Memory of their work faded with time, but it was revived by the 1803 discovery of a manuscript containing their songs (without readable melodies) in the monastery at Benedictbeuern, Germany. Orff’s first chance to try out his ideas on a large scale came in 1935, when be became acquainted with the twelfth-century poetry of the “Goliards,” a decentralized group of poor but educated poet-musicians-itinerate clerics, minstrels, academics, defrocked priests, and the like-whose ribald, secular poems in street Latin and Old German were widely recited and sung in their day. In response he developed a neo-Baroque philosophy of music as an intimate marriage of words, melody, and movement that he called “elementary music.” He even fashioned a musical curriculum for children based on these principles, the “Orff Schulwerk,” which is still in use. Carl Orff (1895–1982), a young choral conductor and composer, found himself unsatisfied not only with the musical status quo, but also with the concept of the “concert” itself. As Hitler consolidated the power that would inexorably lead to the Second World War, composers were searching for musical languages to replace the romanticism of Wagner and Brahms. Post-World War I Germany witnessed spectacular political and artistic tumult.
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