I have noted in the past, some articles from the early 20th century that were critical of saxophones and saxophone players. (They were, of course, nothing but a reflection of the feelings and opinions of some of the general populace.) Well none however, were as verbose, nor perhaps as cheeky, as the following piece from the Sunday, August 14, 1921 edition of the The Milwaukee Journal.
So grab yourselves a good cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy this tidbit from the day when the C melody was the undisputed king of the saxophone family. (At least when it came to the home-trained masses.)
Sadly there was no byline provided for this piece, so the author will remain forever in anonymity. Hey, I wouldn’t want to sign my name to this either. 
Oh, and I hope you enjoy my satirical commentary interjected here, there and everywhere. Because let’s face it, there is nothing about this article that can be taken seriously. 
Saxophone, the Greatest Blow of All
Orpheus Used It to Play His Wife Out of Hades, but Modern Abusers of the Squeeking, Squawling Instrument Would Seemingly Reverse His Feat
Have you been startled of late months by an alarming uproar from a neighbor’s house–something different from the usual disturbing noises?—A series of sonorous groans, grunts, gurgles, squeals, squawls, screeches and squeakings. And have you stepped over to see if retribution or a new baby or another crate of chickens has arrived?
And have you found that it is nothing short of your neighbor’s son learning to play the saxophone?
And now a word from our sponsor…
Buescher True Tone Advertisement from 1929
We return you now to the regularly scheduled saxophone bashing. 
If that has been your experience, you have only duplicated the plight of thousands throughout the length and breadth of the land, for the voice of the saxophone, that hybrid horn, is being heard in all these United States. It has reached the point of a craze, the instrument being just easy enough for anyone to play somehow or somewhat.
Grandfather, we remember, played the mouth organ on all occasions. Dad was indefatigable on the banjo. A less musically virile younger generation resorted to a slipshod strumming upon the Hawaiian ukulele. And now with the vigor of reconstruction comes the saxophone, giving every indication of being the hardest blow of all.
Hence it comes about that few communities are without their saxophonists, budding, blooming or full blown. Quiet mountain lakes this summer will hear a substitute for the cry of the loon. On the seashore, there will be a new and dominant note in the booming of the breakers.
File Your Order Early
Saxophone surveys made in music stores show an alarmingly heavy demand for the things. Reports are they are selling three times as well as other instruments and that is in spite of the price which runs from close to $100 to far beyond it.
“You have to file your orders away ahead of time, just as you do for xxxxxxx,” [word illegible] said one salesman.
It can be seen the time is coming, nay, is at hand, when a purchaser of one of the instruments must with great foresight file his order for his 1921 saxophone, brass or nickel fittings, muffler and cut out, wind shield, water proof top and 60 horsepower. [Sounds a bit steampunk to me.]
Perhaps it was through fiction that the saxophone first came into wide notice. In George Randolph Chester‘s Wallingford stories, the saturnine “Blackie Daw” often was pictured and described playing on the saxophone, while meditating some heinous xxxxxxxxx [word illegible] deal. One of the faults of Booth Tarkington‘s hero, “Clarence,” was the saxophone. After appearing in xxxxxx [word illegible] the saxophone came into popularity in very truth—that truth which is stranger than fiction.
And now another word from our fine sponsors, Buescher True Tone saxophones…
It’s Saturday night. Are you looking to get lucky? Got sax? No problem.
Buescher True Tone Advertisement from 1925
A Courting Weapon
The saxophone has become a veritable social parlor trick. Young men take their saxophones with them to serenade and court. It is true, one hears them more than one sees them. They generally stay out of sight, seeming to have fears of reprisals, fears which, it may be remarked, are not entirely groundless. Amateur players on the saxophone who volunteer to help out without recompense are the despair of dance orchestras. Nearly all amateur theatricals include as a matter of course a quartet or octet of saxophone players, or an even more numerous group of these offenders in full blast.
If there ever is any question of reparations or an indemnity for the inauguration of the saxophone craze, the matter well may be checked back to the Brown Brothers, who stepped forth one first night, heavily disguised as clowns, and opened up on an unprepared and unarmed “Chin Chin” audience with a terrific barrage of six saxophones. Ever since then there have been imitation Brown Brothers, their identity cloaked behind a mask of white grease paint. There is scarcely a theater in the country which has not echoed to the moanings of much aggregations, as they moved up and down the stage, thus making it harder for them to be hit.
Musical Interlude
Let’s stop here for a moment shall we, and enjoy a brief musical interlude from the famous, Canadian—yes, they really were from Canada—Brown Brothers.
Shocking. I say simply shocking. 
My god, what a cacophony of noise! We Canadians must hang our heads in shame. Apparently we have been exporting our musical talent world-wide for nearly 100 years. I guess the likes of Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne, BTO, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, k.d. lang, Nickelback, The Guess Who, Michael Buble, Paul Shaffer, and on, and on, and on, can thank the Brown Brothers for the precedent.
We return now to the saxophone-bashing in progress.
The saxophone craze has an accomplice in every dance orchestra. The saxophonists are made unduly prominent and given a wide leeway from the score of the music played, with the result of fearful and wonderful “variations.” One of those original sounds is known as the “laugh” on the saxophone, although a purist might be inclined to say the laugh was on the person with the sensitive ears.
Another War Criminal
The forerunner of the saxophone probably was an instrument known as the serpent, a curved horn, the twists of which bore some resemblance to a snake. It is told of the composer, Wagner, that on hearing the guttural explosions of the instrument for the first time, he inquired its name. He was informed it was called the serpent. With a look of disgust, the great musician observed in his broken English, “Ah, surely, dot was not do serpent dot seduced Eve.”
The saxophone proper (so to speak) was invented in 1840 by Adolphe Sax, who might have been charged along with the Kaiser as one of the war criminals were he living today. However, Adolphe probably did not realize to what lengths his invention would be blown.
Another Interlude: He’s gotta’ be kidding. Or is he?
Strange as it may seem, a use has been found for the saxophone in classical orchestras. Halevy called for the saxophone to denote the anguish and despair of humanity on the Last Great Day, and without doubt the instrument did it admirably. Bizet used the instrument for even wider registration to express gentle melancholy. Inexpressible sadness, resignation, hopelessness and grief. And certainly if those are not the saxophone’s expressions they undoubtedly are its results.
Orpheus Played Saxophone
Even before Mr. Sax devised his idea of a phone, there is a very credible theory that the horn in question or some recognizable ancestor of it existed in antiquity or mythology. In the mists of time the identity of musical instruments played upon by fabled or semi-historical musicians of fame is very easy confuse. Apollo, for instance, was accused of playing the flute, while it is very unlikely that anyone considered to be as handsome as Apollo was ever would have allowed himself to be seen looking as funny as one must when he plays the flute. It is proverbial
“I’m just too damn pretty to play flute. Apollo (OK, so I made that up, but then so did the journalist who wrote this piece of hysterical fiction.) 😛
but by no means certain that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but for all that is actually known, the tyrant might have played anything else except the hose.
Orpheus, one of the most noted musicians of all time, is alleged to have emitted the lyre. That seems most inaccurate in the light of the effects which the music of Orpheus are said to have had. It seems hardly possible that he could have played anything other than the saxophone.
When Orpheus struck up, it is reported that sticks and stones and trees were moved to dance about. When that is read, it draws a laugh as a myth. And yet does it seem far fetched after observing the rheumatic gentlemen and heavy ladies who instantly take the floor when a saxophone sounds off in a dance orchestra today?
Tricked Old Cerberus
But the most conclusive piece of evidence in the case is the expedition which Orpheus undertook to ransom his wife, Eurydice, by means of his persuasive music. In the course of human events, Eurydice had died. Missing her, Orpheus slung his saxophone over his shoulder (granting the contention it was that instrument) and set out. He asked no directions, seeming to know just where he would find Mrs. Orpheus. His destination, he announced, was Hades [the underground home of the dead in Greek mythology].
Arriving at the gate of that region, he found it was guarded by a three-headed hound, which breathed fire, was very bad tempered and had the tail of a serpent which rattled when it wagged. The animal would answer to the name of Cerberus, but no one ever called him. Orpheus solved the problem by playing some high notes on his instrument. Almost any dog, it may be proved by experiments, will howl mournfully at the playing of a saxophone. While Cerberus was so indulging, Orpheus slipped through the gate.
Video Interlude
OK, I’ll give the article’s author this one point. Many dogs do tend to bay at the sound of saxophones. Although none of mine did, one of my borzoi was very fond of howling, in almost perfect pitch no less, to “New Attitude”, by Patti LaBelle.
Orpheus betook himself to headquarters of Hades, after a few difficulties on the way in convincing several devils he merely was a visitor. He obtained an audience with King Pluto.
“Mrs. Orpheus is in?” the musician inquired.
“For keeps,” said Pluto uncomprissingly [sic].
“Oh, well. Orpheus replied, changing the subject. “I dropped down to give you a musicale.”
“Fair enough,” declared the infernal monarch. “Let ‘er go, professor.”
Imitated Hades Chorus
Orpheus put his saxophone to his lips and began syncopating some “blues,” which he believed was the composition most likely to find local favor. Plato listened entranced, now and then shaking a satanic shoulder. But while he applauded for encores, it was clear he was not yet in the xxxxxxx [word illegible] mood. It was while Orpheus was putting a few trick attachments on his instrument that fate played into his hands.
Near the hall there happened to be a furnace in which a batch of damned souls were sizzling. In the pause before an encore, a devil dropped around to make an inspection of that furnace and found that it had gotten full of clinkers, was giving out hardly any heat at all and the damned souls within, who were barely being scorched, were congratulating each other on the mild temperature and joking about changing back to their winter underclothes. Maybe that devil didn’t shake down that grate and pull out those clinkers with a volley of oaths at the local coal dealer’s product! The resulting tumult of howls and bellows came to the ears of Orpheus in the concert hall.
What should the alert musician do but imitate it all on the saxophone, finding it made a most suitable tune for that instrument. It brought down the cavern.
Played Wife Out of Hades
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Pluto. “That was the most homelike little piece I ever heard. It certainly sounded like hell! What can I ever do to repay you?”
“Let me have my wife back,” Orpheus instantly requested.
“Huh!” grunted Pluto. “Eccentric chaps, these musicians. “Oh, well, take her. But don’t look at her till you get out of my territory.”
That order of Pluto’s was violated by Orpheus, for he looked at his wife before he had carried her back to earth again and in consequence a devil snatched her and escorted her back to the infernal regions.
But that did not lessen Orpheus’ musical triumph. Performing on the saxophone—for that such was the instrument must by this time have been proven to the reader’s satisfaction—he had literally played his wife out of hell.
_____________
But that was Orpheus. Most of the saxophonists one hears nowadays seem to be trying to reverse this famous old feat.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s instalment of saxophone bashing 401. It really was an upper level course on how the saxophone was despised during the sax-happy 1920s. But did you notice the date? This was written in 1921! I can only imagine how this author was feeling by the mid 20s. By the end of the decade he may have even welcomed the Great Depression, because it ultimately brought about the end of saxophone’s reign in pop culture.
The virtual instrument is all entirely Mr. Sax T — the others weren’t even available at the time I bought that, and I haven’t had the money to buy the others so the other instruments are all pitch-shifted from tenor samples. It works but it’s a significant pain in the ass I could avoid if I bought the rest of the “sax brothers”. I’d still have to do something similar for the bass and nino though, since the “brothers” set is just soprano-alto-tenor-baritone.
The more I listen to it, the more I’m dissatisfied with the realism of the performance. I think I’ll have to go through and hand-edit the breath controller data to eliminate notes that cut off harshly, and stretches that seem flat and expressionless. There are a couple places where I need to adjust the balance as well but that’s not particularly difficult.
As for the key noises, they’re standard with that soft synth. I have hand-edited some clicks out of the parts because they just happen too much. With a solo sax it adds realism. With six of them it just adds chaos. The INTENSITY of the clicks can be sent as a MIDI parameter, but not the AMOUNT of them.
Thanks Helen for this retrospective on saxophone haters.
They are so important for the maverick position of the saxophone.
Now, with herds of saxophone players it is difficult to maintain this image and we are dependant on the uncommon saxophone hater.
Otherwise we only have this intelectual image: glasses, suits, jazz and playing impossible chord permutations.
The last I met was four years ago, a violinist, who really hated the sound of saxophones.
Four years, can you imagine how scarce these people are nowadays?
It is fortunate that we have the internet to find people who realy hate everything; Anser custodis animus.
So it reached me that a conductor in the neigbourhood of Hengelo thinks that one baritone saxophone is worse than ten trombones.
That made my day.
Ah you’re most welcome Theo.
It was rather long-winded, but I thought breaking it up with ads, audio and video clips, as well as some other visuals, would keep things moving along in the silly manner I was hoping for.
I’m sure there are still those people who don’t like the saxophone, but they just keep their opinions to themselves. The last outright slam I heard against the horn was a number of years ago in a big band I was playing in. One of the trumpet players one night commented on his dislike of all things sax. Whatever..
I must say there are no instruments, that I have heard to date, that I dislike. There are just some I like more than others. But then I’m a musician, so perhaps I have a greater understanding or appreciation of instruments, and what goes into playing them. If a non-musician type makes negative comments about an instrument, I can understand it better, since they have no idea what kind of work goes into being a musician. When a musician makes negative comments about a particular instrument however, that I don’t get. Say for example, you don’t like the sound of the harp, as a musician you still should be able to appreciate the instrument and the player—provided that they’re good—for the intricacies of the work and instrument itself.
I find if I sit back and just watch and listen to instruments I don’t like as much, sometimes I see and hear things I haven’t heard before, and they open my ears to new possibilities.
Here’s something a 1920’s sax hater would have been in prime position to hate — I did my own adaptation of Pictures At An Exhibition, along the lines of the Ravel orchestration that itself dates to the 1920s. To really tweak this guy’s sensibilities, it’s JUST SAXES — four to be exact, the usual SATB quartet variety.
I posted it to the “website” link above but I don’t know if those appear on the posts so I’ll repeat the link here:
http://hydrogen.servegame.com/quartet/pictures.html
Anyhow it’s true that a baritone saxophone is worse than a trombone, it has more mass to hit someone with. It’s a bit of a stretch to claim it’s worse than ten trombones though, as that would presumably have ten people to swing them. 😈
Trombones remain unmatched however for “accidentally” hitting people in the back of the head if they annoy you at rehearsal. Seventh position and all that.
Anyhow I’ll update you when the written arrangement is ready. I took liberties with the notation to make it easier for modern eyes, even though the common practice of the 1870s really isn’t THAT different from our own. I took to heart a lesson I learned long ago when a band director asked me what a bar line sounds like. Obviously, it doesn’t sound like anything, it just helps organize the music into digestible chunks for easier processing. Therefore, their placement is somewhat arbitrary to start with, and it’s not a sin against nature to rewrite something in another time signature to make it easier to perform. I don’t know that alternating 6/4 and 5/4 was EVER particularly common or easy to count in your head, but I know it sure isn’t now, so I chose to use two bars of 4/4 and one of 3/4 to do the same thing. I made other such changes where notes didn’t use their logical duration, halving or doubling the written length so that they make more sense, or re-notating G# minor as Ab minor because G# minor would cause the alto and bari to transpose to EIGHT sharps.
In any event, you may have an ensemble you wished to perform this with, but I’ll warn you that some stretches of it are HARD. Damn hard. The poor soprano gets pushed into altissimo (not HIGH altissimo, mostly A and under but there’s a single isolated C) but it was either that or expect them to pull out a ‘nino to properly cover the part. (I’ll provide parts if they want to do exactly that.) It’s also over 30 minutes long in its entirety, so it’s quite a blow for all involved. The bari gets a bit of a break, not playing at all on two of the 16 separate movements, but that’s offset by playing continuously for some others.
Wow! I’m just listening to parts of this while I reply Mal. Pictures At An Exhibition has always been one of my favourite pieces. This is quite the remarkable piece of arranging. Congrats! Well done. That’s a lot of instrumentation to cover off with only 4 horns. I might have been tempted to make it a quintet or sextet, and add a bass (of course, because I own one).
As I sit here and listen to the “Gate Of Kiev”, I am thinking I’d love to put together a sax ensemble and try it, as well as some of the other arrangements that I have from Paul Coats. I really loved my time in the MSQ (Martini Sax Quintet) back in Fredericton. It was a totally different style of playing to what I do now, and really kept my musical skills up.
I’ve been under the weather Mal, and I know you sent me an email. I’ve got boatloads of emails that I haven’t even opened. I think yours had something to do with some sax ensemble arrangements. I didn’t realize that you did this kind of stuff. I just want to say congrats on a really nice job. :cheers:
There are places when a bass would have been useful, but I found I didn’t have as many range issues as I was expecting. Of those I did have, the bass would probably solve half of them but create one or two new ones in the process (I do use the top end of the bari at times and let the tenor carry the bass line).
As I prepare individual parts and a transposed score (I always write in concert pitch and transpose later), I realize there’s actually quite a lot of altissimo for the poor soprano player and it’s not a single isolated C, there are several of them. That’s a high as I push it though, and I acknowledge the reality that the fingerings are twisty and don’t make the lines too fast up there. On the other end, I do ask for the soprano to function all the way to its low Bb, since it sometimes is filling an inside part so that the alto or even the tenor can lead and give a different sound. The bari leads at times, but generally it’s not practical to have the soprano written BELOW the bari so I didn’t. 🙂 The bari just leads without being the highest line. The alto has a small amount of altissimo (a handful of Gs, and I think one A) but I know from personal experience that low altissimo on alto is not asking a whole lot. The tenor only requires a high F# unless I screwed something up, but goes clear to low Bb an awful lot, and the bari similarly requires the entire horn to be used — low A to high E, I believe.
I originally started this with the thought of using a whole saxophone orchestra, from sopranino to bass and including a C-mel to make it an even 8 players. I got about midway through Gnomus (just the second movement) when I realized that all I was doing with all these horns was spreading the parts around, and having them double up on the loud parts. That’s when I decided to see if I could pull it off with smaller forces. I had it in the back of my mind that I could push it back out to 5 players if it was necessary, and it almost was in a couple places, but these spots were so brief I managed to find ways to carefully avoid the problems. For example, in “The Old Castle” there is a spot (later repeated) where there is a distinct four-note chord (F# fully diminished 7) played over the drone bass which is an unwavering Ab. I tried every combination of omitting one note that I could think of, having one of the inside lines move and cover two of the notes, etc., but ultimately opted to just drop the drone bass for one brief moment and have the bari play a chord tone. I figured that after a minute or so of having the drone of the bass, it would still be ringing in your ears if I had to omit it for just one note. This ended up being my method of problem-solving for the rest of the suite — figure out a way to take on the current difficulty and hope it didn’t cause a consistency problem somewhere else. It never did because the pieces are all so completely different. I even found that I was able to move the parts around among the horns so that nobody got stuck doing the same monotonous task continuously for long stretches. This had the side benefit of generating textural changes to add interest, but I did it for practical reasons. The fact that so many of the pieces are in G# minor or Ab major meant the tenor was often capable of taking over the bass role momentarily without having to shift up an octave. There was ONE little spot I really wished the soprano went down to low A, but I had to find a way to write around it since I insisted on an alto lead at that point.
The biggest problem with the quartet format was ultimately a lack of dynamic range. Bringing the volume down isn’t much of a problem, but when it comes to the really loud parts there is no wall of brass and percussion to call on for power. Saxophones are fairly powerful, but they really can’t compete with an entire brass section for sheer power. Still I stuck with the minimal instrumentation, figuring that was the most likely to actually get played. As soon as you deviate from a standardized lineup, you lose pieces of the potential market to play what you write. Finding a fifth sax player is not likely to be a problem, as I’d imagine most working groups have an understudy on call anyhow. It’s just unlikely said understudy will have a bass saxophone.
I haven’t even finished the written parts and I’m already trying to figure out what to take on next. Maybe you have some ideas as well? Grand Canyon Suite is a contender. So are An American in Paris and the 1812 Overture, both of which were brought to mind by various bits of Pictures (Limoges and Great Gate, respectively). The latter resemblance is almost certainly not an accident, as both Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky were strong in their desire to produce a uniquely Russian school of composition and used much of the same cultural heritage in doing so. As for Limoges foreshadowing Gershwin 50 years later, it makes sense that Gershwin would choose to reference something that was already associated with Paris so that’s probably no accident either.
The PDF “printed” parts (as a single ZIP file) are now posted to:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/106555632/Pictures_at_an_Exhibition.zip
or you can access them from the page I linked to before.
I also re-mastered the recordings. I was unhappy with two aspects — first I used too much reverb and muddied up a lot of the detail. Second, I had the instruments set very wide in the mix (tenor hard left, bari hard right), making it sound like you were sitting in the middle of the group which was even more at odds with the strong reverb. The new edition has the placement closer to center so it sounds more like they’re standing in front of you rather than surrounding you, and just enough reverb to give ambience without blurring the faster passages.
Some folks at SOTW thought the range issues were too severe to allow for good performance. I happen to disagree in the sense that this is a piece of great difficulty to start with and isn’t aimed at your typical school or amateur sax quartet. It’s intended for a group composed of players who are all confident solo players in their own right (except perhaps for the bari, which isn’t THAT difficult). I also wrote the altissimo parts so as to not require much fluid motion — eliminating grace notes, not writing trills up there, etc. However, there are also other concerns that I simply ignored of necessity — a lack of dynamic range, a handful of available tone colors, and octave compromises that had to be made.
All of these are addressed in the new sextet version, which I have posted here:
http://hydrogen.servegame.com/sextet/
The octave compromises are decreased but not entirely eliminated. To do that would have required the services of a soprillo and a contrabass, when finding an outfit with a sopranino and a bass is going to be hard enough. I didn’t add the omitted grace notes back into the ‘nino part, since even THAT is in altissimo or perilously close to it at those points. (They’re typically keyed only up to Eb, right? I wrote it up to F but considered E and F to be “difficult”. And there’s still an altissimo A in “Gnomus”.)
Unfortunately for you, the bass player, you have the least demanding part of the six by a good margin. (You get the fun of honking on low Bb-B-C though. :)) The bari is made somewhat easier by not spending much time in the pinky-key range, but that wasn’t a terribly difficult part to start with. The bass is just not needed all the time. Neither is the sopranino, but it still has some very difficult stretches.
A score and parts will follow in the next few days or maybe a week. I’m rather drained at this point.
Wow! You’re a crazy man. The amount you’ve put into this is phenomenal. 😯
As far as the SOTW crowd goes… Well, there’s no pleasing some people. :scratch:
This is clearly not for your average group of horn players, and yes, I do in general find bari and bass parts a tad on the unchallenging side, but c’est la vie. It’s the downside of being a large horn player. The upside is, you get to carry a big-ass saxophone around. 😉
Can I ask, what actual instrument was used in the recording? I must admit I haven’t listened to all 32 tracks (if you include the quartet and sextet versions). But at times I thought I heard key noises–for example in the sextet version of The Old Castle.