Carl Orff

Carl Orff is a German Compositeur , born the July 10th 1895 with Munich and dead the March 29th 1982 in Munich also.

Biography

Studies

Carl Orff, wire of two good musicians, quickly shows in his youth of intelligence and curiosity. Later, it does not encounter difficulties in its musical studies although it does not support the academism of some of its professors. He prefers to improvise to control the piano rather than to play of the parts of the Masters of the past. In 1912, it enters to the academy of music of Munich. There still, he always does not get along with his professors, nevertheless these years of studies will be fertile. It composes an opera, Gisei, drawn from a Japanese part and strongly influenced by Claude Debussy.

Musical career

In 1914, it still takes lessons of interpretation with Hermann Zilcher. In 1916, It is named leader and musical director of Münchner Kammerspiele. It takes share with the war in 1917 but is demobilized for wound. With the return, it is named musical director and leader of the operas of Mannheim and Darmstadt. After the war, eager to associate the text, the music and the movement, it is devoted to the study and the composition. It gives up its functions with the opera of Darmstadt. In 1920, he marries Alice Solscher of which he will have a girl, Godela, in 1921. He will marry in fact four times, his last wife being Liselotte Schmitz.

After having studied Claudio Monteverdi, it tests a passion for the Italian rebirth and will make many adaptations of Orfeo. In 1924, it founds a school of dance: Güntherschule, with Dorothee Günther, a dancer. In 1937, it composes its greater success: Dyed with carmine Burana , work inspired of songs of the Middle Ages found in the Abbey of Ottobeuren. The type-setter found his way and in 1939 he writes Der Mond (the moon) and Die Kluge (the wise wife).

In 1943, it composes the Catulli Carmina and, to supplement this pagan triptych, the Trionfo di Afrodite in 1953. Thereafter he writes nothing any more but for the musical theater of the parts such as Antigone or temporum fine comoedia, his last work, which returns to the shapes of the theater crowned with ritual dances. In 1961, it founds its school in Mozarteum of Salzburg then gives conferences to present its teaching method. It had as raises the New Zealand type-setter Edwin Carr (1926-2003) in works of which the print of his Master will be noticed.

Considered by all, Carl Orff dies out on March 29th, 1982. He was marked by the music of his time. Attracted by Arnold Schoenberg or Richard Strauss, it did not test anything for the atonal music however.

Orff is not however known nowadays that for Carmina Burana . It causes sometimes mistrust, perhaps because of being remained in Germany and to have composed during third Reich, although it never adhered to its ideas.

Principal works

Its Schulwerk (school workshop) is not really a method as one often thinks it in France. They are rather teaching orientations of which the original intention is to support an harmonious development of the child thanks to the music known as elementary and the movement. Musical pedagogy Carl Orff is opened with all (not only with the children), it is “nonélitiste and ludic”. It is practiced in group and uses a whole of small percussions (xylophones, métallophones, etc), called: “instrumentarium Orff”. This pedagogy uses as support of works of the traditional repertory of all the cultures while supporting creation and the improvisation. The song, the dance, the movement, the theater, the body percussions… find there a place quite as important as the instrumental and musical technique. Admittedly, there exist collections of musical education ( music for children , 1930-1933, revised in 1950-1954, of which there exists a signed French version of Jos Wuytack) but Orff pedagogy is taught exclusively for the example and the experimentation through training courses and formations, from where its classification in the active methods. For more information on the Orff-Schulwerk , see the site of association Carl Orff France.

In its famous scenic cantata Dyed with carmine Burana (1937), it uses poems of XIIIe century and creates a deliberately simple music, for full orchestra and chorus, articulated around pulsations and of vigorous rates/rhythms, with rich sonorities. This work constitutes the first part of a trilogy entitled Trionfi (Triumphs), which includes/understands the Catulli dyed with carmine (cantata according to Catulle, 1943), for chorus, voice solo, pianos and percussions, in which the chorus provides a quasi instrumental accompaniment to the soloists, and Trionfo di Afrodite (Triumph of Aphrodite, 1953), for full orchestra and chorus. This trilogy is founded on texts glorifiant the love.

Among its other works, let us quote the operas Der Mond (the Moon, 1939) and Die Kluge (the warned Woman, 1943), both inspired by the Tales of Grimm, and austere the Antigonae (1949) which, on the text of Sophocle (translated into German by Hölderlin), seeks to find the dimension of the Greek tragedy. The last philosopher's stone of Carl Orff is the opera-oratorio Of temporum fine comœdia (1973).

Scenic works

Dyed with carmine Burana, 1937
Der Mond ( the Moon ), 1939
Ein Sommernachtstraum ( the one night Dream of summer ), 1939
Die Kluge ( the intelligent Woman ), 1943
Catulli dyed with carmine, 1943
Die Bernauerin, 1947
Antigonae, 1949
Astutuli, 1953
Trionfo di Afrodite ( Triumph of Aphrodite ), 1953
Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione, 1957
Oedipus der Tyrann, 1959
Ludus of nato infante mirificus, 1960
Prometheus, 1968
De Temporum fine comoedia ( play of the end of time ), 1973

External bonds

Biography of Carl Orff

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