Carl Orff

Early life Carl Heinrich Maria Orff was born in Munich on 10 July 1895, the son of Paula Orff (; 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, (1828–1905) and Karl Köstler (1837–1924), were both major generals and also scholars. His paternal grandmother, Fanny Orff (née Kraft; 1833–1919), was the daughter of Jews who had converted to Catholicism before her birth, Heinrich Kraft (1784–1866) and Barbara Kraft (née Neustädtl, 1797–1872). His maternal grandmother was Maria Köstler (née Aschenbrenner; 1845–1906). Orff had one sibling, his younger sister Maria ("Mia", 1898–1975), who married the architect Alwin Seifert (1890–1972) in 1924. Despite his family's military background, Orff recalled in 1970: "In my father's house there was certainly more music making than drilling." At age five, he began to play piano, and later studied cello and organ. He composed a few songs and music for puppet plays. 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. 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. 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. Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music from 1912 until 1914. 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) was against the idea. Orff had the support of his mother, who persuaded his father, and of his grandfather Köstler. 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). 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. 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 removed it from the program following an unsuccessful rehearsal; 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. Around this time he also came to know theater director Otto Falckenberg, and saw plays by August Strindberg and Frank Wedekind. World War I Orff was forced into the German Army in August 1917, which was a great crisis for him. In a letter to his father dated 3 August 1917, he wrote: The coming fall, he was severely injured and nearly killed when a trench caved in, suffering amnesia, aphasia, and paralysis of his left-side. During his difficult recovery, he wrote to his father: After Orff's death in 1982, his daughter wrote that she believed this experience "made him think and rebel yet more revolutionarily." Weimar Republic After recovering from his battle injuries, Orff held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt, later returning to Munich to pursue his music studies. Around 1920, Orff was drawn to the poetry of Franz Werfel, which became the basis for numerous Lieder and choral compositions. In the mid-1920s, he began to formulate a concept he called , or elemental music, which was based on the unity of the arts symbolized by the ancient Greek Muses, and involved tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture. Like many other composers of the time, he was influenced by the Russian-French émigré Igor Stravinsky. But while others followed the cool, balanced neoclassic works of Stravinsky, it was works such as Les noces (The Wedding), an earthy, quasi-folkloric depiction of Russian peasant wedding rites, that appealed to Orff. Orff came to know the work of Bertolt Brecht in 1924, which had a profound influence on him. The same year, he and founded the Günther-Schule for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich. He developed his theories of music education, having constant contact with children and working with musical beginners. In 1930, Orff published a manual titled Schulwerk, in which he shares his method of conducting. He was involved with the Schulwerk and its associated institutions throughout his life, although he retired from the Günther-Schule in 1938. Orff also began adapting musical works of earlier eras for contemporary theatrical presentation, including Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro Striggio's opera ''L'Orfeo'' (1607). Orff's shortened German version (with Günther's translation), Orpheus, was staged under his direction in 1925 in Mannheim, using some of the instruments that had been used in the original 1607 performance, although several of these were unavailable and had to be replaced. Orff revised the score a few years later; this version was first performed in Munich in 1929. Orff's adaptations of early music brought him very little money. The passionately declaimed opera of Monteverdi's era was almost unknown in the 1920s, and Orff's production met with reactions ranging from incomprehension to ridicule. He told his mentor Curt Sachs, who had led him to study Monteverdi and supported his Orpheus, that the Munich press was against him: "I am made out to be not only a violator of corpses (see Monteverdi), but also a youth-seducer, who systematically corrupts our good youth with exotic perversities." Nazi era Orff's relationship with German National Socialism and the Nazi Party has been a matter of considerable debate and analysis, sometimes colored by misinformation. Historian Michael H. Kater, whose work is critical of Orff, nevertheless wrote that "Carl Orff's name to many has become synonymous with fascist art and culture, frequently by way of a rather cavalier prejudgment." Orff never joined the Party, nor did he have any leadership position with the Third Reich. He was a member of the Reichsmusikkammer, which was required of active musicians in the Third Reich. Several of Orff's friends and associates went into exile between 1933 and 1939, including Sachs and Leo Kestenberg, the latter of whom was an advocate for his Schulwerk. Orff reconnected with several of these exiled colleagues after the war and in some cases maintained lifelong friendships, as with singer and composer , who emigrated within the first few months of the Nazi takeover. Another such figure is the art historian Albin von Prybram-Gladona (1890–1974), whose parents had converted from Judaism before his birth and who survived multiple incarcerations in concentration camps after he fled to France. Prybram-Gladona testified to Orff's character during the denazification process. Another important friend to Orff was the German-Jewish musicologist and composer Erich Katz (1900–1973), who fled in 1939 after temporary incarceration in Dachau. Orff reestablished contact with Katz in 1952, and Katz considered Orff a valued friend. Orff wrote a tribute upon Katz's death in the form of a letter addressed to the deceased. Carmina Burana Orff's Carmina Burana had its premiere in Frankfurt on 8 June 1937. It became very popular in Nazi Germany over the next few years. Historian Michael H. Kater wrote that "by 1945" it "[stood] out as the single universally important work produced during the entire span of the Third Reich". Oliver Rathkolb, however, has noted that subsequent popular perception has exaggerated the degree of its importance to the culture of the Third Reich, as numerous other works received more stagings. Given Orff's previous lack of commercial success, the monetary gains from Carmina Buranas acclaim, including a 500 RM award from the city of Frankfurt, were significant to him but the composition, with its unfamiliar rhythms, was also denounced with racist taunts. Ein Sommernachtstraum Orff was one of numerous German composers under the Nazi regime who wrote new incidental music for Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream – in German Ein Sommernachtstraum'' – after Mendelssohn's incidental music for that play had been banned. Orff's version was first performed on 14 October 1939 in Frankfurt as the result of a commission through that city. By his report, he had already composed music for the play as early as 1917 and 1927, long before the Frankfurt commission; no materials from these earlier (presumably incomplete) versions are extant. Orff's publisher had serious reservations about the project, and Orff's commission was unable to make the original deadline of the commission, resulting in the reduction of his payment from 5,000 RM to 3,000 RM. He later called the 1939 iteration "a compromised (unfortunately printed) version. In place of the small onstage ensemble there was again a normal small opera orchestra, no more magical percussion, all inexcusable concessions." The composer's discontent, together with his initial difficulties in composition, sometimes has been interpreted at least in part as due to pangs of conscience. Thomas Rösch has written of this project: "The autonomy of art, which Orff always held highly, was only more illusion within the dictatorship – and the insistence of the composer on a purely artistic, aesthetic viewpoint inevitably changed under this condition to a momentous error." Orff went on to rework his Ein Sommernachtstraum score three times. The next version was to have its premiere on 10 September 1944, but the closure of all theaters in dire wartime conditions prevented it from occurring. In December 1945, Orff expressed hope for a performance in Stuttgart, but when Gottfried von Einem asked him in 1946 about a premiere of this version at the Salzburg Festival, he demurred and responded defensively when Einem asked if the work had been a commission from the Third Reich. Orff made further revisions still, and this version was first performed on 30 October 1952 in Darmstadt. It also had an American premiere by Leopold Stokowski at the Empire State Music Festival on 19 July 1956. Orff revised the score yet again in 1962; this final version had its first performance on in Stuttgart on 12 March 1964. Relationship with Kurt Huber Orff was a friend of Kurt Huber (1893–1943), a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), with whom he worked since 1934 on Bavarian folk music. Together with Orff's Schulwerk associate Hans Bergese (1910–2000), they published two volumes of folk music as Musik der Landschaft: Volksmusik in neuen Sätzen in 1942. In December 1942, Huber became a member of the student resistance movement (the White Rose). He was arrested on 27 February 1943, condemned to death by the , and executed by the Nazis on 13 July 1943. By happenstance, Orff called at Huber's house on the day after his arrest. Huber's distraught wife, Clara (née Schlickenrieder; 1908–1998), hoped Orff would use his influence to help her husband, but Orff panicked upon learning of Kurt Huber's arrest, fearing that he was "ruined" (ruiniert). Clara Huber later said she never saw Orff again, but there is documentary evidence that they had further contact. On at least one occasion, she recalled that Orff had attempted to help her husband through Baldur von Schirach (the highest-ranking Nazi official with whom he came into contact, and whom he met at least twice), for which no further evidence has been found. In June 1949, Orff transferred his rights to Musik der Landschaft to Huber's family. Shortly after the war, Clara Huber asked Orff to contribute to a memorial volume for her husband; he contributed an emotional letter written directly to Kurt Huber, similar to what he did for Katz years later. Orff's Die Bernauerin, a project which he completed in 1946 and which he had discussed with Huber before the latter's execution, is dedicated to Huber's memory. The final scene of this work, which is about the wrongful execution of Agnes Bernauer, depicts a guilt-ridden chorus begging not to be implicated in the title character's death. Denazification In late March 1946, Orff underwent a denazification process in Bad Homburg at a psychological screening center of the Information Control Division (ICD), a department of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS). Orff was rated "Grey C, acceptable", which his evaluator Bertram Schaffner (1912–2010) defined as for those "compromised by their actions during the Nazi period but not subscribers to Nazi doctrine". Some sources report that Orff had been blacklisted before the evaluation, which would have prevented him from collecting royalties on his compositions. According to more recent research by Oliver Rathkolb, there is no evidence to support this. In January 1946, American officer Newell Jenkins (1915–1996) – Orff's former student (with whom he used the informal du), who went on to have a career as a conductor – informed him that he did not need a license as a composer if he was not seeking to conduct, teach, or otherwise appear in public. Jenkins, however, hoped that Orff would take an Intendant position in Stuttgart, which Orff was considering after initially saying no. This would require evaluation, and thus Jenkins encouraged Orff to think of how he could prove that he had actively resisted Nazism, as such persons were most highly valued. Orff turned down the Stuttgart position by early March 1946, but Jenkins still insisted Orff undergo an evaluation at the end of that month. Schaffner's report notes: "Orff does not wish a license as 'Intendant' of an opera-house, and states that he has already refused such an offer, because the work would be primarily administrative and not musical. He wishes to have permission to appear as guest-conductor." Orff was granted a license without any restrictions despite his rating of "'Grey C', acceptable", but there is no evidence that he conducted in public after the war. Schaffner believed that the root causes of Nazism included an underlying societal rigidity and authoritarianism in Germany, especially as they pertained to fathers in family life and institutions such as the school and the military. His theories informed his and his colleagues' denazification evaluations. In his report on Orff, Schaffner wrote: There is no evidence that Orff was ever reclassified, but since his license had no restrictions, this was not necessary. For Orff's psychological evaluation, Schaffner wrote: Some scholars have maintained that Orff deceived his evaluators to some degree. The counterpoint is that Orff misrepresented himself in some instances, but the Americans had enough information to assess him fundamentally correctly and rate him accordingly. The report notes some of Orff's financial support from the cities of Frankfurt and Vienna, his participation in the 1936 Summer Olympics, and the music for ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' (although the number of its performances was undercounted), which Orff said he wrote "from his own private musical point of view" but "admit[ted] that he chose an unfortunate moment in history to write it." Orff said "that he never got a favorable review by a Nazi music critic"; however, his work had been enthusiastically received by audiences and many critics. He also said that "[h]is great success" was in 1942 with a performance of Carmina Burana in La Scala in Milan, "not under the auspices of the Propaganda Ministry." In fact, Orff later publicly characterized the second staging of Carmina Burana, which took place in Dresden on 4 October 1940, as the beginning of his great success. The American evaluators disbelieved Orff's account of his reception in the Third Reich: "The fact that he was deferred ... during the war is contradictory to his claim that he was not well thought of at the Propaganda Ministry. ... He does not give a very good [e]xplanation." The report likewise notes Orff's very sharp rise in income in the latter part of the Third Reich. Surprisingly absent from the report are several factors that Orff could have used in his favor, notably his associations with Jewish colleagues as well as his own partly Jewish ancestry, the latter of which was never publicly known while he was alive. Nor is there any mention of the potentially subversive and anti-authoritarian texts in his works, notably the passages in Die Kluge (premiere 1943) that have been identified as such, sometimes even during Orff's lifetime (including by Carl Dahlhaus). White Rose controversy According to Michael Kater, Orff cleared his name during the denazification period by claiming that he had helped establish the White Rose resistance movement in Germany. Kater also made a particularly strong case that Orff collaborated with Nazi German authorities. In some instances the debate focused more on acrimony between those involved. In Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (2000), Kater qualified his earlier accusations to some extent after reviewing the documents that Rathkolb discovered. Subsequently, however, Kater reiterated his initial claim regarding Orff and the White Rose without any reference to the denazification file. While Kater's account has been accepted by some scholars who have investigated the matter further, Rathkolb and others have examined the theory that Orff lied about being a member of the resistance and found insufficient evidence to believe it, noting there is no solid corroboration outside of Kater's interview with Jenkins. Writing in 2021, Siegfried Göllner was not convinced that the allegation about the White Rose lie had been refuted as unambiguously as he felt Rathkolb and Thomas Rösch had claimed, but "since the episode about the White Rose was never on the record or issued openly by Orff, it is ultimately irrelevant whether the episode reported by Jenkins to Kater actually took place or was a matter of misunderstanding. ... Kater in any case attached too much significance to the statement of Jenkins." In 1999, at the height of the controversy, musicologist Reinhard Schulz described the affair as a "scholarly cockfight" (wissenschaftlichen Hahnenkampfes), adding: "Far more important than a single fact would be an understanding of [the] connection" to Orff's life and creativity. Personal life Carl Orff was very guarded as to his personal life. When asked by the theater scholar to provide a handwritten entry for a collection of autobiographies of German composers of the day, for which some of his colleagues wrote as many as three pages, he sent only: "Carl Orff[,] born 1895 in Munich[,] living there" (Carl Orff[,] geboren 1895 in München[,] lebt daselbst). Orff was married four times and had three divorces. His first marriage was in 1920 to the singer Alice Solscher (1891–1970). Orff's only child, ) (1921–2013) was born on 21 February 1921. The couple separated about six months after Godela's birth and were divorced officially in 1927. Godela remained with her father when her mother moved to Melbourne to pursue her career around 1930. In 1939, Orff married Gertrud Willert (1914–2000), who had been his student and who founded a method of music therapy using the Orff-Schulwerk; they divorced in 1953. By 1952, he began a relationship with author Luise Rinser (1911–2002), whom he married in 1954. In 1955, they moved from Munich to Dießen am Ammersee. Their marriage was troubled and ended in divorce in 1959, by which time Orff was living with the person who would become his next wife. Orff's final marriage, which lasted to the end of his life, was with Liselotte Schmitz (1930–2012), who had been his secretary, and who after his death carried on his legacy in her capacity with the Carl-Orff Stiftung. They married in Andechs on 10 May 1960. Born to devout Roman Catholic parents, Orff broke from religious dogma at a young age. His daughter tied his break from the church to the suicide of a classmate, and she reported that he did not have her baptized. Gertrud Orff said that "he never went to church; to the contrary. It was probably the time of inner rebellion against things like that. ... He was a religious person, yes. But not a person of the church." Nevertheless, he wanted to be buried in the Baroque church of the beer-brewing Benedictine priory of Andechs, southwest of Munich; he could see this monastery from his home in Dießen. Orff had no desire to follow in his family's military tradition, even as a child. He later wrote: "My father [Heinrich Orff] knew that everything soldierly lay far from me and that I could not warm up to it." According to Godela Orff, the composer's parents "nevertheless always remained lovingly inclined toward him, even when his way of life did not meet their expectations", and Orff and his sister "were watched over and supported with loving tolerance." She also wrote that her father's mother, Paula Orff, always fostered her son's creativity and gave him "the gift of inspiration". Orff himself wrote of his mother: "From time immemorial I was a real mother's boy. In life's serious and most difficult situations she understood me deeply with her heart, even if her ideas, strongly set in tradition, stood in the way of it." Paula Orff died on 22 July 1960, after which Orff's colleague Karl Amadeus Hartmann wrote to him: "I know how intimately bonded you were with your mother, similar to me with mine, and can therefore especially sympathize with the entire gravity of the loss." Godela Orff described her relationship with her father as having been difficult at times. "He had his life and that was that", she tells Tony Palmer in the documentary O Fortuna. Their relationship became especially strained in the late 1940s; they reconciled around the early 1970s. Death Orff died of cancer in Munich on 29 March 1982, at the age of 86. He is buried in the Andechs Abbey. His tombstone bears the Latin inscription (the Ultimate End), taken from the end of his last work, . ==Works==