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Erwin Schulhoff Life In his youth, Schulhoff studied composition and piano in Prague, Vienna, Leipzig and Cologne, studying with Claude Debussy and Max Reger among others. He began to embrace the avant-garde influences of jazz and Dadaism in his performance and writing after World War I. He was one of the first classical composers in Europe to find inspiration in the rhythms of jazz music. Schulhoff was a celebrated keyboard virtuoso and made extensive tours of Germany while also venturing farther afield to France and England. In the 1930s, Schulhoff ran into mounting personal and professional difficulties. Because of his Jewish descent and his radical politics, he and his work were blacklisted as "degenerate" by the Nazi regime. He could no longer give recitals in Germany, nor could his works be publicly performed. His Communist sympathies, which became increasingly visible in his works, also brought him trouble in Czechoslovakia. In 1932 he created a music version of "The Communist Manifesto" (Op. 82). Taking refuge in Prague, he found employment as a radio pianist but earned barely enough to cover the cost of everyday essentials. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he had to resort to performing under a pseudonym. In 1941, the Soviet Union approved his petition for citizenship, but he was arrested and imprisoned before he could leave Czechoslovakia. In June 1941, Schulhoff was deported to the Wülzburg concentration camp, near Weißenburg, Bavaria. He died on August 18, 1942 from tuberculosis. Musical style What might be described as Schulhoff's "mature" style is typified by works like the String Quartet No. 1 and Five Pieces for String Quartet, which integrate modernist vocabulary, neoclassical elements, jazz, and dance rhythms from a variety of sources and cultures. Also important to Schulhoff was the work of the Second Viennese School, though Schulhoff never adopted twelve-tone serialism as a compositional tool. The final period of his career was dedicated to pieces classifiable as socialist realism, with Communist ideology frequently in the foreground. In general Schulhoff's music remains connected to Western tonality, though -- like Prokofiev, among others -- the fundamentally triadic conception of his music is often embellished by passages of intense dissonance. Other features characteristic of Schulhoff's compositional style are use of modal and quartal harmonies, dance rhythms, and a comparatively free approach to form. Selected works |
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