'Whenever I plant a tree, I never know how big it will be . . Some trees stay small, others grow very tall. It all depends on the quality of the earth, sunshine and other factors that have to work together.' This was the answer given to me by Carl Orff in a radio interview I held with him in 1975 when I asked him if he knew or had any idea or expectation that his Schulwerk would be accepted by so many teachers throughout the world.

It would seem that the earth in many lands is really quite good and that much sunshine has contributed to growth. Consider the fact that since 1950 these are the published versions of Orff-Schulwerk: German, English, Swedish, Dutch, Latin-American, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Welsh, Czechoslovakian, Chinese, Danish, Korean, Italian and an adaptation for the United States. Supplements and other editions have come from Greece, Brazil, Bolivia, Ghana and Estonia. In other countries the ideas of the Schulwerk or of using the instruments play a significant role. Since 1961 students from forty-eight different countries have studied at the Orff Institute of the Hochschule 'Mozarteum' in Salzburg.

This book describes the basic ideas of Orff-Schulwerk for the classroom in the United States. It states concretely how its media, pedagogy and theory must be interwoven in order to give whole classes and individual children musical competence. It also serves as a motivating source for teachers to set out on their own voyages of discovery to Orff-Schulwerk.

This book talks a lot about the Orff Schulwerk teacher. Thank goodness there is no such thing as a description of the typical teacher. There has never been any research to establish statistical facts which could very well result in a ridiculous statement like: 'The Orff teacher is someone between the ages of thirty-seven and forty, female, blond, eager to travel, and who plays a good game of chess!' A good teacher who works with the philosophy and materials from Orff-Schulwerk is full of ideas. He does not want to be a slave to a method which does not allow him the freedom to make pedagogical decisions in each separate teaching situation.

The teacher Carl Orff had in mind is an artistic being with good taste; sensitive, spontaneous and responsive. As a teacher one must pay close attention to observing children. He has both the quick and vocal children in view as well as the slower and quieter ones. He is protective, can stay in the background when necessary and lead the children to warm associations with partners, with instruments and with music itself. The Orff-Schulwerk teacher is moreover a human being. . . one who can be full ofjoy and also anger, who can be happy and also sad; a human being with strengths and weaknesses. To the children he is a dependable partner, a person who animates without being too demanding, who accepts the individual efforts of the children and is not afraid to let his own ideas and demands for good quality be expressed along with theirs. For these reasons there is no such thing as the 'Orff-Schulwerk teacher'. There are many Orff-Schulwerk teachers, and no two are alike. Each one alone has the right and the obligation to contribute his own background, his experiences in music and movement, his understanding of Orff's ideas.

If all is so open, what then are the specific requisites? There are basic principles for working with Orff-Schulwerk that are set forth in this book. There are musical skills and concepts that give directions and goals to teaching. Furthermore, common to all Orff-Schulwerk teachers throughout the world is the caring about coming closer to a clear insight into music and movement that gives each participant a basic, fundamental experience. It has to do with the encounters these responsible teachers create in music and dance . . . not with pieces of music and separate dances, but with music and dance as universal and at the same time very specific media of human expression. It also has to do with the artistic quality intended by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman in all the adaptations of the Schulwerk. This transfer into other cultures and into present and future times is necessary.

Carl Orff and collaborators throughout the world have thought for many years about how the vision of such an education for so many children and young adults can be realized in a constantly changing world. This book represents a carefully considered and wise step toward the answer.

Hermann Regner
Director, Orff-Schulwerk Zentrum, Salzburg

(translated by Miriam Samuelson)

Not long ago a visiting family brought their young daughter to my school music room. She seemed intrigued by the surroundings and was soon playing a xylophone. As we watched, she moved on to drums, then to cymbals and glockenspiels until at last she had made her way through them all. When she finished she ran to me and said, 'I have played every single instrument in this whole room and it's like magic.' My guest musician was a seven-year-old named Rebecca. She had never before been in an Orff classroom.

Most Orff teachers regularly witness such discoveries. In this particular case, the magic Rebecca spoke of lay not only in the instrumental sounds but in the fact that she could use those instruments to make such sounds. And therein lies one of the reasons why Orff pedagogy is so effective and such stories are so commonplace. The Orff approach combines the love of sound, love of music-making, and the need to be appreciated in such a way that children can participate in their own musical education and personal growth. Not only are their minds and imaginations stimulated but they are also urged to feel and to give musical expression to that feeling.

The ultimate aim of Orff's approach to music is the enrichment of students' lives through the development of their inherent musicality. That goal is hardly unique to Orff, in fact many other methods claim the same intent. However, what makes Orff's approach special is the way it develops the idea that the child learns musical behavior through behaving in musical ways: by creating, listening and performing.

As Orff originally developed his perspective in the 1920s, creating was of central importance. Teaching consisted of presenting musical problems with students expected to improvise their own solutions. The end result was a musically independent student.

Listening was also of prime importance because all music in an Orff program was created by groups. In order to contribute, students had to listen to the sounds of others. Skill at self-evaluation would also be impossible without this ability as would the talent to understand music one lacked the technical facility to perform.

The last fundamental premise of Orff's conception made much of performance. All students were to perform all the time, be it singing, moving, speaking or playing. So important was participation that Orff designed or adapted instruments that facilitated student contributions, whatever their level of ability.

The music that inspired this creating, listening and performing was also special. Since Orff was a German teaching German-speaking students he used the rhymes, proverbs and poetry of that language to teach the rhythms of that culture. Finding little German folk material in the pentatonic scale, he wrote his own, the better to help students improvise. And as Orff's approach spread to a wider world in the 1950s he urged others to use comparable material from their own cultures.

This book does not radically alter Orff's goals and practices. Instead, the following pages take up where Orff left off. Content with developing the main objectives, he did not provide the step-by-step process needed to implement his intentions. We now know that such concerns need to be addressed. Hence this book is for those of you who want detailed, practical assistance in how and why to use Orff techniques and materials in your classrooms. We have made an effort to outline goals and explore the best ways to achieve them, but the principal focus is on the arrangement of the curriculum in a logical sequence. Such a structure provides a reasonable progression from simple to more complex objectives not only from day to day but from year to year.

Since an emphasis on sequence is rare in Orff literature, perhaps a few words of explanation are in order. I have placed a major emphasis on sequence because in more than twenty years as a teacher of both children and teachers of children it is clear that this is the greatest need. To some, this sequential approach may seem the rankest heresy since structured learning does appear to be the enemy of improvisation, surely one of the most characteristic features of Orff pedagogy. But for those who read on it will soon become clear that these pages abound with opportunities for student creativity. Actually, the real issue is not the merit of improvisation but rather how best to provide students with the tools they need to improvise. Not only my experience but that of many other teachers, suggests that those tools are best acquired in a carefully planned curriculum that develops steadily over the years. From such learning will come the independent musicianship we all so deeply want for our students.

In order to provide detailed assistance, we have arranged the book as follows: after an introduction to the development of Orff-Schulwerk we turn, in Part One, to a discussion of the distinguishing features of this approach. Chapter Two introduces the activities children use in their music-making. The teaching procedure that structures those activities is taken up in Chapter Three while Chapter Four explains the vocabulary and accompaniment theory essential to the Orff teacher. Part Two applies these elements in a sequential curriculum designed for Grades One through Five. Especially important in each chapter is the inclusion of supporting activities designed to aid you in teaching the various skills and concepts.

This book does not claim to have the magic formula for teaching excellence. Even if these pages contained nothing but wisdom such insight would be useless without the committed teacher. Rather, this book has the more modest intent of trying to help channel energies and talents so that you and your students can more easily make music that delights the ear and enriches the mind.