Biography of Orto

Germany Fortune of the Bavarian experimenter Karl Orf is a famous composer who created over the course of four eras of German history, an outstanding teacher and the author of one of the most famous classic works of the twentieth century. In a musical family, a boy from a very young age began to study the game on the piano. At nine years old, he wrote music for his own puppet theater.

Karl easily entered the Munich Music Academy, but the young creator did not like to teach the theory at all. In those years, he became interested in the music of Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy and even intended to quit his studies to leave for Paris. Nevertheless, the young man graduated from the Academy and became a capmerist at the Munich Chamber Theater - there he was so carried away by theatrical work that he not only conducted the orchestra, but also performed the roles of the illuminator and the souffler.

In the years, the Orp switching to teaching. So, in the year he, along with Dorothea, Gunter opens the school of dance and music “Guntershule”, which he will devote his whole life. Constant creative communication with the young generation so fascinated the musician that he began to develop his own education methodology. Its Schulverk has become widespread only thirty years later, but is still successfully used around the world.

With the advent of the Nazis to power, Orfa had to behave very carefully and avoid loud statements. Despite the fact that his father was a respected citizen during the time of the empire, Karl was afraid of his life, hiding Jewish roots. Nevertheless, his most famous work of Karmina Buran gained tremendous popularity precisely during the Third Reich. Subsequently, it became part of the triptich “Triumph”, combining elements of the oratorio, medieval mystery and opera.

Goebbels called the composer’s work “a model of real German music,” and it sounded throughout the country. The authority of the Orff has so increased that he - the only one of the composers of the Reich - was instructed to compose music for the opera "Sleep on a summer night." At that time, the already finished version of Felix Mendelsson was banned for production just because of the author’s non-Aryan origin.

To return to creativity and avoid repressions after the victory over fascist Germany Karl Orfa managed to have been related to the connection with the resistance group - however, this part of the composer’s biography is practically not known. At the end of X, he again returned to the development of a child education methodology. It was based on “free music”: “Whoever the child becomes in the future, the task of teachers is to educate him in the creative beginning,” said the composer, “the desire and ability to create will find the application in any field of human future activity.” The Orpher’s radio broadcasts on musical education have gained tremendous popularity, and its technique began to spread around the world.

In the year, at the Conservatory, Mozartum organized special classes in which they taught on the recommendations of Orf, and in the year the Institute of Musical Education in Salzburg became the largest training center for this innovative methodology. The premiere of the last work of Karl Orf, “De Temporum Fine Comoedia”, sounded in the year at the Salzburg festival. It was performed by the Symphony Orchestra of Kologna radio under the direction of Herbert von Karayan.

Karl Orf did not get in the year. Text: Anna Chichagova.