Adolphe Sax’s Workshop: Six Images of a Musical Revolution

Charles Baugniet drew this portrait of Adolphe Sax in London in 1844, two years after Sax settled in Paris. Printed by Day & Haghe, it presents an already established professional. The image is a lithograph, not a photograph, and predates the 1846 patent for the saxophone.

Sax made this soprano ophicleide in the middle of the nineteenth century. The keyed brass instrument helps explain the materials he worked with: the Met describes his experiments placing a bass-clarinet mouthpiece on an ophicleide. This surviving example illustrates that instrument family; it is not identified as the original experimental prototype.

Made in Paris around 1855, this alto saxophone belongs to the first decades of the instrument’s history. Its brass body and network of keys make the family resemblance to later saxophones clear. Sax hoped to strengthen bands and orchestras; the jazz performances now associated with the instrument lay far in the future.

This bass saxhorn from 1863 combines six independent valves with a bell that the player could turn to redirect the sound. Sax sought to improve tuning when valves were used in different combinations. Instruments of this type were used in the stage band he directed at the Paris Opéra.

The bell of this trumpet carries a copper image of Wynendaele Castle in Belgium. Sax manufactured the instrument in 1856, but the decoration depicts the castle after its 1877 remodeling, suggesting a later sale from workshop stock. The design originated in Sax’s ceremonial trumpets for Napoleon III’s Cent Gardes.