Schulhoff - Tango For String Quartet Score/Parts Book

The Austro-Hungarian composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) was musically precocious: At the suggestion of Antonin Dvorak, he received piano lessons at the age of seven, and at the age of ten became a student at the Prague Conservatory. Further piano studies in Vienna, Cologne and Leipzig as well as composition lessons with Max Reger supplemented his education. However, his Jewish background, which defamed his music as "degenerate", and his sympathy for communism cost him his life. In Prague and finally interned in Wulzburg near Weissenburg in Bavaria, he died of tuberculosis.

Schulhoff's musical significance lies in the integration of jazz into art music, for example in his oratorio HMS Royal Oak or in his Hot Sonata for alto saxophone and piano. He earned his living as a jazz pianist for a long time. In August 1922 he wrote four short piano pieces, his Rag Music, to which he added four more phrases in November: released as Partita, also known as Jazz-like Partita - with the fashion dances Ragtime, Foxtrott, Shimmy, Boston and - as No. 7 - a tango. From a piano to a string quartet movement, the arrangement presents itself as a delicate and smart, technically not too difficult sweet, suitable as a diversion or addition in a quartet program.