Quarter tone clarinet

In the 1920s Alois Hába commissioned a quarter tone clarinet from the Kohlert company of Grazlitz.

[4] In 1937, another German, the instrument builder Fritz Schüller (1883-1977) of Markneukirchen made an attempt to create a quarter tone clarinet to overcome these problems.

It consisted of a single mouthpiece connected to two parallel bores, one slightly longer than the other; effectively these were two clarinets tuned a quarter tone apart.

Music for quarter tone clarinet has been written by Eric Mandat, Alois Hába (Sonata and Matka), Viktor Ullmann, and by some various jazz musicians through the late 20th century.

Other composers, such as Béla Bartók and Pierre Boulez, wrote for conventional clarinet using quarter tones.