Tabloid Tuesday: Carl Orff

There have been a lot of interesting speculations made about composer Carl Orff over the years – and not all of them flattering.

But first I’m going to start with an important tidbit on his contribution to musical instruction (not to say that this bit isn’t also terribly fascinating, of course). He seriously influenced the principles of elementary teaching of musical skills. He believed that all children have the ability to learn music to a degree. While many thought that a child had to show natural genius to be able to learn music, he showed the world that just about any child can be taught to play an instrument or sing. In other words, he came down on the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate.

I want to add a disclaimer right now, before we get into the heart of the issue I will be discussing this week: Though we play and listen to the music of any given composer does not mean we endorse his/her political views. This is merely a discussion of lives of artists, and a showcase of rumors surrounding them.

Orff lived a long life in a tumultuous time, especially considering the fact that he was a German citizen. He was born in 1895 and died in 1982. This means that he lived through both world wars, post-WWII Germany and all that it entailed, and unfathomable technological and political development.

The most well-known work Orff produced in his lifetime is Carmina Burana. This piece was largely popular with the Nazi party during WWII. Of course, having your work admired by bad people does not necessarily make you a bad person.

Moreover, if you’re living in Nazi Germany and you are commissioned to write a piece for the Nazi’s, you’d better believe you’re going to do it. After all, you’re creating music, not actively killing people. So when the Nazi’s asked someone to re-write incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream after Felix Mendelssohn had been banned, Orff took on the task, though there is evidence that he may have actually written the music before the Nazis asked for it, and simply produced it upon request.

Now without getting too much into a major discussion of the nature of evil, I want to briefly discuss something called the banality of evil. This is essentially the S.S. officer who works at the camps all day, then comes home, gives his wife and kiss and spends the evening playing with his children. This was a term coined post-WWII to describe those who accepted the basic premise of their state and carried forth orders accordingly; that the people who committed these atrocities were not fanatics or psychopaths, but regular people – those “just following orders.” If you’re familiar with the Milgram Experiment, this is the issue from which it arises.

So we have to ask: How far down does evil go? Does complying with the demands (even if those demands are just to compose music) of an evil administration to save yourself make you evil? Moreover, does this discussion really apply to Orff at all? These are all important questions, and definitely something to consider before condemning Orff to the category of evil based upon speculations about his supposed associations with the Nazi party, as some people do.

Those who say that Orff supported the Nazi party have little evidence to back this up, however, and there is little cause to believe it to be true. Though there is evidence that he went through the “denazification” process. 

In fact, Orff himself claims to have helped to establish theWhite Rose resistance movement in Germany, but like the contrary claims, this also has little evidence.

No matter what his political standing was, it is impossible to recognize Carima Burana as anything short of a musical masterpiece. You can hear this comedic and bawdy scenic cantata performed by the Kingston Symphony on Saturday November 9^th at 7:30 at the Kingston Gospel Temple.