Today, on November 6th 2017, we’re celebrating in style the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Antoine-Joseph Sax, known as Adolphe Sax, who entered the world in Dinant in what was then the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Dinant, being the capital of brass and copper work (known as dinanderie). The legend (either true or well conceived) states that the saxophone, saxhorn, saxotromba, saxtuba and other saxmachines came close to never seeing the light of day: indeed, the little Adolphe apparently fell from the third floor of a building and split his skull open on a rock, drank a cup of vitriol at the age of three, almost died poisoned by the toxic fumes of freshly-varnished instruments stored in his room (a strange idea from his dad, we must admit), almost drowned in various rivers, and had been severely burned on multiple occasions. Anyway, he survived—even despite a tumor on the lip that was truly documented, once adult—to the venerable age of 79, and even if at the end of his life he wasn’t laid down in a bed of roses (because he was bankrupt and somewhat forgotten), his name now shines in the firmament of the revolutionary musical instrument inventors.
Questions that everyone asks themselves about Adolphe Sax and his instruments (loosely, to pick up a few subjects from the good doctor David Reuben: do the aphrodisax work? What is sol-do-mi? What is a saxual pervert? Into what do you slide during a glissando?) will find in this small article a few answers, even if it’s impossible to sum up the life and most of all the work of Adolphe in these few lines. Let it be clear from the start that, if Sax’s name is firmly rooted in the saxophone family, the good man also invented or developed saxhorns (from the bugle), saxotrombas (which never really found their place), the contrabass clarinet, and he would have been the manufacturer of the “Wagner tubas”—and would have this way made his indubitable and definitive mark on the classical orchestra—if the two spirited characters had ever managed to get along.
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