Orff-Schulwerk, an approach to 

music and movement education

"I wanted to create a music education approach, which would take into account the needs of the child, irrespective of their level of talent. My experience taught me that almost every child is musical, and that all have areas in which they can develop."

                                                                                                   - Carl Orff

Main features of Orff-Schulwerk pedagogy

• movement, human voice, language, dance and musical instruments create an entity (musiké)

• tuning the student's creative capacity, giving stimuli and room for creativity

• learning through one's own experiments, play in learning

• making music in a group, by singing, movement and playing - an opportunity to learn together and from others in a group where the level of skill and motivation varies

• the educational process is adjusted to each teaching group, the teacher sees to the logic of the process amidst various possibilities

• based on one's own cultural roots: songs, dances, folk instruments, as well as nursery rhymes, poems and stories; getting to know the culture and history of other countries through them

• instruments that encourage ensemble playing and lead to movement and to individual expression

• improvisation, composing and invention of original material, combined with listening, processing existing compositions and gaining musical knowledge

Elements of an Orff-Schulwerk education process

The essential elements of the Orff-Schulwerk teaching process are experiment and experience. Parameters of music and movement are explored and tested with a variety of activities which, through group experiences, turn into tools of self-expression.

The aim is as versatile a learning process as possible with a variety of areas. The process can start, for example, with a rhythmic theme that involves nursery rhymes and movement. Expression and movement are connected to the rhyme. Rhythms can be generated with instruments and turned into a performance that also contains parts that are prepared by the group and improvisation. The teacher sees to the logic of the process amidst the various possibilities.

The learner's process goes from:

• imitation to one's own doing

• parts to a whole

• simple to complex

• one's own experimentation to the group's joint activities

The ideas associated with the Orff-Schulwerk teaching process are applicable to early childhood music education, classroom teaching, instrument teaching and various ensemble groups.

Elements of musical inventiveness

Carl Orff's and Gunild Keetman's idea was to guide children to make their own music. First, they play with sounds. Then the sound games and experiments are incorporated into a form, e.g. question-answer, intro, B part, interlude, etc. From experiments, the learner moves to improvisation and composing their own pieces. To create opportunities for improvisation, Orff and Keetman included accompaniment patterns in their Schulwerk books that are models and leave room for improvisation and music making.

                                                                                                                                             Soili Perkiö 2021

About the principles and history of Orff-Schulwerk

Link to Articles about Orff-Schulwerk in Mentorship Programme 2019 homepage