Alois Hába

Alois Hába was a trailblazing Czech composer and music theorist who pushed boundaries with his microtonal experiments in the early 20th century. Born in 1893 in Vizovice (now Czech Republic), this innovative artist became famous for using quarter-tone and sixth-tone systems – splitting traditional musical intervals into smaller, stranger steps you won't find on a standard piano. His fascination with microtones was partly inspired by the folk music of Moravia and Slovakia, which he later translated into classical forms like his striking string quartets and nonets.

A student of Franz Schreker and influential figure at the Prague Conservatory, Hába composed everything from operas (like *The Mother* featuring quarter-tone harmonies) to experimental piano works. His compositions – including those featured in recent recordings of his string quartets and nonets – feel both mathematical and strangely expressive, like musical puzzles that somehow still sing. Though his microtonal ideas seemed wild in the 1920s-30s, they paved the way for later avant-garde composers to rethink what music could sound like.