First Name:
Katherine
Last Name:
Burkhalter
Major Department:
Music Education
Thesis Director:
Susan Mills
Date of Thesis:
May 2014
The Orff-Schulwerk approach to music education has molded music classrooms across the United States since its inception in Munich, Germany in 1924 (Gray, 2002). The Orff-Schulwerk approach was first implemented in the Gunther School, a small school for women. Contrasting with the typical music education of the age, which was based upon the works of composers Bach and Mozart, Carl Orff believed that students should actively discover music through movement and improvisation (Gray, 2002). Orff's music lessons were interactive, incorporated movement and speech, and students were exposed to a variety of pitched and unpitched instruments. Together, Carl Orff and his colleagues developed the Schulwerk, an interactive approach to teaching music education that has remained influential to music classrooms around the world until this day. General music educators in North America continue to practice Carl Orff's Schulwerk to cultivate creative young musicians and prepare them to become active citizens of the 21st century (Goodkin, 2013). The purpose of this thesis is to expand the reader's knowledge of the history of the Schulwerk and how it made its way to North America, and to present methods for implementing the Orff-Schulwerk process in the classroom to enhance 21st century learning.