Adolphe Sax and the Strange Life Behind the Saxophone

Daniel Holland
4 hours ago
7 min read

If you ever need proof that the inventor of a musical instrument can have a stranger backstory than the people who eventually play it, then the life of Adolphe Sax is where you should begin. His later achievements were so substantial that it is easy to forget he spent much of his childhood apparently waging an accidental one boy battle against the concept of survival itself. The future inventor of the saxophone fell out of windows, swallowed pins, drank acid and walked straight into explosions. His mother once looked at the unfortunate little boy and declared that he was surely not long for this world. Yet somehow this accident prone child grew up to help reshape the sound of modern music (some might not be terribly thankful about that though...)

This is the strange and surprisingly charming story of Antoine Joseph Adolphe Sax, the Belgian instrument maker who gave the world the saxophone and survived enough mishaps to make even the most reckless Victorian adventurer wince.

Early Life The Ghost Child of Dinant

Antoine Joseph Sax was born in November 1814 in the riverside town of Dinant, a place of copper work, craftsmen and the background clang of metal on metal. His parents Charles Joseph Sax and Marie Joseph Masson were themselves instrument designers. They spent their lives shaping brass instruments in their workshop, which did nothing to discourage young Adolphe from tinkering with tools whenever the adults were not looking. Although he was christened Antoine Joseph, everyone called him Adolphe from childhood, and the name stuck.

It was probably around the time of his third accident that neighbours began to wonder if the boy might be cursed. At one point he fell from the third floor of a building and crashed head first onto stone. He was carried home because everyone assumed he had died on impact. On another day he found a bowl containing acidic water used by his father for industrial processes and drank it because he believed it was milk. He eventually recovered, although how anyone could drink acid and walk away from the experience is a question medical historians still quietly ask themselves. He then swallowed a pin for good measure and later managed to fall onto a hot stove. He also caused a gunpowder explosion that left him badly burned. The drumbeat of misfortune seemed to accompany him everywhere.

He also enjoyed being hit on the head by random airborne objects. A falling cobblestone once struck him so hard that he toppled into a nearby river. A passer by dragged him from the water just in time. There were also times when he nearly died from sleeping in a room filled with dangerous fumes while varnish dried on furniture. The detail that he slept peacefully through these incidents tells you everything you need to know about Adolphe Sax and his particular approach to life.

His mother apparently surveyed the constant injuries and said with maternal certainty that her son was surely condemned to misfortune and would not live. Local people went one step further and began calling him the ghost child of Dinant. Despite these gloomy predictions he kept going. By his teenage years he had become quite an accomplished musician and by the age of fifteen he had already entered two flutes and a clarinet of his own design into a competition.

He went on to study flute, clarinet and voice at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. It turned out that the boy who could barely stay alive had a gift for design and a flair for imagining instruments that did not yet exist.

The Young Inventor and the Trouble with Rivals

After leaving the Royal Conservatory, Sax ignored the sensible career of becoming a professional musician and instead plunged into the world of invention. His parents continued running their traditional instrument business, but he preferred to stay in the workshop experimenting with designs that others would have considered entirely unnecessary or absurd.

One of his earliest successes was a redesign of the bass clarinet. Previous versions were bulky and uncooperative, but Sax created a more refined version and patented it in his early twenties. It was a small taste of the innovation that was still to come.

He then moved to Paris in 1842, a change of scenery that would alter his life and reshape European music in the process. Paris at the time was a competitive place for instrument makers. Rivalries were fierce, lawsuits were common and the French music establishment was notoriously suspicious of young foreigners who arrived with ideas.

This did not deter him. Instead, he plunged head first into a series of new inventions with his usual slightly chaotic enthusiasm. He began by working on a new type of valved bugle, later known as the saxhorn. He did not invent the bugle itself, but the way he improved its design completely altered its performance. His models featured precise valving and a clear, full sound that composers quickly noticed.

Composer Hector Berlioz became one of his earliest and loudest supporters. Berlioz heard the saxhorns and announced that they were revolutionary. It is said that in 1844 he arranged an entire piece to be performed only on saxhorns simply to show off what the instruments could do. For a young Belgian trying to break into the Parisian musical world, praise from Berlioz was like receiving a personal blessing from Olympus.

These new instruments came in seven sizes and created a family of sounds that bridged traditional divides between brass and woodwind. They also laid the groundwork for the modern flugelhorn and contributed to the evolution of the euphonium.

Sax also designed the saxotromba in the mid eighteen forties which enjoyed only a brief moment of popularity. Still, for someone who nearly died every four or five months during childhood, this level of productivity was astonishing.

The Invention of the Saxophone

By the early eighteen forties Sax had turned his attention to something entirely new, a hybrid instrument that would combine the expressive agility of a woodwind with the powerful projection of a brass instrument. The result was the saxophone, patented in June 1846.

Between his initial designs and his final patent he created models ranging from tiny sopranino to enormous subcontrabass instruments that were so large they looked as though they required their own building permit. Not every size was ever constructed, though Sax insisted they were perfectly feasible.

The saxophone fascinated composers almost immediately. Berlioz continued to champion the instrument, writing that it was capable of producing a wide range of tones from soft and melancholy to forceful and brilliant. Despite this glowing endorsement the instrument struggled to find a regular place in the traditional orchestra. It was too robust for the delicate passages of classical woodwinds yet too flexible and lyrical to seem at home among the brass.

Military bands, however, instantly understood its potential. The saxophone could cut through outdoor noise, project across open spaces and handle technical passages with ease. Soon it spread from France to other European countries and later to America where it would eventually help define entire genres.

Crimean War Projects and the Strange Machines That Never Happened

During the Crimean War Sax unveiled two inventions that are proof he occasionally allowed his imagination to wander several miles beyond practicality. The first was the Saxotonnerre. This was meant to be a gigantic organ powered by a locomotive engine. He believed it could be heard across all of Paris at once. For reasons that defy easy explanation, the French authorities chose not to proceed with the construction of a city wide sound blaster.

His second unbuilt invention was the Saxocannon, a colossal artillery piece capable of firing half ton projectiles powerful enough to destroy an entire average sized city. Whether he proposed this seriously or simply got carried away with wartime patriotism is unclear. At any rate, no one felt the need to hand him a military contract.

There is something almost endearing about these unrealised inventions. They show that at heart Adolphe Sax loved spectacle. He could imagine an instrument or machine so bold and so loud that it would force the world to pay attention.

Teaching, Troubles and Bankruptcy

Although he experienced moments of success, Sax also spent much of his life in the courtroom. Rival instrument makers were angered by his patents and repeatedly challenged them. He in turn sued those who produced imitations of his inventions. The result was a twenty year legal battle that drained his finances and pushed him into bankruptcy three separate times. He declared bankruptcy in 1852 then again in 1873 and finally in 1877.

Yet even during these difficulties he achieved significant professional milestones. In 1857 he was appointed a professor at the Paris Conservatory where he taught saxophone as part of the new curriculum. His instruments continued to influence brass and woodwind design throughout Europe and the saxhorn family became a particular favourite of British brass bands. Groups like the Jedforest Instrumental Band and the Hawick Saxhorn Band emerged in the Scottish Borders, carrying his name into local music cultures.

Despite his early fame and the international spread of his ideas, Sax never became wealthy. His lawsuits were constant and his rivals persistent. He also suffered from lip cancer for several years in the eighteen fifties although he made a full recovery. By the time he died of pneumonia in 1894 he had returned to poverty, a melancholy end for a man whose inventions shaped the sound of the nineteenth century and beyond.

He was buried at the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, the final resting place of many artists who, like him, transformed their craft and left behind legacies far larger than their bank accounts.

Legacy The Sound That Outlived the Man

Today the saxophone is one of the most recognisable instruments in the world. It is a staple of jazz, a favourite of military bands, a familiar presence in orchestral experiments and an essential part of popular culture. From early ragtime to bebop to soul and rock, the saxophone became a voice capable of swagger, sorrow, comedy and longing.

It is almost comical to think that the sleek instrument at the centre of so many iconic musical moments was invented by a man who barely survived childhood. In a way, it suits the story. Adolphe Sax spent his early years defying the odds and his later years battling competitors, inventors, critics and creditors. Yet nothing could stop his ideas from travelling across the world.

His mother once said he would not live. She was wrong. Through his inventions, he never really died.