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.

[2] He studied composition and piano there and later in Vienna, Leipzig, and Cologne; where his teachers included Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Fritz Steinbach, and Willi Thern.

This is particularly true in music, because this art form is the liveliest, and as a result reflects the revolution most strongly and deeply–the complete escape from imperialistic tonality and rhythm, the climb to an ecstatic change for the better.Schulhoff occasionally performed as a pianist in the Prague Free Theatre.

[6][7] 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.

"[8] He wrote in a letter to his friend Alban Berg in 1921:[7] I am boundlessly fond of nightclub dancing, so much so that I have periods during which I spend whole nights dancing with one hostess or another...out of pure enjoyment of the rhythm and with my subconscious filled with sensual delight.... [T]hereby I acquire phenomenal inspiration for my work, as my conscious mind is incredibly earthly, even animal as it were.Olin Downes praised a Salzburg performance of his Five Pieces for String Quartet in 1924:[9] These pieces attempted only to charm or entertain.

Not all composers, old or young, have the good sense not to take themselves, now and again, too seriously.Downes reported that following the performance Schulhoff played American ragtime numbers on piano at a local inn "till the walls tottered".

[10] 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'.

[12] 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.

Anticipating John Cage's 4′33″ 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").

But when the most extreme modern Erwin Schulhoff presented his "thirty-two absurd variations upon a no less eccentric theme," opposition began to make itself felt and heard.

At the end of the helpless variations strong men who were provided with instruments for the purpose made a noise described in German as "höllenlärm", which was answered by equally noisy applause.

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".

[18] One critic has written that "Schulhoff's notion of what constitutes jazz is 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.