Today is National Saxophone Day. It is the birthday of the saxophone’s inventor, Adolphe Sax, who was born on November 6, 1814. The saxophone is one of the main instruments used to play jazz. Sax made saxophones in several sizes in the early 1840’s. He received a 15-year patent for the instrument on June 28, 1846. The patent covered 14 different versions of the saxophone, divided into two categories of seven instruments each, and ranging from sopranino to contrabass. When Sax’s patent ended in 1866, several saxophonists and instrument makers improved the original design.
When Sax first introduced the saxophone in the 1840’s, he received a great deal of ridicule, especially from other people in Paris. But the saxophone’s public image improved after composer Hector Berlioz praised it as revolutionary. Now, it is viewed by some as romantic or sexy.
Sax came close to death many times. As a kid, he once fell from a height of three stories, hit his head on a stone and was mistakenly thought to have died. When he was 3, he drank a bowl full of acidic water, mistaking it for milk. Later on, he swallowed a pin. He received serious burns from a gunpowder explosion and once fell onto a hot cast-iron frying pan, burning his side. Several times he was nearly poisoned from sleeping in a room where varnished furniture was drying. Once, Sax was struck on the head by a cobblestone and fell into a river, almost perishing.
His mother once lamented that “he’s a child condemned to misfortune; he won’t live.” His neighbors described him as “little Sax, the ghost.”
Antoine-Joseph Sax was born in 1814, in Dinant, in the French-speaking part of what is now Belgium. While his birth name was Antoine-Joseph, he was called Adolphe from childhood. His father and mother were instrument designers themselves, who made several modifications to the design of the French horn. Adolphe began to make his own instruments at an early age, entering two of his flutes and a clarinet into a competition when he was 15. He subsequently practiced on those two instruments as well as singing at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.
