100th birthday of Carl Orff - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1995 - 100 Pfennig

Carl Orff, who was born on 10 July 1895 in Munich, has become world famous especially through his work: Carmina Burana. Hardly a day goes by when this piece is not performed anywhere in the world. In a second-hand bookshop Orff had discovered the Benediktbeurer manuscript, a collection of medieval songs, and composed a scenic cantata for these texts. Carl Orff's work was music theater. He set two fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm "The Moon" and "The Kluge" and then devoted himself to the Greek tragedies. After Antigonae and Oedipus he set to music Prometheus in the ancient Greek version of Aeschylus. But Carl Orff was also very close to his Bavarian home. To his creative complex of the "Bavarian World Theater" belongs the story of the Bernauerin as well as the Easter play and the Christmas play. But Orff described the school work "Music for Children", which he developed together with Gunild Keetman, as a "quarry" for all his works. The ideas of the school, the instruments and notes influence the music and dance education in many countries of the world even today. Orff's last work, the End Times Game, a kind of end-time vision, was premiered in 1973 at the Salzburg Festival. Carl Orff died on March 29, 1982 in Munich. He is buried in the Sorrowful Chapel of the Monastery Church of Andechs. (Text: Xaver Frühbeis, M.A., Munich)