The composer's collected Bavarian stage works (Die Bernauerin, Astutuli, Ludus de nato Infante mirificus and Comoedia de Christi resurrectione), signed and inscribed on the front free endpaper: "Hermann Peisach / herzlichst / C.O. / 11.9.73" (Hermann Peisach, most cordially, C.O.). Inscribed three weeks after the Salzburg world premiere of Orff's last stage work, De temporum fine comoedia, on 20 August 1973. Linen, in grey pictorial jacket, the lettering on binding and jacket reproducing Orff's own hand. 200 pp. Complete with the separate 19-page glossary booklet by Werner Thomas.

The recipient, Hermann Emanuel Peisach (1900–1990), was born in Munich five years after Orff, and in the same city. A sales agent, he married Henriette ("Henny") Bernheim in 1937, and that autumn the couple emigrated via Rome to the United States, settling in Norwalk, Connecticut. Henriette's mother, Rosa Bernheim, was deported from Munich in November 1941 and murdered at Kaunas. Orff's correspondence with Peisach runs from 1958 until the composer's death in 1982, by which time the two families addressed one another with the familiar "Du."

Provenance: Private Collection, CT (ex-Peisach Estate).