Musical instruments tend to be named after either their material or the sound they make. “Bugle,” for example, is derived from an antiquated word for a wild ox, because the instrument was originally made from oxen horns. “Xylophone,” meanwhile, comes from the Greek for “wood sound” (xylon and phōnē), and "oboe" from the French for “high wood” (hautbois); these names convey basic concepts no single inventor could take credit for. In fact, history does not record many individual instrument innovators — there is no Thaddeus Trumpet or Norman Tuba. However, there is an outlier: the Belgian inventor and musician Adolphe Sax.
Let’s Talk About Sax
Adolphe Sax was born in 1814, the son of a Belgian carpenter and instrument maker. Growing up in his father’s workshop, Sax was exposed to music and the craft behind making musical instruments. After taking up the clarinet as a teenager, Sax bore additional holes into the instrument, thus improving the quality of the sound by changing the locations of the openings. At the 1840 Industrial Exposition in Brussels, the young prodigy presented nine musical innovations, including a new technique for tuning pianos and a sound-reflection screen. At the following year’s exhibition, he demonstrated a new hybrid instrument with a woodwind mouthpiece attached to a conical brass body. He played this eponymous “saxophone” behind a curtain, so the audience could admire the sound but would-be plagiarists couldn’t steal his design. Sax’s instrument was in such demand that he received death threats over copyright issues, but the saxophone was patented in 1846.
Shortly after his 1841 demonstration, Sax left Belgium to go solo in Paris, at the time considered the music capital of the world. He quickly gained the attention of the composer and influential critic Hector Berloiz, who wrote glowing reviews of Sax and his new instruments. In 1845, the French government conducted an overhaul of their military music and began including the saxophone. This was a huge market for the nascent creation, and Sax sold over 20,000 instruments from 1843 to 1860.
Sax’s life did hit a few sour notes, however. Along with the saxophone, Sax created musical dead-ends such as the saxhorn, the saxtuba, and the saxtrombone (which looks particularly cumbersome with two sets of three valves perpendicular to each other). Musicians were reluctant to learn a new fingering system for an instrument that was much heavier than a traditional trombone.
All That Jazz
After the Spanish-American War in 1898, there was a buildup of secondhand marching band instruments that could be bought by the public at cheap prices. These included classics such as clarinets, trombones, and cornets, but also the relatively new saxophone. These plentiful instruments became the core of American jazz music. Throughout the 20th century, jazz saxophonists including Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Branford Marsalis, and Marcus Strickland wowed audiences with their instrumental skills.
While the hybrid reed-brass saxophone still isn’t a mainstay in most traditional orchestras (and in 1903, Pope Pius X banned it from sacred music, an official proscription that still holds), its continued use in military bands has cemented its lasting legacy. United States military bands (including the U.S. Air Force Airmen of Note, the U.S. Army Blues, and the U.S. Coast Guard Band) feature several saxophonists. The U.S. Navy Band even spotlights the instruments and their musicians every year at the International Saxophone Symposium.
The saxophone, namesake of a Belgian instrument inventor, has earned its place in modern pop culture, being played by the likes of U.S. Presidents and animated geniuses. Perhaps Adolphe Sax is looking down on his creation and thinking, “When is it the saxtuba’s turn?”
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