IT’S OFFICIAL. Orff Scotland is now a reality. It was officially recognised in December 2010 by the Orff Institute in Salzburg thanks to the tireless work of Moira Jakobsson, primary music specialist, Glasgow who has for many years promoted the Orff Approach to music education.

Supported by the Orff Society UK in 2002, she organises the ongoing series ACCENT ON ORFF courses in Glasgow. However, there is no doubt that  the success of the Carl Orff approach to Music courses initiated by Alpha Munro as part of Music Trains in 2004 -2011under the Artlink Highland/Artsplay Highland have helped in the creation of Orff Scotland.

Carl Orff

Carl Orff (10 July, 1895– 29 March, 1982) was a 20th-century German composer best known for his oratorio Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential approach to music education for children known as Orff-Schulwerk or Music for Children.

As music director for the Gunther-School of music and dance, he perfected his ideas with dancer Gunild Keetman. His principles were then published in Orff Schulwerk. Unlike the Kodaly method, the Suzuki method or the Dalcroze method, the Orff approach is not a method. There is no systematic procedure. It offers a holistic and dynamic experience.

Carl Orff’s genius lies in his synthesis of art forms. “Elemental music, never alone, always connected with movement, rhythm and speech,” he believed.  Dance, song, body percussion, improvisation and musical instruments were then natural additions and made meaningful in active participation.

The materials needed to teach students are also “simple, basic, natural, and close to a child’s world of thought and fantasy.”  The Orff approach uses speech tones, and two note tunes from the start, and moves into pentatonic scales, folk modes and polyphony. Music revolves round the IV, V I harmonies.

Songs are drawn from world folk music but they can also be well known nursery rhymes or drawn from the child’s heritage. Word rhythms are connected with movement and played out on percussion instruments. Variations in form and improvisation on a theme are main features. Simple sequential structures are included such as drones and ostinatos.

Orff designed glockenspiels, xylophones and metallophones to fulfil his purpose, adding drums, shakers and other percussion instruments used in world folk traditions. In order to draw out the student’s inherent affinities for rhythm and melody and allow these to grow naturally, he would intuitively lead him or her from primitive to increasingly sophisticated expression through stages parallel to western music’s evolution.

The melody and rhythm of compositions are often determined by the words of the song. Composition is also included. “Let the children be their own composers,” said Carl Orff, for he recognised that creation is not only the highest level of thought but the most motivating as well.

Since the 1930’s Orff’s Schulwerk, a programme of elemental music and movement instruction, has recharged music education for children in over 30 countries around the world. He was passionate about working with beginners. Here where he had constant contact with children, his work evolved.

Throughout much of his life, Orff worked with children, using music as an educational tool. The Orff Approach is a “child-centered way of learning” music education that treats music like language and believes that just as every child can learn language without formal instruction, so every child can learn music in a friendly and informal way.

In order for the Orff Approach to work effectively, teachers are expected to create an atmosphere that is similar to a child’s world of play and fantasy. In this environment children feel at ease exploring an instrument or learning a new and often abstract musical skill. Every child is treated as an equal so performance pressure is not part of the Orff classroom.

In this way children appreciate the joys of group music making, communication and cohesion. Confidence is generated from the start. From a teacher’s perspective Orff-Schulwerk’s process of breaking down each activity into its simplest form, presenting those steps one at a time until a completed performance is achieved, is a valuable one.

The Carl Orff approach to music is accessible to all ages and stages – to both musicians and non-musicians. It is an exceptionally enriching way into music for those with additional needs. These students respond well to Orff’s belief in the use of pentatonic and modal scales, creativity, exploration and free expression within a structured framework.

In addition, the use of sensory materials and multi-sensory activities support and facilitate the learning process. Music is therapeutic, it calms, energises and nourishes.

Music Trains was founded in 2004, partly in response to research in the efficacy of modal music in the therapeutic setting, but also to give musicians, dance and drama workers, teachers, play leaders, carers as well as children the opportunity to explore new ways of approaching music education, and to explore cultural diversity through music song and dance.

Jelica Gavrilovic (Artsplay Highland), Nanna Hlif Ingvadottir (Iceland), Alpha Munro, Doug Goodkin (San Francisco), and Steve Sharpe (Drumfun, Moray).

The two organisations involved in the formation of Music Trains were Artlink Highland and Artsplay Highland. Whilst Artlink Highland specialised in the delivery of workshops to those involved in the additional needs sector, Artsplay concentrated on those working with children in the public sector.

It was the inspiration of international Orff specialist Doug Goodkin’s book Play Sing Dance that inspired Alpha Munro’s enthusiasm for the Orff approach, and it was the success of the first Music Trains Orff workshops led by Doug Goodkin, San Francisco, bringing over 200 people together that encouraged the ensuing Music Trains weeks which have been staged until 2011.

Since Music Trains inception in 2004 under Artlink Highland and Artsplay Highland, the Orff approach to music education has been central to its theme, targeting all ages and abilities with introductory and intermediate training by international tutors such as Doug Goodkin and Nanna Hlif Ingvadottir.

Training in the Orff approach has revolutionised Alpha Munro’s music teaching, and that of many others, because it revitalises intuitive creative powers. It is an approach for today and the future. It connects everyone with the roots of world music, movement and chant. Above all it teaches all to listen, imagine and create.

The next Music Trains is to be held at the Bishop’s Palace, Eden Court, Inverness, from 5-7 April 2011.

© Alpha Munro, 2011

Links

• Orff Scotland
• Music Trains by Alpha Munro