2010/09/02 by Nicholas Attfield · 12 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Musicology and Musical Analysis #German Literature and Culture Studies #Arts, Culture, and Music Studies #Simplicity #German #Style (visual arts) #Literature #Art #History #Aesthetics #Philosophy #Epistemology #Archaeology
paper · doi:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199558551.003.0018
published in Oxford University Press eBooks, 340-368 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2010/09/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/03/03
This chapter deals with some largely unknown works of Carl Orff (1895–1982). Specifically, it considers two dramas based on ancient Greek texts, the setting of which occupied several decades in Orff's middle age. These are Antigonae (1949) and Oedipus der Tyrann (1959), both composed after Friedrich Hölderlin's German translations of Sophocles. It shows that the distant past was a matter of considerable interest and significance for Orff. It was the imagining of this past in music that laid the bedrock of his style for much of his life; it is this that, in the main, accounts for the ‘extraordinary simplicity, even childishness’ for which he is sometimes championed and just as often ridiculed.