Dissertation - International Bass Clarinet Research Center

explored the limits of chromaticism, which turned into microtonalism. In the early 1920s
Hába also explored an interest in Middle Eastern folk music. This was facilitated in large
part by Georg Schünemann, professor at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik who made
available to him the most progressive ethnomusicological research of the time. 35
From 1918-1920, Hába was a proofreader and copy editor for Universal Edition
in Vienna and was heavily influenced by Schoenberg’s radical theories of organized
tonality using the twelve-tone technique. While Hába’s music clearly contains an
equality between dissonance and consonance, his music differs from Schoenberg in the
emphasis on a tonal center. This concept of a tonal center is found in his works using
both twelve-tone series and microtonality. 36
Hába returned to Prague in 1923 and would live there the rest of his life. In 1927
he published his Neue Harmonielehre. An indisputable nod to Schoenberg, it was a
treatise explaining the theory and applications of the diatonic, chromatic, quarter-, third-,
sixth-, and twelfth-tonal systems. 37
He was perhaps best known for his compositions
based on microtonal series and the invention of several instruments to play these
compositions. Among these instruments were three types of quarter-tone pianos (1924-
31), a quarter-tone (1928) and sixth-tone (1936) harmonium, various systems of quartertone
clarinets (1924), a trumpet (1931), and a guitar (1943). Hába established a
department of microtonal music at the Prague Conservatory from 1924 until 1949 with an
interruption during World War II. After the war, life became more difficult for all
35 Andrew McCredie, Music of the Twentieth-century Avant-garde, ed. Larry Sitsky and
Jonathan D. Kramer (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 191.
36 Czech Music Information Centre, “Alois Hába – Czech Contemporary Composer,”
http://www.musica.cz/comp/haba.htm (accessed February 28, 2009).
37 McCredie, 193.
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