The formative concerts he attended included the world premiere of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in 1911 and Richard Strauss conducting his opera Elektra on 4 June 1914.

[19] Orff's teacher at the Akademie was the composer Anton Beer-Walbrunn, of whom he later wrote with respect but said that he found the academy overall to be "conservative and old-fashioned" (konservativ und altväterlich).

Orff's source material is a German translation of part of Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami, specifically "Terakoya" ("The Village School") in Act IV.

"[29] After recovering from his battle injuries, Orff held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt, later returning to Munich to pursue his music studies.

In the mid-1920s, he began to formulate a concept he called elementare Musik, or elemental music, which was based on the unity of the arts symbolized by the ancient Greek Muses, and involved tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture.

[37] Orff also began adapting musical works of earlier eras for contemporary theatrical presentation, including Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro Striggio's opera L'Orfeo (1607).

Orff's shortened German version (with Günther's translation), Orpheus, was staged under his direction in 1925 in Mannheim, using some of the instruments that had been used in the original 1607 performance, although several of these were unavailable and had to be replaced.

[52][53] Orff reconnected with several of these exiled colleagues after the war and in some cases maintained lifelong friendships, as with singer and composer Karel Salmon [de], who emigrated within the first few months of the Nazi takeover.

[54][55] Another such figure is the art historian Albin von Prybram-Gladona (1890–1974),[56][57] whose parents had converted from Judaism before his birth and who survived multiple incarcerations in concentration camps after he fled to France.

[63] Oliver Rathkolb, however, has noted that subsequent popular perception has exaggerated the degree of its importance to the culture of the Third Reich, as numerous other works received more stagings.

[64][65] Given Orff's previous lack of commercial success, the monetary gains from Carmina Burana's acclaim, including a 500 RM award from the city of Frankfurt,[66][67] were significant to him but the composition, with its unfamiliar rhythms, was also denounced with racist taunts.

[76][77][78] Thomas Rösch has written of this project: "The autonomy of art, which Orff always held highly, was only more illusion within the dictatorship – and the insistence of the composer on a purely artistic, aesthetic viewpoint inevitably changed under this condition to a momentous error.

[84] Together with Orff's Schulwerk associate Hans Bergese (1910–2000),[85] they published two volumes of folk music as Musik der Landschaft: Volksmusik in neuen Sätzen in 1942.

[94][95] On at least one occasion, she recalled that Orff had attempted to help her husband through Baldur von Schirach[96] (the highest-ranking Nazi official with whom he came into contact, and whom he met at least twice[97][98]), for which no further evidence has been found.

The final scene of this work, which is about the wrongful execution of Agnes Bernauer, depicts a guilt-ridden chorus begging not to be implicated in the title character's death.

[103] In late March 1946, Orff underwent a denazification process in Bad Homburg at a psychological screening center of the Information Control Division (ICD), a department of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS).

[116] Schaffner believed that the root causes of Nazism included an underlying societal rigidity and authoritarianism in Germany, especially as they pertained to fathers in family life and institutions such as the school and the military.

[132] The American evaluators disbelieved Orff's account of his reception in the Third Reich: "The fact that he was deferred ... during the war is contradictory to his claim that he was not well thought of at the Propaganda Ministry.

[137] Nor is there any mention of the potentially subversive and anti-authoritarian texts in his works,[138][139] notably the passages in Die Kluge (premiere 1943) that have been identified as such, sometimes even during Orff's lifetime (including by Carl Dahlhaus).

[140][141][142][143][144][44] According to Michael Kater, Orff cleared his name during the denazification period by claiming that he had helped establish the White Rose resistance movement in Germany.

[151] A few years later, Viennese historian Oliver Rathkolb discovered Orff's denazification file, which was distributed to reporters in a press conference at the Orff-Zentrum München on 10 February 1999.

"[167] In 1999, at the height of the controversy, musicologist Reinhard Schulz described the affair as a "scholarly cockfight" (wissenschaftlichen Hahnenkampfes), adding: "Far more important than a single fact would be an understanding of [the] connection" to Orff's life and creativity.

[176] Orff's final marriage, which lasted to the end of his life, was with Liselotte Schmitz (1930–2012), who had been his secretary, and who after his death carried on his legacy in her capacity with the Carl-Orff Stiftung.

The medieval poems, written in Latin and an early form of German, are a lament about the cruel indifference of fate (the brief opening and closing sections of Orff's work are titled "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi", i.e., "Fortune, Ruler of the World").

[193] The work's association with fascism also led Pier Paolo Pasolini to use the movement "Veris leta facies" to accompany the concluding scenes of torture and murder in his final film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.

[204] In a letter dated 8 January 1947 to his student Heinrich Sutermeister, Orff called Die Bernauerin "the last piece in the series of my earlier work; Antigonae starts a new phase.

[208]Orff's final work for the stage, De temporum fine comoedia (Play on the End of Times), had its premiere at the Salzburg Festival on 20 August 1973, performed by Herbert von Karajan and the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and Chorus.

It has a large cast and similar scoring to the Greek tragedies with some exceptions, notably clarinetists (all with E-flat clarinets) instead of oboists and the addition of contrabassoon, horns, and tuba.

"[209] There is no evidence Orff considered writing another stage work after De temporum fine comoedia, and in 1979 he told an interviewer he was certain it was the end (Schluß) of his composition.

[210] In this highly personal work, Orff presented a mystery play, sung in Greek, German, and Latin, in which he summarized his view of the end of time.