Tuesday Tools

A brief history of the founder and origin of method

The term “Orff-Schulwerk” identifies an approach to music making that has found application primarily with children but can be equally useful in other contexts. It began in Germany (Bavaria) in the 1920s with adult music and dance students, and was revitalized there around 1950–to a great extent through the efforts of Orff’s colleague, Gunild Keetman–for use with school children of that area.

Carl Orff (1895-1982), a German composer, is noted primarily for his musical/dramatic stage works based on ancient and classic texts. The work most often performed is the “Carmina Burana.” The pedagogical ideas that became Orff-Schulwerk (literally “school work”) originated in the 1920s, influenced by the experimental “New Dance” movement of the time and by Dalcroze eurhythmics. Orff and colleague Dorothee Guenther, a movement teacher, in 1924 founded the Guentherschule (Guenther school) in Munich (Bavaria), providing an environment for musicians and dancers to gain understanding of each others’ art forms through participation and especially through improvisation. Gunild Keetman, gifted in both music and movement, came to the school as a student and stayed on as a teacher. The school gained performance reknown in Europe at the time; the most noteworthy event was the design and execution of opening ceremony music and dance for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

The Guentherschule flourished until World War II; in 1944 it was bombed beyond use. In 1948 a recording of Guentherschule music making caught the attention of the education directors of Bavarian Radio; they asked Orff to develop this same kind of music making for and with children. He and Keetman set to work with a group of children, developing materials that embodied their ideas about “elemental” music. These sessions were recorded and then broadcast to German elementary schools, with the intent that teachers there would develop comparable music making with their own students.

The continuation of this work with children led to the publication of volumes I-V of Orff-Schulwerk: Musik fur Kinder (Schott, Mainz, 1950-54). A later volume, Paralipomena (1977) contains material considered essential to the original set but not included at that time. In most cases, these have been the materials first translated when other cultures became interested in developing the Schulwerk for their own children. Beginning in 1953, Schulwerk courses were offered at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria for its own students and for interested outsiders; children’s classes were also offered on an ongoing basis. The first four-semester teacher training course began in fall 1961.

The program outgrew its facilities, and in 1963 a new, separate building called the Orff Institute opened. Dr. Hermann Regner was the first director; Barbara Haselbach was in charge of the movement department and Wilhelm Keller of the work with handicapped. Orff died in 1982, Keetman in 1990, Regner and Keller have retired, and there have been many changes in the program. However, the Orff Institute continues to offer courses for local students and for those from a great many parts of the world, and its faculty travel abroad on request to offer introductory and continuation courses. A special division of the Institute’s work, the Orff Zentrum, was established specifically to maintain contacts with Schulwerk people throughout the word, including many who have studied at the Institute.

Arnold Walter, an outstanding German music educator who became music department chair at the University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada), is responsible for introducing the Schulwerk to North America. In the 1950s he sent Doreen Hall, a young music education instructor, to Salzburg to study with Orff and Keetman. Upon return, she started children’s classes and teacher training courses; in 1962 she brought Orff and Keetman for a special weekend during the summer course. Later the courses became organized as Levels I, II, and III, each three weeks long. A number of music educators from the U.S. attended these Toronto courses and then founded training courses built on this model at various institutions here. The three-level training course remains the U.S. standard, now with just two weeks at each level. These can be supplemented liberally by master classes, AOSA conference and chapter workshops, and other training opportunities that contribute to the ongoing development of the Schulwerk teacher.

Orff Schulwerk music and movement pedagogy contributes to development of the individual far beyond specific skills and understandings in the arts. These skills and procedures have a wider application and value in several areas:

• Intellectual: The critical-thinking and problem-solving tasks involved in Orff Schulwerk call upon both linear and intuitive intellectual capacities. The carrying out of creative ideas calls upon organizational abilities as well as artistic knowledge and skill.
• Social: Orff Schulwerk is a group model, requiring the cooperative interaction of everyone involved, including the instructor. It is important that artistic development occurs within a satisfying and supportive human environment. Tolerance, helpfulness, patience, and other cooperative attitudes must be cultivated consciously. The ensemble setting requires sensitivity to the total group and awareness of the role of each individual within it. Problem solving, improvisation, and the group composing process provide opportunities for developing leadership.
• Emotional: The artistic media involved—music and movement—provide the individual with avenues for non-verbal expression of emotions. The exploratory and improvisatory activities can provide a focus for emotions, a means for release of tension and frustration, and a vehicle for the enhancement of self-esteem.
• Aesthetic: As knowledge of and skills in music and movement grow, students will have opportunities to develop standards of what is considered “good” within the styles being explored.

Orff instruments include xylophones glockenspiels marimbas and metallophones. These instruments may contain removable bars that resonate to project a sound when they are hit with mallets. Other instruments in the Orff Approach include various-sized drums (timpani) and recorders.