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Introduction:

I ask for 30 seconds of your time right now. Please, for 30 seconds, just close your eyes

and really listen to the solo provided.

What feelings are present, in the luscious, yet longing and woeful sound of the instrument

playing? The melody speaks in such a romantic way, that we can not avoid a feeling of unity

with the sound. The sound is full yet muffled, it is expressive yet clear. The saxophone is an

instrument that is unlike any seen before it’s time. Never before had the power and solidarity of

a brass instrument been combined with the delicacy and agility of a woodwind instrument. The

saxophone is a mold and a mesh of all the wind instruments before it’s time, and a cultivation of

itself from then on. The saxophone is constantly being improved by instrument makers around

the world, and has been from the start, when Adolphe Sax strived for a parabolic brass

instrument that was dainty and light like the woodwind family established. The saxophone, a

cultivation of a lifetime of work, struggle, litigation, despair, and triumph for Adolphe Sax.

Never before had a musical instrument caused so much political and personal turmoil, seen

through the overwhelming litigation and personal attacks on its creator and his masterpiece.

Without Adolphe Saxʼs overwhelming persistence and fortitude, the nineteenth century design

and application of the saxophone would be all but lost in the annals of musical history.

Feel free to listen to the end of Eugene Bozza’s Aria, But before proceeding to the next section,

please skip to track 2.

Antolick

The Early Life of Adolphe Sax:

Adolphe Sax was born in the tiny village of Dinant, Belgium. Known the the locals as Le

petit Sax, le revenant (the ghost child), Sax lived a reckless, almost carefree life from birth. His

mother was quoted, “This child is doomed to suffer; he won’t live.”1 Sax’s father, Charles, was

employed as the chief instrument maker by William I of Orange. Charles was eager to pass his

skills to his son Adolphe as soon as possible.2 However, the spirits from beyond were eager to

claim the boy for their own. When Adolphe was two, he fell down a flight of stairs and smashed

his head on a rock, ensuing a coma from a week. No more than two years later, young Adolphe

was playing around his fathers atelier, where he assumed he found a warm bottle of milk and

consumed it eagerly. What he did not realize, is that the white liquid he consumed was liquid

sulfate of zinc, which nearly poisoned him to the extent of expiration. The boy was also

poisoned by arsenic, copper oxide, and even the highly toxic element lead. He was burned by his

stove, swallowed a needle, and was even scorched by exploding gunpowder in his father’s

workshop. Additionally, he was put into his second coma of his life from a falling slate slab.

This lead to his head being badly scarred as well as his body being disfigured by burn wounds.

At the age of ten, a villager found him drowning in a lake after he fell in a river. Sax was found

facedown, unconscious, in a whirlpool above a miller’s gate. In spite of all the close encounters

Adolphe Sax had with death, he went on to providing the world with one of the most

controversial instruments ever. Author Michael Segell summed up the ghost child’s youth by

saying, “His misadventures proved instructive, hardening him for the nasty battles that would

plague him as he tried to launch an ingenious musical invention, a serpentine horn whose

Antolick

1 Michael Segell, The Devilʼs Horn (New York: Farrer Straus and Giroux, 2005), 11.

2 Segell, Devilʼs, 11.

provenance he secured by naming it after himself. From the moment his lips first touched his

saxophone prototype, Adolphe Sax would face a juggernaut of slander, theft, litigation, forced

bankruptcies, and attempts on his own life to suppress his new sound.”3

Paris:

If there is one thing this young instrument crafter had, it was ambition. Sax visited Paris

in the spring of 1839 showcased Sax’s retooling of the bass clarinet. He was exalted by

prominent names composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Jaques Fromental Halévy. Sax knew he

could reach a learned and appreciative audience in France.4 On a cold winters day in 1841, Sax

decided to set out for Paris permanently. His complete possessions included 30 francs and an

enormous yet mysterious brass horn that he had constructed in his father’s workshop.

One of Sax’s great talents were his interpersonal skills, and his ability to make friends in

high places. His musical brilliance assisted him in this, no doubt, but his ability to become so

well networked in such a short time is nothing short of amazing. As soon as he arrived, Sax

approached the famous Hector Berlioz. Berlioz was a man Sax desired to have in his corner.

Berlioz, along with being the highest standing composer in France at the time, had been an

author for the highbrow Journal des débats. Sax invited Berlioz to critique his auditory

inventions including his new bass horn. Hector Berlioz immediately fell in love with Sax’s bass

horn, and in his article on June 12, 1842, entitled the instrument, le Saxophon.5

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4 Léon Kochnitzky, Adolph Sax and His Saxophone (New York: Belgian Government Information Center, 1964), 6.


Berlioz would often write about Adolphe Sax and his newly titled saxophone in des

Débats. “Composers will be indebted to M. Sax when his new instruments are in general use,

the saxophone will meet the support of all friends of music.”6 “It cries, sighs and dreams. It

possesses a crescendo and can gradually diminish its sound until it is only an echo of an echo of

an echo-until its sound becomes crepuscular.” The timbre of the saxophone has something

vexing and sad about it in the high register; the low notes to the contrary are of a grandiose

nature, one could say, pontifical. For works of a mysterious and solemn character, the saxophone

is, in my mind, the most beautiful low voice known to this day.”7

“Brash, Arrogant, handsome, with a lush, full beard and bedroom eyes, Adolphe Sax was

the embodiment of the fiery nineteenth-century Romantic.”8 Despite all the high praise his new

instrument was receiving, Sax was not making any money in Paris. He was living in the poorest

neighborhood and once went three days without eating because he could not afford to do so. Sax

would play public concerts and giving lectures about his various instruments, but that paid

minimally, just enough for Sax to stay afloat. Unbenounced to Sax, strings were being pulled to

give this young inventor a chance. Sax accepted a visitor to his apartment and this stranger

offered him 4,000 francs to start an instrument factory. Of course, Sax accepted and began

planning his location. When word got around that this loan had been given to sax, other

investors followed suit. In total, Sax acquired about 12,000 francs to run his operation.9 Sax

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6 Wally Horwood, Adolphe Sax: 1814-1894 His Life and Legacy (Baldock: Egon Publishers Ltd, 1980), 42.

7 Stephen Cottrell, The Saxophone (London: TJ International Ltd, 2012), 43.


9 Horwood, Life and Legacy, 44.

took out the address of No. 10 Rue Saint Georges and titled his place, The Adolphe Sax Musical

Instrument Factory.”10

Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest, "Adolphe Sax / Instrument Builder", accessed 28 Apr 2014, http://quest.eb.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/images/109_162889

Saxophone Evolution Before 1846.

“The emergence of the saxophone in 1839 and the subsequent popularity of the

saxophone family (soprano through bass) after 1870 in France is a unique development in music

history. This development proceeded in two basic stages: the first, up to May 11, 1866-the date

on which Adolphe Sax's patent expired- under Sax's patent protection; and the second, after this

date, when other makers developed their own models.”11

The reason why Sax invented the Saxophone has been in question by scholars and

musical historians for years. He never left any personal account to suggest how he arrived at the

Antolick


11 Albert R. Rice, “Making and Improving the Nineteenth-Century Saxophone,” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 35, (2009): 83.

http://quest.eb.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/images/109_162889?subjectId=0&collectionId=0&keyword=Adolphe+Sax&localizeMetaData=false#http://quest.eb.com.proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/images/109_162889?subjectId=0&collectionId=0&keyword=Adolphe+Sax&localizeMetaData=false#

new instrument. However, there are some reasonable theories that have been generally accepted

by the public.

François-Joseph Fétis, like Sax, was a Belgian woodwind musician and critic. He was

quoted in 1864 that, “The clarinet’s imperfections will not be overcome until a conical bore is

adopted.”12 The imperfections Fétis was referencing was the overblowing system the clarinet

had in place. The Clarinet over blows at the 12th, which makes for a complicated fingering

scheme.

The clarinet had been one of Sax’s projects for a considerable amount of time. The

register key on the clarinet gave the clarinet a rich timbre and great range but, at the same time,

presents the instrument crafter challenges in connecting all the registers. The Clarinet over blows

at the 12th, which makes for a complicated fingering scheme. This system of overblowing also

contributes to there being three distinct registers on the clarinet. Sax felt that a metal clarinet

was a reasonable upgrade to the instrument and tried to replicate the wooden clarinet timbre by

continuously extending the tapered tube body. He pushed the extension so far that he actually

created the saxophone.13

Sax envisioned an instrument that over blew at the octave. This idea is very attractive to

music lovers because the fingerings of notes in different octaves would be the same, just with or

without the octave keys. Original saxophones had two octave keys on the instrument instead of

the common one key that came into use in the late 1800’s.14

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13 Richard Ingham, The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).


Along with the desire to have a octave speaking woodwind instrument, Sax desired the

power and consistency of a brass instrument. The Sax family were originally producers of

ophicleide in Belgium. Adolphe learned metalwork from is father at a young age, and the fact

that metal was chosen for the new horn is no accident. Charles Sax found that any non-porous

material will produce the same tonal results provided the proportions of the bore and the method

of vibrating the air-column are consistent. Conclusively, Adolphe believed that if he could make

a horn out of consistent brass body that could produce consistent tones among itself, as well as

consistent tones throughout an entire family of instruments.

The first record of any saxophone came from the the 1839 at the Brussels Music

Exhibition. However, there is some mystery to this account. Sax showcased his saxhorns rather

than his saxophone at this exhibit. The saxophone wasn’t patented at the time, so Sax only

revealed his saxophone to close friends and trusted allies. The saxophone showed its face again

at the 1841 Paris Music Exhibition. Jean Babtiste Jobard noted first saxophone, “Mr. Sax junior

has just invented a contrabass clarinet in brass. After thunder, it is by far the strongest bass that

exists. Its round, full, and vibrant sounds entirely fill the ear and will satisfy the musical appetite

of the greatest glutton; it is no longer a little brook, but a river of harmony ready to overflow. The

saxophone is the Niagara of sound."15

Sax’s good friend, Hector Berlioz echoed Jobard’s praises in his column in débats, “An

invaluable invention for the beauty of sound that it gives to the ophicleide was recently

completed by Mr. Sax of Brussels. It involves replacing the cupshaped mouthpiece with a

clarinet mouthpiece. Ophicleides thus become brass instruments with a reed; the difference in

Antolick

15 Ingham, Improving, 82.

sonority that results is much to their advantage.” Finally, the bass saxophone appears in the

Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung in November 1843, providing a few more construction details:

"The instrument maker Sax in Paris has invented a new instrument and called it 'Saxophone.' It is

of brass, about eight feet long, in a conical shape, has nineteen keys (some covered holes are two

inches in diameter), and a mouthpiece similar to the clarinet. The range is three octaves. The tone

is sonorous and strong, soft and noble, and very easy to produce."16 Considering the high praise

Sax was receiving from his contemporaries, it is no surprise that his new family of brass,

woodwind instruments would be officially patented on March 20th, 1846.17

The Patent:(Note: Sax’s patent is attached to the end of the paper.)

It has already been noted that Adolphe Sax and Hector Berlioz were good friends since

Sax’s arrival in Paris in 1841. Berlioz loved to write about Sax and his refreshing, sonorous

saxophones. Berlioz noted, “Le Saxophon, named after its inventor, is a brass instrument with

nineteen keys, whose shape is rather similar to the ophicleide. Its mouthpiece, unlike that of

most brass instruments, is similar to the mouthpiece of the bass clarinet. Thus the saxophone

becomes the head of a new group, that of the brass instrument with reed. It has a compass of

three octaves beginning from the lower B flat under the staff: its fingering is akin to the flute or

the second part of the clarinet. Its sound is of such rare quality that, to my knowledge, there is

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16 Robert Howe, “Invention and Development of the Saxophone,” Notes: America Musical Instrument Society 29, (2003): 98.


not a bass instrument in use today that could compare to the saxophone.”18 The patent included

an 8 instrument family that have characteristics of both the modern day saxophone and

ophicleide shape. It is important to note that six of the eight submissions were simply conceptual

and Sax had not yet produced them in his workshop.19 (See Sax patent attached.)

No 1. is described as, “Tenor in E-flat” and looks very similar to the modern day baritone

saxophone. No. 2 is described as a larger instrument in C or B-flat and was, in all probability, the

first saxophone ever made.20 No. 3 and No. 4 are contrabass sketches, that are ophicleide shaped

with the bell facing upright. Nos. 5,6,7, and 8 correspond to the B-flat tenor, E-flat alto, B-flat

soprano and E-flat Soprano.21

Along with his sketches, Sax included an in depth explanation of his new horns.22 Sax’s

words are translated show him acknowledging a common problem among music of the time, and

then offering his new solution. “One knows that, in general, wind instruments are either too loud

or too soft in sonority. It is particularly in the basses where one or the other of these faults is

most appreciable. The ophicleide, for example, produces a sound by nature so disagreeable that

one is obligated to banish it from closed rooms, for lack of being able to modify timbre.” He

goes on to write, “Struck by these various drawbacks, I have sought a way to remedy this by

creating an instrument which, by the character of its voice, can blend with string instruments, but

which possesses greater strength and intensity than these. This instrument is the Saxophone.

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18 Kochnitzky, His Saxophone, 24.

19 Cottrell, Saxophone, 343.




Better than any other, the Saxophone can finely modify its sound to give them the qualities just

mentioned and to preserve a perfect evenness throughout its range. I have made it from brass in

the shape of a parabolic cone.”23

Along with the sketches and descriptions of the eight member family, Sax included a

brief description of the fingering chart, mouthpiece, and nomenclature.24 The patent of 1846 was

set for ten years, but was granted an extra ten years by a french council.25 (This will be addressed

later in the paper.) The patent was both a gift and a curse to Adolphe Sax, the ability to mass

produce his instrument and finally make decent money, accompanied by the consistent threat of

copyright infringement and murder attempts from his adversaries.

The Expansion and Evolution of the Saxophone

1846-1866

The next step for the saxophone was to expand from

the confines of Adolphe Sax’s workshop. Up until this point,

Sax was the only one who could adequately play and perform

his invention. This is because he was wary that his not yet

patented masterpiece would be stolen by rival instrument

makers and companies. As soon as Sax’s patent was granted,

his good friend Georges Kastner published the first ever

Antolick



25 Howe, “Invention and Development,” 101.

Stephen Cottrell, “The Saxophone”, accessed 28 April 2014, 100.

method book for saxophone26, thus allowing the public to start learning Sax’s music. While this

is a major accomplishment, Sax still had no medium for his instrument to be performed. At the

1841 Music Exhibition in Paris, Sax had befriended Lieutenant General de Rumigny of the

french military. At the time, the french army band was an embarrassment in comparison to the

powerful bands sported by Prussian and Austria.27 A contributing factor is that the french

government refused to pay professional musicians, so the overall musicality was left to common,

amateur musicians. In addition, the way the instruments were built at the time, most brass

valving schemes were very difficult for amateur military musicians to master technically, which

also diminished the value of the French field band.28 Sax wrote a letter to Rumigny, the Minister

of War, and the King of France, outlining his proposal on how to fix the french military band.29

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27 Horwood Life and Legacy, 49.



Table 1.30

1 Piccolo 4 Piston Cornets

4 trombones

1 E-flat 2 Valved Trumpets

4 horns

12 B-flat Clarinets

1 Regular Trumpet

6 ophicleides

2 Oboes 1 Keyed Bugle 5 percussion

2 Bassoons

Table 2.31

1 E-flat Piccolo 2 B-flat 3-Valve Baritone Saxhorns

2 B-Flat Ophicleides

1 E-flat Clarinet 2 B-flat 4-valve Saxhorns 1 Snare Drum

6 Unison B-flat Clarinets 4 E-flat 3-Valve Contrabass Saxhorns

1 Bass Drum

6 Three-Valve Trumpets (Sax System)

2 Three-Valve Cornets 1 Tenor Drum

2 Small E-flat Saxhorns 2 Valve Trombones (Sax System)

2 Pairs of Cymbals

4 B-flat Saxhorns 2 Slide Trombones 1 Triangle

4 B-flat Tenor Saxhorns

The first table presented represents the typical instrumentation of a French military band

prior to 1845. The later represents the French military band instrumentation proposed by Sax in

1845. The director of Gymnase de Musique Military, Michele Carafa,opposed saxes reforms and

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Source: Stephen Cottrell, The Saxophone (London: TJ International Ltd, 2012), 20.

Source: Stephen Cottrell, The Saxophone (London: TJ International Ltd, 2012), 20.

consistently criticized Sax to the French royalty Sax wrote to. The royalty, who was aware of the

failing French military band, arranged for a “Battle of the Bands” to take place to see which

instrumentation style was more appealing to the general population.32 Both director’s bands

gathered under the Eiffel Tower, and were prepared to play two pieces each. The support for

Sax’s band was so overwhelming, that the competition never made it to the second round. The

uproar of the crowd supporting Sax’s new band introduced the Saxophone to the French military,

and in turn, the world.33

In 1847, Sax began to teach his instrument at Gymnase Musical. Along with Sax’s

personal knowledge, he employed Kastner’s method book to his students, and the spread of the

Saxophone around the world had begun.34

Charles Jean-Baptiste Soualle, a clarinetist by trade,met Sax on the streets of Paris and

immediately began studying saxophone in the Paris Conservatory. He eventually made a few

adjustments to the instrument and is credited with the single octave key that is in use today.35

Soualle began touring Australia, New Zealand, Manila, Java, Canton, Macau, Shanghai,

and Calcutta, showing off the new instrument and enchanting listeners who often attributed

spiritual powers to it. He settled in Radjah, India, where he converted to Islam and became the

area’s new musical director. Soualle is credited with bringing the Saxophone to the south pacific

region of the world.36

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32 Cottrell, The Saxophone, 21.





Clarinetist Edward Lefebre met Sax in Paris and was mesmerized by the instrument. He

made it his life’s mission to promote the saxophone around the world. He then traveled to Cape

Town in 1859, where he set up an music store, introducing the saxophone to South African

dignitaries and sold the instrument to music loving merchants from the African Continent.

Lefebre then moved back to Holland for a few years before accepting a job as a saxophonist in a

sixty-two-piece orchestra. Shortly after, he joined the Rosa Opera Company, which brought him

and the Saxophone to America in 1873. Lefebre was the first saxophone king of America.37 In

spite of the overwhelming support Adolphe Sax received in expanding and developing his horn

across borders, domestic issues in France took up most of his working days and took a major toll

on the wellbeing of the inventor.

Legal and Personal Troubles of Adolphe Sax Under His Patent:

As soon as Sax implemented his patent, the instrument developers in Paris collaborated,

because Sax’s new instrument and factory, were beginning to cause rifts in their monopoly over

french music. The Association of United Instrument Makers was formed in1846 and the desire

to ruin Adolphe Sax was evident from the start.38

The association immediately influenced the government to depose of Sax’s benefactor,

King Louis Philippe in 1848. One of the first decrees of the new republic was to remove all Sax

built instruments from military bands. However, When Napoleon III seized control of the

government in 1852, his first ever decree was to reinstill Sax’s instruments into the military

bands.39

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37 Ingham, Cambridge Companion, 37.



The association broke into Sax’s workshop consistently and stole his special, handmade

tools he needed to produce saxophones. His employees were bribed to abandon his services, a

mysterious fire crippled his factory, and there were multiple attempts os Sax’s life. The

association planted a bomb under Sax’s bed, which luckily exploded early, when Sax was at

work. One night, an employee, of similar stature to sax, showed up to his residence around

midnight. When the employee stepped on the front porch, a mysterious figure came out from

the darkness, stabbing the inadvertent decoy to death.40

The natural world rose up against Sax once again, when a small, black, spot appeared on

his bottom lip. Within five years, the cancerous tumor grew to be so big, that Sax had to eat

from a tube and was told if he did not receive reconstructive surgery to remove the tumor, he

would slowly suffocate to death. Out of no where, a mysterious doctor arose and treated Sax

with herbal extractions from the subcontinent, and in just six months, Sax was healed.41 These,

cartoon like, experiences with his competitors and the natural world, no doubt left Sax exhausted

and broke. In 1852, Sax declared bankruptcy and was forced to sell off over 500 of his rarest

instruments and his protection under the patent was all but lost.42

Expansion of the Saxophone Post 1866

In 1866, Sax’s protective patent expired and companies could not wait to get their hands

on this raw instrument. The improvements to the saxophone rapidly increased, and the

saxophone was starting to look like the modern day horn.

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The first instrumental architect was François Millereau of

Paris, who had sold Sax's brass instruments since 1862 under a

license. He applied for a French patent (no. 72,530) for his

Saxophone on August 7, 1866, and the patent was granted on October

10th, 1866. According to Fred L. Hemke, Millereau's alterations to

Sax's design included new positioning of the plates of the plateau

keys, a new system of rods to prevent key noise, steel covered with

brass for some keys, redesign of the two octave keys, a single rod for

mounting both E-flat and C, and changes to some key positions.43

On January 25, 1867, the second maker, Claude George of

Toulon, applied for a French patent (no. 74,477) for a system of mounting keys on the

saxophone. He made additions to this patent on June 24, 1869, and June 13, 1870. The new

system involved a number of differences in the placement of pads and touches, as compared to

Sax's instrument.44

The third saxophone construction company was Pierre Louis Gautrot. Gautrot was

granted a French patent (no. 79,612) for a saxophone on March 1, 1868 His proposed

improvements included tone hole placement, interior bore dimensions, placement of keys, the

key mechanism, and a newly designed pad.45

Antolick

43 Stephen Howard, Saxophone Manuel (Sparkford: Haynes Publishing, 2009) 14.

44 Rice, “Making and Improving,” 7.

45 Rice, “Making and Improving,” 8.

Page from Millereau patent in 1866. Cottrell, “The

Saxophone,” 20.

Conclusions:

The saxophone may appear to most as just another musical instrument. Often times it is

referred to as “A confused brass instrument,” not wooden enough for a true woodwind and not

powerful enough to be a brass instrument. However, to those who take the time to just sit and

listen to the horn, the saxophone is anything but confused. The wonderful instrument has a

sound and style all to its own, and its faithful following of musicians, critics, and amateur

listeners know the true value of this beautiful mechanism of musical expression.

The saxophone came about at a time of political and industrial change. Adolphe Sax

knew that better than anyone. He was quoted in Le Musique de Familles in 1894 saying, “Before

me, I am proud to say, the musical instrument industry was nothing, or next to nothing, in

France. I created this industry; I carried it to an unrivaled height: I developed the legions of

workers and musicians, and it is above all my counterfeiters who have profited off my work.”46 I

feel that this quote sums up the life and achievements of Adolphe Sax. No matter what the odds,

he believed in his strange brass woodwind instrument, and his persistence is shown through the

saxophone standing the test of time. The Saxophone may bear the name of it’s creator, but the

truth is, this is the world’s horn. The saxophone we know is the cultivation of a prototype from

its inventor and the improvements and modification the world of music minds made to it, to

shape the fully functional and lovable instrument it is today.

Antolick


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