Carl Heinrich Maria Orff was a a German composer and music educator, best known for his famous oratorio “Carmina Burana.” He was born on July 10, 1895, in Munich, Germany and died on March 29, 1982. From a very young age, Orff was immersed in a world full of music, and he studied many instruments. As a young man, he attended the Munich Academy of Music. He was later deployed onto the battlefield of WWI. In the mid-thirties, he composed “Carmina Burana”, which was premiered in 1937; he conducted various orchestral works, and also published an important collection of folksongs with Kurt Huber (who was later executed by the Nazis). There is great debate about Orff's involvement in Nazi Germany during WWII, but he went through the "denazification" process in 1946.  Although he went on to compose more music in his later years, he never again returned to the concert podium.