This is the week for the vintage, double reed saxophone relatives to make a rare appearance on my blog. I don’t write about these strange horns very often, but when I happened across these photos, I thought they were interesting enough to include here.
While yesterday’s post dealt with rothophones, today’s subjects are close relatives of those anorexic-looking, saxophone-shaped oddities. Like the rothophone and the saxophone, the sarrusophone was also built mostly as a transposing instrument, with a conical bore. The sarrus is however younger than the sax, and older than the roth.
The sarrusophone was invented in 1856 by Pierre-Louis Gautrot, who named it after French band leader Pierre-Auguste Sarrus—Gautrot gave him credit for the instrument’s concept. Like the rothophone, the sarrus was played with a double reed, although a saxophone-like mouthpiece that attached to the bocal was developed.
The sarrusophone was similar to early saxophones in its fingering system, which is in part what led Sax to initiate lawsuits against its makers. Adolphe Sax felt that the sarrusophone was too similar to his saxophone, so he repeatedly sued Gautrot for patent infringement.
Sarrusophones were built in the following voices:
- Eb Sopranino
- Bb Soprano
- Eb Alto
- Bb Tenor
- Eb Baritone
- Bb Bass
- Eb Contrabass
- C Contrabass
- Bb Contrabass
The range of these instruments was the same as saxophones we see today—from low Bb to high F—which gave these horns a greater range than the saxophones of the time.
The primary companies that made sarrusophones included: Gautrot and Couesnon (Gautrot’s successor), Orsi, Rampone, Buffet (Evette & Schaeffer), and Conn—they made the Eb contrabass only. Today, only the Orsi company is still in the sarrusophone business. They will only make one upon request however, since these are not regular production instruments.
The photo below is of a Bb tenor and an Eb contrabass sarrusophone. Both are on display at the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels.
Author: Vitmalinovsky Source: cs.wikipedia.org
Although rare, the sarrusophone is not nearly as rare as its rothophone cousin. Vintage sarrusophones do occasionally appear on eBay. For example, this tenor sarrus appeared on the auction site in November 2008. This was indeed more of a rarity, since the most common sarrusophone is the Eb contra.
If you would like to know more about sarrusophones, check out Grant Green’s Sarrusophones page. You’ll also find lots of sound clips there.
To find out a bit more about the Conn 16V Eb Contrabass, check out this page on the old SaxPics site. On that page you’ll also find a photo of the single reed mouthpiece.
