Saxophone

The saxophone was developed in 1846 by Adolphe Sax, a Belgian-born instrument-maker, flautist, and clarinetist working in Paris. He created an instrument with a single reed mouthpiece like a clarinet, conical brass body with the acoustic properties of the French horn and the clarinet. Having constructed saxophones in several sizes in the early 1840s, Sax obtained a 15-year patent for the instrument on June 28, 1846. After this many saxophonists and instrument manufacturers added their own improvements to the design and mechanism.

Sax's original keywork based on the Triebert system 3 oboe for the left hand and the Boehm clarinet for the right, was very simplistic and made playing some legato passages and wide intervals extremely difficult to finger, so numerous developers added extra keys and alternate fingerings to make chromatic playing less difficult. A substantial advancement in saxophone keywork was the development of a method by which both tone holes are operated by a single octave key by the left thumb which is now universal on all modern saxophones.

The Saxophone belongs to the woodwind family