 Erdmann came to critical notice as a composer with the sensational success of his First Symphony (dedicated to Alban Berg) in 1919.He was also close friends with Ferruccio Busoni's pupil Philipp Jarnach, as well as Ernst Krenek, Artur Schnabel and Emil Nolde.Like Tiessen and Schnabel, he was deeply impressed by Schoenbergian and Bergian Expressionism but did not adopt the twelve-note method, preferring a freely and often totally chromatic vocabulary with little or no sense of key.