A chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character.

Chorales tend to have simple and singable tunes, because they were originally intended to be sung by the congregation rather than a professional choir. They generally have rhyming words and are in a strophic form (with the same melody being used for different verses). Within a verse, most chorales follow the AAB pattern of melody that is known as the German Bar form.

Martin Luther posited that worship should be conducted in German rather than Latin. He thus saw an immediate need for a large repertory of new chorales. He composed some chorale melodies himself, such as A Mighty Fortress. For other chorales he used Gregorian Chant melodies used in Catholic worship and fitted them with a new German text. A famous example is Christ lag in Todes Banden, which is based on the tune of the Catholic Easter Sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes.

Carl Orff ((1895-07-10)July 10, 1895 – March 29, 1982(1982-03-29)) was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.

Orff was born in Munich on July 10, 1895. His family was Bavarian and was active in the Army of the German Empire.

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.