Elementar as the Fundamental Idea in Orff-Schulwerk : When Orff Started Using the Term

The idea of the music educator Carl Off (Germany 1895(Germany -1982) ) in music education is described as elementar in German.This study is a part of the effort to enable Japanese teachers to deeper understand Orff's elementar as they belong to a different history, culture, and language.In precise, this study identifies when and how Orff started using the term elementar and decided to set this idea at the center of his pedagogy.In conclusion, Orff used the term primitiv in his essay when he was 36 years old and presented the idea equivalent to elementar that came later.He nearly for thirty years, however, refrained himself from using the term primitiv that has a similar connotation to elementar but also contains a negative implication.And it is revealed that Orff, since 1962 when he visited Japan for the first time, started using the term elementar and vigorously promoting the term internationally.He was already 67 years old when he publically started using the term elementar.