SAXOPHONE (Ger. Saxophon, Ital. sassofone)

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 274 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SAR-SCY

SAXOPHONE (Ger. Saxophon, Ital. sassofone) , a modern hybrid musical

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

invented by Adolphe Sax, having the clarinet mouthpiece with single reed applied to a conical brass tube. In general appearance the saxophone resembles the bass clarinet, but the tube of the latter is cylindrical and of

wood

; both

instruments

INSTRUMENTS

are doubled up near the bell, which is shaped somewhat like the flower of the gloxinia. The mouthpiece in both is fixed to a serpentine tube at right angles to the main bore. On the saxophone, owing to its conical bore, the production of sound materially differs from that of the clarinet, and resembles that of the oboe. The reed mouthpiece in combination with a conical tube allows the performer to give the

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

harmonic

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

unbroken, which means in practice that the octave or second member of the harmonic

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

is first overblown when the pressure of the breath and the tension of the lips on the reed are proportionally increased. The saxophone is there-fore one of the class known as octave

instruments

INSTRUMENTS

. The fundamental note given out by the tube when the lateral holes are closed is that of an open organ pipe of the same length, whereas when, as in the clarinet family, the reed mouthpiece is combined with a cylindrical bore, the tube behaves as though it were closed at one end, and its notes are an octave lower in pitch. Hence the bass'clarinet to give the same note as a bass saxophone would need to be only half as long. The closed pipe, moreover, can only overblow the uneven numbers of the harmonic series, and therefore first gives the 12th instead of the octave, which
necessitates an entirely different arrangement of holes and keys and a different

scheme

SCHEME (Lat. schema, Gr. oxfjya, figure, form, from the root axe, seen in exeiv, to have, hold, to be of such shape, form, &c.)

of fingering.
The bore of the saxophone is large, and there are from 18 to 20 keys covering holes of large

diameter

DIAMETER (from the Cr. &a, through, µErpov, measure)

to produce the fundamental scale. The first 15 semitones are obtained by opening successive keys, the rest of the compass by means of
octave keys enabling th'e performer to
_ sound the harmonic octave of the funda-
mental scale. The compass of the various
= saxophones extends over 2 octaves and
a fifth with chromatic intervals, being one octave less than the clarinet. The
complete family consists of the accompanying members. The treble clef is used in notation., and all saxophones are transposing instruments, the music being written in a higher key, according to the difference in pitch between the fundamental note of the

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

and the standard C of the
notation. The keys given above are of the orchestral saxophones; the instruments used in military bands are a tone lower. The quality of tone of this family of instruments is inferior to that of the clarinets and has affinities with that of the harmonium. According to Berlioz it has vague analogies with the timbre of 'cello, clarinet and cor anglais,with, how-ever, a brazen tinge. To a clock-maker of Lisieux named Desfontenelles, who made a clarinet with a conical bore and an upturned bell in 1807, is due the combination of single reed mouthpiece with a conical tube. In 1840 Adolphe Sax, in trying to produce a clarinet that would overblow an octave like the

flute

FLUTE

and oboe, in-vented the saxophone, which at once leapt into popularity in France and Belgium, where the alto, tenor and baryton have super-
seded & Co., Ltd.) seded the bassoon in almost all
(Besson military bands. Many modern French composers, Meyerbeer, Massenet, Ambroise Thomas and others, have scored for it in their operas. Kastner introduced it into the orchestra in Paris in 1844 in Le Dernier Roi de Judo. The saxophone has been adopted in England at the Royal
Military School of Music at Kneller

Hall

. (K. S.)

End of Article: SAXOPHONE (Ger. Saxophon, Ital. sassofone)

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