Carl Orff, the composer who lived a monstrous lie
The opening line of Carmina Burana – “O Fortuna!” – could hardly be more apt. Few composers felt themselves more at the mercy of capricious gods and twists of fate than its composer, Carl Orff. He was never a diehard Nazi; indeed, he looked with disdain on their oafish cultural values. Far from espousing the hounding of “inferior races”, he was fascinated by jazz and by what today we would call world music. Yet he rose to become one of the Third Reich’s top musicians.
According to one of his four wives, he “found it impossible to love” and “despised people”. Yet in Carmina Burana he created the world’s jolliest musical celebration of boozing, feasting and generally enjoying the sins of other people’s flesh.
He turned his back on his own teenage daughter, who adored him. “He didn’t want me in his married life,” she recalls sadly. Yet he was (and, in some quarters, still is) adulated in educational circles for his Schulwerksystem of teaching music to young children through rhythm and gesture – a system he originally intended to flog to the Hitler Youth movement. It is still used around the world, particularly (and paradoxically) to help children with cerebral palsy, who would probably not be alive if Hitler’s Germany had triumphed.
A connoisseur of Greek drama, and a perceptive scholar who edited and performed Monteverdi long before the rest of the world rediscovered the Baroque genius, he talked eloquently about the need for people to express themselves through art if they were to become “complete” human beings. Yet one of his wives says that he himself was full of “demonic forces” and would “wake up screaming at night”. He used people shamelessly. Yet, as another wife puts it, “all his life he wanted forgiveness” for the guilt that consumed him. He was obsessed by the myth of Orpheus, the musician who descended into the Underworld. “Just like Orff himself,” his biographer notes.
All this, and an act of treachery hidden until now, is revealed in an exceptional film by Tony Palmer, fittingly called O Fortuna, that’s just out on DVD and will be broadcast on Sky Arts 2 in late January. ...
[His secret?]
Orff had a friend called Kurt Huber, an academic who had helped him with librettos. Huber was also a brave man. During the war he founded the Munich unit of Die Weisse Rose (The White Rose), the German resistance movement. In February 1943 he and other Resistance members were arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and publicly hanged. Orff happened to call at Huber’s house the day after his arrest. Huber’s wife (whom Palmer tracked down for his film) begged Orff to use his influence to help her husband. But Orff’s only thought was for his own position. If his friendship with Huber came out, he told her, he would be “ruined”. Huber’s wife never saw Orff again.
Two years later, after Germany’s surrender, Orff himself was interrogated – by an American intelligence officer who had to establish whether Orff could be “denazi-fied”. That would allow Orff (among other things) to collect the massive royalties from Carmina Burana. The American asked Orff if he could think of a single thing he had done to stand up to Hitler, or to distance himself from the policies of the Third Reich? Orff had done nothing of that kind. So he made up a brazen lie. Knowing that anyone who might contradict him was likely to be dead, he told Jenkins that he had co-founded Die Weisse Rose with his friend, Kurt Huber. He was believed – or at least, not sufficiently disbelieved to have his denazification delayed.
And then, as Palmer’s film reveals, Orff did the most astonishing thing. He sat down and wrote a fictitious letter to his dead friend, in effect apologising for his behaviour. He craved Huber’s forgiveness – even, it seems, from beyond the grave....
Read entire article at Times (of London)
According to one of his four wives, he “found it impossible to love” and “despised people”. Yet in Carmina Burana he created the world’s jolliest musical celebration of boozing, feasting and generally enjoying the sins of other people’s flesh.
He turned his back on his own teenage daughter, who adored him. “He didn’t want me in his married life,” she recalls sadly. Yet he was (and, in some quarters, still is) adulated in educational circles for his Schulwerksystem of teaching music to young children through rhythm and gesture – a system he originally intended to flog to the Hitler Youth movement. It is still used around the world, particularly (and paradoxically) to help children with cerebral palsy, who would probably not be alive if Hitler’s Germany had triumphed.
A connoisseur of Greek drama, and a perceptive scholar who edited and performed Monteverdi long before the rest of the world rediscovered the Baroque genius, he talked eloquently about the need for people to express themselves through art if they were to become “complete” human beings. Yet one of his wives says that he himself was full of “demonic forces” and would “wake up screaming at night”. He used people shamelessly. Yet, as another wife puts it, “all his life he wanted forgiveness” for the guilt that consumed him. He was obsessed by the myth of Orpheus, the musician who descended into the Underworld. “Just like Orff himself,” his biographer notes.
All this, and an act of treachery hidden until now, is revealed in an exceptional film by Tony Palmer, fittingly called O Fortuna, that’s just out on DVD and will be broadcast on Sky Arts 2 in late January. ...
[His secret?]
Orff had a friend called Kurt Huber, an academic who had helped him with librettos. Huber was also a brave man. During the war he founded the Munich unit of Die Weisse Rose (The White Rose), the German resistance movement. In February 1943 he and other Resistance members were arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and publicly hanged. Orff happened to call at Huber’s house the day after his arrest. Huber’s wife (whom Palmer tracked down for his film) begged Orff to use his influence to help her husband. But Orff’s only thought was for his own position. If his friendship with Huber came out, he told her, he would be “ruined”. Huber’s wife never saw Orff again.
Two years later, after Germany’s surrender, Orff himself was interrogated – by an American intelligence officer who had to establish whether Orff could be “denazi-fied”. That would allow Orff (among other things) to collect the massive royalties from Carmina Burana. The American asked Orff if he could think of a single thing he had done to stand up to Hitler, or to distance himself from the policies of the Third Reich? Orff had done nothing of that kind. So he made up a brazen lie. Knowing that anyone who might contradict him was likely to be dead, he told Jenkins that he had co-founded Die Weisse Rose with his friend, Kurt Huber. He was believed – or at least, not sufficiently disbelieved to have his denazification delayed.
And then, as Palmer’s film reveals, Orff did the most astonishing thing. He sat down and wrote a fictitious letter to his dead friend, in effect apologising for his behaviour. He craved Huber’s forgiveness – even, it seems, from beyond the grave....