ANTOINE

See also:

• JOSEPH
• JOSEPH, COMTE DE (1785-1870)
• JOSEPH, FATHER (FRANCOIS LECLERC DU TREMBLAY) (1577-1638)

JOSEPH

See also:

• ANTOINE JOSEPH SAX

SAX  , known as ADOLPHE (1814-1894), maker of musical instruments, was born at Dinant in Belgium on the 6th of November 1814 and died in Paris in 1894 . In 1835 he perfected a bass clarinet superior to any that had preceded it . He came to Paris in 1842 and succeeded in interesting many eminent men, including Berlioz and Halevy . He set up a workshop in the Rue St Georges and studied acoustics, discovering a new principle in the manufacture of wind instruments, viz. that it is the proportions given to a column of air vibrating in a sonorous tube, and these alone, that determine the character of the timbre produced: the material of the walls of the tube is not of the slightest importance so long as it offers enough resistance . Together with his genius for mechanical invention Sax seems to have combined a knowledge of self-advertisement, and his name was often prefixed to successful types of instrument for the invention of which he was notprimarily responsible . In 1845 he patented his saxhorn and a family of cylinder instruments called saxotrombas . On the 22nd of June 1846 he registered the saxophone . He also effected various improvements in piston instruments, of which the most important was the substitution of a single ascending piston for a number of descending ones . See J . P . O . Cornettant, Histoire d'un inventeur (186o) ; C .

Pilard,

Les Inventions Sax (1869) .