A few weeks ago I ordered a book that I’ve been meaning to buy for years now. The book was written by fellow bass saxophone player, Paul Lindemeyer, and is titled, Celebrating the Saxophone. 
Celebrating the Saxophone was published in 1996, and is just what the title says: a 96-page celebration of the saxophone, salient saxophonists, as well as saxophone-related things and ideas. The book is richly illustrated with colour photographs, and provides the reader with a nice introductory read about the instrument that has made such an impact on music and pop culture in the 20th century.
Even if you have never read the book, there is one of Paul’s photos from Celebrating the Saxophone that will most likely be familiar to you, since it has been circulating on the Internet for years. This relative size chart of the saxophone family appears on pages 24-25 of the book.
Source: saxontheweb.net
SOTW has the above chart on their site, but I didn’t originally see it there. A number of other sites have reproduced Paul’s pictorial representation of the sopranino through contrabass members of the saxophone family.
Celebrating the Saxophone is research rich
In this day and age of instant access to almost everything via the ‘Net, it’s easy to forget that as recently as the 1990s—yeah, I know that is almost a generation ago for our younger players 😉 —researching the information included in this book took a lot more time and effort than sitting at the computer and entering a bunch of search terms into Google and Bing.
As I sit here today and look through Paul’s book, I can’t help but be struck by the similarities to some to today’s saxophone websites and blogs. For example, these are the chapters in Celebrating the Saxophone:
- The Saxophone Phenomenon
- Saxophone Origins
- The Saxophone Explosion
- The Modern Saxophone
- Saxophone Objects
The individual topics covered in each chapter overlap very nicely with what is currently being written about in online saxophone websites—including this one. Because of this, I see Paul’s Celebrating the Saxophone, as an early, hard copy version of current saxophone websites.
That said, there is enough material in it that you won’t readily find anywhere else, that makes this book worth buying. It is a nice coffee table book, that even your non-saxophone playing friends can enjoy.
If you’re interested in picking up a copy for yourself, contact Paul Lindemeyer directly. When I last spoke with him, he didn’t have that many copies left, so if you’re interested, I wouldn’t wait too long to email him.
I’d like to give the last word to saxophone historian Paul Lindemeyer. A man whose musical knowledge I greatly respect, and whose humour I thoroughly enjoy. In these few words, I believe Paul has eloquently managed to capture the saxophone’s evolution, mystique, and world-wide appeal.
The saxophone’s possibilities range far beyond what Adolphe Sax could have imagined puttering in his workshop. The ugly ducking with the beautiful call has taken over the world. Growing, multiplying, ever changing, it has become as big and endlessly rich as music itself — yet is still as familiar as one’s own voice. Indeed, few sounds have come to mean so much to so many as the sound of the saxophone.
Source: Celebrating the Saxophone, p. 81
Hey, I woulda let you borrow my copy, if I had known you hadn’t read it.
A lot of the horn pics — including ones the above chart — are actually from Dr. Paul Cohen, late of the “Vintage Saxophones Revisited” column in The Saxophone Journal.
The range of production saxophones has expanded since 1996. Production saxophones now span the range from Bb sopranissimo (1 octave higher than soprano) to Eb subcontrabass (2 octaves lower than baritone).
But if I’d have borrowed yours, then I wouldn’t have received an autographed copy. :saxy: Not to mention, I’d have to return it. 😛 I wouldn’t like that.
I just ordered a few more books from Amazon. These might prove to be interesting. They arrived 2 days ago, along with a 400 page book on my new camera. I bet you can guess which one I started reading first.