Carl Orff
Carl Heinrich Maria Orff (German: [ɔʁf]; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982[1]) was a German composer and music educator,[2] who composed the cantata Carmina Burana (1937).[3] The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education.
"Orff" redirects here. For other uses, see Orff (disambiguation).
Carl Orff
10 July 1895
29 March 1982 (aged 86)
Life[edit]
Early life[edit]
Carl Heinrich Maria Orff was born in Munich on 10 July 1895, the son of Paula Orff (née Köstler, 1872–1960) and Heinrich Orff (1869–1949). His family was Bavarian and was active in the Imperial German Army; his father was an army officer with strong musical interests, and his mother was a trained pianist. His grandfathers, Carl von Orff (1828–1905) and Karl Köstler (1837–1924), were both major generals and also scholars.[4][5][6] His paternal grandmother, Fanny Orff (née Kraft, 1833–1919), was Catholic of Jewish descent.[7][8] His maternal grandmother was Maria Köstler (née Aschenbrenner, 1845–1906).[1] Orff had one sibling, his younger sister Maria ("Mia", 1898–1975),[9] who married the architect Alwin Seifert (1890–1972) in 1924.[10]
Despite his family's military background, Orff recalled in 1970: "In my father's house there was certainly more music making than drilling."[11] At age five, he began to play piano, and later studied cello and organ.[4] He composed a few songs and music for puppet plays.[2] He had two vignettes published in July 1905 in Das gute Kind, the children's supplement to Die katholische Familie.[12] He began attending concerts in 1903 and heard his first opera (Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman) in 1909. The formative concerts he attended included the world premiere of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in 1911 and Richard Strauss conducting his opera Elektra on 4 June 1914.[13]
In 1910–12, Orff wrote several dozen Lieder on texts by German poets, including the song set Frühlingslieder (Opus 1, text by Ludwig Uhland) and the song cycle Eliland: Ein Sang von Chiemsee (Opus 12, text by Karl Stieler). The poet whose work he most frequently used was Heinrich Heine; he also chose texts of Walther von der Vogelweide, Princess Mathilde of Bavaria (1877–1906), Friedrich Hölderlin, Ludwig August Frankl, Hermann Lingg, Rudolf Baumbach, Richard Beer-Hofmann, and Börries von Münchhausen, among others. Orff's songs fell into the style of Richard Strauss and other German composers of the day, but with hints of what would become Orff's distinctive musical language. Some of his songs were published in 1912. These include Eliland, with a dedication to Karl Köstler, who funded the publication.[14][a] In 1911–12, Orff wrote Zarathustra (Opus 14), a large work for baritone voice, three tenor-bass choruses, winds, percussion, harps, pianos, and organ, based on a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel Also sprach Zarathustra.[15][16]
Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music from 1912 until 1914.[15][17] Orff later wrote that his decision to pursue music studies instead of completing Gymnasium was the source of family strife, as the Orff patriarch (his father's older brother, also named Karl Orff, 1863–1942[18]) was against the idea. Orff had the support of his mother, who persuaded his father, and of his grandfather Köstler.[19] Orff's teacher at the Akademie was the composer Anton Beer-Walbrunn, of whom he later wrote with respect but said that he found the academy overall to be "conservative and old-fashioned" (konservativ und altväterlich).[20] At this time, he studied the works of Arnold Schoenberg, and one of his most important influences at this time was the French composer Claude Debussy.[21] These influences can be heard in his first stage work, the music drama Gisei: Das Opfer (Gisei: The Sacrifice, Opus 20), written in 1913 but not performed until 2010. Orff's source material is a German translation of part of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami, specifically "Terakoya" ("The Village School") in Act IV. In 1914 Orff wrote Tanzende Faune: Ein Orchesterspiel (Opus 21). The work was to be performed at the Akademie—his first performance by an orchestra—but conductor Eberhard Schwickerath removed it from the program following an unsuccessful rehearsal;[22] it was first performed in 1995. In 1915, he began studying piano with Hermann Zilcher. Writing to his father, he called the studies with Zilcher his most productive teacher relationship to date.[23] Around this time he also came to know theater director Otto Falckenberg, and saw plays by August Strindberg and Frank Wedekind.[24]
Works[edit]
Carmina Burana[edit]
Orff is best known for Carmina Burana (1936), a "scenic cantata". It is the first part of a trilogy that also includes Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. Carmina Burana reflects his interest in medieval German poetry. The trilogy as a whole is called Trionfi, or "Triumphs". The work is based on thirteenth-century poetry found in a manuscript dubbed the Codex latinus monacensis found in the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern in 1803 and written by the Goliards; this collection is also known as Carmina Burana. While "modern" in some of his compositional techniques, Orff was able to capture the spirit of the medieval period in this trilogy. The medieval poems, written in Latin and an early form of German, are a lament about the cruel indifference of fate (the brief opening and closing sections of Orff's work are titled "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi", i.e., "Fortune, Ruler of the World"). The chorus that opens and concludes Carmina Burana, "O Fortuna", is often used to denote primal forces, for example in the Oliver Stone film The Doors.[193] The work's association with fascism also led Pier Paolo Pasolini to use the movement "Veris leta facies" to accompany the concluding scenes of torture and murder in his final film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.[194] Pasolini was concerned with the question of art being appropriated by power when he made the film, which has relevance to Orff's situation.[195]
Relationship to pre-Carmina Burana works[edit]
Orff often said that, following a dress rehearsal for Carmina Burana, he told his publisher the following: "Everything that I have written up until now and that you, unfortunately, have printed you now can pulp. With Carmina Burana begins my collected works."[196][c] Michael H. Kater has called this statement into question, citing a lack of documentary evidence and the continuation of performances of Orff's previous works after the premiere of Carmina Burana,[197] although in fact most of these performances used revised versions.[198][199] Orff eventually qualified his oft-repeated statement: "So I had said this thoughtlessly, con leggerezza [i.e. "lightly"]: a remark that, as I well knew, was true and also not true. I only wanted to accentuate with it the meaning that the Carmina Burana held in my creations up to that point, as was clear to me myself."[200] When asked about the quotation in 1975, Orff replied: "For the first time I had done exactly what I wanted, and I also knew that I had treated it right. Really there is nothing more to say."[201] Orff went on to revise many of his earlier works, and later in his career he reissued some of his pre-Carmina Burana compositions with minimal revisions. One of his final publications was a volume of songs he had composed between 1911 and 1920.[202]
After World War II[edit]
Most of Orff's later works – Antigonae (1949), Oedipus der Tyrann (Oedipus the Tyrant, 1959), Prometheus desmotes (Prometheus Bound, 1968), and De temporum fine comoedia (Play on the End of Times, 1973) – were based on texts or topics from antiquity. They extend the language of Carmina Burana in interesting ways, but they are expensive to stage and (on Orff's own characterization) are not operas in the conventional sense.[203] Live performances of them have been few, even in Germany.[204]
In a letter dated 8 January 1947 to his student Heinrich Sutermeister, Orff called Die Bernauerin "the last piece in the series of my earlier work; Antigonae starts a new phase."[205] Antigonae is a setting of Friedrich Hölderlin's translation of the play by Sophocles. Orff first became interested in this source material shortly after his trauma in World War I and began planning his work late in 1940.[206] The premiere took place on 9 August 1949 at the Salzburg Festival. Orff followed Antigonae with Oedipus der Tyrann, also using Hölderlin's translation of Sophocles's play, and Prometheus, using the original language of the Greek play attributed to Aeschylus. Their premieres took place in Stuttgart, respectively in 1959 and 1968, conducted by Ferdinand Leitner. All three of the Greek tragedies make no cuts or alterations to the texts.[207]
The Greek tragedies are scored for highly unusual ensembles centered on large percussion ensembles, which include non-Western instruments and numerous mallet instruments (including lithophone), and several pianos (four in Prometheus and six in the other two); the traditional string section is dispensed with excepting nine contrabasses. They also have six flutes and six oboes (with various auxiliary doublings of piccolo, alto flute, and English horn), as well as trumpets (six in Antigonae and Prometheus; eight in Oedipus der Tyrann, behind the scene). Oedipus der Tyrann and Prometheus also have six trombones and organ. All three works also have four harps; there is additionally mandolin in Oedipus der Tyrann and four tenor banjos in Prometheus.
Following the premiere of Prometheus, Everett Helm wrote: