Erwin Schulhoff
Encyclopedia
Erwin Schulhoff was a Czech composer
and pianist
.
of Jewish
-German
origin, Schulhoff was one of the brightest figures in a generation of European musicians whose successful careers were prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany
. Despite making important contributions to the development of European classical music during the early 20th century, their works have largely languished in obscurity, including Schulhoff's.
In his youth, Schulhoff studied composition and piano
in Prague, Vienna
, Leipzig
and Cologne
, where his teachers included Claude Debussy
, Max Reger
and Willi Thern
, among others. He was one of the first classical composers in Europe to find inspiration in the rhythms of jazz
music. Schulhoff also embraced the avant-garde
influence of Dada
ism in his performance and writing after World War I
.
Schulhoff occasionally performed as a pianist in the Osvobozené divadlo
in Prague. He also toured Germany, France
and England
as a celebrated keyboard virtuoso.
In the 1930s, Schulhoff ran into mounting personal and professional difficulties. Because of his Jewish descent and his radical politics, he and his works were blacklisted as "degenerate
" by the Nazi regime. He could no longer give recitals in Germany, nor could his works be performed publicly.
His Communist
sympathies, which became increasingly visible 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 concentration camp, near Weißenburg, Bavaria
. He died on 18 August 1942 from tuberculosis
.
, and Richard Strauss
. Later, during his Dadaist phase, Schulhoff composed a number of pieces with absurdist elements; notable among these is "In futurum" (from the Fünf Pittoresken for piano) -- a completely silent piece made up entirely of rests that anticipates John Cage
's 4′33″ by over thirty years. (Schulhoff's work is itself predated by Alphonse Allais
's Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man, written in 1897; unlike Allais's and Cage's pieces, however, Schulhoff's composition is notated in great rhythmic detail, and employs bizarre time signatures and intricate, though silent, rhythmic patterns.)
Schulhoff's third style period dates from approximately 1923 to 1932. These were his most prolific years as a composer, and the pieces composed during these years are generally the most frequently performed of Schulhoff's works. Examples include 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.
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
. Also important to Schulhoff was the work of the Second Viennese School
, though Schulhoff never adopted twelve-tone serialism as a compositional tool.
Many of these works are now available as recordings.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
.
Life
Born in PraguePrague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
of Jewish
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
-German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
origin, Schulhoff was one of the brightest figures in a generation of European musicians whose successful careers were prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. Despite making important contributions to the development of European classical music during the early 20th century, their works have largely languished in obscurity, including Schulhoff's.
In his youth, Schulhoff studied composition and piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
in Prague, Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
and Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, where his teachers included Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
and Willi Thern
Willi and Louis Thern
Vilmos Thern and Lajos Thern were Hungarian pianists and teachers. They were the sons of the composer and conductor Károly Thern....
, among others. He was one of the first classical composers in Europe to find inspiration in the rhythms of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
music. Schulhoff also embraced the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
influence of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ism in his performance and writing after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Schulhoff occasionally performed as a pianist in the Osvobozené divadlo
Osvobozené divadlo
Osvobozené divadlo was a Prague avant-garde theatre scene founded as the theatre section of an association of Czech avant-garde artists Devětsil in 1926. The theatre's beginnings were strongly influenced by Dadaism and Futurism, later by Poetism...
in Prague. He also toured Germany, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
as a celebrated keyboard virtuoso.
In the 1930s, Schulhoff ran into mounting personal and professional difficulties. Because of his Jewish descent and his radical politics, he and his works were blacklisted as "degenerate
Degenerate music
Degenerate music was a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi government in Germany to certain forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concern for degenerate music was a part of its larger and more well-known campaign against degenerate art...
" by the Nazi regime. He could no longer give recitals in Germany, nor could his works be performed publicly.
His Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
sympathies, which became increasingly visible in his works, also brought him trouble in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
. In 1932 he composed a musical version of The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party is a short 1848 publication written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the...
(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
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
. In 1941, the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
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
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. He died on 18 August 1942 from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
.
Musical style
Schulhoff went through a number of distinct stylistic periods. His early works exhibit the influence of composers from the preceding generation, including Debussy, ScriabinAlexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
, and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
. Later, during his Dadaist phase, Schulhoff composed a number of pieces with absurdist elements; notable among these is "In futurum" (from the Fünf Pittoresken for piano) -- a completely silent piece made up entirely of rests that anticipates John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
's 4′33″ by over thirty years. (Schulhoff's work is itself predated by Alphonse Allais
Alphonse Allais
Alphonse Allais was a French writer and humorist born in Honfleur, Calvados.He is the author of many collections of whimsical writings. A poet as much as a humorist, he in particular cultivated the verse form known as holorhyme, i.e. made up entirely of homophonous verses, where entire lines rhyme...
's Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man, written in 1897; unlike Allais's and Cage's pieces, however, Schulhoff's composition is notated in great rhythmic detail, and employs bizarre time signatures and intricate, though silent, rhythmic patterns.)
Schulhoff's third style period dates from approximately 1923 to 1932. These were his most prolific years as a composer, and the pieces composed during these years are generally the most frequently performed of Schulhoff's works. Examples include the String Quartet No. 1 and Five Pieces for String Quartet, which integrate modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
vocabulary, neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
elements, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, and dance rhythms from a variety of sources and cultures.
The final period of his career was dedicated to pieces classifiable as socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
, with Communist ideology frequently in the foreground.
In general Schulhoff's music remains connected to Western tonality, though—like Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
, 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
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
and quartal
Quartal and quintal harmony
In music, quartal harmony is the building of harmonic structures with a distinct preference for the intervals of the perfect fourth, the augmented fourth and the diminished fourth. Quintal harmony is harmonic structure preferring the perfect fifth, the augmented fifth and the diminished fifth...
harmonies, dance rhythms, and a comparatively free approach to form
Musical form
The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections...
. Also important to Schulhoff was the work of the Second Viennese School
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
, though Schulhoff never adopted twelve-tone serialism as a compositional tool.
Selected works
- SymphonySymphonyA symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
No. 1 (1925) - Symphony No. 2 (1932)
- Symphony No. 3
- 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)
- Piano Concerto "Alla jazz"
- Double Concerto for Flute, Piano and Orchestra
- Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra
- SuiteSuiteIn music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
for Chamber Orchestra (1921) - Ogelala, ballet (fr) (1922)
- String Sextet
- Divertimento for String Quartet
- Five Pieces for String Quartet (Fünf Stücke für Streichquartett)
- String Quartet No. 0, op.25
- String Quartet No. 1
- String Quartet No. 2
- Concertino for flute, viola and double bass
- Divertimento for oboe, clarinet and bassoon
- Suite for Violin and Piano
- Violin Sonata No. 1
- Cello Sonata
- Hot Sonate for alto saxophone and piano
- Piano Sonata No. 1
- Piano Sonata No. 2
- Piano Sonata No. 3
- 5 Etudes de jazz for piano
- 6 Esquisses de jazz for piano
- Suite dansante en jazz for piano
- Fünf Pittoresken for piano
- Bassnachtigall for contrabassoonContrabassoonThe contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
- FlammenFlammen (Schulhoff)Flammen is an opera is two acts and ten scenes composed by Erwin Schulhoff. The original libretto in Czech was written by Karel Josef Beneš. The German version was translated by Max Brod. The opera had its world premiere at the old National Theatre in Brno on January 27, 1932 performed in Czech...
, opera - Sonata Erotica for female voice solo
Many of these works are now available as recordings.
See also
- Wilhelm KuheWilhelm KuheWilhelm Kuhe was a German pianist, pianoforte player and teacher, composer and administrator born in the city of Prague , in the first half of the nineteenth-century.-Life:...
- Julius SchulhoffJulius SchulhoffJulius Schulhoff, was a Bohemian pianist and composer of Jewish birth. He was the great-uncle of the 20th century composer Erwin Schulhoff....
, the great-uncle of Erwin Schulhoff - Eye musicEye musicEye music describes graphical features of scores that when performed are unnoticeable by the listener.-Difficulties in defining eye music:...
External links
- A Comprehensive discography by Claude Torres
- JMI newsletter: CD review
- Orel Foundation (engl.) Erwin Schulhoff- biography, bibliography, works and discography.
- Erwin Shulhoff's life and Weinberger Tour
- Program note to Schulhoff's Double Concerto for Flute, Piano, and Orchestra from the Los Angeles Chamber OrchestraLos Angeles Chamber OrchestraThe Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra is a 40-member American chamber orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, considered by music critic Jim Svejda as "America's finest chamber orchestra".-History:...