Karl Scheit was one of the most important personalities in the 20th century for the guitar in Austria. Originally self-taught, he went on to study violin at the Linz Conservatory and then guitar at the Vienna Academy for Music and Performing Art with Jakob Ortner.
As a teacher, he founded a new school built around melodic playing. At the Academy (later Hochschule) in Vienna, he trained a number of prominent guitarists between 1933 and 1984, which worked throughout Europe - Konrad Ragosnig, Heinz Wallisch, Melitta Heinzmann, Michael Buchrainer, Wolfgang Jungwirth, Bernard Hebb, Maritta Kersting, Sonja Prunnbauer, Mario Sicca, Richard Pilkington, Hans Michael Koch, Maria Kämmerling, Reinbert Evers, Eugenia Kanthou, Christoph Jäggin, Per Olof Johnson and Ralph Towner.
As a guitarist and lutenist, he was one of the pioneers of historic performance practice of Early Music (et al. in the Ensemble Schola Antiqua with Josef Mertin and Gustav Leonhardt), but was also very concerned about the expansion of the repertoire for new works. Numerous composers wrote for him - Ernst Krenek, Alfred Uhl, Johann Nepomuk David, Cristobal Halffter, Heinz Kratochwil, Hans Erich Apostel and many others.
Scheit was an important editor of guitar music. The series "Musik für Gitarre" at the Universal Edition Vienna comprises around 150 works, and as many from the series "Gitarre-Kammermusik" from Doblinger. With these collections, he made lute music accessible to the repertoire of the classical guitar, published study material and contemporary music.
