A quarter tone clarinet is an experimental clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

 designed to play music using quarter tone

Quarter tone

A quarter tone , is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale, an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone....

 intervals. Using special fingerings, quarter tones may be produced by a skilled player on a conventional clarinet. However, such fingerings are awkward in rapid passages, and results tend to vary from one clarinet to another. The German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 instrument builder Fritz Schüller (1883-1977) of Markneukirchen

Markneukirchen

Markneukirchen is a town in the Vogtlandkreis district, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It lies in between the Erzgebirge and the Fichtelgebirge in the Elstergebirge, southeast of Plauen, and northeast of Asch ....

 made an attempt to create a quarter tone clarinet to overcome these problems. It consisted of a single mouthpiece connected to two parallel bores

Bore (wind instruments)

The bore of a wind instrument is its interior chamber that defines a flow path through which air travels and is set into vibration to produce sounds. The shape of the bore has a strong influence on the instruments' timbre.-Bore shapes:...

, one slightly longer than the other; effectively these were two clarinets tuned a quarter tone apart. A single set of keywork controlled the tone hole

Tone hole

A tone hole is an opening in the body of a wind instrument which, when covered by a key, alters the pitch of the sound produced.The resonant frequencies of the an air column in a pipe are inversely proportional to the pipe's effective length. For a pipe with no tone holes, the effective length is...

s of both bores simultaneously, and a valve was provided to switch rapidly from one bore to the other.

Music for quarter tone

Quarter tone

A quarter tone , is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale, an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone....

 clarinet has been written by Eric Mandat

Eric Mandat

Eric Paul Mandat is a composer and performer of contemporary clarinet music.Mandat began his clarinet studies under the tutelage of Richard Joiner of the Denver Symphony. He later studied with Lee Gibson, Keith Wilson, D. Stanley Hasty, and Charles Neidich...

, Alois Hába

Alois Hába

Alois Hába was a Czech composer, musical theorist and teacher. He is primarily known for his microtonal compositions, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones and twelfth-tones....

, and Viktor Ullmann

Viktor Ullmann

Viktor Ullmann was a Silesia-born Austrian, later Czech composer, conductor and pianist of Jewish origin.- Biography :...

 and even by some various jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

musicians through the late 20th century.