How it began
Adolphe Sax was born in Dinant in 1814, the son of an instrument maker, and trained on flute and clarinet. Around 1840 he built a low-register instrument he called the "Saxophon" and planned to show it at the 1841 Belgian industrial exhibition in Brussels, though it was not finished in time. He moved to Paris in 1842 and presented a bass saxophone at the French industrial exhibition of 1844.
His French patent of 1846 covered a whole family of saxophones rather than a single instrument. Sources differ on the exact day: the patent is cited as No. 3226 of March 21, 1846, while other accounts give June 28, 1846.
Before it existed
Sax came to the idea through his work on the bass clarinet, whose design he had improved and patented at age 24. Observing bands and orchestras, he concluded that there was a missing range between the woodwinds and the brass: woodwinds were agile but did not carry, and brass carried but was less nimble. Wind instrument making was changing quickly at the time. Valves had been invented in 1813, and Theobald Boehm's key mechanism was applied to the flute in 1832 and to the clarinet in 1839.
How it works
The saxophone is classed as a woodwind although it is usually made of brass. The player blows through a mouthpiece with a single reed, similar to a clarinet's, into a conical metal tube. Sax gave the bore the shape of a parabolic cone, a form that still prevails, and derived the fingering from the Boehm systems of the flute and clarinet.
The result combines the projection of a brass instrument with the agility of a woodwind. Sax designed the instruments as a family spanning many registers, from sopranino to contrabass, so that they could cover a full range within a band or orchestra.
How it spread
Hector Berlioz championed Sax in the Paris press from 1842. The saxophone's ability to play technical passages while projecting loudly led to its adoption by military bands in France and elsewhere, and Georges Kastner described a seven-member family in his 1848 handbook of French military music. A saxophone class opened at the Paris Conservatoire in 1857 with Sax as teacher, where he trained about 130 players. His patent expired in 1866, which allowed other makers to build their own versions.
Who pushed back
Rival instrument makers attacked the legitimacy of Sax's patents, and he sued them for infringement in disputes that ran for more than 20 years. He was driven into bankruptcy three times, in 1852, 1873 and 1877, and died in poverty in Paris in 1894.
The instrument he had intended for orchestras as well as bands never became a standard orchestral voice. The Conservatoire suspended its saxophone class after the war of 1870, and for decades the instrument remained largely confined to military music.
What lasted
The saxophone found its largest audience well after its inventor's death. A shortage of French instruments around the First World War pushed the United States to develop its own production, and the rise of jazz created strong demand. Selmer Paris began making saxophones in 1921 and bought the Sax workshops in 1929. Although the instrument was conceived for bands and orchestras, its best known players, including Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, came from jazz.
Where it stands today
The modern family still has seven members, close to what Kastner described in 1848: E flat sopranino, B flat soprano, E flat alto, B flat tenor, E flat baritone, B flat bass and E flat contrabass. Models in C and F were abandoned after the instrument failed to settle into the symphony orchestra. The saxophone is now used in classical music, military and marching bands, jazz and rock. Dinant commemorates Sax with a monument, and Belgium featured him on its 200 franc banknote.
