Two hundred franc banknote featuring Adolphe Sax. National Bank of Belgium, 1996
«November 6 marks the two-hundredth birthday of Adolphe Sax (1814–1894), and the Met will be celebrating the occasion with a special exhibition, Celebrating Sax: Instruments and Innovation, which features instruments made by three generations of the Sax family. Rare saxophones, brass instruments, and even an exquisite ivory clarinet are among the twenty-six instruments selected to showcase the inventions and innovations of this extraordinary family. The exhibition opens with a free concert by internationally acclaimed saxophone soloist Paul Cohen at 2:30 pm this Wednesday, November 5, in The André Mertens Galleries for Musical Instruments.»
It's not often that instrument makers become a household name, but the instruments of Adolphe Sax have had an incredibly wide-reaching impact on music and society. Military and band music were transformed during the nineteenth century by saxhorns, Sax's innovative family of brass instruments. The saxhorn fueled the brass-band movement, which expanded opportunities for music making among the working classes. And, of course, the saxophone, patented in 1846, is now integral to many different types of music around the world; primarily through jazz and pop, the saxophone has achieved the type of universal popularity matched by few other instruments.
Sax was also an avid collector active during a formative period of instrument scholarship. Many important collections of musical instruments were established during his lifetime, including the Crosby Brown Collection here at the Metropolitan Museum. The bicentenary of Sax's birth coincides with the 125th anniversary of the gift of over 3,600 instruments to the Met by the pioneering collector Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown. Sax and Brown circulated in the same international community of scholars and collectors, and instruments made by the Sax family featured prominently in Brown's collection as examples of cutting-edge instrument design—examples which continue to inspire performers, composers, and instrument makers alike.
Stay tuned for future Of Note posts that will explore some of the more unusual and important Sax instruments in the Met's collection.