From a Paris Workshop to Jazz Clubs: The Story of the Saxophone
Paris, the 1840s. In a workshop not far from the city's theatres, a Belgian instrument maker named Adolphe Sax was building something that did not yet have a place in any orchestra or band. It had a single reed and a mouthpiece like a clarinet, but its body was a widening cone of brass. It could be played softly and sweetly, or with a power that could carry across a parade ground. In 1846 he received a French patent for it, covering a whole family of sizes. He named it after himself: the saxophone.
Most instruments evolved slowly over centuries, but the saxophone had a known inventor, a birthplace and a patent. What Sax could not have predicted was where it would end up. After decades in military bands and on the margins of classical music, his invention crossed the Atlantic and became the sound of jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, one of the most recognisable voices in modern music.
Adolphe Sax's workshop
Antoine-Joseph Sax, known as Adolphe, was born in Dinant, Belgium, in 1814. His father, Charles-Joseph Sax, was an instrument maker, and Adolphe grew up in the family workshop in Brussels. He showed his talent early, improving the bass clarinet and other instruments, and in 1842 he moved to Paris, then the centre of the European instrument trade.
Sax had powerful supporters. The composer Hector Berlioz wrote admiringly about his work in the Paris press in 1842, and soon Sax was producing not only saxophones but also a family of valved brass instruments known as saxhorns. His idea for the saxophone was to bridge a gap: woodwinds were agile and expressive but could struggle to be heard outdoors, while brass instruments were powerful but less flexible. A single reed on a conical metal body gave him the best of both.
Military bands and courtroom battles
Sax's first big opportunity came from the French army. In 1845, a public contest was held in Paris between a band using his new instruments and a band using the traditional line-up. Sax's band was judged the winner, and his instruments were adopted into French military bands, giving the saxophone its first secure home.
Success came at a price. Rival instrument makers, resentful of the newcomer, challenged his patents and took him to court repeatedly. Sax won many of the cases, but the legal battles were costly, and he went bankrupt more than once. He nevertheless taught saxophone at the Paris Conservatoire from 1857, and a few composers wrote for the instrument in orchestral works, among them Georges Bizet, who gave it a memorable melody in his music for L'Arlésienne in 1872. Sax died in Paris in 1894, without seeing the instrument become a worldwide phenomenon.
Crossing the Atlantic
After Sax's main patent expired, other manufacturers in France and later the United States began making saxophones. In America, the instrument found a place in the large concert and military bands that were hugely popular in the late nineteenth century, including those led by Patrick Gilmore and John Philip Sousa.
From there, the saxophone moved into vaudeville theatres and dance bands. In the 1910s and 1920s, America experienced something of a saxophone craze. Novelty performers such as Rudy Wiedoeft popularised the instrument through recordings, manufacturers sold saxophones to amateurs in large numbers, and dance orchestras began building their arrangements around sections of saxophones playing in harmony.
The voice of jazz
It was in jazz that the saxophone truly found its voice. In the early years of the music, the clarinet and trumpet often led, but players soon discovered how expressively a saxophone could bend notes and imitate the human voice. Sidney Bechet made the soprano saxophone a commanding solo instrument in the 1920s. Coleman Hawkins showed what the tenor saxophone could do, and his 1939 recording of Body and Soul became a landmark. Lester Young, with Count Basie's band, offered a lighter, floating alternative that influenced generations of players.
In the 1940s, the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker helped create bebop, a fast, harmonically adventurous style that transformed jazz. In the decades that followed, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz and many others pushed the instrument in new directions, from hard bop and bossa nova to modal and spiritual jazz. Paul Desmond's cool alto sound on the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Take Five, recorded in 1959, became one of the best-known saxophone performances of all time.
Rhythm and blues, rock and pop
At the same time, the saxophone was shaping popular music. In the jump blues and rhythm and blues of the 1940s and 1950s, bandleaders such as Louis Jordan and honking tenor players drove dancers wild, and the tenor sax solo became a standard ingredient of early rock and roll records. King Curtis played on many hits of the late 1950s and 1960s, and in soul music the saxophone was part of the horn sections that powered countless records.
In the rock era, Clarence Clemons became famous for his tenor saxophone playing with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, and the saxophone riff on Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street in 1978 became one of the most recognisable in pop. Throughout the 1980s, saxophone solos were a familiar sound on pop records and film soundtracks, and the instrument continues to appear in funk, soul, pop and electronic music today.
The saxophone today
More than 175 years after its invention, the saxophone is played in school bands, jazz ensembles, military bands, classical saxophone quartets and pop groups across the world. The family Sax patented in 1846 survives mainly in four sizes, soprano, alto, tenor and baritone, each with its own character.
If you would like to hear them side by side, you can play a virtual saxophone free in your browser on HarmonyHub, switching between alto, tenor, soprano and baritone sax, and explore other instruments in the wind category. From one inventor's Paris workshop, the saxophone has become a voice that the whole world recognises.