January 14th; Karl Orff Institue

The day started with the entire group taking the public buses out of the center of town to the Karl Orff Institute. We were met at the institute by the director who gave us a tour of the music portion of the Universität Mozartem. We got to look into a few of the classrooms, see their "cafeteria," which consisted of two vending machines and some tables, as well as the theater, student lounge, and see the workshop where they build the mallet instruments that Orff is so well-known for using in his teaching (xylophones).
After our tour we attended a lecture that, though quite interesting, at an hour and a half in length, got to be a little long for everyone. We learned about Karl Orff's childhood and how he came to develop the method of teaching music known as Orff-Schelwurk. We also learned about the people crucial in aiding the development of this methodology, as well as listening to recordings as well as watch of video of one of his main influencers teaching students and performing. Following the lecture we had a workshop on body percussion and movement. Our instructor had us completing activities that tested how good the group's rhythm and coordination was. We would have to move our feet to keep the beat, while clapping or patting a different rhythm with our hands while singing/chanting something else. A large portion of the opening activity was completed in call and response, and we learned multiple different actions. We would get split into different groups and we would have to keep two or more different rhythm patterns going simultaneously. The juxtaposition of the rhythms in each group made this activity difficult. The last activity of this type that we completed had 4 different patterns going, with 4 different phrases to go with that matched the rhythms. Each group had to develop their own body percussion pattern that we then put together with other groups to see how they lined up. This task was especially interesting to see how well things landed together when the groups had been working completely separately from each other. We also did some improvisation exercises on our own and with partners, and individual people in the group got the opportunity to lead everyone in a rhythm pattern.
At this point there was some confusion, as the director of the institution thought that we were going to be staying for the entire day, while the group's schedules included a free afternoon. So our two professors stuck around for the entire day while the rest of the group split up. Part of the group went to the top of the mountain the a few students had travelled to the day before. The rest of the group went for lunch, shopping, and the fortress, Hohensalzburg. It was a very educational and enjoyable day for all.