Bb tenor before or after C melody?

[shmuelyosef]

I was talking to an old cat tonite who has been playing (all saxes, clarinet, flute, piano) since WWII...started in Philadelphia. I have done some repair work for him and his students. (get to the point...) He was saying that sopranos and tenors were available in C concert BEFORE the Bb horns emerged. I thought that the C melodys and the C sopranos came out during the depression, to try and stimulate average 'joes' to play along with the piano, etc...

Anybody have an authoritative take on this?

[paulwl]

Ah yes...the Old-Cat theory of history. Now if he'd been playing since the 1840s and not the 1940s... :? Adolphe Sax may or may not have put together a tenor or soprano in C before the Bb's, at the very beginning. But that's like asking which came first, white chickens or Rhode Island Reds.

AFAICT, the C melody wasn't very widely available at all until after 1900. The C sop seems to be "last hired-first fired" amongst the sax family, made in any quantity only during the 1920s.

The "depression" part is just wistful mist on a hoary mind. The depression is what killed off the C horns and the play-at-home market. A very few were still made, I'd guess mostly for church musicians.

Obsessive-compulsive that I am, I hoard "late number" saxes, things like 1930 Buescher and '36 Conn C melodies. I'm currently awaiting delivery on a 1928 Buescher C soprano – a very strange one, keyed to high F, with a bright-polished "tacked on" bell. Pix here for the time being:

http://www.saxquest.com/productDetails.asp?productcode=236834BuescherCsop

(PS: Horn just arrived. It's a beauty! Now to match up a mouthpiece and play...)

[Riff]

It is my understanding that Sax first built saxes in C & F for orchestral use and later in Bb & Eb for military bands.

Paul Cohen mentions both families in this article, http://www.classicsax.com/asi/falto.pdf, though he doesn't actually say which came first. (This article is in PDF format, and can be found at the classic sax.com site under the Adolfe Sax Institute.)

There is a record of Sax demonstrating a bass sax in C to Hector Berlioz in Paris. This leads me to believe that Sax built the C instruments first. However, as we all know, the sax is still not widely used in orchestral music but it is quite at home in military bands in their Eb & Bb incarnations. Obviously the C & F versions have faded into history. So perhaps it's popularity in the band instrumentation has led to some confusion as to which came first?

[paulwl]

It is my understanding that Sax first built saxes in C & F for orchestral use and later in Bb & Eb for military bands.
But I've never seen anyone attempt to pin down which came first, beyond that C bass – which has never turned up to my knowledge.

Note that Paul doesn't address the issue of actual horns in the early years, except through instrumentation books, which have been known to accept prior writings (especially by composers) as evidence enough that an instrument existed. Eg: Since he wrote the above piece, IIRC, he's theorized that there probably never was an F baritone.

I'm slightly suspicious that "C & F first" might have been propaganda to convince more people to accept saxophones in orchestras. So too might be the idea of an F family. Sax made a few F altos, but I think they were very rare until Conn came out with the mezzo-soprano. But there we leave the key of C, and the topic...

Paul, if you're looking in:

• Have your searches turned up any sizable number of C sops (or F altos) in the pre-1920s era?
• How about C tenors? Were they around in any numbers before about 1900? (I know Conn began making one around then.)
• Was I right in saying there's never been an F bari?