Richard Strauss beats Carl Orff any day in the week. Try to name *another* large and popular work by Orff. See how many seconds it takes any good musician to list TEN works of Strauss that are masterworks.
Added - @Rrr - of course, those of us who have any decent education in music know more works by ANY obscure composer, who is know to the general public as a one-trick pony. Discussion on YA are hardly at the level of graduate school, or even coffee-house conversation among intelligent friends. Did Orff present some rather inventive devices for his time? Sure. However, his total output is nowhere as profound as that of Strauss. Sure, you can cherry-pick and line up a weak work from one guy, and hold it up against a strong work form the other - but why? How about comparing two more similar composers - Orff and Schreker?
Yes, Husband and I laugh out loud when we hear movie composers *steal* from Orff -not because they are taking from the BEST, but because they are taking from the best-known. This is like those *survey says* answers - the opinions of the general public are hardly the same as those with specialist-level education - in ANY field.
You got a lot of really great responses, so I don't have anything much to add other than this comment. While it is true "O Fortuna" turns up in a lot of commercials, television and movie soundtracks, completely out-of-context with the original work--parts of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" has "suffered" the same fate. Most people know it only as the main theme from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", and subsequently every time someone parodies a scene from the movie.
O fortuna definitely. Im a horn player. I love strauss, but i really cant say that i like also sprach. Personally i think its pretty lame. O fortuna isnt my favorite, but its really nice. I like it, certainly more than i do Also Sprach. All i have to say is the last 30 seconds of Scraibin's Prometheus is the greatest in terms of epicness!
"O Fortuna" is one movement (about 3 minutes) from a lengthy cantata, Carmina Burana (about 1 hour). Zarathustra is a symphonic poem that takes about 35 minutes to perform. The two are clearly not comparable. Besides, there is no common standard by which to judge which is better - it's completely subjective.
And for the other answerers, you can't rag on Orff because popular culture has appropriated "O Fortuna" and neglected the rest of his oeuvre. Strauss' work is much better known than Orff's for a number of reasons, including the fact that Strauss was from a previous generation, he was much more prolific, he was a prominent conductor and was very well-connected - besides any considerations of quality of his output (which is amazing, of course). Strauss composed for a variety of genres; Orff's output was primarily choral and dealt with themes from classical antiquity. If you cannot name Orff's "Catulli Carmina", "Die Kluge", "Antigonae", "Trionfo di Afrodite" and so on, that makes you, not Orff, the one-trick pony. And since when is fame proportional to quality? As you can tell from reading this forum, far more people can name Yiruma than Richard Strauss. This should tell you that in some cases, fame and quality are inversely proportional.
Orff's Carmina Burana is quite the masterpiece... but he is a "one trick pony." Most people, even really knowledgeable ones, could probably not name another work by him.
Strauss on the other hand has a significant number of works that are highly regarded.
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Richard Strauss beats Carl Orff any day in the week. Try to name *another* large and popular work by Orff. See how many seconds it takes any good musician to list TEN works of Strauss that are masterworks.
Added - @Rrr - of course, those of us who have any decent education in music know more works by ANY obscure composer, who is know to the general public as a one-trick pony. Discussion on YA are hardly at the level of graduate school, or even coffee-house conversation among intelligent friends. Did Orff present some rather inventive devices for his time? Sure. However, his total output is nowhere as profound as that of Strauss. Sure, you can cherry-pick and line up a weak work from one guy, and hold it up against a strong work form the other - but why? How about comparing two more similar composers - Orff and Schreker?
Yes, Husband and I laugh out loud when we hear movie composers *steal* from Orff -not because they are taking from the BEST, but because they are taking from the best-known. This is like those *survey says* answers - the opinions of the general public are hardly the same as those with specialist-level education - in ANY field.
You got a lot of really great responses, so I don't have anything much to add other than this comment. While it is true "O Fortuna" turns up in a lot of commercials, television and movie soundtracks, completely out-of-context with the original work--parts of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" has "suffered" the same fate. Most people know it only as the main theme from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", and subsequently every time someone parodies a scene from the movie.
See below, a video game commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8mRYiMZGcw
O fortuna definitely. Im a horn player. I love strauss, but i really cant say that i like also sprach. Personally i think its pretty lame. O fortuna isnt my favorite, but its really nice. I like it, certainly more than i do Also Sprach. All i have to say is the last 30 seconds of Scraibin's Prometheus is the greatest in terms of epicness!
In terms of originality and influence, probably the Orff opus.
In fact, I wonder how film composers would convey battle scenes, fulfilled prophesies, and supernatural events without Orff's example.
(I believe it was Mamianka who said that she and her husband enjoy going to the movies and playing a game which they call "catch the Orff.")
In fact, his influence has inspired the coinage of a new term on this forum: "epic."
I have never tried to compose in the epic style, but I suspect that the formula might be simple:
a moderately slow tempo, minor modality, and a repetition of the main theme with an increase in the dynamic level.
Simple or not, it was Orff who first came up with it.
I don't like Strauss very much.
My feeble brain can't take on fifteen different countermelodies at once.
There must be something about his music that I'm missing, though, because he was unrivalled as the most popular German composer of his time.
Besides, what if Orff WAS a one-hit wonder?
That's one more than a lot of composers score!
"O Fortuna" is one movement (about 3 minutes) from a lengthy cantata, Carmina Burana (about 1 hour). Zarathustra is a symphonic poem that takes about 35 minutes to perform. The two are clearly not comparable. Besides, there is no common standard by which to judge which is better - it's completely subjective.
And for the other answerers, you can't rag on Orff because popular culture has appropriated "O Fortuna" and neglected the rest of his oeuvre. Strauss' work is much better known than Orff's for a number of reasons, including the fact that Strauss was from a previous generation, he was much more prolific, he was a prominent conductor and was very well-connected - besides any considerations of quality of his output (which is amazing, of course). Strauss composed for a variety of genres; Orff's output was primarily choral and dealt with themes from classical antiquity. If you cannot name Orff's "Catulli Carmina", "Die Kluge", "Antigonae", "Trionfo di Afrodite" and so on, that makes you, not Orff, the one-trick pony. And since when is fame proportional to quality? As you can tell from reading this forum, far more people can name Yiruma than Richard Strauss. This should tell you that in some cases, fame and quality are inversely proportional.
Orff's Carmina Burana is quite the masterpiece... but he is a "one trick pony." Most people, even really knowledgeable ones, could probably not name another work by him.
Strauss on the other hand has a significant number of works that are highly regarded.
Better is subjective.
... of the two I'd rather not listen to either right now.
its personal opinion dude