From military parades to smoky clubs, one invention’s wild journey reveals how an instrument can become a symbol of rebellion and reinvention. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. I want you to imagine a world where you can just invent a musical instrument. I don't mean when you were a kid and you put some rubber bands on a tissue box.
I mean you come up with a new instrument almost from scratch and then watch as that instrument gets taken up and played in nearly every marching band, jazz band, and high school music classroom across the country.
there actually was a time where this kind of thing happened.
Chapter 2: What historical context led to the invention of the saxophone?
That's reporter Jay Coburn. In the 19th century, Western Europe saw an explosion of instrument innovation where the entire landscape of instrumentation was shifting and where there was money to be made if your improvements caught on with the public.
This is when many of the instruments we know today reached their modern forms. Trumpets had been around since Roman times, but in the 19th century, they took on the valved form we know today. And flutes went from being conical wooden instruments to metal cylinders.
But one of the greatest innovations to come out of this time was the saxophone. The saxophone wasn't an improvement on a previous instrument. It was a brand new invention, a hybrid of brass and woodwind that not only managed to secure a spot in the musical canon, but also went on to change American music forever.
Its design came from the mind of a brash young entrepreneur.
His name, perhaps unsurprisingly, was Saxe.
Adolphe Saxe was born in Dinant, Belgium in 1814.
His full name was actually Antoine Joseph Saxe, but at the time Adolphe wasn't, you know, taken.
So he went by that instead. It's difficult not to remember him as this romanticized figure. The rags to riches to rags, the fiery temper.
This is Dr. Stephen Cottrell, Emeritus Professor of Music at City St. George's University of London.
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Chapter 3: Who was Adolphe Sax and what were his early challenges?
Sax style.
Although Adolf was churning out a variety of instruments, none of them had been a big enough hit to make him properly rich. He was one instrument maker among many in Paris, all competing for the attention of orchestras and private buyers.
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.
Because since time immemorial, there has been one tried and true way for an entrepreneur to make a ton of money. Adolf Sachs wanted to land a military contract.
If you could get a contract with the French military to supply brass instruments or brass wind instruments, then that was going to be the backbone of your business. You were going to sell far more instruments to the French military than you ever were going to the orchestras in Paris.
If cannons and cavalry were how a country demonstrated military prowess, then music was how it showed its cultural might. And France was lagging behind.
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.
France's military band, on the other hand, was still dominated by woodwind instruments, which are tuneful and elegant, but not loud enough to fill a parade ground.
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.
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Chapter 4: How did Adolphe Sax innovate the design of woodwind instruments?
And this is really what we think of the saxophone as. Really intellectual music. Fast notes. And they're like virtuosos. And you can say from that moment on, no one ever danced to jazz again.
The way jazz instrumentalists used the saxophone showcased the flexibility Adolph Sachs had aimed to perfect in his instrument. While traditional saxophonists used the big, brash tones, some jazz players leaned into the saxophone's ability to be smooth and nuanced, almost mimicking the human voice.
I guess I'm such a jazz funk saxophone player that to me, I would be inhibiting myself. So a good example of that is classical saxophone. Here's this how my voice sounds. This is how it sounds classical. Hey, how are you? How's everybody doing? I play classical saxophone. But no, this is my real stop, stop, stop.
You see, so like I felt, I just felt oppressed because I'm just like, why can't I play like this when this is how I talk? Why do you want me to do this? Please, please, I want to play jazz.
By this point, the saxophone had come a long way from its roots in Europe. It was no longer the brash young upstart trying to make it big in the French military. Over the course of a century, the instrument had woven itself into the fabric of life in the US, traveling with concert bands and hanging out in living rooms across the country. It was an iconic American instrument.
And now, with jazz, it was a black American's instrument.
It gets more political because it was founded by African-Americans. So if we ever got a group of people that are founding a music that starts off with them oppressed, it's already the music of revolution.
The saxophone's new associations did not come without pushback. Some, mostly white musicians, felt that the saxophone shouldn't be debased by jazz. They thought it was a proper instrument for proper people.
I've got this magazine column here written by a couple of saxophone purists in 1917. Let me just read a bit. God save us from the hideous catcalling that is so much in vogue at present termed jassing. The listener who hears some of these jazz players and has never before heard a saxophone is liable to form some very erroneous opinions of the much talked of instrument.
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