Jay Coburn

And then added Sachs to the name.

If you asked Adolf though, he'd probably tell you this was a mere technicality.

Don't be such a sax downer.

He'd say he was here to disrupt the industry.

Move fast and break things.

Sax style.

So he came up with a plan to secure his own niche in a competitive market.

He went after a client so huge, so wealthy, that their business could set him up for life.

Austria and Prussia's military bands were leading the way with fancy new valve technology in their brass instruments, which made for loud, impressive displays.

In 1845, the French Ministry of War established a commission to investigate improvements to military bands, and Sax decided that he was going to hit it big by designing the perfect instrument to lift French military bands out of the toilettes.

Adolphe thought he could have the best of both brass and woodwinds, with a little tinkering.

His starting point was this other instrument that was common in bands at the time, called the offerclyde.

This is a recording of an ophiclide I found online.

It is as if a bull escaped from its stall had come to play off its vagaries in the middle of a drawing room.

Adolf Sax borrowed from his earlier project, the bass clarinet, and created a sort of hybrid brass and reed instrument.

Adolf also placed the boreholes scientifically, the way he had with the bass clarinet.

Crucially, this wasn't just one instrument.

Adolf Sax was looking to improve the entire ensemble, and so he created families of similar instruments at different pitches.

He'd already done this with the sax horns and saxotrombas a few years before.

The idea was to create a chorus of instruments working together, a little like a choir of human voices, with altos, tenors, sopranos, and bass all working together in harmony.