Did Adolphe Sax invent the Sousaphone in 1867?!

[Dave Detwiler]

The August 10, 1867 edition of Le Monde Illustre features a drawing of the Adolphe Sax booth at the Exposition Universelle. Check out the horns that were there - esp. that monster on the left!:

1867 Adolphe Sax booth - Copy.jpg

[David Richoux]

Sorry - those are fantasy - satirical illustrations, probably a comment on the ever increasing size and complexity of brass instruments.

(I have been collecting tuba cartoons for quite a while - there are other similar ones from around the same era.)

[imperialbari]

Whether this instrument actually was built in any larger numbers may be doubtful. But even if the equivalent of our present day Eb tuba was the lowest bass, the Saxhorn Contrabasse en Mi bemol, of brass ensembles until 1880 or 1885 (in some areas even later), then Sax very well may have planned for extrapolations into the lowest range.

Couesnon built a double Eb bass with 3 top pistons.

image.jpeg

The illustration of this thread is a report from an actual exhibition. Sax may very well have built this oversize cornu as an eyecatcher without planning about this models as part of his regular production line-up.

Klaus

[Dave Detwiler]

The illustration of this thread is a report from an actual exhibition. Sax may very well have built this oversize cornu as an eyecatcher without planning about this models as part of his regular production line-up.

My thinking exactly. We do know of giant tubas like the one on the right in the illustration, such as "big carl." The possibility that Sax was the first to make such a huge tuba is mentioned in this brief article: http://www.cmuse.org/playing-the-bigges ... -of-lungs/

Could it be that he also made the first huge helicon/saxtuba/sousaphone-like-horn? I am aware of the smaller, simpler design from 1845, that I wrote about here: http://tubapastor.blogspot.com/2015/12/ ... stors.html. The this huge version, in the present illustration, clearly rests on the shoulder - albeit the right shoulder!