Books › A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891 › scan 151
Scan 151
A descriptive catalogue of the musical instruments recently exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, 1890 …, 1891
11 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 131. See the scan on archive.org.
1VII.
2CLASS—REED INSTRUMENTS.
4FAMILY: Single reeds (β) with conical bore.
6THE application of the single-beating reed to a conical tube has been usually attributed to Adolphe Sax. There is, however, reason to believe that experiments in this direction had been made at the commencement of the century; and a curious wooden clarinet, having a conical bore, and bearing the name of "Desfontenelles, Lisieux, 1807," is to be seen in the Museum of the Paris Conservatoire. This interesting instrument is all the more remarkable since it has not only a conical bore, but also the bell turned vertically upwards, and 12 keys. The maker was a clockmaker, of Lisieux, and it has been urged that he suggested to Ivan Muller many of the improvements, in the ordinary clarinet, since attributed to Muller himself. The priority of the invention of the saxophone is, then, due to Desfontenelles. According to M. Lavoix (Histoire de l'Instrumentation), it was probably in endeavouring to construct a clarinet which should overblow the octave, instead of the twelfth, that Sax invented, in 1840, the instrument to which he gave the name of Saxophone. Whatever may be the real origin of this invention, it is, nevertheless, certain that the credit of having introduced and perfected the instrument belongs rightly to Sax.
8The saxophone consists essentially of a conical brass tube furnished with some 20 lateral orifices covered by keys, and with six touch-pieces for the first three fingers of each hand. The saxophone, therefore, becomes, as regards brass instruments, what the clarinet is as regards wood.
10Comparatively little used in England and Germany, the saxophone, introduced first in 1846 into military bands in France, completely superseded the clarinet. French makers have, therefore, from time to time introduced various improvements. The maker Goumas, in 1879, adding an additional fingering for b'b, rendered it possible for certain passages, hitherto of difficult execution, to be played with ease. An improvement upon this, with further changes, was, some years later,
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