Foreword Introduction What is Orff Schulwerk? Contents . The Author   Foreword Carl Orff's educational ideas could not have an advocate more well-equipped by fortune and disposition. Inspired initially by Avon Gillespie who embodied playing, singing and dancing, Doug Goodkin also brings to his teaching a first-hand, intensive experience of the indigenous music and dance of many continents and peoples. The San Francisco School, where he has been teaching since the mid-1970s, started as a Montessori school, but over the years has grown and now takes children aged from 3-14 in classes numbering around 18. The advantage of the small classes is obvious, and the not so usual age range has given him the unique, practical opportunity of working out a successful and convincing progression from the earliest beginnings through to the more advanced techniques to be found in the later, less explored original volumes of Orff Schulwerk - and much of it he relates to a world music setting. There is a wealth of detail here that provides the incentive to attempt achievable goals, and to explore with greater understanding the wealth of material that Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman have left us. Doug Goodkin's advocacy is compelling and reading this book has been a very heartening experience. MARGARET MURRAY $60.00 (inc GST)

What is Orff Schulwerk? When asked to define jazz, Louis Armstrong once replied, "If you have to ask what it is, you'll never know." Having had to describe Orff Schulwerk to countless parents, fellow teachers and seatmates on airplanes, I wish I could get by with such a clever retort. But the fact is that having never heard of it before, seen it or experienced it, people are naturally compelled to ask. And when I answer with one of my stock replies: "It's holistic music education;" "It's a way to learn music by singing, dancing, playing special instruments and improvising;" "It's an approach to music education developed by the composer Carl Orff of Carmina Burana fame;" I see them nod their head in feigned understanding, but know that they're not one inch closer to a useful picture of what these two mysterious foreign words mean. The simple fact is that the definition of the Schulwerk is too large to fit comfortably into one sentence - or two or ten or ten thousand. Like Louis Armstrong's jazz, it is more easily felt than explained - which means one must observe it being taught to children and participate oneself in an Orff workshop. Yet even those experiences just allow you to peek through the window. Taking a two-week intensive Orff teacher training course and teaching it yourself to children of various ages gets your toe in the door. Completing the three levels of an Orff Certification Program and teaching for five years might finally gain you entrance into the room. Yet the breadth of the experience is so large and the possibilities so endless that there is never a sense of having fully arrived. Just when you think you have it, someone changes the furniture in the room or reveals a hidden closet and you have to refocus your perception. The Schulwerk may be called the Orff approach or the Orff process, but never the Orff method, suggesting that there is no systematic step wise procedure to be followed that will apply equally to all situations. It is a demanding discipline for teachers, for it requires that each instigate his or her own method of investigation and procedure. This is not to say that there is any lack of fundamental principles, clear models and basic processes - indeed, the structures of the Schulwerk are a blessing to the intuitive and creative teacher seeking a means to organize her or his ideas. But like the jazz player who forges a personal voice by absorbing and then transforming the vocabulary of those who came before, the Orff teacher must animate the basic procedures with the full force of her musicality, personality and intelligence. Once that voice emerges, then the real work begins. And begins again. For the word "approach" also suggests that one never wholly arrives, but is perpetually on the way. The majestic scope of the Schulwerk touched on in these sixteen chapters exploring Orff media partly explains its resistance to being reduced to a few easy platitudes - its life as an active practice explains the rest. As a practice, it is like any other living organism that changes through time and space. Not only is "Music for Children" over 50 years old, but it has traveled clear around the world and back again, leaving its mark in over 25 countries. And yet, amidst all the changes through the years and across cultural borders, there is something that would allow the Austrian teacher in 1950 and the Californian teacher in 2001 to recognize each other. Despite the differences in accent and dialect, each speaks fundamentally the same tongue. It appears that in the midst of happily fluid vernaculars, there are certain guiding grammars that define the language of Orff Schulwerk. Somewhere between the fixed walls of brittle doctrine and the indulgent freedom of unbridled expression lie a few palpable truths about what makes this practice unique. Teasing out those core principles is the task of this book. In that spirit, I offer this collection as my attempt to answer the innocent question of my airplane seatmate. My hope is not to reduce its freedom by pinning it down to a definition, but to understand more thoroughly the precise nature of its freedom - and in so doing, deepen the actual work with the children. That these ideas are backed by some 25,000 classes with children and 27 years of experimentation should give them enough weight to merit being heard, but by no means make them the definitive interpretation. One can no more be an expert on Orff Schulwerk than one can be an expert in parenting. All one can hope for is to keep alive a relentless spirit of inquiry, a healthy self-doubt, a willingness to set limits and an unbridled love for the child. "What is Orff Schulwerk?" is the question that informs every chapter in this book and the best place to begin is with the story of how it came to be.

Contents - 200 pages Foreword v Introduction: The Challenge Of Orff Schulwerk vii What Is Orff Schulwerk? 1 The Story Of The Schulwerk 3 I. ORFFMEDIA (see note below) 9 1. Games - A Child's Curriculum 11 2. Musica Poetica: The Word In Orff Schulwerk 17 3. What! - Me Sing? 27 4. Sing Sing Sing 31 5. Folk Dance In The Music Classroom 35 6. To Move And Be Moved 51 7. Dance In The Orff Schulwerk 55 8. Movement in the Music Classroom 61 9. Body Percussion In Music Education 67 10. An Introduction To Keith Terry's "Body Music" 75 11. Bells On Her Toes - Percussion In The Music Class 79 12. The Orff Instruments: A Child-sized Orchestra 85 13. The Role Of The Recorder In The Schulwerk 101 14. The Play's The Thing: Drama In Music Education 105 15. Drama Program Notes 113 16. Celebrations Orff Schulwerk Style 119 II.ELEMENTALSTYLE (see note below) 127 17. Rhythmic Vocalization 129 18. Solfege In The Orff Schulwerk 135 19. The Pentatonic Scale 141 20. The Drone - A Basic Foundation 147 21. The Ostinato 153 22. Music For Children: The Volumes 157 23. The Volumes: A Logical Progression 163 Afterword 193 Appendix 197

The Author Doug Goodkin teaches music and movement to children between three years old and the eighth grade at The San Francisco School, where he has taught since 1975. He is an internationally recognized practitioner of Orff-Schulwerk, teaching Orff courses throughout North America, Europe and Australia. He is the director of the Mills College Orff Certification Course in Oakland, CA and teaches his own course on Jazz and Orff-Schulwerk through San Francisco State University. Doug has published numerous articles on Orff in contemporary culture and is an author of the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill textbook series Share the Music. He is a founding member of the Orff-based adult performing group Xephyr. Doug is known for his innovative application of Orff-Schulwerk across various disciplines, particularly language arts, jazz, and multi-cultural music. He received the distinguished Pro Merita Award for his contributions to Orff Schulwerk in July 2000. To contact him, e-mail Doug at Goodkindg@aol.com

I. ORFF MEDIA The Schulwerk is a demanding discipline, asking for a minimal expertise in a wide variety of art forms and media. Since each area alone deserves a lifetime of study, no one can ever be an expert in this teaching style that requires them all. It is indeed a distinct challenge for a trained musician to have to dance and a trained dancer to have to play music, but it is also a great pleasure and one of the reasons why the work remains perpetually fresh. The Orff teacher is always a beginner in one field or another. The following chapters speak of my own experiences encountering each of the various media and my idea about how they move together in the dance of the Schulwerk. Far from definitive statements, they hope to stimulate further discussion and investigation as each new teacher brings his or her own training and expertise to the field.

II. ELEMENTAL STYLE It is useful to distinguish between education and training. Education is concerned with wholeness, with drawing forth that which lies within. It proceeds from the inside out, growing from the interest and temperament of each individual and calling on his or her contribution to the process. Authentic education requires the teacher to notice and attend to the unique needs and gifts of each student. By contrast, training moves from the outside in, bringing the student through an existing body of knowledge and ways of doing things. Here the greater share of responsibility falls to the student to rise to the demands of the given structure and to master the essentials of the craft. We need both. The first section of this book suggests how the broad scope of Orff media helps children to retain their intrinsic wholeness and express their uniqueness. This next section gives an overview of some specific ways in which the Schulwerk trains the musical intelligence, with a special focus on what Orff called "elemental style." The guidelines presented here are explored in-depth in the Orff Certification Teacher Training Courses - and of course, worked out in the actual music class with the children. Although the basic principles are universally accepted within the Orff community, the actual interpretations vary widely and are the subject of much lively discussion.

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