O Is for Orff Schulwerk

Just recorded my next Podcast with the above title. Usually, I read from my ABC book and make a few other comments, but decided to re-write the whole thing. So might as well include it here! (The Podcast is titled The ABC’s of Education and is available on Spotify in case you’re interested.)

 

I’m writing this from Portland, Oregon, as I begin a week’s visit with my 10 and 14-year-old grandchildren, Malik and Zadie. I went to Zadie’s volleyball game where her team lost after being ahead most of the game and Zadie played all of one minute. The next day to Malik’s soccer game, the entire first half in the pouring rain while we spectators huddled under umbrellas. He played the whole game and his team won. But in both cases, all the effort and energy to develop teamwork, discipline, kinesthetic skills—all good things—feel to me shadowed by the 50% rule that half the participants—and their cheering parents!— often go home disappointed or unhappy.

 

I couldn’t help but feel the contrast to the recent guest singing I did at a neighborhood school. 100% of the kids participated 100% of the time and 100% of the kids were happy at the beginning, middle and the end. Befitting October, we sang Halloween songs, making a fun holiday yet more fun. The songs we sang went beyond mere singing—kids making faces like the Jack-o-lanterns they would or already carved, select kids coming forward to conduct the scary sounds of ghosts, cats and witches— getting louder, softer, faster, slower, short sounds, low sounds, signals to stop. Knowing some kids might be disappointed they didn’t get chosen to conduct, all then paired off in partners, one conducting and the other following, then switching. No one sitting on the bench wondering if they’re ever get to play. There was a song where they had to figure out when to clap 3 times, another song where they learned how to best surprise the listener at the end with a perfectly timed “Boo!” (and the homework to sing it to their family back home) and then my favorite Halloween song where I tell a story, them singing a haunting “ooo, oo, oo, oo” between each line and then me picking the moment to say my own “Boo!” and scare them. 

 

These just some of the gifts of music, a subject historically marginalized in education and once again, sacrificed for the insanity of making time for stress-inducing, anxiety producing tests with answers to questions that no kid wakes up in the morning asking and leaving out all the questions they should be asking. Sports, with its winners and losers and cutthroat competition and big money pouring in, that the culture understands and values and when it does pay attention to music, it’s often to get the band ready to play at the halftime of the football game or turns it into the toxic competition of American Idol. And note the title.  And burdening musicians with the expectation that they are there to be idolized, pumped up by celebrity magazines and drugs and whisked away after the concerts in their limousines with screaming fans. But not all musical cultures are like that. 

 

The Orff approach is a refreshing antidote to all of that nonsense.  Its aim is to release the musicality and expressive dance in each and every one of us.  Not to monetize or win competitions or prepare for a musical career (though some Orff students may choose to go in those directions) but to enjoy the supreme pleasure of music’s multiple gifts. Not to pit kids against each other, but to connect them with each other. Not to show off what they can do for people to adore them and envy them and idolize them, but to have them perform to bring the audience into the beauty and power of the moment. 

 

A good Orff Schulwerk class begins by inviting each and every student into the house of music. Every single one is welcome and all are meant to feel at home.  And the number of doors through which one can enter are far more numerous that “Pick an instrument. Learn to read notes. Practice every day. “ 

 

The very definition of music as the Orff teacher understands it begins by redefining music. As Carl Orff himself said, “Music is never music alone but forms a unity with movement, dance and speech. It is music that one makes oneself, in which one takes part not as a listener, but as a participant…. Elemental music is near the earth, natural, physical, within the range of everyone to learn it and experience it and suitable for the child.”

 

Indeed, the title of my book Play, Sing & Dance echoes the larger definition of music. Our specialized culture leaks into all aspects of life so in our Western model, the aspiring musician or dancer must chose Play, Sing OR Dance. The genius of the Orff approach lies in the AND.  And…there are a lot of “ands.”

The chapters of my various books on music education follow the diverse range of media typical of Orff classes.  Body percussion, vocal percussion, chant and rhyme, song, expressive movement, folk dance, small percussion instruments (shakers, drums, scrapers, etc.), specially designed instruments known as Orff instruments, (xylophones, metallophones, glockenspiels), recorder, drama, integrated arts. Within all of that, there is improvisation, composition, choreography, kids creating something new, both alone and together. 

 

The Orff class, whether it be for kids or teachers learning to be Orff teachers, is wholly participatory. Take off your shoes and jump in! Whoever is in the room— this is for you! And then when you learn a particular song or game or folk dance or a piece of music, don’t stop there. When you master a piece, it’s not the end of a matter and here’s your gold star. It’s the beginning of the next possibility and you move into the exciting unknown with simple questions: “What can we do next? How to we adapt or adopt it to this place, this time, this group of people? How might we spring into new territory, making a dance to go with the music or composing new music to go with the dance? Can we preserve the piece or choreography with some graphic notation? Play it on other instruments? Compose a new section or improvise within a given section? As Charlie Parker said, “There is no boundary line to art.” So it’s a good idea to decorate the box from the inside or think outside of the box or use the box as a percussion instrument or movement prop. Are you getting the idea?

 

 In addition to all this richness, the Orff approach also offers a strong and durable foundation to introduce a vast variety of musical styles. The concerts we give at the San Francisco School include the Blues, Beethoven, Brazilian samba, Balinese gamelan, Bulgarian songs and pieces, Bolivian pieces adapted for recorder, Burkina Faso xylophone pieces— and that’s just one letter in the whole alphabet of musical styles! From Argentina to Zimbabwe, just about all music can be explored from an Orff perspective. 

 

This way of working is called the Orff approach rather than the Orff method for two reasons: 

1)   Rather than a prescribed method that all must dutifully follow, the Orff approach asks each teacher to discover their own methodical way to organize the possibilities. We have to not only choose the repertoire, but how we teach it, how we develop it, how we connect it with its larger possibilities— create music for the dance or dance for the music, use it in a dramatic context, fold it into a school ceremony and more. This is of course, a challenge. The Orff teacher is constantly researching and inventing and reinventing and this keeps things fresh and vibrant. Some teachers teach for 45 years by teaching the same curriculum with the same textbooks 45 times, but each year is unique for the dedicated Orff teacher. Indeed, in my time at the school, I created Orff arrangements on the instruments for almost a thousand pieces. When I retired in 2020 ago, it wasn’t because I was tired of teaching children or burnt out— far from it. In these last five years, I continue to give workshops nationwide and worldwide and teach kids in schools, from a single guest singing class to a three-week residency. 

 

2)   By treating it as an approach, we never rest content on our laurels, always searching and seeking. Like Duke Ellington, when asked about our favorite composition (or class), we say, “The next one.” This means we can never claim ourselves as an expert for at least two other reasons:

 

• The diverse media mentioned earlier guarantee that no one can be equally proficient in body percussion, singing, playing, expressive movement, dancing and that the wide variety of instruments to be mastered and musical styles to master is far beyond any of us. 

 

• Even if we were proficient in all of the above and experts in curriculum planning and inspired class process, we’re still dealing with the unpredictable world of actual children. They don’t care about your music teacher grammy or honorary doctorate. They delight in throwing down the gauntlet and saying with their behavior, “So you’re the expert, eh? How you’re going to deal with me!” No teacher in any subject can be an expert teacher any more than any of us can claim we’re an expert parent!

 

That’s the thumbnail answer to the question I often get asked. Hope this sheds some light on it!