Ervín Schulhoff
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Erwin Schulhoff ( cs, Ervín Šulhov; 8 June 189418 August 1942) was an Austro-Czech composer and pianist. He was one of the figures in the generation of European musicians whose successful careers were prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany and whose works have been rarely noted or performed.


Life

Schulhoff was born in Prague into a German- Jewish family. His father Gustav Schulhoff was a wool merchant from Prague and his mother Louise Wolff from Frankfurt. The noted pianist and composer
Julius Schulhoff Julius Schulhoff (Julius Šulhov) (2 August 182515 March 1898) was a Bohemian pianist and composer of Jewish birth. As a composer, he was best known for his virtuosic salon pieces for solo piano, which included a grand sonata in F minor, twelve é ...
was his great-uncle.
Antonín Dvořák Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czechs, Czech composer. Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravian traditional music, Moravia and his native Bohemia, following t ...
encouraged Schulhoff's earliest musical studies, which began at the Prague Conservatory when he was ten years old. He studied composition and piano there and later in Vienna, Leipzig, and Cologne, where his teachers included
Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
,
Max Reger Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger (19 March 187311 May 1916) was a German composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and academic teacher. He worked as a concert pianist, as a musical director at the Paulinerkirche, Leipzig, Leipzig University ...
, Fritz Steinbach, and Willi Thern. He won the Mendelssohn Prize twice, for piano in 1913 and for composition in 1918. He served on the Russian front in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. He was wounded and was in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp when the war ended.Patricia Ann Hall, ''Berg's Wozzeck'' (Oxford University Press, 2011), 40–1 He lived in Germany after the war before returning in 1923 to Prague, where he joined the faculty of the conservatory in 1929. He was one of the first generation of classical composers to find inspiration in the rhythms of jazz music. Schulhoff also embraced the avant-garde influence of Dadaism in his performances and compositions after World War I. When organizing concerts of avant-garde music in 1919, he included this manifesto: Schulhoff occasionally performed as a pianist in the Prague Free Theatre. He also toured Germany, France and England performing his own works, contemporary classical compositions, and jazz. His 1921 Suite for Chamber Orchestra, in one critic's words, "is stylistically mixed, with jazz-like numbers...encompassing two slow affecting ones...as if the clown of ''Die Wolkenpumpe'' has let the mask slip as he recalled the horrors and absurdities of the trenches." He wrote his friend
Alban Berg Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
in 1921:Chris Woodstra, Gerald Brennan, Allen Schrott, ''All Music Guide to Classical Music: The Definitive Guide to Classical Music'' (All Media Guide, 2005), 1213 Olin Downes praised a Salzburg performance of his ''Five Pieces for String Quartet'' in 1924: Downes reported that following the performance Schulhoff played American ragtime numbers on piano at a local inn "till the walls tottered". In 1928, the
Flonzaley Quartet The Flonzaley Quartet was a string quartet organized in Manhattan, New York City in 1902. The group disbanded in 1929. Personnel The personnel of the group were as follows: *1st violin: (Bagni di Lucca, 21 March 1875 – Lucca, 2 December 195 ...
played the String Quartet No. 1 at their farewell New York concert between works of Beethoven and Brahms, and it was greeted enthusiastically. A 1930 performance of Schulhoff's ''Partita'' by Walter Gieseking proved to be the audience's favorite work of the recital "to judge from the applause and laughter" wrote one reviewer, "which greeted the sections bearing such titles as 'All Art Is Useless' and 'Alexander, Alexander, You Are a Salamander'." He composed his Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra in 1930, which provides, in one critic's estimation, "a fascinating inversion of the traditional concerto grosso style, with winds providing the framework of the piece as a whole, within which the string quartet appears as contrast and solo." The Boston Symphony gave the U.S. premiere on 23 February 1995 with the hawthorne String Quartet. In the 1930s, Schulhoff faced mounting personal and professional difficulties. Because of his Jewish descent and his radical politics, he and his works were labelled ''
degenerate Degeneracy, degenerate, or degeneration may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Degenerate'' (album), a 2010 album by the British band Trigger the Bloodshed * Degenerate art, a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to descr ...
'' and blacklisted by the Nazi regime. He could no longer give recitals in Germany, nor could his works be performed publicly. His
communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
sympathies, which became increasingly evident in his works, also brought him trouble in Czechoslovakia. In 1932 he composed a musical version of '' The Communist Manifesto'' (Op. 82). Taking refuge in Prague, Schulhoff 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 perform 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 Wülzburg is a historical fortress A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ...
prison near Weißenburg, Bavaria. He died there on 18 August 1942 from tuberculosis.


Musical style

Schulhoff went through a number of distinct stylistic periods, ranging, in Anne Midgette's words, "from the endearing self-consciousness of talented youth in the Suite for Chamber Orchestra to the fierce somber aggression of the Fifth Symphony." She found that even as his style changed there was a certain commonality, so that even the "angular, forceful, even raw style" of the late Fifth Symphony reflected "the late Romantic tradition of orchestral color". His early works exhibit the influence of composers from the preceding generation, including Debussy, Scriabin, and
Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
. Later, during his Dadaist phase, Schulhoff composed a number of pieces with absurdist elements. Anticipating
John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
's ''
4′33″ ''4′33″'' (pronounced "four minutes, thirty-three seconds" or just "four thirty-three") is a three- movement composition by American experimental composer John Cage. It was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, ...
'' by more than thirty years, Schulhoff's ''In futurum'' (part of ''Fünf Pittoresken'' for piano, written in 1919) is a silent piece composed entirely of rests, with the interpretative instruction "tutto il canzone con espressione e sentimento ad libitum, sempre, sin al fine" ("the whole piece with free expression and feeling, always, until the end"). The composition is notated in great rhythmic detail, employing bizarre time signatures and intricate rhythmic patterns. A 1923 report of a
Bochum Bochum ( , also , ; wep, Baukem) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 364,920 (2016), is the sixth largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) of the most populous Germany, German federal state o ...
performance puts Schulhoff in the context of his contemporaries: Schulhoff's third period dates from approximately 1923 to 1932. The pieces composed during these years, his most prolific years as a composer, are the most frequently performed of his works, including 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. He thought of jazz as a dance idiom and in a 1924 essay expressed the view that no one, including Stravinsky and Auric, had yet successfully blended jazz and art music. Performers of his Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 (1927) have described how it "draws liberally on the composers interests and abilities as a bona fide jazzman, acerbic wit and dance aficionado" and said its andante has "the kind of expressivity you find in the music of Berg". One critic has written that "Schulhoff's notion of what constitutes jazz are as surreal as some of the Dadaist texts he set...; some of the music is rather more indebted to de Falla and Russian Orientalism than ragtime or anything trans-Atlantic." He thought that innovations like an entire movement of the Suite for Chamber Orchestra (1921) for percussion alone and the use of the siren in another "would have seemed outlandish enough in 1921, even if it all sounds a bit tame now 995" A ''New York Times'' critic in 1932 called the ''Duo for violin and cello'' (1925) "long-winded and even insincere", while a performance in 2012 noted it was dedicated to Janáček, evokes Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello and "blends folk and contemporary elements" while employing "a range of sonorities and effects like dramatic pizzicatos" while "vivacious Hungarian fiddle playing enlivens the Zingaresca movement". His jazz oratorio ''H.M.S. Royal Oak'' is based on the true story of a naval mutiny against a superior who prohibits jazz on board
HMS Royal Oak Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS ''Royal Oak'', after the Royal Oak in which Charles II hid himself during his flight from the country in the English Civil War: * was a 76-gun second rate launched in 1664 and burnt by the Dutch ...
.Demetz, ''Prague in Danger'', 109 The final period of his career was dedicated to 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 Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form also refers to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data ...
. Also important to Schulhoff was the work of the
Second Viennese School The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
, though Schulhoff never adopted
serialism In music, serialism is a method of Musical composition, composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other elements of music, musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, thou ...
as a compositional tool. The papers of conferences in Cologne (1992) and in Düsseldorf (1994) focused on Schulhoff's work have been published.


Selected works

*''5 Etudes de jazz'' for piano (c.1910–1920) *Violin Sonata No. 1, Op.7 (1913) *Piano Concerto No. 1, Op.11 (1913) *''Divertimento for String Quartet'' (1914) *Cello Sonata (1914) *String Quartet No. 0, Op.25 (1918) *''Sonata Erotica'' for female voice solo (1919), "in which a soprano spends several minutes faking a carefully notated orgasm" *''Fünf Pittoresken'' for piano (1919) * ''Symphonia Germanica'' (1919), a satire against German militarismDaniel Albright, ed., ''Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources'' (University of Chicago Press, 2004), 327 *Suite for Chamber Orchestra (1921), originally called ''In the New Style'', six dances, "this bouncy, even silly work features instruments never used in the classical repertoire before, like slide whistles and car horns" *''Ogelala'', ballet ( fr) (1922) *''Cloud-Pump'' (''Die Wolkenpumpe'') (1922), songs for baritone, four winds and percussion, to texts by "the holy ghost Hans Arp" *''Bassnachtigall'' for contrabassoon (1922), "in which a solo contrabassoon does its best to make soulful liquid birdcalls" *Piano Concerto "alla Jazz" (1923) *'' Five Pieces for String Quartet'' (''Fünf Stücke für Streichquartett'') (1923) *String Sextet (1920–24) *String Quartet No. 1 (1924) *Piano Sonata No. 1 (1924) *String Quartet No. 2 (1925) *Concertino for flute, viola and double bass (1925) *Symphony No. 1 (1925) *Die Mondsüchtige ('Moonstruck'), ''Tanzgroteske'' (ballet) (1925) *Piano Sonata No. 2 (1926) *Piano Sonata No. 3 (1927) *Violin Sonata No. 2 (1927) *Sonata for Flute and Piano (1927) *Double Concerto for Flute, Piano and Orchestra (1927), neo-classical in flavor *''6 Esquisses de jazz'' for piano (1927) *''Divertisement'' (1927), for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon *'' Flammen'', opera (1927–29) *''Hot Sonate'' for alto saxophone and piano (1930) *Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra (1930) *''Suite dansante en jazz'' for piano (1931), in six dance movements: "a short fast Stomp, a languorous Strait, a parodistic Waltz, a sensuous Tango, a languid Slow, and...a fast and lascivious Fox Trot" *Symphony No. 2 (1932), "a mondane icand brilliant work with a jazz scherzo, highly typical of the composer" *''Das kommunistische Manifest'', oratorio (1932) * ''Orinoco'' (1934), a fox trot *Symphony No. 3 (1935) *''HMS Royal Oak'' (1935), jazz oratorio for narrator, soprano, tenor, mixed choir and symphonic jazz orchestra, based on text by Otto RombachAlex Ross, "Grammy surprise," 12 February 2007
accessed 15 August 2012
*Symphony No. 4 (1937) *Symphony No. 5 (1938–39) *Symphony No. 6 "Svobody" for chorus and orchestra (1940) *Symphony No. 7, in piano score only (1941–42) *Symphony No. 8, incomplete, in piano score only (1941–42) *Suite for Violin and Piano *Variations on an original Dorian theme and Fugato, op. 10, theme, 15 variations, and fugue (date?)


See also

* Eye music


Notes


References

* *


Further reading

* Yoel, Greenberg (2014). "Parables of the Old Men and the Young: The Multifarious Modernisms of Erwin Schulhoff’s String Quartets". ''Music and Letters'' 95, No. 2:.


External links


Orel Foundation
(engl.) Erwin Schulhoff- biography, bibliography, works and discography.
World ORT Music and Holocaust
Erwin Schulhoff- biography


Program note to Schulhoff's Double Concerto for Flute, Piano, and Orchestra
from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra * {{DEFAULTSORT:Schulhoff, Erwin 1894 births 1942 deaths Musicians from Prague University of Music and Theatre Leipzig alumni 20th-century classical composers Czech classical composers Czech male classical composers German male classical composers Czech classical pianists German opera composers Male opera composers Czech Jews Jewish classical composers Jewish classical pianists Mendelssohn Prize winners 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in Germany Czechoslovak civilians killed in World War II 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century German composers Male classical pianists 20th-century German male musicians Czech people who died in Nazi concentration camps Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I