I have a tremendous passion for the fashionable dances and there are times when
I go dancing night after night with dance hostesses purely out of rhythmic
enthusiasm and subconscious sensuality; this gives my creative work a phenomenal
impulse, because in my consciousness I am incredibly earthly, even bestial…
Erwin Schulhoff in a letter to
Alban Berg (1921).
Schulhoff, born in 1894 in Prague (then part of the Hungarian empire) was born
in a German speaking Jewish family. Schulhoff was discovered by
Dvorak himself,
who recognized the talents. Schulhoff was admitted to the Prague Conservatory (major
piano) which he followed from 1902 to 1904. He then continues to study in Vienna,
Austria (1904-1908). From 1908 to 1910 he studies with
Max Reger at the
Leipzig Conservatory
followed by a course of study at the Cologne Conservatory (1910-14). In Cologne he studies
with
Debussy.
Despite Schulhoff's conservatory years and classical training, he feels right-away attracted
to modern art and music. As a formidable pianist he quickly gaines a reputation of a champion
of Avant-Garde along with classical music. Schulhoff gives performances of the works of
Scriabin,
Schoenberg,
Berg,
Webern,
Hindemith,
Bartok, and surprisingly, he shows
he masters the quarter-tone piano music of
Alois Haba.
Schulhoff (feeling atracted to the
Dada movement) even dedicates works (
Pittoresken)
to
George Grosz. Another
Dada inspired composition 'In Futurum' contains only one
rest,
that is marked as
with feeling.
Schulhoff was (naturally) also a proponent of
Jazz and
Rag-Time: he played in several Jazz bars
as a pianist.
The rise of the Nazis in Germany, who put him on the list of forbidden music, immediately ended
his career in Berlin. The Czech
authorities were suspicious of him because of his 'pro-German'
views and music: worser yet, Schulhoff was a follower of
Communism (he even set the Communist
Manifesto to music). In 1939 he became a Soviet citizen.
When the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia, he is arrested by the Security Police and transported to
camp Wülzburg,
Germany. Here he dies (1942) of tuberculosis according to one source,
typhus according to another, and torture according to a third one.
Schülhoff produced a large number of work including two operas (Flammen for example), two ballets, a Jazz oratorio,
a piano concerto and two string quartets. After the war, Schulhoff (political) works were
mainly used for the
propaganda machine of
Czechoslovakia. Nowadays his works are slowly
getting mainstream and played by ensembles specializing in
modern music.
Source:
Sierra Chamber Society