Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Adolphe Sax
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Early life== Antoine-Joseph Sax was born on 6 November 1814 in [[Dinant]], in what is now Belgium, to [[Charles-Joseph Sax]] and his wife Marie-Joseph (Masson).<ref>[https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/of-note/2014/ivory-clarinet Fit for a King: An Ivory Clarinet by Charles Joseph Sax].</ref> While his given name was Antoine-Joseph, he was referred to as Adolphe from childhood.<ref name=hubbard-encycl/><ref name="Ingham1998">{{cite book | author=Richard Ingham | title=The Cambridge companion to the saxophone | series=[[Cambridge Companions to Music]] | year=1998 | publisher=Cambridge University Press | isbn=978-0-521-59666-4 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/cambridgecompani00ingh/page/1 1–2] | url=https://archive.org/details/cambridgecompani00ingh/page/1 }}</ref> His father and mother were instrument designers themselves, who made several changes to the design of the [[French horn]]. Adolphe began to make his own instruments at an early age, entering two of his flutes and a clarinet into a competition at the age of 15. He subsequently studied performance on those two instruments as well as voice at the [[Royal Conservatory of Brussels]].<ref name=hubbard-encycl/><ref name="Ingham1998"/> Sax faced many brushes with death. As a child, he once fell from a height of three floors, hit his head on a stone and was believed dead. At the age of three, he drank a bowl full of [[pH|acidic]] water, mistaking it for milk,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kochnitzky |first1=L. |title=Adolphe Sax and his Saxophone |year=1949 |publisher=Рипол Классик |isbn=978-5-87233-344-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RdMGAwAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref> and later swallowed a pin. He received serious burns from a gunpowder explosion and once fell onto a hot cast-iron frying pan, burning his side. Several times he avoided accidental poisoning and asphyxiation from sleeping in a room where varnished furniture was drying. Another time young Sax was struck on the head by a cobblestone and fell into a river, almost dying.<ref name="Dinant"/> His mother once said that "he's a child condemned to misfortune; he won't live". His neighbors called him "little Sax, the ghost".<ref name="Dinant">{{Cite web|url=http://www.dinant.be/en/inheritance/adolphe-sax|title=Adolphe Sax|access-date=6 November 2015|website=Ville de Dinant|last=Rémy|first=Albert|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151117230219/http://www.dinant.be/en/inheritance/adolphe-sax|archive-date=17 November 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)