ax became a footnote in history after his creation was nearly forgotten when he died. Jazz musicians who barely remembered his name had revived it and over time Sax made musical headlines.

Sax was born on November 6, 1814, in Dinant. Dinant was part of France at the time and then was captured by the Netherlands. The town where Sax grew up is known for a particular type of yellow copper and it lies in the southern, French-speaking part of what in 1830 became the independent country of Belgium. Sax was the eldest of eleven children. Sax was very lucky to survive his childhood. In between incidents Sax naturally took to the trade of his father. His father, Charles-Joseph Sax, was a cabinetmaker who was ordered to provide musical instruments …show more content…
After his workshop in Paris became successful the roles were reversed. Sax hired his father, who unfortunately ran into financial problems in Belgium, to be his production manager. By the time Adolphe Sax was 16, he was not only creating good examples of existing instruments, but he also was inventing new ones. When he was 20 he has displayed an original 24-key clarinet, and his invention of the new bass clarinet won the admiration of François Antoine Habeneck, who was the conductor of the Paris Opera Orchestra, who had passed through Brussels.

At the Belgian Exhibition, an industrial fair, in 1840 Sax presented nine of his inventions; they included an organ, a piano tuning process and a sound-reflecting screen. The judges felt that he was too young to receive the top prize and they instead awarded him with the vermeil. Sax was intrigued by an early version of the saxophone from a French opera composer, Fromental Halévy and he quickly made a decision to head for Paris with only 30 francs in his …show more content…
When Halévy had introduced him to Hector Berlioz Sax’s fortunes turned around. In 1842 Sax showed Berlioz an early version of the baritone saxophone, which was different then any other instrument in that time. It had the power like a brass instrument but a voice-like quality of a woodwind. Berlioz went on and praised Sax and his instrument which he soon produced in seven different sizes from soprano all the way down to double bass. This unfortunately was when Sax’s problems began. Rival builders tried to sabotage his inventions, but Berlioz continued to defend Sax and he wrote a piece for the new instrument. After Sax showed his saxophone at the Paris Industrial Exhibition in 1844, he had to contend with accusations from a German bandleader. He stated that a pair of German inventors were actually the first builders to devise both the saxophone and Sax’s bass clarinet. German musicians backed up the fraud by ordering Sax’s instruments and buffing out the etching of his name in the brass, and sending it back to France

Sax received his patent in 1846 and he won his gold medal at the Paris Industrial Exposition in 1849. This definitely didn’t end his legal problems. Sax’s workshop sold around 20,000 instruments between 1843 and 1860, but he was definitely not a talented money manager. Sax ended up filing for bankruptcy three times, in 1852, 1873 and 1877. He was