His 1948 biography The Great Dr Burney was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

During the First World War he directed the Music section of the YMCA for troops at home and abroad.

From 1923 up until 1928 (when he departed for Switzerland) he was making regular music appreciation broadcasts on BBC radio.

Although the Oxford Companion to Music was (and is) regarded as authoritative, the text of the first edition is enlivened by Scholes' own anecdotal and sometimes quirky style.

From 1930 onwards, Scholes collaborated with the Columbia Graphophone Company in The Columbia History of Music by Ear and Eye; this comprised five volumes, each containing an explanatory booklet and eight 78rpm records specially made for the series, including Renaissance vocal and instrumental items performed by Arnold Dolmetsch and his family.

He also worked on the innovative 'AudioGraphic' project for the Aeolian Company creating richly annotated player-piano (pianola) rolls, having joined as Secretary the Honorary Advisory Committee on the Use of Piano-Player Rolls in Education, chaired by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in 1925.

Scholes led the public denunciations of Arthur Eaglefield Hull when his book Music: Classical, Romantic and Modern (1927) was found to include material borrowed from other writers.

[16][17] Scholes also made enemies amongst The Sackbut group which included Philip Heseltine and Ursula Greville.

[18] In The Oxford Companion to Music some composers (Berg, Schönberg and Webern, for example) were described in somewhat unsympathetic and dismissive terms.

His article on Jazz states that "jazz is to serious music as daily journalism is to serious writing"; similarly, his article on the composer John Henry Maunder states that Maunder's "seemingly inexhaustible cantatas, Penitence, Pardon and Peace and From Olivet to Calvary, long enjoyed popularity, and still aid the devotions of undemanding congregations in less sophisticated areas."

[20] Compton Mackenzie who dined with Scholes at the Savile Club noted that he ate two carrots for his dinner.

Ward considered it "inappropriate to change radically the characteristic rich anecdotal quality of Dr. Scholes' style."