The Styrous® Viewfinder: Adolphe Sax ~ The saxophone & other weird wonders

Trombone a six pistons - 1866

photo: Rama

Today is the birthday of Belgian inventor and musician, Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone, which bears his name. But he also invented many other strange brass instruments, most lost in the thrash bin of history only to be dredged up occasionally by special groups of musicians interested in strange instruments.

I saw some of his bizarre designs when I was in Vermillion in South Dakota. The University of South Dakota is home to the National Music Museum which has over 15,000 American, European, and non-Western instruments; it is one of the world's largest collections of music instruments.

Hector Berlioz discovered the instruments Sax was inventing at the time, fell in love with them and utilized them in his works. He liked the sound of brass instruments and used them in many of his works.

In 1844, Sax invented the Saxtromba which was designed for the mounted bands of the French military, probably as a substitute for the French horn. The saxotrombas comprised a family of half-tube instruments of different pitches. The name of the instrument combines Sax's surname with the Italian word for "trumpet" (tromba). By about 1867 the saxotromba was no longer being used by the French military.

Saxtromba soprano - 1844

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The Saxhorn is a family of valved brass instruments (although at one point ten different sizes seem to have existed). Designed for band use, they are pitched alternately in E♭ and B♭, like the saxophone group. that have conical bores and deep cup-shaped mouthpieces.

Saxhorn - 1866

Modern saxhorns are still manufactured and in use. The B♭ soprano saxhorn is called a flugelhorn. Joe Bishop, a member of the Woody Herman band in 1936, was one of the earliest jazz musicians to use the flugelhorn. Shorty Rogers and Kenny Baker began playing it in the early fifties, and Clark Terry used it in the Duke Ellington orchestra in the mid-1950s. Chet Baker recorded several albums on the instrument in the 1950s and 1960s. Miles Davis popularized the instrument in jazz on the albums Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain, (both arranged by Gil Evans). Sketches is my favorite album by Davis. Other prominent flugelhorn players include Freddie Hubbard, Tom Browne, Lee Morgan, Bill Dixon, Wilbur Harden, Art Farmer, Roy Hargrove, Randy Brecker, Hugh Masekela, Tony Guerrero, Jimmy Owens, Terumasa Hino, Woody Shaw, Guido Basso, Kenny Wheeler, Tom Harrell, Bill Coleman, Thad Jones, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Loughnane of the rock band Chicago, Mike Metheny, Harry Beckett, Ack van Rooyen and Maynard Ferguson. My favorite album by Ferguson is Conquistador released in 1977, I used the title song for the opening of the Obiko Art to Wear show, Tribal Visions, at the Fort Mason center in San Francisco in 1989 (link below).

Most jazz flugelhorn players use the instrument as an auxiliary to the trumpet, but in the 1970s Chuck Mangione gave up playing the trumpet and concentrated on the flugelhorn alone, notably on his jazz-pop hit song Feels So Good. Mangione, in an interview on ABC during the 1980 Winter Olympics, for which he wrote the theme Give It All You Got, referred to the flugelhorn as "the right baseball glove".

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The bass saxhorn was built by Adolphe Sax in 1863. This instrument features several innovations by Sax, including his six independant valve system and a pavillon tournant, or moveable bell that can be adjusted by the player to direct the sound of the instrument. Sax’s system of six independent valves was devised to correct the intonation problems of typical three-valve instruments, which can sound out of tune when valves are used in combination. Sax made a wide range of instruments with this system, including saxhorns, trombones, trumpets, cornets and horns. Saxhorns like this were featured in the Banda, or stage band of the Paris Opéra that Sax formed and directed from 1847 to 1892.

Bass saxhorn - 1863

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Sax’s system of six independent valves was devised to correct the intonation problems of typical three-valve instruments, which can sound out of tune when valves are used in combination. Valve trombones were useful in situations where using a slide was awkward, such as while marching or playing in a cramped orchestra pit.

Tenor valve Trombone with six pistons - 1866

The valve system used on this instrument is detailed in Sax’s 1859 patent (France, No. 39371). It is an ascending system, since the valves do not add extra tubing to the instrument’s length. Instead each of them isolates different amounts of the instrument’s total tubing. Each valve is to be used on its own and causes the instrument to sound a half-tone lower than the previous valve. Sax applied his six-valve independent system mostly to saxhorns and trombones.

Also detailed in the 1859 patent is the valve venting system seen on this trombone. Instead of having a vent hole in the bottom of each valve cap as is usual, the casing of each valve has an external tube for venting. This was designed to make the instrument more durable. It permits air to escape when the valve is depressed (like a typical perforated valve cap) but prevents dust from entering the casing.

Despite these innovations and the quality of their construction, Sax's six-valve instruments did not achieve lasting popularity. Players were reluctant to learn such a radically different fingering system and the instruments were much heavier to hold than conventional three-valve models.

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Saxtuba is an obsolete valved brasswind instrument conceived by Sax around 1845. The design of the instrument was inspired by the ancient Roman cornu and Roman tuba.

Saxtuba -1867 Wood-engraving: Le Monde illustré

In the 1770s, the French artist Jacques-Louis David carried out extensive researches into the ancient Roman instruments that appeared on Trajan's Column in Rome. Two of these instruments – the straight Roman tuba and the curved cornu – were revived in Revolutionary France as the buccina and tuba curva. To devise the saxtubas Sax merely added valves to these natural instruments, thus providing them with chromatic compasses. Furthermore, he designed them in such a way that the valves were hidden from general view, thus giving the impression that the instruments were primitive natural trumpets only capable of playing notes from a single harmonic series.

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And last, but certainly not least, is my favorite instrument for pop music, the alto saxophone, also referred to as the alto sax or simply the alto, is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Invented by Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846, it is pitched in E♭ and smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano. It is the most common saxophone and is commonly used in popular music, concert bands, chamber music, solo repertoire, military bands, marching bands, and jazz (such as big bands, jazz combos, swing music). The fingerings of the different saxophones are all the same so a saxophone player can play any type of saxophone.

Altsaxofon

photo by Mikael Bodner

The alto saxophone had a prominent role in the development of jazz. Influential jazz musicians who made significant contributions include Don Redman, Jimmy Dorsey, Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, Jackie McLean, Phil Woods, Art Pepper, Paul Desmond, Cannonball Adderley and Stan Getz.

Of all the above mentioned jazz artists my very favorite is the Stan Getz 1977 recording of Another World. The title song is an extraordinary experimental sonic voyage (links below).

Stan Getz ~ Another World
cover photo by Guiseppe Pino

photo of album cover by Styrous®

In the pop realm, my all-time favorite is the 1979 album by Madness, One Step Beyond. The title song has an awsome (literally) sax played by Lee "Kix" Thompson to say nothing of their wacky and wonderful instrumental interpretation of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky (links below).

Madness ~ One Step Beyond

cover photo by Lee "Kix" Thompson

photo of album cover by Styrous®

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In 1863, a saxophone solo, composed by Jean Baptiste Singelee, was commissioned and published by Sax himself. There is a recording of it (link below) played by Randy Emerick on an original Adolphe Sax baritone saxophone made in 1861 at Sax's first saxophone factory. The piece, Septieme Solo de Concert, would have been first played on an identical baritone saxophone.

The musicians are:
Randy Emerick, 1861 Adolphe Sax baritone saxophone
Richard Brookens, soprano saxophone
Neal Bonsanti, alto saxophone
Scott Klarman, tenor saxophone

In 1874, Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, composed a suite of ten pieces for piano entitled Pictures at an Exhibition. In 1922, Maurice Ravel arrenged it for full orchestra and utilized the beautiful sound of the saxophone at it's best (link below).

In 2015, Google celebrated the 201st birthday of Adolphe Sax with a series of Google Doodles created by Lydia Nichols that feature Sax with his various musical instruments.