13 Facts About Adolphe Sax

1.

Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax was a Belgian inventor and musician who created the saxophone in the early 1840s, patenting it in 1846.

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2.

Antoine-Joseph Adolphe Sax was born on 6 November 1814, in Dinant, in what is Belgium, to Charles-Joseph Adolphe Sax and his wife Marie-Joseph .

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3.

Adolphe Sax began to make his own instruments at an early age, entering two of his flutes and a clarinet into a competition at the age of 15.

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4.

Adolphe Sax subsequently studied performance on those two instruments as well as voice at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

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5.

Adolphe Sax received serious burns from a gunpowder explosion and once fell onto a hot cast-iron frying pan, burning his side.

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6.

Adolphe Sax's first important invention was an improvement in bass clarinet design, which he patented at the age of 24.

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7.

Adolphe Sax relocated permanently to Paris in 1842 and began working on a new set of valved bugles.

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8.

Adolphe Sax developed the saxotromba family, valved brass instruments with narrower bore than the saxhorns, in 1845, though they survived only briefly.

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9.

The advances made by Adolphe Sax were soon followed by the British brass band movement, which exclusively adopted the saxhorn family of instruments.

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10.

Period around 1840 saw Adolphe Sax inventing the, an early unsuccessful design of contrabass clarinet.

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11.

Adolphe Sax's reputation helped secure him a job teaching at the Paris Conservatory in 1857.

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12.

Adolphe Sax continued to make instruments later in life and presided over the new saxophone course at the Paris Conservatory.

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13.

Adolphe Sax suffered from lip cancer between 1853 and 1858 but made a full recovery.

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