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Adolphe Sax
BELGIAN INVENTOR

WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

See Article History

Alternative Title: Antoine-Joseph Sax

Adolphe Sax, byname of Antoine-Joseph Sax, (born November 6, 1814, Dinant,

Belgium—died February 7, 1894, Paris, France), Belgian-French maker of musical
instruments and inventor of the saxophone.

Sax was the son of Charles Joseph Sax (1791–1865), a maker of wind and brass
instruments, as well as of pianos, harps, and guitars. Adolphe studied the ute and
clarinet at the Brussels Conservatory and in 1842 went to Paris. There he exhibited the
saxophone, a single-reed instrument made of metal, with a conical bore, overblowing
at the octave, which had resulted from his efforts to improve the tone of the bass
clarinet. It was patented in 1846. With his father he evolved the saxhorn (patented
1845), a development on the bugle horn; the saxo-tromba, producing a tone between
that of the bugle and the trumpet; and the saxtuba. Sax discovered that it is the
proportions given to a column of air vibrating in a sonorous tube, and these alone,
that determine the timbre produced.
Adolphe Sax
BELGIAN INVENTOR
In 1857 Sax was appointed instructor of the saxophone at the Paris Conservatory. Later
he improved several instruments and invented others without, however, establishing
a basis for their commercial exploitation. Many of his instruments were accepted for
the French army bands, and for 10 years Sax was involved in lawsuits with competing
instrument makers seeking to have his patents revoked. In his 80th year he was living
in abject poverty; Emmanuel Chabrier, Jules Massenet, and Camille Saint-Saëns were
obliged to petition the minister of ne arts to come to his aid.

LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:

BORN
wind instrument: The Romantic period November 6, 1814

The Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax patented the Dinant, Belgium

saxophone in 1846, combining a wide conical bore with a large

single reed and producing an instrument that overblows at the DIED

octave and covers a written range of b♭ to f‴. Sax’s patent covered February 7, 1894 (aged 79)
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invention
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musical instrument: Wind instruments
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industrial development 
instrument making
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…was the Belgian instrument maker Antoine-JosephARTICLE
Sax, who in  MEDIA 
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1845 built a family of valved instruments called saxhorns, using the DATES
bugle as the basis for his invention. Similar instruments were February 7
widely adopted in military and brass bands, but only the bass, November 6
under the name bass tuba, became a normal member…

saxophone

… rst saxophone was patented by Antoine-Joseph Sax in Paris in 1846.…

saxhorn

…patented by the Belgian instrument-maker Antoine-Joseph Sax,

known as Adolphe Sax, in Paris in 1845. Saxhorns, one of many
19th-century developments from the valved bugle, provided
military bands with a homogeneous series of valved brass in place
of the miscellany of valved instruments that had come into use
since 1825…

wind instrument

Wind instrument, any musical instrument that uses air as the

primary vibrating medium for the production of sound.…

MORE ABOUT Adolphe Sax

4 REFERENCES FOUND IN BRITANNICA ARTICLES

Assorted References

development of wind instruments

(In musical instrument: Wind instruments)

(In wind instrument: The Romantic period)

invention of

saxhorn
(In saxhorn)

saxophone
(In saxophone)

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