A quarter tone clarinet is an experimental clarinet designed to play music using quarter tone intervals. Using special fingerings, quarter tones may be produced by a skilled player on a conventional clarinet.[1] However, such fingerings are awkward in rapid passages, and results tend to vary from one clarinet to another. The German 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. A single set of keywork controlled the tone holes of both bores simultaneously, and a valve was provided to switch rapidly from one bore to the other.
Music for quarter tone clarinet has been written by Alois Hába and Viktor Ullmann.
See also
List of quarter tone pieces
Notes
- ^ Heaton, Roger. "The Contemporary Clarinet". In Lawson (ed.), Colin (1995). The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet. Cambridge University Press, 174-175.
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