Adolphe Sax (1814-1894)
Inventor of the Saxophone

Charles Joseph Sax, a brass manufacturer at Woodwind Musical Instruments lived in Dinant, Belgium at the beginning of the 19th century. On November 6, 1814 the first of eleven children, Antoine-Joseph, also known as Adolphe, was born. During the next year, after the battle of Waterloo, Charles Joseph established himself in Brussels. King William I of the Lowlands appointed him as his music instrument manufacturer and commissioned him to make band instruments for the newly created army of his "new-fangled" kingdom.

It is very common for a son to follow in the steps of his father, especially in the fine arts and in the field of music. No wonder that little Adolph Sax was very familiar with the shapes and structures of various brass and woodwind instruments from a very young age. At the age of six he was able to properly drill a clarinet's body and to twirl the cup of a horn. While still an apprentice in his father's workshop, young Adolph Sax was a pupil of the Brussels Conservatory and soon became an excellent flutist. He was taught to play the clarinet by Bender, conductor of a famous Belgian military band. At the age of fifteen, in 1830, he sent two flutes and a clarinet made of ivory to the Brussels Industrial Exhibition. The instruments were considered extremely fine specimens. When he was twenty, he invented the bass-clarinet.

Although the center of his activity was still Brussels, Adolphe Sax became well known in the principal musical centers of Europe. But the young man dreamt of a Paris success, a Parisian consecration. In the spring of 1841 he decided to leave Brussels.

In Paris, the young inventor, who was now twenty-eight, paid the price of his genial creativeness: he had to face the envy and jealousy, the wrath and hatred of his rivals and colleagues; he underwent all kinds of misery, suffering and afflictions. Glory was to be his reward, but it only came much later, in the course of his long career.

Sax invented the saxophone and sent it to the Brussels exhibition in 1841. It lay wrapped up in green when somebody malevolently kicked the package, damaging the instrument so badly that it was impossible for Sax to exhibit it. In 1842 Berlioz saw the instrument and wrote about it in the Parisian Journal des Debats. This was a crucial turn in Sax’s life. Adolph Sax obtained the patent for his new instrument only in June, 1846.

The saxophone (Le saxophon), named after its inventor, is a brass instrument with nineteen keys, whose shape is rather similar to that of the ophicleide. Its mouthpiece, unlike those of most brass instruments, is similar to the mouthpiece of the bass-clarinet. Thus the Saxophone became the most sought after brass instrument with reed. The instrument had a compass of three octaves beginning from the lower B flat under the staff (bass clef); its fingering is akin to that of the flute or the second part of the clarinet. Its sound is of such rare quality that, to this day there are no other bass instruments in use that compare to the Saxophone. It is full, soft, vibrating, extremely powerful, and easy to lower in intensity.

Sax endured strife and struggling and wrangling. One of his famous challenges was held in the French Ministry of War. A governmental commission had been set up to investigate military band reform. The commission had arranged an experiment comparing Sax’s and another band. Sax was accompanied by a group of nine musicians, whereas the opposing orchestra, that of Carafa, one of France’s foremost composers, was composed of thirty-two performers. The location chosen for the challenge was the Champ-de-Mars -- today a group of beautiful gardens surrounding the Eiffel Tower but, in 1845, a wide drill ground bordering on the Ecoile Militaire.

April 22nd, 1845 was a lovely spring day. More than twenty thousand Parisians had gathered at noon on the Champ-de-Mars. The two "hostile" groups stood in a single line, one next to the other. Across from them stood the members of the Commission. Carafa was leading his own band. Sax had passed the baton to his friend Fessy. Seven of his men did not turn up, perhaps led astray by the "enemy." And Sax himself was late. At last he showed up, carrying two instruments which he intended to play alternately, thus replacing two of the missing musicians. After the first part of the concert, there was no hesitation whatsoever on the part of the audience. The members of the Commission both civilian and military, musicians, arid laymen, and thousands of Parisians that crowded the field agreed: the band of Sax was by far superior to that of Carafa. Sax's victory was overwhelming.

Adolphe Sax died in Paris, on February 4, 1894.

This article has been condensed and reprinted with permission from
SaxCollector, Purveyors of Fine Vintage Saxophones