Solicitud de autorización de beca externa para realizar estancia formativa complementaria a favor de las doctoras María de Lourdes Miranda Rivas y Alexia Rebeca Ramos Pérez,

ear – not always to be found among those who performed on it, though the fact that the instrument proliferated at all is a testament to its more skilled players.

Sax was very familiar with the ophicleide. His father Charles-Joseph made them from at least the 1830s and the instrument’s merits and demerits would undoubtedly have been subjects of conversation between father and son. In 182 Sax père had taken out a Belgian patent to protect a system of ‘cylinders’ added to the instrument intended to address some of its deficiencies,2 _{and there are extant examples made by} Adolphe himself dating from the early 180s.3 _{The ophicleide may itself have been} related to an upright version of the serpent, a wooden instrument with a cup mouth- piece made in a snake-like shape from which it takes its name. Later versions of the serpent had used keys to cover those holes previously closed by the fingers, and it is possible that Halary had developed the idea for the ophicleide from this instrument; the word ‘ophicleide’ literally means ‘keyed serpent’.

Sax’s ambivalence towards the ophicleide was shared by others of the time. Berlioz, for example, in one of several diatribes against the instrument (which he had employed in the Symphonie fantastique) wrote in 182 that ophicleides were ‘poorly studied. Good performers are rare; in general they leave much to be desired [. . .]. One uses them in military music to fill out the harmony or to double the melody; but their timbre is generally very unpleasant, and they lack exactness’. _{In 183 the critic Blanchard,} using text remarkably prescient of Sax’s own patent description, observed that:

The ophicleide, which plays forte with the trombones, often makes sounds that are raucous, uneven and especially unpleasant in a room and even in the open air; it is very difficult to modify them. The bassoon, on the contrary, is only good for accompaniment and for certain effects that are particular to it; it is nearly useless in fortes. Except this last instrument, there are none that blend pleasantly with string instruments, and these are a nuisance outside whereas the strident voices of the brass instruments resound. The saxophone remedies these inconveniences: with more intensity in its sound, it could not blend better with the string instruments; it can modify its sounds better than any other.5

Blanchard’s words are sufficiently close to Sax’s patent deposition that one wonders whether he had seen the patent, or a text similar to it, as early as 183; or – more likely – whether Sax borrowed Blanchard’s review in constructing the patent. But however their shared dislike of the ophicleide was arrived at, sentiments such as these were not confined to France. In London the Musical World of June 181, commenting on an improvement to the serpent made by Thomas Key, observed that ‘thus the fine quality of tone of the serpent may, henceforth, be available in the orchestra, and the hog-song of the ophicleide will, we fervently hope, be speedily tacitted or banished altogether’.6 Such was the widespread antipathy towards the instrument that it was unkindly (and infamously) referred to as the ‘chromatic bullock’ by George Bernard Shaw.7

Sax’s prototype saxophone entailed removing the cup mouthpiece from an ophi- cleide and replacing it with a single-reed mouthpiece. Although he left no account of his invention it is highly likely that this prototype was arrived at by adding a bass clarinet mouthpiece to an ophicleide.8 _{The coupling of a single-reed sound generator}

with a large conical-bore instrument such as the ophicleide certainly produces a sound that distinctly suggests the tessitura of the baritone/bass saxophone. Berlioz, writing in March 182, confirms the genesis of this ‘ophicléide à bec’, observing that the instrument involved ‘replacing the cup mouthpiece with the mouthpiece of a clarinet. The ophicleides thus become brass instruments with reeds; the different sonority and timbre which results from this system is so much to their advantage [. . .] that, most probably, the ophicleide with a reed mouthpiece will come into general use in a few years.’

Creating a new musical instrument through such hybridisation was not unusual in nineteenth-century Paris, and other inventors endeavoured to amalgamate a piano with an organ, a harmonium with a piano, or a piano with percussion instruments.10 Sax’s innovation and enterprise was thus very much of its time, but his experiment with the ‘ophicléide à bec’ was not arrived at by chance. As the patent deposition makes clear, it was the product of logical reasoning and reflection, a point underlined by Sax’s son Adolphe-Edouard in later life.11 _{Nevertheless, several of Sax’s competitors} attempted to demonstrate that the saxophone was not an original instrument and was therefore not eligible to be protected by a patent; as part of the legal proceedings taken against him several forerunners were suggested as possible models for the saxophone.

The principle of adding a single reed to a conical-bore instrument was by no means novel, and it has been suggested that similar instruments existed in ancient times.12 There were certainly late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century attempts to secure clarinet-type mouthpieces to conical-bore woodwinds. Johann Wilhelm Hesse, a clarinettist in the court orchestra of Braunschweig, Germany, in the late eighteenth century, is listed as having attached a clarinet mouthpiece to a bassoon; observers are reputed to have remarked that the new instrument surpassed the woodwinds both in looks and in sound.13 _{Another bassoon-related instrument, the alto fagotto, invented} by the Scotsman William Miekle probably sometime in the early nineteenth century, was also advanced as a prototype saxophone. It comprised a conical wooden tube shaped like a bassoon, but sounded by a single reed attached to the instrument by means of a bassoon-like crook.1 _{Miekle’s invention appears to have been refined by} the London manufacturer George Wood around 1830. Wood published a method for the instrument in the early 1830s, the title page of which observed – in the somewhat longwinded fashion of the time – that it was An Instrument which Embraces the Sweetest & Most Admired Notes of the Clarinet & Bassoon, & Eminently Calculated to Accompany the Human Voice, or to Perform Solos & Concertos in Orchestras or Military Bands. It seems unlikely that Sax knew anything about this instrument,15 _{but the range of possible} uses implied by this title is surprisingly consonant with Sax’s own ideas about what the saxophone might achieve, and demonstrates that he was not the only inventor addressing these issues at the time.

There are other instruments worth noting because of the associations previously made between them and the saxophone. Constant Pierre (1855–118), a French musi- cologist who was no fan of Sax, drew attention to an instrument made by the French clockmaker Desfontenelles in 1807, largely on the grounds of its morphological simi- larity to the saxophone. However, later tests indicate that the instrument overblows at

the twelfth, like a clarinet, and not at the octave, as the saxophone does. It also sounded one octave lower than the clarinet, suggesting that it was an early bass clarinet.16 _An instrument called the bathyphon, invented in 183 by Sax’s German adversary Wieprecht and the Berlin maker Skorra, was also put forward as a progenitor of the saxophone.17 _{But the bathyphon is a contrabass clarinet, described as such by its} inventor; in fact the panel of experts selected for Sax’s trial of 187 concluded that the German instrument was itself an imitation of Sax’s bass clarinet, patented in 1838.

Another instrument often presumed to have some connection with the saxophone is the Hungarian tárogató, largely on account of its resemblance to the soprano saxo- phone, since it too has a straight tube with a discernible conical bore to which a single reed mouthpiece is attached. But this manifestation of the tárogató did not appear until the late nineteenth century. Its original incarnation was as a shawm-like instru- ment with a double reed. It was not until the Hungarian instrument makers Stowasser and Schunda developed it in the cause of Hungarian nationalism – submitting a series of patents either side of the turn of the twentieth century – that it took on its present form.18 _{Much though his competitors endeavoured to prove otherwise, it is clear that} Sax’s new instrument was indeed very largely an innovation of his own making.

No specific date can be ascertained for the invention of Sax’s prototype. Although the patent for the saxophone was originally intended to be submitted in 185, the instrument had been demonstrated before this date. It seems likely that the initial development occurred in the late 1830s. Maurice Hamel, whose father Henry was a close friend of Sax, suggests in a series of handwritten notes (now in the archives of the Selmer company in Paris) that Charles-Joseph Sax indicated that the saxophone was created in 1838, while Adolphe was still working in his father’s workshop.1 _This was the year that Sax patented his new bass clarinet, reinforcing the idea that the young Belgian was preoccupied at this time with the lower part of the orchestral wind texture. Furthermore, in 187 Charles-Joseph Sax, in a series of polemics published in La Belgique musicale in which he supported his son against accusations made by the German maker Wieprecht, stated that the saxophone was already invented by 1838. Such assertions must be treated warily, however, since a polemical exchange, by its very nature, encourages writers to be liberal with the truth.

The prototype is likely to have been invented before the term ‘saxophone’ was conceived and it is not clear when the word itself was first used. J. B. Jobard, the Belgian government’s commissioner in Paris, wrote a report of an 183 industrial exhi- bition in the French capital, in which he observed that Sax had invented ‘a contra-bass clarinet in brass [. . .] the saxophone is the Niagara of sound’.20 _{Quite what the commis-} sioner meant by the use of the word at this point is unclear; it is possible that he had attributed it to describe Sax’s new bass clarinet, or perhaps a contra-bass clarinet.21 However, Jobard’s report was not published until 182, and may well have been written some time after the exhibition itself, so even if he was using the word as we understand it, we cannot be completely sure whether the term was in circulation in 183.

But we can be confident that the saxophone was invented between 1838 and 180, since in 181 we find the instrument listed as part of Sax’s participation in the Belgian Industrial exhibition held in Brussels. For the first time Adolphe registered separately from his father Charles-Joseph. The catalogue demonstrates that he was exhibiting

a variety of clarinets, a bass clarinet and ‘un saxophone basse en cuivre’ – a bass saxophone in brass.22 _{It is not entirely clear whether the instrument was in fact prop-} erly displayed. The exhibition’s official report states that the instrument was not presented because it was not finished in time, but it also suggests that Sax did play the instrument before the jury of the music section.23 _{Why Sax might demonstrate} the instrument but not officially enter it is a matter for conjecture. Most likely, as the report implies, he felt it to be not sufficiently finished to warrant public appraisal or critical scrutiny. Another explanation was provided by the Belgian organologist Charles Mahillon in 187. Mahillon stated that Adolphe Sax had wanted his latest invention be placed behind a curtain, to prevent it being copied by a rival manufac- turer before Sax had the opportunity to protect it with a patent.2 _{This appears} plausible in light of the constant litigation in which Sax was later embroiled, although it does beg the question as to why Sax waited until 185 to submit the patent. In 188 Georges Kastner offered a more romanticised reason for the instrument’s non- participation in the 181 exhibition, suggesting that ‘an instrument wrapped in a cloth that Sax had wanted to present or at least to make heard before the admission jury, was sent flying with a violent kick at a moment when the inventor Adolphe Sax was absent.’25 _{Kastner makes clear that he is referring to the saxophone; however,} given his partisan support of Sax and his instruments, such a story must be treated with caution.

Whatever the veracity of these individual tales, it is clear that a prototype saxophone was in existence while Sax was still in Belgium, before his move to Paris in 182.

Developing the saxophone family in Paris

Sax had made one trip to Paris in 183 to promote his new bass clarinet, but consider- ably more important was his visit of June 182. This resulted in two significant meet- ings at which he demonstrated his various instruments: one with Berlioz, at that time music critic of the respected Journal des débats; and one at the initiation of François- Antoine Habeneck, conductor at both the Paris Opéra and the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, who invited Sax to perform at the Conservatoire before various luminaries such as the composers Auber and Halévy, the writer Éduard Monnais and the flautist Louis Dorus. Clearly these presentations made good impressions, for on 12 June 182 no fewer than three articles appeared in different publications lauding Sax’s achievements. A news article in the RGMP noted that:

M. Sax (son), the skilful instrument manufacturer from Brussels, has been in Paris for some days. He has made heard at the Conservatoire, before the director M. Auber and some professors, the bass clarinet and the new ophicleide of which he is the inventor. Full justice has been rendered to the beauty of these instruments, to which no other can be compared for the range, power and infinite variety of nuances of which they are capable.26

The editor of La France musicale similarly reported Sax’s presentation at the Conser- vatoire, and observed that ‘his third invention is destined to replace the ophicleide. This brass instrument is played with a clarinet mouthpiece and its range is close to two and a half octaves, beginning from the Ba of the bassoon. One can have no idea of the beauty of the sound and the power of the notes in the lower octave.’27

Perhaps the most extensive and influential eulogy, and certainly the article that has been subsequently most widely quoted, was written by Berlioz for the Journal des débats. It is a long piece in which Berlioz notes that considerable progress had been made in the art of musical instrumentation in the previous twenty years, and he lavishly praises the contributions Sax had made, as well as asserting the further contributions Berlioz felt he was likely to make. After outlining for the reader Sax’s development of the clarinet family, and particularly his bass clarinet, he draws attention to the saxophone:

The saxophon [sic], named after its inventor, is a brass instrument somewhat similar in shape to the ophicleide, and equipped with nineteen keys. It is not played with a mouthpiece like other brass instruments, but with a mouthpiece similar to that of the bass clarinet. The saxophone will thus be the head of a new family, that of brass instruments with a reed. Its range is three octaves, beginning with the low B flat below the stave (bass clef ); its fingering is more or less the same as that of the flute or the second register of the clarinet. As for the sound, it is of a nature that I don’t know a low instrument currently in use to which, in that respect, it can be compared. It is full, mellow, vibrant, extremely powerful, and capable of being soft. It is much superior, in my view, to the low notes of the ophicleide, for the precision and consistency of the sound, the character of which is in any case totally new and does not resemble any of the timbres that one presently hears in the orchestra, with the exception of the low E and F of the bass clarinet. Thanks to the reed with which it is provided the saxophone can increase and decrease its sound; it produces, in the high register, notes of penetrating vibration that could be successfully applied to melodic expression. Undoubtedly it will never be appropriate for rapid lines or complicated arpeggios; but low instruments are not intended for such rapid movements. Therefore, instead of complaining, we should rejoice in the impossi- bility that one will be able to abuse the saxophone and destroy its majestic character by giving it musical futilities to perform. Composers will be much indebted to M. Sax when his instruments come into general use. May he persevere; he will not lack encouragement from friends of art.28

Although Sax was demonstrating the instrument at this time, it was clearly still in development. In June 182 Michele Carafa, the director of the Gymnase de Musique Militaire with whom Sax would later clash over the reorganisation of military bands, wrote the inventor a letter in which he observes that ‘your brass instrument which uses a clarinet mouthpiece will become a very good instrument. I regret not having seen it finished; in the state that I have heard it, I cannot express enough the advantages which it will offer.’2 _{Furthermore, the various observations that the saxophone was} ‘similar in shape to the ophicleide’ suggests that at this time (mid 182), the

ophicleide-saxophone was the only shape in existence, and the S-shaped instrument of today had yet to evolve. The editor of La France musicale cited above notes that the instrument had a range of some two and a half octaves, starting from Ba₁, indicating that the instrument was a bass. We cannot be sure in what key this prototype was pitched, but C or Ba appear the most likely options, if only because these were the keys in which bass ophicleides were made (with C being more common than Ba).30

By 183 the instrument had evolved further. The critic Henri Blanchard, writing in RGMP in September of that year, noted that the saxophone ‘is equipped with nineteen keys, which close the holes, of which some are nearly two inches in diameter. Its fingering resembles that of the second register of the clarinet, and its mouthpiece is, more or less, similar to that of the new bass clarinet. Its range is three octaves, the lowest note being A’.31 _{Similarly, Berlioz, in a late addition to his Grand Traité} d’instrumentation in December 183, observed unambiguously that ‘the saxophone is a transposing instrument in B flat; its [written] range is [B₁-c1_].’32 _{Thus the first working} saxophone was an ophicleide-shaped saxophone, pitched in Ba, with the lowest written note of B₁, sounding A₁. The choice of this low note, a minor third below that available on the cello, is unlikely to have been fortuitous. The equivalent note on the ophicleide in Ba was unreliably sharp, while the bassoon could descend only as low