Cinq études de jazz: a study of jazz and modernism

When Erwin Schulhoff’s Cinq Études de Jazz appeared in 1926, the major cities in the United States and Europe were witnessing a global jazz phenomenon. Paris was among the major cities and cultural centers where the spirit of jazz ventured beyond the dance hall. Although the French reception of jazz has been thoroughly documented, this study offers a unique vantage point through a close musical analysis of this work. Schulhoff was a Czech composer who used his vantage point as an outsider to witness the influence of jazz on French culture and modern art. Besides the musical analysis, this study treats Schulhoff’s Cinq Études as a documentary by examining the unfolding of developments in the arts during the seventy-year period that preceded the 1920s. By examining the concurrent emergence of the European avant-garde and jazz, along with their similar ethos as a reaction to the sociopolitical climate of the time, this document seeks to implore the reader to consider that jazz—not simply a mere influence to modernism—is itself a branch of modern art.