# Do you give Carl Orff any credit for his Schulwerk?



## ericdxx (Jul 7, 2013)

I mean these are pretty simple works but they survived. In large part thanks to film music composer Hans Zimmer who copied them for several movies such as True Romance. 

I'm not sure how I feel about it myself.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I like them, and I see it as an early form of minimalism. I'm surprised that these works are being questioned, rather than being accepted wholeheartedly.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

The Schulwerk are not compositions in the general sense, they're not designed for concerts. The Schulwerk is a fantastic method of teaching kids about music - and dance, motion, speech, etc. It's a whole-body and brain activity. So the melodies are quite simple - not unlike those in Carmina Burana in some ways. The tunes he (and others) wrote have to work on the purposefully limited instruments. Kind of like using a pentatonic scale, the tunes all sound similar because of the limited number of notes. I've taken three Orff courses and believe that it could improve student performance in all areas. But with budget cuts all over, music is too often cut out first.


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## Guest (Jul 26, 2018)

My earliest music classes were based on his method, using Orff percussion and some other things...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

mbhaub said:


> The Schulwerk are not compositions in the general sense, they're not designed for concerts.


I think that will change in the future, as more people discover the simple beauty of these compositions. Yes, they will be performed in concert, and yes, they will be recognized as the beautiful works of art that they are.


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

I never marked any


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## Eusebius12 (Mar 22, 2010)

But I'm not a big fan of Orff. I guess I don't get Orff 

Certainly even his best works have a massive whiff of banality. The orchestration is often fairly primitive.


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