Early life  Orff started studying the piano at the age of five,
and he also took organ and cello lessons. However, he was more
interested in composing original music than in studying to be a
performer. Orff wrote and staged puppet shows for his family,
composing music for piano, violin, zither, and glockenspiel to
accompany them. He had a short story published in a children's
magazine in 1905 and started to write a book about nature. In
his spare time he enjoyed collecting insects. By the time he was
a teenager, Orff was writing songs, although he had not studied
harmony or composition; his mother helped him set down his first
works in musical notation. Orff wrote his own texts and he
learned the art of composing, without a teacher, by studying
classical masterworks on his own. In 1911, at age 16, some of
Orff's music was published. Many of his youthful works were
songs, often settings of German poetry. They fell into the style
of Richard Strauss and other German composers of the day, but
with hints of what w