscle
Carbs from the bun becomes energy
Vitamins from the veggies go to various body systems
Fat goes straight to your butt / stomach
and the cholesterol goes straight to the arteries
4. Useless leftover stuff, um, ...goes away...
Follow this process and the cheeseburger becomes part of you.
What does this tell us?
- There is a reason that sequence "sells"
- Without the process, any sequence is meaningless
- Cheeseburgers are yummy
- The healthier the food is, the more good nutrients it has
- it is important to choose high quality material for digestion
- the process will result in a different person every time
- fat and cholesterol are not good for you
Orff Schulwerk Fat and Cholesterol Free for over 75 years!
RESOURCES
- American Orff Schulwerk Associations Introduction
-
Research Studies in Orff
Schulwerk
- National Children's Folksong Repository
- Buying Orff Instruments
- Institutions offering AOSA approved ORFF SCHULWERK TEACHER TRAINING COURSES May 1, 2006
ORFF THE COMPOSER
Carmina Burana
Berliner Philharmoniker with Simon Rattle O Fortuna 5:11
Orff is most known for Carmina Burana (1937), a "scenic cantata". It is the first of a trilogy that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. These compositions reflected his interest in medieval German poetry. Together the trilogy is called Trionfi, meaning triumph. It is described by the composer as the celebration of the triumph of the human spirit through sexual and holistic balance. The work was based on a 13th-century erotic verse found in Bavaria. Lyrics to Carmina Burana While "modern" in some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the medieval period in this trilogy, with infectious rhythms and easy tonalities Listen to a minute of Carmina Burana:
The medieval poems, written in an early form of German and Latin, are often racy, but without descending into smut. Carmina Burana is probably the most famous piece of music composed and premiered in Nazi Germany.
MORE ARTICLES TO READ ABOUT ORFF
Carl Orff in his Time Speech on the occasion of Carl Orff's 100th birthday Munich, Prinzregententheater, 7 July 1995
Orff's Musical and Moral Failings - Was Carl
Orff a Nazi? NYT May 6, 2001
MUSIC EDUCATION: ORFF Schulwerk Approach
"Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play . " Founders Orff Schulwerk
Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 - March 29, 1982 a German composer born in Munich.
Orff's ideas were developed, together with two Women Gunild Keetman, and Traude Schrattenecker into a very innovative approach to music education for children, known as the Orff Schulwerk . The term Schulwerk is German for schooling or school work.
Karen Ellis CEO of the Eductional
CyberPlayGround
was taught by Traude Schrattenecker and
Mrs.
Fannebell Kremins is the First American "Orff Schulwerk" Teacher in America
. She had
just
received her training directly from
Carl Orff and Gunild
Keetman
in the class of 1962 at the Royal Conservatory of Music, University of Toronto.
See Pic
"Dance creates and develops rhythmical
competency
and that is the purpose and intention of using it in the Schulwerk."
While being one of the most seminal composers of the 20th century, his greatest success and influence has been in the field of music education.
Orff was the head of a department and co-founder of the Guenther School for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich, where he worked with musical beginners. Having constant contact with children, this is where he developed his theories in music education.
In pedagogical circles he is probably best remembered for his Schulwerk (1930-35), translated into English as Music for Children.
Its simple musical instrumentation allowed even untutored child musicians to perform the piece with relative ease. Much of his life Orff worked with children, using music as an educational tool - both melody and rhythm are often determined by the words.
Orff Schulwerk @OrffEnsemble Dec 22 The Wild Horseman arr. Doug Ed. Torremolinos Orff Ensemble conductor: @jaimecores
The Orff Approach
Botton Line:
If creativity and improvisation is not included in the lesson,
one CANNOT call it an Orff approach based music lesson.
Orff Level 2 2006 UST presentation performed by adults includes recorder, instruments, dance, singing, chanting. Lots of body work done with chanting - very exciting to watch and hear.
More on Youtube | More on Pinterest |
By
Jos
Wuytack
,
Orff Levels 2007,
University of Memphis
Printed with Permission
Jos Wuytack is a retired Professor of Pedagogy at the Lemmen-Institute, University of Leuven, Belgium and
internationally renowned authority in Orff Schulwerk. He has taught over 1,000 Orff courses and 46
countries; is author of numerous compositions and books translated into eight languages. He is the 1996
recipient of Pro Merito Award from the Carl Orff Foundation. 2007 is his 36th consecutive year to teach
Orff
Schulwerk at the University of Memphis.
When using the Orff approach, every music educator must be aware of some general pedagogical principles. The most important is the principle of totality: every learning process starts with a total general impression from which differentiations must then be made. In order to be appreciated, each characteristic requires the child's personal involvement. Integration follows when the process is completed and the elements are put back into the organized whole.
Activity is the key to real enjoyment of a music experience. All good music training is based on active participation. The children must feel and live the music vocally as well as instrumentally.
Creativity is the high point of activity. Everyone must learn to improvise: anyone who does not speak a language precisely is difficult to understand. Music too is a language which must be learned. It is not sufficient to simply reproduce music: a language is a means of communication and personal exchange. If music is creative, it can be the ideal medium for self expression. There exists an infinite variety of possibilities, which express a fundamental vitality to experience, to test, and to take shape in the new creation.
Community is the pulse of a social experience: singing, dancing and playing are group activities. This is not an individual music education aimed at the most gifted. Every child is able to contribute according to his/her own abilities. Each individual is broadened, learning discipline and losing his complexes and shyness.
Theory must not be neglected: music education has to be a training. Good results cannot be obtained without conscious learning. Certainly music is joyful, enthusiastic and interesting but based on a constantly growing knowledge. There are many lively ways to introduce theory in game form.
Pedocentry is a “condition sine qua non” for successful music education. Children have the need to play (ludic element). They play with joy and gravity. The teacher has to know the psychology of the child, his points of interest, his dreams, fantasies, feelings, his games, songs, rounds and dances, his language, nonsense syllables and his love of animals and nature.
Motricity helps to balance the child's personality! Body percussion, movement and instrumental activities provide an equilibrium, developing coordination, new abilities and skills, which make the child more open to the magic of beauty.
All of these didactics together form the resume of our teaching:
ABC'S Activity, Artistry, Articulation
Balance between Brains, Breathing, Body in Beauty
Creativity, Compassion and Community
Basic Pedegogy Sustains the most fundemental universal similarities shared by children of all cultures re: World Music.
Folk dance from GHANA called Portripor dancing
"The material is credited to Mary Shamrock, 1986. In the Orff approach, process refers to the way
songs and accompaniments are taught. The process for the teaching a song is as follows: First, the entire
song is sung, then it is taught gradually, using imitation. The teacher should seek the easiest part in
the
song to have the students imitate first. Then, the rest of the song follows bit by bit. The teachers
incorporate many repetitions and questioning when teaching a song.
The process for teaching an accompaniment involves doing the motion, first as a body percussion
accompaniment to the chant or song. The movements done as body percussion are then transferred to the
instruments.
Below is a general procedure based on the Orff approach for guiding children through several phases of
musical development:
First, children are encouraged to explore sounds (body and voice) and movement on their own. Then, through
imitation they develop basic skills in rhythmic speech and body percussion: clapping, finger snapping,
thigh
slapping, and foot stamping. In addition, they develop the ability to do rhythmic and free movement
through
space and skills in singing, in playing Orff pitched and nonpitched percussion instruments, and in playing
the recorder as a melody instrument.
Creation, the last stage involves combining material from any or all of the previous phases into original
small forms such as rondos, and theme and variations. The children can also contribute improvisations to
group activities based on their varying abilities (Shamrock, 1986)."
Creativity
by students must
be part of every Orff lesson.
The sequence of instruction is what Shamrock is naming "process." Note that the last stage, is creation by the STUDENT. Creativity by students MUST be part of every Orff process/sequence of instruction. Without the student creativity, it's a sequence of teacher-creativity steps. Lastly, process and sequence are joined at the hip. You can't have one without the other.
Process / Sequence Analogy
by David Thaxton 11/6/05
Here's an analogy I thought of at lunch regarding the "process." It may just be a matter of
semantics, but I happen to be fond of semantics :-) This may have worked better with a healthier food,
but I had a Jonesin' for one, so there you go...
Sequence for a Cheeseburger:
1. Bun
2. Ketchup
3. Mustard
4. Pickle
5. onion
6. lettuce
7. tomato
8. Beef patty cooked to greasy perfection
9. Cheese
10. Top bun
Stack in this sequence, and you will get a cheeseburger every time.
Process for a cheeseburger:
1. Teeth pulverize it
2. Stomach breaks it down into a nutrient rich soup
3. Intestines pull out the nutrients:
Calcium from the cheese becomes bone
Protein from the meat becomes muscle
Carbs from the bun becomes energy
Vitamins from the veggies go to various body systems
Fat goes straight to your butt / stomach
and the cholesterol goes straight to the arteries
4. Useless leftover stuff, um, ...goes away...
Follow this process and the cheeseburger becomes part of you.
What does this tell us?
- There is a reason that sequence "sells"
- Without the process, any sequence is meaningless
- Cheeseburgers are yummy
- The healthier the food is, the more good nutrients it has
- it is important to choose high quality material for digestion
- the process will result in a different person every time
- fat and cholesterol are not good for you
Orff Schulwerk Fat and Cholesterol Free for over 75 years!
RESOURCES
- American Orff Schulwerk Associations Introduction
-
Research Studies in Orff
Schulwerk
- National Children's Folksong Repository
- Buying Orff Instruments
- Institutions offering AOSA approved ORFF SCHULWERK TEACHER TRAINING COURSES May 1, 2006 Find and get free Orff materials from your inter library loan department.
ORFF THE COMPOSER
Compare prices for Orff Instruments
What to do with Talented Musical Classroom Teachers who want to use the Orff Instruments without the "music teacher" around.
How to Use the instrumentarium
1. Make sure they read this page
2. know how much the instruments cost
3. Know the rules of how to take care of them
4. Will tell the children what the rules are.
Recorder owned by ECP RingLeader Cordley Coit.
"Orff redesigned the recorder to get rid of the English cross fingering used on traditional recorder design. He changed how music was taught. His redesigned recorder did not catch on but his music teaching did."
Replacement Tubing
go to our hospital supply store in town and get their oxygen tubing for replacement tubing for
glocks, xylophones & marimba
. It's very cheap and lasts longer than the black
tubing from the manufacturers-sounds just as good too.
This document is
a
Chart which compares the costs of every instrument for every major brand
PDF
Rhythm
Band, Suzuki, Sonor, Primary Line (Sonor),Studio 49, and Bergerault. [not current price list]
We purchased Bergerault from www.peripole.com and highly recommend them! As you'll see, we doubled on altos. A word about Peripole-Bergerault......the instruments are fantastic! The xylophones are outstanding in quality. They have a lifetime warranty.
xylophones, I have really liked Studio 49 with rosewood bars. I've heard good things about Peripoles
but have never myself had them. I've also had some of the
older Sonor xylophones with rosewood bars and have been pleased with them.
I also love Studio 49; their sound is so beautiful.
Peripole is excellent. I have (personally) one of the new composite alto xylophones. I love the tone. It sounds just like rosewood.Also Peripole's pins are surgical steel thus unbreakable.
I have a mixture of Peripole rosewood xylos, metallophones and glocks and then a few Sonor palisano xylophones. I love them all. The people at Peripole are fabulous, and you'll get the best customer service from them. Plus, their instruments are priced nicely and are very durable and sound nice.
CLEAN YOUR ORFF INSTRUMENTS AT THE END OF THE YEAR.
Used a regular vacuum cleaner. Have a student take off the bars, and just go along and suck out
all the dust with the tube attachment on the vacuum. If you wipe things down with a damp cloth you will
end
up only smearing the dirt around. You can also turn the box upside down, and blow it out but remember to
wear a mask over your mouth and nose, so you don't breath it in.
Use furniture polish - It doesn't take much. Rub it in with a soft cloth.....be careful not to get
slivers in your hand!..... and give them time to "cure," ie to absorb the oil. It will clean and
nourish the wood. It's perfect. I usually do it in June at pack-up time, and wrap in unprinted
newsprint
for the summer.
music Technology
Develop a music technology program and curriculum. Teaching Resources
FREE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY
Finale Notepad - free download and on the PBS site
Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in music
Richard Robinson's
Tunebook
Downloadable printed folk melodies from Europe
Good-Ear.com
Free on-line ear training exercises
Free online lessons on jazz and music theory
Editing toys like Cakewalk and Cool Edit Pro can make even a modest professional studio a place where great music is captured. It is the easiest path to bring your recording within the range of commercial quality.
Mr. Dunn's Online Classroom recommendations
What is Music Fingerprinting?
"A digital music identification system that can search through 17 million songs in under 1 second
has
been launched in the US.
MusicIP
, based in California,
US,
announced last week that it had received a
US patent
for its method of automatically identifying, or 'fingerprinting,'
digital music files. The company already offers software that analyses the music collection on a computer,
identifies it, and makes recommendations. But now it will offer its music identification feature for other
companies to include in their products." MusicIP offers several free tools including the MusicIP
Mixer
(free) application and this web-based database.
Carl Orff in His Time — Speech on the Occasion of Carl Orff's 100th Birthday (Hans Maier, 1995)
Carl Orff in his Time By Hans MaierSpeech on the occasion of Carl Orff's 100th birthday
Munich, Prinzregententheater, 7 July 1995
Carl Orff's hundredth birthday had hardly begun to approach than there erupted fierce arguments about the composer. They were concerned less with his work than with his life, and particularly with his behaviour during the Third Reich and in the years immediately after the war. New investigations into Orff's life and work, to which the Orff Centre in Munich rendered an outstanding service, went round the world in crassly-expressed news flashes that raised some (false) points. This triggered off confusion and consternation: Was Orff a Nazi? Was Orff a liar - someone who, like a Bavarian Astutulus, had cunningly led the occupying authorities by the nose? This was grist to their mill for those who had always known, like Gerald Abraham, who had always maintained that there were suspicious elements in the German's work, that "rhythmically hypnotic, totally diatonic neo-primitivism" that allows itself to be so easily connected with the stamping columns of the Third Reich. And promptly on the 28th January of this year, London Weekend Television, in a polemic disguised as "Documentation" presented SS-troops marching to Orff's music and showed pictures of dead bodies in concentration camps.
O Fortuna velut luna! Carl Orff has often been portrayed and also misrepresented in his long life, though hardly ever with such malicious over-simplification as in this year of celebration and jubilation. There has never been any lack of distorted pictures, of mischievous personal descriptions of such multiform and protean characters. Already in the time of the Weimar Republic, Orff was suspiciously regarded by the conservatives as an anti-traditionalist and a taboo-breaker, largely because of the nature of his performances, but also as a music pedagogue: Alexander Berrsche spoke of Hottentot rhythm with regard to the Schulwerk. Opinions such as these lasted well into the time of the Nazis when his works were successful in spite of all opposition, but also had to survive some highly officious forms of excommunication; in this connection Goebbels' music adviser, Heinz Drewes, described Carmina Burana without hesitation as Bavarian Niggermusic. After the war Orff really fell between two stools; for those who belonged to the aesthetic of music attached to the Viennese School he was considered for several decades - as was his contemporary Paul Hindemith - to be a non-person. In the seventies the taboos relaxed somewhat. Orff's name surfaced again in musicological seminars and in the company of critics. The theoretical boycott had hardly harmed his works. They had remained young through being performed. In today's descriptions of music history there are frequent conciliatory attempts to attach the label "populism" to Orff - in reference books he appears as the director of a musical folkpark, in which people like Prokofiev and Gershwin go in and out, where children eagerly practise on xylophones, where open-air performances for huge audiences take place and where the fence between serious and light music is lower than it is elsewhere. It remains open to conjecture if that is his definitive place.
A hundred years of Orff, a hundred years of judgements and prejudices. My short lecture cannot give voice to all the stupid and wise, accurate and inaccurate, intelligently witty and plainly nonsensical statements that have been made about Orff. But thirty minutes will serve at least to place Orff in his time and to make his life and work understandable in reference to his environment. Let us try then; it is partly political, partly the music history of our time, and even partly an appreciative history of his work, the time that divides us from him being so short.
When Carl Orff died in 1982 at the age of 86, he had wandered through four epochs in the course of his life: the Empire, the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and finally the time after 1945 - since 1949 leading to the second, the Bonn Republic. I say "wandered through" deliberately, for one can hardly say of Orff that he had a particular, conscious or significant relationship to time or political situation. In general, for many reasons, musicians are less fixated on politics than writers; though of course there is the exception of the political musician: one has only to think of Liszt, Paderewski or of Henze, Nono and Theodorakis in our time. Orff did not belong to this type; he was totally a musician and nothing else, concerned with musical, not political effect, obstinately and obsessively committed to the service of Music. Not once did the problems of musicians, such as copyright or organisational questions concerning the position of the music profession so decisively interest him, that he was prepared to work for them within a professional organisation - as did both Richard Strauss and Werner Egk. So we hardly find any trace of specific statements about the times, the political and social conditions in which he grew up and developed. Certainly, the times through which he wandered left their stamp on him; for him to have lived in another century is unthinkable; he was a twentieth century man, coming from, alienated and escaping from the nineteenth century. But the effects of time and politics on his biography are nevertheless more indirect, conveyed almost coincidentally; and I can only warn those curious researchers who are interested in themes such as "Orff and the First World War", "Orff and the Weimar Republic", "Orff and the Adenauer Era", that they will hardly find what they are seeking in the sparse sources. I am heretical enough to add: even the theme "Orff and National Socialism" reveals in the end little in the way of information or even anything sensational. Orff went through time, through many times with the gestures of a sleepwalker; he gladly gave the time the chance to do something for him; though he would leave it to run its course with indifference or defiant fatalism.
The time before the First World War, the time of the Empire and particularly of the Prince Regent, was indeed a time through which the descendent of a well-educated Munich officer's family, born in 1895 would have lived. It was rather like the Bavarian Belle Époque. Those familiar with the reminiscences of Hermann Heimpel and Karl Alexander or the historical writings of Karl Möckl will have gained the impression that only those who lived through this time would have known the real douceur de vivre. The young Orff grew up in his parents' house free from any material worries. He was not drawn to military honours but rather to books, musical scores and old languages. He was already having piano lessons at the age of five. He made up the music to accompany his puppet theatre. The first song cycles were written. From the autumn of 1912 he studied composition with Anton Beer-Walbrunn, a friend of Max Reger's who embodied the modem trend at the Academy of Music in Munich. Orff strove for a theatrical career; he achieved this by working with Hermann Zilcher as a repetiteur with the necessary pianistic gifts. From 1915-1917 he was a conductor at the theatre called the Munich Kammerspiele. Karl Marx, later to become a friend, noticed the fair-haired young man with the characteristic profile, who passed the time during the troop medical inspection in May 1917 by studying the pocket score of Reger's string quartet in F# minor. After a short period of compulsory duty with the First Royal Regiment of Bavarian Field Artillery in Poland, where he was buried alive and became consequently ill, Orff worked as a conductor at the National Theatre in Mannheim, and then at the Court Theatre in Darmstadt; he returned to Munich in 1919 and dedicated himself to composing songs. Taking lessons (amongst others from Pfitzner and Kaminski) and giving lessons (amongst others to Werner Egk), progressing slowly, discovering much, searching doggedly, interested in old scores, he became fundmentally an eclectic and self-taught working artist.
In the stormy, culturally so productive years of the Weimar Republic, the "Roaring Twenties", one would at first glance have taken Orff to be a stranger. Was he not primarily interested in music education, a man who, with Dorothee Günther, was working at the revitalisation of Dance and Movement, who was composing songs with piano accompaniment, and who was preparing his Schulwerk? One thereby overlooks two points, of course: first that the school music of the Weimar Republic, as it had been newly conceived in 1920, had a thoroughly political character, that it was in fact a showcase for a political education of the people - one has only to mention the name of Leo Kestenberg. Within this scheme there was room for much of what was currently being sung, played and newly discovered, from the songs of the Youth Movement to the eagerly collected "Verklingende Weisen" of folk songs and hymns - not to forget the work and protest songs of the time. In the Memorandum concerning the total involvement of Music in school and society (1923), conceived by Kestenberg and issued by the Prussian Ministry of Culture, one reads: Music must once more become a part of the life of all our people, its practice must lead to personal activity, to singing and playing oneself. The boat builder on his boat who plays the accordion, the worker who goes from his workplace to the rehearsal room of his male choir - they are perhaps as inwardly rich as the subscribers to big symphony concerts who go on a fixed day and time to hear a familiar symphony conducted by their favourite conductor (Quoted by Heide Hammel, Die Schulmusik in der Weimarer Republik, Stuttgart 1990, p.140). On the other hand the music of the time, particularly the avant garde, addressed itself with educational pathos to the general public, to nation and state. Educational works were produced not only in the field of contemporary literature - Brecht, Bronnen, Kaiser - but also in the field of contemporary music. And Orff also had his place in this spectrum, formed from expressionistic world-friendliness, humanist-social involvement and a revolutionary agitprop mood, that ranged from Fritz Jöde to Paul Hindemith and Hanns Eisler; it is no surprise that he set poems by Franz Werfel, wrote choral pieces to texts by Bert Brecht, and worked together with Kestenberg and Hermann Scherchen.
Had the Weimar Republic been granted a longer life, Orff might have become a musical educator of the people within the limits of democratic conditions. None of his undertakings were foreign to the political-educational aspirations of the First Republic. He was no conductor of worker choirs; his combinations and predilections, his educational models were different; above all, they were musically, not politically motivated. But with his inclination to combine old and contemporary, to bring new life to old instruments and performance techniques and at the same time delivering some well-aimed blows at the middle class music culture as an example: degrading the pianoforte to the status of percussion instrument! Considering all this he certainly did not stand alone during these years.
Orff was a late-developer. It was his problem, perhaps his misfortune, that he did not find his own unchangeable style in the Weimar years, but only later. The musician Orff, as we know him, was bom in the thirties. In June 1937 on the occasion of the dress rehearsal of Carmina Burana, when in relation to his publisher he dissociated himself from his previous compositional style and disowned the early offspring of his muse, the National Socialists had already been in power in Germany for four years. The conclusive breakthrough of the composer Carl Orff, his rise to European, and later worldwide fame and significance fell (sadly) in the Nazi time.
Did this rise have anything materially to do with the Nazi time? Did an elective affinity exist? Did the new "national community" offer a sounding board for the work of the composer in his middle forties? Fierce battles have raged about this in Germany and elsewhere in most recent times - and not only then! There is no doubt that some elements can be clarified - and even the most recent controversy about Michael Kater's study Carl Orff in the Third Reich has contributed much to this clarification if one disregards some of the terrible simplifications appearing in the media. Orff was no Nazi. Inwardly he had nothing to do with National Socialism; he had absolutely no political aspirations, neither before 1933 nor after (and also not after 1945). He was a composer and he wanted to have his works performed. He believed in his gift, if you will: in his mission. Composers have a hard time in totalitarian regimes - the biographies of Schönberg, Hindemith and Shostakovich in our century, to name but these three, show this very clearly. For composers in this situation there is fundamentally only one alternative: to emigrate or to remain. To go underground, to appear in clandestine publications, to paint pictures in secret, this is all possible within limits for writers and painters who oppose the status quo, but remains denied to the composer. For the Gods have ordained that there shall be a performance before musical fame can be achieved. Music, particularly dramatic music, is not simply there; it consists of notes in a score. It is an arduous process, it demands preparation, contracts, rehearsals, singers, an orchestra, the contribution of many people, inclusion in theatre repertoires, advertising in the media - already a colossal collective endeavour in normal times, how much more so under the requirements of a malicious, unpredictable, capricious system, often led from different sources of power that did not agree and were in fact rivals! I know only a few leading composers of the twentieth century who deliberately withdrew from the music business and regarded their scores as private works available for future generations, quite unconcerned about their being realised. The most significant of these was Anton Webem, tragically killed in 1945 by the bullet of an American soldier in the Occupation Forces. But this was not the normal way; it requires an extreme, idealistic understanding of musical workmanship. Most composers do not want to withdraw. Even in the "Reich des Menschenfressers" (regime of the cannibal) - according to Thomas Mann - they wanted to have their works heard and made available to others. To achieve this of course one had to make compromises. As Carl Orff also had to in the Third Reich.
Did he go too far in this respect? Orff's contribution as a composer to the Olympic Games in 1936 does not constitute a corpus delicti. On that occasion the representatives of all nations, including those who later fought against Germany, were sitting at Hitler's feet in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. (Kurt Schumacher, at that time in a concentration camp, did not refrain from pointing this out with biting sarcasm in the speeches he made after the war.) Shortly before the eleventh hour in 1944, Orff was able to avoid having to compose "battle music" for the weekly cinema news reel. The fact that he was prepared to make a new musical setting for Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, a suggestion that even Hans Pfitzner firmly rejected, is more questionable. To manage to become a musical replacement for the "Jew Mendelssohn" at the particular behest of a top functionary of the Nazi Party - that appears to us today as a bad example of kowtowing to the powerful of that time. Certainly, Orff's Shakespeare plans were long-standing, they went back to when he was conductor at the Munich Kammerspiele in Falckenberg's time. Orff's reasons were aesthetic, not political. He had never found Mendelssohn's stage music appropriate - it was too gentle, too sweet. He thought he could match Shakespeare's drama more nearly with his own. The argument that it was immaterial to Orff that Mendelssohn was a Jew (and this is verifiable in the available source material!) can hardly be accepted unexamined; it overestimates the scope of musical autonomy in a state committed to a particular Weltanschauung. The National Socialists merely added Orff's aesthetic arguments to their other political triumphs. They would have taken no notice of his insistence on the absolute power of music. For the Nazis there was nothing musical that was not also political.
This is how the Nazis were - and Orff had assessed the time correctly when in the fairy tale play Die Kluge (1943) the imprisoned father sings: Those who have power are in the right, and those who are in the right will turn it to their own uses, for force rules over everything. In this sentence one could clearly have recognised, as in the mischievous exchange of the three vagabonds (Faith is struck dead. Justice lives in great penury...), an allusion to the conditions current at the time. I only fear that Orff saw politics in this light at all times in his life. It might not always have appeared so tyrannical and criminal as in the Third Reich, but for a man who wanted to create, to produce, it could be dangerously distracting and disturbing. If the powers in control gave music full scope and freedom, all was well - that is why Orff had absolutely no problems or difficulties with either of the two democratic republics, those of Weimar and Bonn. His musical realm should remain without disturbances or disputes, this was the most important maxim. His ideal was represented by an inwardness protected from those in power (not by those in power!). And for Orff, tyranny was mainly evil and wicked because it destroyed the autonomy of the Arts, because everything was sucked into the undertow of politics.
Only these conclusions make it understandable that the friends Kurt Huber and Carl Orff, according to trustworthy witnesses, talked exclusively about music, and not about politics, on the many occasions when they met. And one also understands Orff's first reaction to Huber's arrest, as transmitted by Clara Huber: Now I shall no longer be able to compose. Politics had overpowered Music. That Carl Orff later tried nevertheless to make political capital out of his musical association with his friend, or, more accurately, tried to avert the possible harm of a ban on performances of his works imposed by the American Occupation Forces - that was rather a kind of satyric drama after the end of the tragedy. For if Orff was certainly no Nazi, and if he heartily despised the Nazis - he was also certainly no resistance fighter. Nevertheless how can one, how may one - especially when born at a later time - so ingenuously expect this from an artist living in the Third Reich?
When Orff had survived the war and the Third Reich, when his "Bavarian Play" Die Bernauerin, could be performed in Stuttgart in 1947, when his post-war and mature productions began: Antigone (1949), Trionfo di Afrodite (1953), Oedipus the King (1959), Prometheus (1968), the Easter and Christmas plays and finally De temporum fine comoedia (1973), he seemed finally to have circumnavigated the dangerous cliffs of the first half of his life. Orff was an established master. The young Republic - also establishing and consolidating itself - was adorned by his fame. In 1950-1960 he directed a master-class for composition at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik (State College of Music) in Munich. In 1961 a training centre and seminar for the development of the Orff-Schulwerk - later the Orff-Institut - was opened at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. His ideas about music education, like his dramatic works, spread all over the world. They found acceptance in kindergartens and schools, in teacher training and adult education, in remedial education and in music therapy. Orff was compensated for the withdrawal of a large number of musicologists and critics through many friendships with philosophers, historians and philologists. His home in Diessen, where he both worked and lived, became a place of pilgrimage. It was here that the composer worked in the early morning hours amongst his books and collections, here he heard the "Amixl" (dialect for the blackbird in Die Bernauerin) singing and here he looked at the "Mond-Eiche" (the oak tree from which the moon hung in DerMond) in the park. The comfortable country house with its old family pictures, his wife Liselotte's Iceland ponies, the Chinese and Javanese gongs, the cymbals, bells and drums seemed - with characteristically different emphases - to be comparable to Richard Strauss' Villa in Garmisch. Since Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss there has been no composer living in Bavaria who has achieved such undisputed world-wide recognition as Carl Orff.
We could thus say goodbye to this idyll as a happy ending to Orff's long and sometimes stormy journey through life - were there not in the end one question, as with any life's work, what remains? What remains of Orff's personality, of Orff's music? To try to answer this question we must look back again at the life of this Bavarian master - this time not confronting the political world, but looking at the musical and music historical connections with his life.
When Carl Orff began to experiment and to compose before the First World War, the language of late romanticism was prevalent in song, in chamber music and in music for the stage - in all the genres in which the young musician tried his hand. Refinement was trumps. The tonal system was extended and stretched without being broken. The ear was gripped and tickled by a subtle and appealing harmony. Extramusical objects left their mark: Oriental pictures, hanging gardens, the sensuous magic of exotic landscapes, flowers and animals. A select, precious, aristocratic world stood opposite the real ugliness of the cities, factories and machines. The musical echo of these contrasting creations ranged from Debussy to Strauss, from Pfitzner to the young Schönberg.
This late romantic world collapsed in the First World War. Strictly speaking its demise started earlier; the catastrophe only made the occurrence clearly visible and audible. In poetry, music and art there was a whirl of new experiments, new starting points and beginnings. Above all the musical cards were reshuffled. Much was clarified and simplified. In the course of time Orff's compositions also became simpler, more elemental; the linear became more prominent, rhythm, at first barely significant adapted itself to the word; dissonances, but not the kind appearing to require resolution, "Personanzklänge" as they were later called, started the replacement of functional harmony.
Hans Joachim Moser, Werner Thomas, Wilhelm Keller and Horst Leuchtmann have analysed the elements of this new tonal language: the monotony, the repetition, a consciously barren tonal landscape, a musical principle of economy, ostinato techniques, the restriction of melody and others besides. The music brings about the most concise expression, the narrowest enveloping of the words. It releases and gathers its rhythmic and musical energies. Once the musical formula is found, as Orff says, it remains the same for each repetition. The conciseness of the verbal expression makes the repetition and its effect possible. Listening to Orff's music with today's ears, with the ears of the nineties, some of it sounds like an early foretaste of something like Techno; and parallels to Rock, to Klang-art cannot be ignored. The uncovering of musical energies in pulsing, almost toneless rhythm, in stamping, thundering and drumming seems in no way to have exhausted all its possibilities. Carl Orff may be considered as one of the forerunners of those placing such a concentration on the value of rhythmic movement in music. Melodies become sequences of notes. The flow of speech is stemmed, breaks up in pieces till only sounds, crackles and hisses remain. Of course a possible surplus of monotony in Orff's music dramas is carefully balanced through new forms of recitativo secco and arioso, through melody that is freely modal and through orchestral primary colours produced by an orchestra that, in contrast to that of the classic-romantic period, consists of xylophones, percussion, double basses, woodwind and brass.
This is no longer traditional music. In the music dramas of his mature years, as spacious as they are concentrated, Orff distances himself ever more decisively than before from the dominant music schools of thought of the twentieth century. His way is different from the musical constructivism of the Viennese School - but he also leaves the great stimulus and source of his youth, Igor Stravinsky, somewhat far behind him. In a certain sense, in turning away from opera and turning towards drama, he is continuing the work of Richard Wagner - except that he supports the words much more radically than the master of Bayreuth, and in contrast to him avoids using the symphonic commentary of an orchestra opposite the singing and reciting human voice. In the end, practically all that remains is the language, Greek or Latin, old Bavarian or old French, and it is both inexhaustible and at the same time the hidden source and storehouse of all tonal and rhythmic energy. "There would be no sound, where the word is lacking" - One could thus adapt Stefan George's verse in relation to Orff.
Orff's music, his mousike - I use the Greek expression purposely - offers less to the ear than traditional opera. But on the other hand it includes all the senses; for it is not only tone but also dance, not only sound but also play, not only song but also scene, theatre - it is music in the sense of an art that unifies and embraces all the other arts, as the Greeks first conceived it.
The idea of such a music, one that is constantly renewing itself through its language forms, is perhaps the boldest idea that the musician Carl Orff has left to posterity. It reaches far beyond his own work and its future historical evaluation. Therein lies its significance for the future. In a world that grows ever closer its separate individualities are maintained through their languages. Out of all languages, every single one - this is Orff's idea - music can be made. Such a music would no longer be an artificial creation of its own, removed from the visual and language arts, it would remain closely connected with the cultural archetypes of mankind, their languages and speakers. And it would thus to some extent be both universal and indi-vidual, both archaic and modern: a foretaste of the new music of one world.
Hans Maier, University Professor, born 18 June 1931 in Freiburg im Breisgau. Studied in Freiburg, Munich and Paris. From 1962 Professor for Political Science at the University of Munich; 1970-1986 Bavarian State Minister for Education and Culture; since 1988 full Professor for Christian Weltanschauung, Religious and Cultural Theory at the University of Munich. Several publications about constitutional and administrative history, state church politics, and the history of the Christian political parties.
Produced by Schott Musik International, Mainz
In cooperation with Orff-Zentrum Munich
Orff's Musical and Moral Failings
By RICHARD TARUSKIN
NYT May 6, 2001
Was Carl Orff a Nazi?
DON'T look now, but Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra are teasing us again about music
and politics. In recent concerts they have given us politically excruciating but musically attractive
cantatas by Franz Schmidt, who toadied to Hitler, and Sergei Prokofiev, who did it to Stalin. As a
follow-up, one might expect a program of musically excruciating but politically attractive works.
But no, we don't need the American Symphony for that. Such pieces are all over the map, what with Joseph
Schwantner's banalities in praise of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ("New Morning for the
World"), John Harbison's in furtherance of Middle East peace ("Four Psalms"), Ellen Taaffe
Zwilich's in defense of the environment (Symphony No. 4: "The Gardens") or Philip Glass's on
behalf of every piety in sight (Symphony No. 5: "Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya"), just to name a few.
Instead, the same formula, with its implied torture to our collective conscience, will be ridden again,
pitting politics everybody loves to hate against music many hate to love but find vexingly irresistible.
Under the title "After 'Carmina Burana': A Historical Perspective," the orchestra is
sponsoring a daylong symposium next Sunday at LaGuardia High School near Lincoln Center, and a concert on
May 16 at Avery Fisher Hall, devoted to Carl Orff's "Catulli Carmina" (1943) and his rarely
heard "Trionfo di Afrodite" (1951).
Together with "Carmina Burana" (1936), which, as it happens, Zdenek Macal and the New Jersey
Symphony will perform beginning on May 16 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, these two
cantatas or, as originally intended, choral ballets make up a trilogy called "Trionfi," first
performed at La Scala in Milan in 1953. Widely regarded as a magnified (or inflated) and popularized
(or dumbed-down) sequel to (or knockoff of) "Les Noces," Stravinsky's choral ballet of 1923,
"Trionfi" stands as a monument to . . . what? The triumph of artistic independence (and prescient
accessibility) in an age of musical hermeticism and conformism mandated by the cold war? The persistence of
instinctive affirmation of life in an age of thermonuclear threat and existential disillusion? The survival
of Nazi-inspired artistic barbarism under cover of classical simplicity?
The possibilities don't end there, although these three have had vocal exponents, and they will probably
get a heated airing at the symposium. But why, exactly, has the Nazi taint stuck so doggedly to Orff, who
(unlike Herbert von Karajan or Elisabeth Schwarzkopf) never belonged to the Nazi Party? Is it because
two-thirds of his trilogy was very successfully performed under Nazi auspices? If being loved by the Nazis
were enough to damn, we would have to take leave not only of Orff, and not only of Wagner, but also of Bach,
Beethoven and Brahms. Is it because Orff's cantatas are the only musical fruits of the Third Reich
(apart, perhaps, from the later, less popular operas of Richard Strauss) to survive in active repertory
today? Then why do we tolerate all that Soviet music?
Or is it merely because the Nazis offer an "objective" pretext for dismissal to those who
subjectively disapprove of Orff's music for other reasons: reasons having to do, could it be, with
prudery?
Unlike Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Orff never wrote music in actual praise of his Leader or explicitly
touting a totalitarian party line. Prokofiev's "Toast to Stalin," performed by the American
Symphony in December, is fairly well known. Shostakovich's film score for "The Fall of Berlin"
ends with a resounding paean to the dictator. (It will take a heap of ingenuity to find hidden dissidence
in that one.) Both Russians also wrote plenty of Communist mass songs to order. Orff's controversial
cantatas, by contrast, set medieval German poetry (in Latin and Bavarian dialect), and classical texts by
Catullus, Sappho and Euripides in the original languages, along with additional Latin lyrics by the
composer himself, a trained "humanist."
The worst Orff can be accused of is opportunism. He accepted a 1938 commission from the mayor of Frankfurt
to create a replacement for the incidentally Jewish Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
music. And he was the composer of a special work, since lost, for the 1936 Olympics. Were these not
compromises? Mr. Botstein will argue not, that they were the actions of a man seeking patronage for his
art in the only places it was available in Germany at the time.
STRAVINSKY'S repetitions are offset by rhythmic irregularities so that they elude easy memorization and
remain surprising even after many hearings. As a result, the overall mood of "Les Noces" and
"The Rite of Spring," his loudest pseudo-aboriginal scores, is grim, even terrifying. Orff's
rhythms are uniformly foursquare, his melodies catchy, his moods ingratiating. His music provides what the
Australian musicologist Margaret King recently called "an instant tape loop for the mind," something
that, grasped fully and immediately, reverberates in the head the way propaganda is supposed to do. As Mr.
Ross put it, even after half a century or more, Orff's music remains "as adept as ever at rousing
primitive, unreflective enthusiasm."
Is that a reason to love it or to hate it? Everybody likes to indulge the herd instinct now and then, as
Thomas Mann so chillingly reminded us in "Mario and the Magician." It is just because we like it
that we ought to resist it. Could the Nazi Holocaust have been carried off without expertly rousing
primitive, unreflective enthusiasm in millions? Was Orff's neo-paganism unrelated to the ideology that
reigned in his homeland when he wrote his most famous scores?
In 1937, the year in which "Carmina Burana" enjoyed its smashing success, the National Socialists
were engaged in a furious propaganda battle with the churches of Germany, countering the Christian message
of compassion with neo-pagan worship of holy hatred. And what could better support the Nazi claim that the
Germans, precisely in their Aryan neo-paganism, were the true heirs of Greco-Roman ("Western")
culture than Orff's animalistic settings of Greek and Latin poets?
Did Orff intend precisely this? Was he a Nazi? These questions are ultimately immaterial. They allow the
deflection of any criticism of his work into irrelevant questions of rights: Orff's right to compose his
music, our right to perform and listen to it. Without questioning either, one may still regard his music as
toxic, whether it does its animalizing work at Nazi rallies, in school auditoriums, at rock concerts, in
films, in the soundtracks that accompany commercials or in Avery Fisher Hall.
Orff knew Kurt Huber, but their friendship was based on common music interests, not politics; Orff was not a member of the White Rose. Never a National Socialist, Orff did whatever was required to work in peace, to keep away from politics, and to get through a dirty system as cleanly as possible (27). After reading Kater's article, it is hard to disagree with this assessment, or to avoid thinking it apt for many of those "gray, ambiguous persons, ready to compromise" whom Primo Levi identified both inside and outside the Lager. Source
Michael H. Kater, "Carl Orff im Dritten Reich," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 43, 1 (January 1995): 1-35. Reviewed by David B. Dennis (originally published by H-German on 25 January 1996)