| Carl Orff |
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| 1895 births | |
| 1982 deaths | |
| 20th century classical composers | |
| german opera composers | |
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Carl Orff ( July 10 , 1895 – March 29 , 1982 ) was a 20th-century German Composer , most famous for '' Carmina Burana '' ( 1937 ). He was also successful and influential in the field of Music Education . LIFE Orff was born in Munich, Germany and came from a Bavarian family that was very active in the German military. His father's regimental band supposedly had often played the compositions of young Orff. Moser's Musik Lexicon states that Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music until 1914. He then served in the military during World War I . Afterwards, he held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt , later to return to Munich to pursue further his music studies. As of 1925, and for the rest of his life, Orff was the head of a department and co-founder of the Guenther School for gymnastics, music, and dance in Munich, where he worked with musical beginners. Having constant contact with children, this is where he developed his theories in music education. While Orff's association with the Nazi party has never been conclusively established, his ''Carmina Burana'' was hugely popular in Nazi Germany after its premiere in Frankfurt in 1937, receiving numerous performances. It should be noted that he was one of the few German composers under the Nazi regime who responded to the official call to write new music for '' A Midsummer Night's Dream '' after the music of Felix Mendelssohn had been banned — others refused to cooperate in this. Orff had already composed music for this play as early as 1917 and 1927 , long before this was a favour for the Nazi government. Orff was a personal friend of Kurt Huber , one of the founders of the resistance movement ''Die Weiße Rose'' (the White Rose ), who was condemned to death by the '' Volksgerichtshof '' and executed by the Nazis in 1943 . After World War II , Orff claimed that he was a member of the group, and was himself involved in the resistance, but there was no evidence for this other than his own word, and other sources dispute his claim. Canadian historian Michael H. Kater made in earlier writings a particularly strong case that Orff collaborated with Nazi authorities cf. http://www.h-net.org/~german/articles/dennis1.html for a review of an article by Kater, but in his most recent publication "Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits" (2000) Kater has taken back his earlier accusations to some extent. Orff's assertion that he had been anti-Nazi during the war was accepted by the American de-nazification authorities, who changed his previous category of gray unacceptable to gray acceptable, enabling him to continue to compose for public presentation. Orff is buried in the Baroque church of the beer-brewing Benedictine priory of Andechs , south of Munich . MUSICAL WORK
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