Carl Orff Quotes

Carl Orff: 4 quotes5 likes

Famous Carl Orff Quotes

“Experience first, then intellectualize.”

As quoted in "The Orff Process" (4 July 1997) by Deborah Jeter

“Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play.”

Carl Orff

As quoted in a review of Langley Schools Music Project : Innocence and Despair (2001) http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4685-innocence-and-despair/ by Dominique Leone (6 January 2002)

“Elemental Music is never just music. It's bound up with movement, dance and speech, and so it is a form of music in which one must participate, in which one is involved not as a listener bust as a co-performer.”

Carl Orff

As quoted in Through Music to the Self : How to Appreciate and Experience Music Anew (1979) by Peter Michael Hamel, p. 18
Context: Elemental Music is never just music. It's bound up with movement, dance and speech, and so it is a form of music in which one must participate, in which one is involved not as a listener bust as a co-performer. It is pre-rational, has no over-all form, no architectonics, involves no set sequences, ostinati or minor rondo-forms. Elemental Music is earthy, natural, physical, capable of being learnt and experienced by anybody, child's play.... Elemental Music, word and movement, play, every-thing that awakens and develops the powers of the soul builds up the humus of the soul, the humus without which we face spiritual soil-erosion.... we face spiritual soil-erosion when man estranges himself from the elemental and loses his balance.

“I am often asked why I nearly always select old material, fairy tales and legends for my stage works. I do not look upon them as old, but rather as valid material. The time element disappears, and only the spiritual power remains. My entire interest is in the expression of spiritual realities. I write for the theater in order to convey a spiritual attitude.”

Carl Orff

As quoted in "Carl Orff" by Everett Helm in The Musical Quarterly Vol. 41, No. 3 (July 1955)