Ervin Schulhoff: a musician without prejudices.

Ervin Schulhoff (1894-1942) was an important figure in the Czech avant-garde between the wars. His entire life was spent switching between Czech and German cultural environments. In his time it was mainly as an outstanding pianist that he was highly regarded, and the music that he actually wrote received due recognition only later.

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He composed 7 completed symphonies, the ballets Olegala and Namesicna [The Sleepwalker], the opera Flammen (Plameny--Flames) and several concertos for different instrumental combinations (e.g. Concerto for piano and small orchestra, Double concerto for flute, piano and string orchestra with two french horns or the Concertino for string quartet and winds). His jazz oratorio H.M.S. Royal Oak was the culmination of the Jazz Wave in Bohemia. Schulhoff devoted a major part of his output to the piano, composing 5 piano sonatas, 2 piano suites and many other, often Jazz-influenced cycles (e.g. Partita for Piano, Esquisses de Jazz, Cinq Etudes de Jazz, Hot-music or Suite dansante en Jazz). His most notable works of chamber music were his two string quartets, Sextet for two violins, two violas and two cellos, his second Sonata for violin and piano, Sonata for flute and piano, and Hot-sonata for alto saxophone and piano.

Schulhoff was not only an unusually gifted musician, but one who considerably broadened the range of his creative personality through his unceasing interest in current events in culture and society. He kept up with the most progressive trends in the cultural life of his time and tried to support them with his own activities as a composer, performer and music organiser. He was open to all the newly emergent movements in the arts. For an artist of his type the inter-war period provided an inexhaustible source of creative impulses, and these he incorporated into his own musical idiom to a greater or lesser extent.

Musical Education

Schulhoff came from a Prague Jewish family. He was born in 1894 in the Lesser Town. In the spirit of family traditions he was brought up German-speaking, but from the beginning of his artistic career he was in contact with Czech cultural circles. Especially in the 1920s and 30s in Prague he collaborated with many Czechs from various branches of the arts (e.g. with the conductor Vaclav Talich, the composers Karel Boleslav Jirak and Alois Haba (see CM 3/2005), the poet Vitezslav Nezval and the artist Zdenek Pesanek). His great-uncle Julius Schulhoff had been a well-known piano virtuoso and composer. His maternal grandfather, Heinrich Wolff, an outstanding violinist, was the concert master of an opera orchestra in Frankfurt am Main. Together with the family's affluence, these musical roots provided the naturally artistically disposed Ervin Schulhoff with an excellent environment for developing his gifts and studies from early childhood.

His unusual musical talent became apparent very early. At only seven, on the recommendation of Antonin Dvorak, he started to study the piano privately with Jindrich Kaan and from 1904 at the Prague Conservatory. He studied for a short time in Vienna, but was dissatisfied there and so in 1907 went to Leipzig. Here he also began to take an interest in composition, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the German tradition and modern techniques in harmony in Max Reger's class. It was also while in Leipzig that he came across more recent Russian work in his study of piano literature, and was particularly captivated by the music of Alexander Skriabin. After finishing music studies in Leipzig (1910) he embarked on his first concert tour of Germany as a pianist, launching it in Berlin with a performance of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto--according to the critics of the period it was a colossal success. Schulhoff completed his musical education with three years of study in Cologne. In the summer of 1913 he went to Paris and visited Claude Debussy, who was a strong influence on him at the time and from whom he wanted to learn as much as he could. He was disappointed, however, because the great "modernist" demanded a thorough-going respect for the rules of harmony. In the same year Schulhoff won the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Prize for piano performance in Berlin. His promising musical career and development was interrupted by the war for several years, since Schulhoff immediately joined up and remained in the Austrian army until the end of the war.

A Born Avantgardist

After the war he went to live with his sister in Dresden, where he encountered the Austrian-German avant-garde movement and became actively involved in cultural and social life. The post-war atmosphere of revolutionary enthusiasm suited him. Like the other members of the Dresden Group he embraced the Dadaist programme. He was convinced that Dada ideas could be exploited in music as well, and he chose jazz, which was just at that period reaching Western Europe from America, as the means to do so. Schulhoff could use it to shock, and create a "sensation", something that always attracted him. The music critics of the time, however, condemned him for superficial effect-seeking modishness.

The attempt to express the Dadaist programme in music was expressed in two different ways in two of Schulhoff's piano cycles, Five Picturesques and Zehn Themen (Ten Piano Pieces). In the first case Schulhoff used elements of jazz, the current craze of the younger generation and embodiment of the zeitgeist, to arousing, shocking effect. The 3rd Part "In futurum" is a typical Dadaist squib, composed of nothing but a quantity of different rests and agogic signs, which meant that for a successful performance the player had to be someone with a feeling for practical jokes who could sit down at the untouched keyboard and project the appropriate experience. The piano cycle Zehn Themen is more loosely linked with Dadaism. As far as musical language is concerned, in these pieces Schulhoff adopts an atonal idiom. Once when Schulhoff invited the painter Otto Griebel round to his Dresden studio and played him his most recent piano pieces, it struck both of them that by combining the expressive potential of music and fine art they could create a new artistic form. This inspired Griebel to produce 10 lithographs in which he tried to create a free parallel to the musical work.

In Dresden Schulhoff also engaged in music organisational work. He came up with a plan for a cycle of "progressive concerts" devoted to present as yet unknown works by contemporary composers for the 1919-20 season. The first season was supposed to be focused on the works of composers from Schonberg's circle. The aim of these evenings of contemporary music, as the composer wrote in his plan, was "to support Dresden musical life, enlighten its public and introduce the musical revolution to them." This plan undoubtedly shows the influence of the Second Viennese School. Schonberg's Society for the Private Performance of Music had been founded in 1918 likewise with the aim of promoting new musical endeavours. The German Expressionists also embraced a revolutionary conception of music and believed that it could be a means to spiritual enlightenment and salvation. Nonetheless, there was a fundamental difference between Schonberg's and Schulhoff's attitude: Schulhoff did not take such a sceptical view of the public. He did not aspire to a "pure" artistic approach regardless of public reception. He did not consider the gulf between art and society to be so ominous. The fact that it was to Schonberg School that he appealed, even though it took an entirely different stylistic direction to his own, is a measure of his impartiality and open-minded attitude to different aesthetic movements. For Schulhoff, the idea of artistic revolution was not limited to a particular national culture, and every artist had the potential to take it further.

Music is not Philosophy

"An important work of art ought to create epochs and should never be created by epochs--and by and large it does not matter what kind of work it is or what area it represents. Ultimately this always holds true, despite all excesses and despite the loud trumpetings of various sects to the effect that they are going to "abolish art", and overthrow every valid principle and natural law just in the cause of sensation, since the more they do this, the greater the advertisement that they unwittingly provide for the work of arts they reject." These are the words that Schulhoff uses to start his article Revolution and Music of 1920, which he evidently wrote more for himself than with the aim of publication. It is a set of reflections on the problems of contemporary art. Like every artist at the beginning of his career he was seeking a path for his own work. He supported avant-garde movements since he refused to submit to established conventions, but at the same time he disagreed with mere experimentation for the sake of experiment. "In recent years nothing has been going on in music than constant experimentation without results, which has led to greater and greater nonsense!" The essential feature of Schulhoff's attitude was that he was trying to find a way to a wider public, and unlike the Schonberg School he did not wish to write just for a narrow circle of the initiated. He stresses the importance of rhythm, "because people dance, have always danced and dance even today with the same ecstatic enthusiasm for absolute rhythm." He wanted to reduce the gulf between art music and commercial music. "The task of music is above all to summon up physical bliss, even ecstasy, through rhythm; it is never philosophy, it springs from the ecstatic state and finds it expression in rhythmic movement! Only a bourgeois could believe that music is philosophy, because with his conventional linguistic formulas he inclines more to aestheticism than to naked reality."

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Return to Prague

It was with these revolutionary ideas that in 1923 Schulhoff returned to Prague, where he had the chance to become actively involved in a cultural life that was developing rapidly in every field. In the field of music the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state provided the impulse for a great many innovative trends that had a major impact on the educational system, institutional base, academic and journalistic activity and live musical production. Prague between the wars became a wonderfully congenial place for musicians responding to the most recent developments in the European avant-garde. Contacts between Czech music and international music brought stimuli that evolved during the 1920s into three main creative lines: expressionist, neo-classical and constructivist. In addition, elements of folklore, dance music and jazz appeared in the work of a number of Czech composers.

All this meant that after moving back to Prague Schulhoff could carry on without dislocation in the direction set by his Dresden and Berlin experiences. His basic attitude as an artist, which placed him among supporters of the avant-garde approach, consisted at the most general level of resistance to any kind of convention. He tried to find new sources of inspiration to make his own musical idiom distinctive, and to link up art music and entertainment music. He experimented with a new tonal system and sought to tackle traditional forms in a new way. His complete openness and impartiality with regard to every movement enabled Schulhoff to exploit the very diverse possibilities of the stylistic ferment of his time.

In Prague Schulhoff was extremely active both as a pianist and as a composer. In addition, in the years 1924-26 he followed Max Brod as a music correspondent in the Prague newspaper Prager Abendblatt. At the same time he repeatedly tried to obtain a post as a teacher in the German Musical Academy in Prague, but these attempts were unsuccessful. Later he had a short period at the Prague Conservatory teaching play of scores, figured bass and later also instrumentation, which particularly interested his pupils, the composers Miloslav Kabelac and Klement Slavicky.

Universal Pianist

Throughout his life Schulhoff devoted a great deal of time to his career as a pianist as well as his composing. He appeared as both a solo pianist and a chamber player in Czechoslovakia and abroad, in concert halls and in radio studios. The critics of the time reserved their praise for his achievements as a performance and tended to be negative about his compositions. They agreed that as a pianist Schulhoff was exceptionally technically skilled, had a phenomenal musical memory and was an excellent sight-reader. Certainly there is no other explanation for the huge breadth of his repertoire, which included works from practically all stylistic periods up to the most recent piano music, including quarter-tone music. His repertoire also extended into the field of jazz and popular music, where Schulhoff made good use of his outstanding talent for improvisation. With these gifts he was very much the type of universal "serviceable" pianist much in demand with the rapid development of radio after the 1 st World War. This type had to have an extensive and diverse repertoire from the established and still "living" tradition of piano music and also to be able to present premiere of new domestic and foreign works at short intervals and short notice.

As has been noted, Schulhoff was always interested in the latest artistic movements and kept an open mind about them. In the mid-1920s, i.e. shortly after the construction of a quarter-tone piano, he became one of the first pianists to play the instrument. In 1925 he presented some of Haba's quarter-tone pieces at a concert in Prague and in the following year he published an article entitled Wie spielt man auf dem Vierteltonklavier? (How is the quartertone piano played?) in Auftakt magazine. In 1928 he took part in an experiment with a "colour piano", which added lighting effects to the music and was designed by Zdenek Pesanek and built by the Petrof company; he played Scriabin on the instrument.

The flowering of Prague cultural life between the two world wars offered Schulhoff a wide platform for his abilities. We should at least mention the three major concerts at which Schulhoff was able to present his own pieces. In 1924 he appeared for the first time at the Prague Society for the Private Performance of Music. The programme included the premiere of his recently completed 1st piano sonata. In the same year Prague hosted the 2nd year of the ISCM Festival, at which Schulhoff and Ervina Brokesova played the composer's Sonata for violin and piano (1913). Schulhoff then performed his 1st piano sonata again at another of the festival concerts. He continued to give concerts up to the end of the 1920s, not only in Prague but in many German towns, in Paris and in Holland.

His work with the radio was another major activity that he pursued tenaciously. He appeared in live broadcasts, made studio recordings, and composed and arranged his own pieces and those of others for radio. He worked with Czech (Prague, from 1935 Ostrava and for a short period Brno) radio stations and radio stations abroad (BBC, WDR Koln and other German studios). With Oldrich Letfus he founded a piano duo (Prager Piano-Duo), which appeared once or twice a week in the Prague Radio Station during the 1930s. The programme would include popular music by Czech composers and various arrangements. Schulhoff himself composed around 20 pieces for these broadcasts, in most cases only writing down one piano part while the other player was supposed to improvise.

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Musical Polyglot 

Given the many-sided interests of Schulhoff the pianist it is not surprising that Schulhoff the composer tried to exploit all the possibilities offered by various different movements in music. In his own output he adapted impulses from Late Romanticism, Impressionism, Dadaism, dance music and jazz, folklorism, Expressionism, atonality and constructivist tendencies. Of all these styles, the one that emerges most strikingly and consistently in Schulhoff's work is Neo-classicism, its sober idiom evidently being the closest to his heart. We find the first Neo-classical traces in his work as early as 1912-1913. In the cycles Suite for violin and piano and Variations and fugue on a Dorian theme of the composer's own, Schulhoff used some dances from a Baroque suite. The timing is interesting when we remember how much later it was that works like Prokofiev's "Classical Symphony" (1917) or Stravinsky's ballet Pulcinella (1919) appeared--works considered to be among the first examples of Neo-classicism. These early pieces by Schulhoff are a clear indication of how, even before Late Romanticism had lost its hold, a new direction was slowly and unobtrusively emerging, and one that would be fully developed in the 1920s by a number of leading composers (apart from Prokofiev and Stravinsky, the Paris Six, for example, and in Bohemia Bohuslav Martinu and the Manes Music Group).

The most important part of Schulhoff's output was written in the years 1919-32. It was then that he developed his own modern and stylistically individual idiom. At this point he himself considered that he had reached musical maturity, a view reflected in the fact that he did not give numbers to his first two piano sonatas written in the preceding period (1912-19) and so his 1st piano sonata (1924) was in fact his third. In the last decade of his life (1932-42), very much dominated by symphonic work, Schulhoff's leftwing political stance led him to try to transfer the principles of socialist realism to music.

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If I call Schulhoff a musical polyglot, what I have in mind is his ability to express himself using the languages of various different musical styles. In his or her lifetime every artist naturally tends to go through a series of phases of development, which may either grow out of each other smoothly or proceed by contradiction and rejection. What is typical for Schulhoff, on the other hand, is the mixing of current, often very contradictory trends within the same developmental phase, or even within a single work. It is remarkable how logically these "different musical languages" find their place within extremely closed cyclical forms.

The Art of Meaningful Contrast

The string Sextet, in which Expressionism and Neo-classicism--the two fundamental stylistic movements of the day--are mixed together, occupies a special position in Schulhoff's chamber music of the 1920s. Schulhoff completed the first movement at the end of April 1920 in Dresden, where he had been intensively studying Schonberg's techniques of composition. In this movement he clearly embraces Expressionism, evident both in the exalted, very emotive expression, and in the character of the tone material and its arrangement. Here he tends to use dissonant intervals, and alternate progressions in seconds with large intervals. Often the effect is close to atonality, but in the course of the whole movement the impression of a certain tonal centre is created. The other three parts of the Sextet were not written until four years later in Prague (April-May 1924). In these movements Schulhoff chose a simpler structure. In contrast to the preceding polyphonic treatment of the parts, a homophonic approach prevails. Neo-classical orientation most strikingly affects the 3rd Movement, in character a lightened up dance. The remaining two parts are slow, intellectually serious movements, and contain more exalted passages returning to Expressionist sensibility.

The string Sextet, in which two completely opposed lines of stylistic development interact in a completely natural way, is not the only example of Schulhoff's "polystylistic" approach. We find a similar mixing of different contemporary trends in the 1st piano sonata as well, for example. Schulhoff has integrated the classical four-movement cycle into an unbroken musical current. In the introductory and final thematically linked sections he emphasises above all the rhythmic and timbre elements, and this is undoubtedly connected with his views on the importance of rhythm as a means of freeing up natural human responses (see his article on Revolution and Music). In the second part he exploits ideas derived from Schonberg's compositional technique, while the third part is spiced with elements of ragtime. Once again, approaches that are apparently incompatible are set side by side and even integrated into the same line. The point is that in order for the charm of contrast to work successfully, it cannot be employed just for the sake of contrast, and this is something that Schulhoff was very well aware of. To convey more serious ideas he chose a more complicated musical language, while to lighten the mood he took inspiration from modern dance or folklore. What is essential is that he knew how to integrate these heterogeneous languages meaningfully into a balanced whole.

Recordings in the Supraphon Schulhoff Series:

Works for Piano:

Schulhoff -- Jazz Inspired Piano Works (Tomas Visek)

Schulhoff -- Sonatas and Suites for Piano (Tomas Visek)

Schulhoff -- Piano Cycles 1919-1939 (Tomas Visek)

Chamber Music:

Schulhoff -- Complete String Quartets (Kocian Quartet)

Schulhoff -- Complete Violin Works (Ivan Zenaty, Josef Hala)

Schulhoff -- String Sextet, Divertimento, Duo (Kocian Quartet, Jan Talich, Evzen Rattay)

Schulhoff -- Concertino, Divertissement, Bassnachtigal, Symphonia germanica, Sonata erotica (Pavel Foltyn, Pavel Perina, Emanuel Kumpera, Novak Trio, Lubos Fait, Ivan Kusnjer, Tomas Visek, Diana Stone)

Schulhoff -- Cello Sonata, Flute Sonata, Hot-Sonata (Jiri Barta, Pavel Foltyn, Stepan Koutnik, Jan Cech, Tomas Visek)

Vocal Music:

Schulhoff -- Songs (Olga Cerna, Frantisek Kuda, Jan Jouza)

Orchestral Music:

Schulhoff -- Symphonies No. 1 and No. 2 (Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek)

Schulhoff -- Symphonies No. 3 and No. 5 (Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek)

Schulhoff -- Symphonies No. 4 and No. 6 (Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek)

Schulhoff -- Piano Concertos (Jan Simon, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek)