Obituary. Antonio Joseph Sax.

The Musical Courier,

Volume 28 #7 (Feb 14 1894), P. 30.

Notice was received on Friday, February 9, of the death of Antoine Joseph Adolphe Sax, the veteran inventor of the Sax horns and other improvements in band instruments.

            Mr. Sax was, unfortunately for himself, not a financier, and although his inventions were valuable he was unable to accumulate and substantial results from them, and died in poverty.

            Mr. Sax was personally known to Mr. Carl Fischer and others in this city.

            Some two years ago, when Mr. Fischer was in Europe, he ordered a Sax horn from Mr. Sax, but owing to the lack of tools – the result of his extreme poverty – he could not fill the order.

            The following is a sketch of Mr. Sax’s life and some of his inventions:

            Antoine Joseph Adolphe Sax was born at Dinant in France in the hear 1814, but was of Belgian descent. His father, a maker of musical instruments, had gained a reputation for various improvement s in manufacturer, and this faculty seems to have been inherited by his son. Antonine Sax devoted himself at first to making clarinets, and in 1838 he exhibited a bass clarinet of remarkable qualities at the Belgian Exhibition, and designed a double bass in B flat, but in 1836 established himself in Paris, where in 1838 he constructed his first saxophone. This led to an entire reform of the whole series of brass instruments, and he added to the list several new ones, usually known by names in which that of the inventor forms a part. In 1844 a silver medal was awarded to him, in 1845 he received the cross of the Legion of Honor, in 1849 a gold medal, and in 1855 a grand medal of honor at the Paris Exposition.

            He was harassed by numerous law suits brought by rival manufacturers, who charged him with appropriating their ideas, but the courts decided in his favor.

            Litigiousness is catching, and Sax brought an action against Mrs. Marie Sass, of the Opéra, and obtained an injunction against her using the name of Sax, under which she madder her début. This was probably an advertising scheme for Mr. Sax’s instruments, but it did not save him from pecuniary distress, as in 1874 a subscription was raised b y his friends for his benefit.

            The name of Sax obtained more advertising in connection with a celebrated surgeon Dr. Noir. Sax affirmed that the doctor’s treatment had cured him of cancer, and he thus became a piece of evidence for the defense when other patients who had been treated unsuccessfully sued the doctor. Sax also made a campaign in favor of wind instruments as preventative or curatives of pulmonary diseases.

            Sax was an excellent clarinetist, Bendix considering him his best pupil, and in Paris he had the support of Berlioz, Halévy and G. Kastner among artists and in the army of General de Rumegig, the aide de camp to Louis Philippe, and after a special competition between the old instruments had his he obtained a monopoly which banished from the army all horns, oboes and bassoons. This would have been a fortune to most men, and another fortune was offered him when the pitch in every orchestra and military band in France was altered in 1859. But in spite of all this and his invention of an ascending piston in place of a group of descending ones, of instruments with seven bells and six pistons, of rotary bells, &c., he was always in trouble. In 1877 he was compelled to sell his collection of musical instruments, the best of which went to the Paris Conservatory and Brussels Instrumental Museum.

            His first patent was taken out in 1845 for the saxhorn and the saxotromba, and in 1846 for the saxophone.