Training and Study Years
- 1911-12 wrote Zarathustra, Op. 14
- Unfinished large work for baritone voice, three male choruses and orchestra; based on passages from Frederich Nietzsche's philosophical novel Thus Spake Zarathustra
- 1913 Gisei musical drama sets to his own text which was loosely based on the Japanese No drama Terakoya
- Shows the first sings of colorful, unusual combinations of instruments in orchestrations
- 1914 Further studies with Hermann Zilcher
- 1916 Directly before the outbreak of WWI, Orff recognized he was progressing on the wrong track musically, and radically changed directions
- Irrevocably attracted by the theater-became musical director of Munich Chamber Theater
- 1917 Served in the German Army during World War I
- Severely injured and nearly killed when a trench caved in.
- 1918 After recovery, held various positions at opera houses in Mannheim and Darmstadt
- 1919 Orff worked as a freelance composer in Munich
- 1920 Married Alice Solcher (Married four times: Alice, then Gertrud Willert [1939], Luise Rinser [1954], and Liselotte Schmitz [1960])
- Began to develop his own musical style; studied the music of the masters of the 16th and 17th centuries
- 1921 Curt Sachs attracted Orff to Monteverdi, beginning with Orpheus; developed Orff's musical language
- Birth of daughter Godela
- Orff began to formulate a concept he called "elementare Musil", or elemental music, which was based on the unity of the arts symbolized by the ancient Greek Muses and ivolved tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture
- Influenced by Igor Stravinsky---Les noces: enjoyed Stravinsky's pounding, quasi-folkloric evocation of prehistoric wedding rites