Last night I saw Harry Connick Jr. in concert. Among many instruments reprented in his band were four tenor saxophonists who were (as you would expect) quite good.
However, it occurred to me while watching them what kind of mad genius it took to invent such an instrument? A flute I can see. A violin or piano or drums or trombone I can see. But a saxophone?
Let’s see…
Take a length of brass tubing and bend it in a few places. Drill holes of various sizes up and down its entire length till there isn’t room for anymore and cover those holes with valves. Now connect those valves with a bewildering array of metal bars to open and close those valves in almost endless combinations. Finally, let’s attach a reed as if this were a woodwind instead of a brass instrument.
That’s bad enough but it get’s worse. Even assuming some crazy nut achieved all of the above there had to be the first time he (or she) blew through the darned thing. With the annoying, gawdawful racket that emanated on the first ‘playing’ it’s a wonder it didn’t get tossed in the trash then and there. But no, our mad genius somehow sees through the noise of what is probably the worst sounding instrument ever made when placed in the hands of a novice and realizes that with a LOT of practice it can become a really cool instrument (NOTE: This doesn’t include bagpipes which sound like hell even when played well much less by a novice).
Finally, our mad genius not only does all of the above but somehow convinces others that this is a great new instrument worth playing.
Combines the facility of a woodwind instrument with the carrying power of a brass instrument with the babe-magnetism of a 1962 'Vette. What’s not to understand?
My grandmother and grandfather both played the sax. Grandpa played it for his lifelong living, in Hollywood. Grandma played it in her high school band, in Shreveport, La., in the 1920’s. I always marvelled over her high school yearbook band photo, where she was the dimunitive only femme sax player. Asking her about it in her 80’s got the nice reply: “I could play, and it was the only space I could find where I was treated as an individual instead of ‘just a woman’.” Yee, she was 17!
She ended up going to California and marrying my grandfather. His saxophone playing was a main attraction. That brass conduit for odd undulating difference is a deciding factor in my existence. I’m all for that mad genius!
I think that the sax was probably invented for sheer ease of use! It’s the easiest woodwind to pick up and learn. the key fingerings are all linear. If you want to move up a note, release a key. It’s that easy.
It’s really a vast improvement from the oboe, clarinet and oh my God is the bassoon ever the hardest thing to figure out!
The Belgian Adolphe Sax got an order of the French military
to give a new sound to their brass bands. The idea was using
(march) music written for symphony orchestras and replacing
the violin section by a new instrument. Sax developed several instruments, and instrument now known as the saxophone was born. He started a factory near Paris, and
the real saxophone is still produced there.