Carl Orff

Carl Heinrich Maria Orff (; 10 July 1895 – 29 March 1982) was a German composer and music educator who is best known for composing the cantata Carmina Burana and formulating concepts of his Schulwerk (), which became influential for children’s music education. Born in Munich, Orff was raised in a military family that was fairly musical and later attended the Munich Academy of Music. After composing a number of Lieder and other orchestral works, he completed his Carmina Burana for voices and large orchestra in 1937, setting 24 poems from the medieval poetry collection of the same name. Its première was an immediate great success and Orff considered it the first time he had done exactly what he wanted. While the cantata’s popularity continued to rise throughout and after World War II, Orff never received nearly as much recognition or attention for his later works like the latter two parts of his triptych Trionfi, of which Carmina Burana is the first instalment. Orff was also an influential pedagogue who developed an approach (the “Orff Schulwerk”) to teaching children, which is a collection of fundamental principles to ensure every child learns music, much like a new language, in a c