Orff's idea that the player of ELEMENTAL MUSIC should also be able to build their own instrument goes back to ethnomusicological aspects that were conveyed to him by music anthropologist Curt Sachs (Weinbuch, 2010, 54ff.).

The elemental, the primitive, primitive art and primitive music are intellectual constructs influenced by ethnology (then: ethnography) and ethnomusicology (then: comparative musicology) in the culture of the turn of the century 1900 (ca. 1880-1925). Orff's term elemental music [Elementare Musik] is preceded by the term primitive music, which he adopted from the ethnomusicology of his time (Weinbuch, 2010, 50-72).