Carl Orff, Great Composer, Overused Music.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Carl Orff, a composer who as much as you haven't heard of him, you've heard his music. I'm not saying that lightly. You have heard at least one of his pieces. Because they're everywhere, and overused. He's a great composer, and there are worse songs that you hear on a regular basis. But, have you ever heard O Fortuna? That's an overused song. It's in half the movies you've seen. Because it's a great, epic song. But you don't know the name of the guy who wrote it, likely.

Maybe you don't even know the name of the piece itself. If that's the case, here's the piece.

But, how did this song come into existence? Once, we found a monastery. In this monastery. we found lyrics. But no music. So, composers tried to come up with music that fit. And Carl Orff did a damn good job with it. Because that's what we use, to this very day. In movies, in videos, over the radio, anywhere. He did an amazing job. And that's just for this.

He also did beautiful music outside of the stuff on the monastery, which was great. He also did nice, neat songs for kids to learn. And that stuff was used horribly, as one such song, for kids trying to learn percussion, was used at the opening of the 1936 Olympics. You know, the ones in Germany, when Hitler was in power. And it's also been used in movies for the themes of innocent people like serial killers.

But that's not the way to look at his music. Carl Orff was born in 1895, and spent his life working on beautiful pieces of music and training for children. And he did amazing. And he deserves to be known for that, not for what his music has been used for, be it Nazi Germany, or just an overused piece.

Adventure Van, gopher tuna.