page_title: Saxophone
section_title: Early development and adoption
hierarchical_section_title: Saxophone / History / Early development and adoption
caption_attribution_description: Set design for Gioachino Rossini's Robert Bruce, Act III, Scene 3 (La draperie s'ouvre découvrant le rempart de la forteresse "The curtain opens on the ramparts of the fortress [Sterling Castle]") Pencil, pen, watercolor highlights, gouache, wash and ink; 390 x 578 mm
context_page_description: The saxophone is a family of woodwind instruments usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece. Although most saxophones are made from brass, they are categorized as woodwind instruments, because sound is produced by an oscillating reed rather than lips vibrating in a mouthpiece cup as with the brass instrument family. As with the other woodwind instruments, the pitch of the note being played is controlled by covering holes in the body tube to control the resonant frequency of the air column by changing the effective length of the tube.
  The player covers or uncovers the holes by pressing keys.
  The saxophone is used in classical music, military bands, marching bands, jazz, and contemporary music. The saxophone is also used as a solo and melody instrument or as a member of a horn section in some styles of rock and roll and popular music. Saxophone players are called saxophonists.
  Since the first saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in the early 1840s, saxophones have been produced in a variety of series distinguished by transpositions within instrument sets and tuning standard.
context_section_description: The saxophone was designed around 1840 by Adolphe Sax, a Belgian instrument maker, flautist, and clarinetist. Born in Dinant and originally based in Brussels, he moved to Paris in 1842 to establish his musical instrument business. Before working on the saxophone, he made several improvements to the bass clarinet by improving its keywork and acoustics and extending its lower range. Sax was also a maker of the ophicleide, a large conical brass instrument in the bass register with keys similar to a woodwind instrument. His experience with these two instruments allowed him to develop the skills and technologies needed to make the first saxophones.
  As an outgrowth of his work improving the bass clarinet, Sax began developing an instrument with the projection of a brass instrument and the agility of a woodwind. He wanted it to overblow at the octave, unlike the clarinet, which rises in pitch by a twelfth when overblown. An instrument that overblows at the octave has identical fingering for both registers.
  Sax created an instrument with a single-reed mouthpiece and conical brass body. Having constructed saxophones in several sizes in the early 1840s, Sax applied for, and received, a 15-year patent for the instrument on 28 June 1846. The patent encompassed 14 versions of the fundamental design, split into two categories of seven instruments each, and ranging from sopranino to contrabass.  A limited number of instruments in the series pitched in F and C were produced by Sax, but the series pitched in E♭ and B♭ quickly became the standard.  All the instruments were given an initial written range from the B below the treble staff to the E♭ one half-step below the third ledger line above staff, giving each saxophone a range of two and a half octaves.  Sax's patent expired in 1866. Thereafter, numerous other instrument manufacturers implemented their own improvements to the design and keywork.
  Sax's original keywork, which was based on the Triebert system 3 oboe for the left hand and the Boehm clarinet for the right, was simplistic and made certain legato passages and wide intervals extremely difficult to finger; that system would later evolve with extra keys, linkage mechanisms, and alternate fingerings to make some intervals less difficult.
  Early in the development of the saxophone the upper keyed range was extended to E, then F above the staff; 1880s era sheet music for saxophone was written for the range of low B to F.  In 1887 the Buffet-Crampon company obtained a patent for extending the bell and adding an extra key to extend the range downwards by one semitone to B♭.  This extension is currently standard in most modern designs, with the notable exception of baritone saxophones further extended and keyed to low A. The upper range to F would remain the standard for nearly a century until the altissimo F♯ key became common on modern saxophones.
  In the 1840s and 1850s, Sax's invention gained use in small classical ensembles (both all-saxophone and mixed), as a solo instrument, and in French and British military bands.  Saxophone method books were published and saxophone instruction was offered at conservatories in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and Italy.  By 1856 the French Garde Republicaine band included eight saxophones, making it the large ensemble that featured the instrument most prominently.  The saxophone was used experimentally in orchestral scores, but never came into widespread use as an orchestral instrument.  In 1853-54 the orchestra of Louis Antoine Jullien featured a soprano saxophone on a concert tour of the United States.
  After an early period of interest and support from classical music communities in Europe, their interest in the instrument waned in the late nineteenth century.  Saxophone teaching at the Paris Conservatory was suspended from 1870 to 1900 and classical saxophone repertoire stagnated during that period.  But it was during this same period that the saxophone began to be promoted in the United States, largely through the efforts of Patrick Gilmore, leader of the 22nd Regiment band, and Edward
caption: In a rare early inclusion in an orchestral score, the saxophone was used in Gioacchino Rossini's Robert Bruce (1846)[19]
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