This month marks the 116th anniversary of the death of Adolphe Sax—the inventor of our beloved saxophones. Sax died in February 1894, in Paris, France.
Some sources state that Sax’s death occurred on February 4th. Other sources indicate it happened on the 3rd, while a marker by Sax’s grave indicates he died on the 7th¹. One thing that everyone seems to agree upon however, is that Adolphe Sax died in February 1894.
As most of us know, Adolphe Sax’s contribution to the music world was not limited to the creation of saxophones. Sax was also responsible for some important improvements to bass clarinets. He was the inventor of state of the art valves for brass instruments.² Sax also invented brass instruments such as the saxhorns, saxtrombones, and saxtubas.³ And in the words of Albert Rémy:
The list of the inventions and perfections that Sax accomplished is very long. Apart from the families of instruments already quoted, mention has to be made of reforms to musical notation, compositions, musical methods (Sax became a teacher for military musicians at the Paris Conservatory directed by Auber), a pamphlet on the influence of wind instruments on the lungs, a planned applied school for inventors, a plan for reorganising orchestras, a remarkable study on concert hall acoustics, improvements in the majority of brass and wood instruments. All together: a good forty, not counting a large number of rather extravagant and even fantastical discoveries, which nonetheless show that Sax’s inventive mind was ever alert.
Source: Adolphe Sax
Under the category of what Rémy calls fantastical discoveries, this instrument definitely applies.
7 Bells
Photography by: celesteh Source: Flickr
The photographer wrote the following caption to these photos:
This seven belled, seven horned beast was invented by Sax to be a chromatic horn. Each valve goes to a separate bell.
One problem of having valves in serial, rather than parallel, is that valve combinations tend to be out of tune. (On a modern horn, the third valve is tuned to a length which is based on a ratio of it’s pipes compared with the rest of the instrument. If the player also presses the first valve, then the ratio of the rest of the instrument changes and the third valve pipe is too short). This is a clever way to solve the problem, although it seems like it would tend to be heavy.
At the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels, Belgium
7 Bells – back
Photography by: celesteh Source: Flickr
I’m still trying to get my head around how a player might play this thing. They’d need to use both hands to operate the valves, and sit the instrument in their lap I guess. Ouch! That’s got to be heavy. 😯
But hey, this was built by the same guy who supposedly walked from Brussels to Paris while carrying a bass saxophone, so I guess he figured the player just needed to man-up. ;)__________________________________________
¹ Adolphe Sax page on Wikipedia
² Adolphe Sax page on Wikipedia
³ Adolphe Sax page on dinant.be
Did you spot the anachronism in the background? There is someone sitting at the harpsichord, presumably to play it. The lid is open. Although some modern instruments are built to be played open, this is historically inaccurate. Classical harpsichords are meant to be played CLOSED. Often, the lid is not even hinged and must be completely removed for tuning and repair.
Maybe someone is tuning the instrument, and it’s an instrument with a hinged lid, but I do not see any tools. Maybe that person is not actually at the keyboard, and the instrument is open for display purposes — but that too would be historically inaccurate. During the time that harpsichords were the primary keyboard instrument (aside from pipe organs), they were simply not presented that way. They are instruments for chamber music, and as such are not very loud. They have only a single set of strings at a fairly low tension.
By contrast, a piano has one, two, or three strings per note (one in the bass, two in the tenor, three the rest of the way) which are at a very high tension. The inward stress on a piano frame can be in excess of 20 TONS. This is why they are not made of wood, but cast iron. They were made of wood for a while, but this was neither good for intonation nor longevity — even when they had only two strings per note and less tension than today. Pianos are inherently louder, and built to compete with other instruments or an entire orchestra, and most notably to be played with the lid UP.
Harpsichords are not pianos, but most people simply do not know the difference.