Carl Heinrich Maria Orff , the son of Paula Orff and Heinrich Orff . His family was Bavarian and was active in the Imperial German Army; his father was an army officer with strong musical interests, and his mother was a trained pianist. His grandfathers, Carl von Orff and Karl Köstler, were both major generals and also scholars. His paternal grandmother, Fanny Orff , was Catholic of Jewish descent. His maternal grandmother was Maria Köstler. Orff had one sibling, his younger sister Maria, who married the architect Alwin Seifert in 1924. Despite his family's military background, Orff recalled in 1970: "In my father's house there was certainly more music making than drilling." At age five, he began to play piano, and later studied cello and organ.[4] He composed a few songs and music for puppet plays. He had two vignettes published in July 1905 in Das gute Kind, the children's supplement to Die katholische Familie.