Orff Schulwerk: musical.

An instrumental sound bursts forth, dance takes shape on the stage, and singing voices fill the auditorium.

The piece ends and it is time to switch places--dancers become musicians and musicians, dancers. A chant makes the transition smooth.

New dancers enter with hand drums held high. Rhythm and dynamics inspire the movements and structure it as well.

This is the result of Schulwerk where, according to Carl Orff, "Elementary music is never music alone, but forms a unity with movement, dance, and speech."

MUSIC

Best known as the composer of the oratorio Carmina Burana (1937), Orff set out originally to create music stimulated by dance and invented by dancers (1930-1935). But, from 1950 to 1954, he revised the exercises and began to envision the Schulwerk as a pedagogy based upon the instinctual behavior of children.

He had been searching for an "elemental" music, which is earthy and natural, when he became inspired by the expressionistic modern dancer, Mary Wigman. Her powerful use of percussion instruments initiated his research into primitive and exotic cultures where dance and music are inseparable. The instruments used to accompany dance became his models. He and a group of colleagues designed "Orff instruments"--an ensemble of percussion instruments of xylophones, drums, rattles, gongs, and bells (later adding recorders)--on which children could discover the immediate joys of making music.

Orff also realized that the impulses for music and dance arise simultaneously in children and that song and text come together in their natural play. Games are colored by rhythmic hand clapping and singsong directions. Rhymes and verses find expression in spontaneous song and dance. But unless this playful nature is sustained, the child's spirit is lost.

DANCE

In Orff sessions dance is a part of making music. The children move, gain control of their bodies, accompany, and create music for dance. For example, a session might begin with a walk with the children maintaining personal space. A group tempo is established with the teacher reinforcing the beat on a drum. The children perform two walks to each drumbeat, then one walk to two beats, and thus become aware of walks in different tempi. They create a short pattern of four beats using fast and slow walks; half of the group claps the beat; the other half moves in the pattern. They then trade places. Each half has hand drums to accompany the other. The students invent new patterns, alternate, and repeat the sequence.

On another day children may explore walks on low and high levels. They move to an interval of a fifth played first at a low range, then at a high range. Matching the level and rhythm of movement to the pitch and rhythm of instrumental sounds builds pitch discrimination and the association between movement and sound.

In addition, walking in various movement qualities can be correlated with the timbre of bar instruments, such as the wooden bars of the xylophone, which have a brittle, sharp sound; metal bars of the metallophone that ring with a sustained sound; and the glockenspiel with its steel bars that produce a bell-like sound. Children react appropriately to these sounds and then select them to accompany their movements. Instrumental sounds may match the action, punctuate it, or fill the spaces.

Walks, runs, hops, and jumps grow out of body gestures. Finger snapping, clapping, knee slapping, and foot stamping in endless combinations help children to produce and improvise rhythms with dynamic interest. When body gestures are transferred to the feet, intricate locomotor patterns result. Students progress from walks to folk dances, line games to contradances, improvised movement to new dance forms.

SPEECH

The role of language in Orff Schulwerk is central because it embodies symbolic thought. Proverbs, sayings, poetry, and little dramas teach life's lessons and motivate movement. The rhythm of the text or its dramatic or poetic intent may be utilized. Teachers help children to develop an instinct for instrumental sounds that will complete the form and make it more beautiful or expressive.