Discover the World of Carl Orff Method

The Carl Orff Method: Teaching Music through Play

• Carl Orff was a German composer, conductor, and educator, famous for his composition "Carmina Burana."
• The Orff approach is a way of teaching children about music through singing, chanting, dance, movement, drama, and percussion instruments.
• The method emphasizes play, allowing children to learn at their own level of understanding.
• Orff developed the concept of elemental music based on the synthesis of the arts of the Greek Muses, which combines tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture.
• The approach uses small-scale musical patterns familiar to the students, and emphasizes hands-on music-making regardless of skill level.
• Instruments used in the Orff classroom include xylophones, metallophones, glockenspiels, castanets, bells, maracas, triangles, cymbals, tambourines, timpani, gongs, bongos, steel drums, and conga drums.
• Orff teachers design their own lesson plans and adapt them to suit the size of the class and the age of the students.
• A sample lesson plan format involves choosing a poem, reciting it with the class, choosing students to play instruments, adding other instruments, discussing the lesson, and cleaning up.
• In the Orff classroom, the teacher acts like a conductor who gives cues to her eager orchestra.
• Parts may or may not be notated, and students learn about rhythm, melody, harmony, texture, form, and other elements of music.
• The Orff method teaches imitation, exploration, improvisation, and composition.
• The Orff method is advantageous because it is fun for kids of all ages, children participate in lessons, many elements of music are taught, instructors are competent professionals, and youngsters are exposed to instruments, notation, melody, rhythm, and harmony.