Taking the Orff Approach to Heart: Essays & Articles from a Pioneer of Orff in America

By Isabel McNeill Carley

Taking the Orff Approach to Heart: Essays & Articles from a Pioneer of Orff in America contains twenty-nine original essays and articles. It is a companion book to Making It Up As You Go, also from Brasstown Press. 

North American Orff educator Isabel McNeill Carley writes with skill and humor on topics from theory to practice, integrating music, speech, movement, and improvisation.


Assigned as a text in Orff Levels certification instruction, Taking The Orff Approach to Heart offers insights into teaching, childhood development, pentatonic music theory and applications, and even an illustrated children's story.


Never-before published gems include:

• 
Detailed guidance on weaving speech play into the classroom, with great examples from the public domain

• A comprehensive master class for creating Orff arrangements

• How to introduce Orff instruments in the classroom, with stepwise instruction

• Gentle, age-appropriate sequences introducing music and creativity for preschool and for kindergarten

• Key ways to integrate speech, play, movement, singing, and rhythmic and melodic instruments into the music classroom
• And numerous additional essays about the joys of teaching from the heart, engaging children and adults with spontaneity and simplicity.
• There's even an original children's story which, when read aloud, leads from speech to song.

More inside:

• How to introduce music to pre-schoolers
• How to compose and arrange for the Orff instrumentarium and classroom
• How to introduce music through speech play – with a bonus chapter of great speech materials in the public domain
• How to introduce the ostinato and build the Carpet of Sound
• How to teach and use the recorder with the Orff Approach

• Foreword by Karen Stafford PhD
• 
Editor's Introduction by Anne M Carley
• 
Biographical Note about the author
• 
Informative essays on Carl Orff and the Orff Schulwerk, developed by Orff and his colleague Gunild Keetman
• 
Introductory headnotes from the editor
• 
The significance of the pentatonic scale in Orff education
• 
Extensive speech play resources

• Pentatonic scales + modes in C, F, & G
• 
Glossary and biographical notes
• 
Published resources and references
• 
Selected bibliography

The Table of Contents includes:

1. The Case for Creativity

2. That Lovely Two-Headed Betsy Higginbottam

3. Create or Perform

4. Music Plus: Five- and Six-Year-Olds in the Classroom

5. Playing With Our Materials: Speech Play

6. Speech Play Resources

7. At the Foot of the Mountains, Or How Mrs. Dow Made a Song

8. Introducing Ostinati with Murray Volume I

9. Tips for Teachers of the Recorder

10. How To Introduce the Orff Ensemble

11. Practicing Some Neglected Ensemble Techniques

12. Master Class: Composing and Arranging for the Orff Classroom

13. Teaching Music to Preschoolers

14. Concerning Rabbits

15. The Next Ten Years: A View from the Early Day

16. On Patterns in A Music Gestalt

17. First Encountering Gunild Keetman

18. Improvisation Makes It Happen

19. The Inclusive Art of Music

20. The Essential Role of the Recorder

21. Using the Recorder: The Orff Approach

22. On Setting a Program's Goals

23. The Schulwerk's Origins and Early Music

24. The Orff Approach in Church

25. On Being Simple-Minded

26. My Theory of Education

27. Educating All of the Human Mind

28. Little Is Possible Without Healthy Roots

29. Imparted Grace: The Central Role of Music in Education

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brasstown Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2025
• ISBN: 9780983654599

Isabel McNeill Carley

Karen Whithaus Stafford is an Adjunct Professor at LIndenwood University and Elementary Music Teacher at School District of Washington, Missouri, USA. A PhD candidate in music education at the University of Kansas, she makes her home in Union, Missouri.

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