The first lessons use the body as an instrument, with clapping hands, patting thighs, stamping feet and snapping fingers. Speech patterns begin with prehistoric nonsense syllables and familiar nursery rhymes. The predominant force is rhythm, derived from the subconscious patterns of nature – heartbeats, breathing, walking. Students should enter into serious study and learn formal vocabulary only once they revel in its natural elements by participating in creating ensemble music, feeling the relationship of its elements, listening to other performers and grasping its power to communicate. Orff thoroughly integrated music into gymnastics, dance and play through bodily movements and speech patterns that trace the development of music from its primordial roots. The key to the Orff method is so simple it now seems obvious – recognizing that kids are kids rather than miniature adults and that they must first experience and internalize music on a meaningful level before formal training. As he later recounted in his Schulwerk (Schott, 1950), children rebel against being plunged into the boring technical exercises and "polite minuets, insipid rondos and empty sonatinas" in most practice books. In 1925 he co-founded the Güntherschule, a Munich school where he developed and applied an innovative method of musical education that revolutionized teaching and still wields enormous influence. Rather than remain just another one among the legions of minor composers of his time, Orff redirected his work toward a far more lasting goal. Carl Orff, though, looked back even further, to the era before tonality had begun. Most of the best-known composers averted that peril by clinging to the popular models of the past and lapsed into recycling formulae of the previous century. Once tonality had run its course, some pursued further innovation through bypassing traditional notions of melody, harmony, rhythm and structure altogether, but they alienated much of their audience in the process. The overriding challenge of twentieth-century music has been progress with integrity.
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