Adolphe Sax en de conservatoria van Gent en Brussel : de spraakmakende experimenten met koperblazers met onafhankelijke ventielen

During the 1850’s, Adolphe Sax worked on a range of brass instruments equipped with an independent ascending valve system. The goal was to produce valved instruments that could play every note in its perfect harmonic, and the system was soon applied to trumpets, cornets, trombones, saxhorns and saxotromba’s. Only in the middle of the 1860’s the system was applied to the the horn, and by 1867 Sax had a 4-valve version of the Cor Sax à Pistons Indépendants ready. Despite negative reactions from the conservative French horn world, Sax continued the perfectioning of the independent valve system on the horn and finished the ultimate version of the horn, the Cor Sax à 6 Pistons in the years after. Sax's novelties evidently drew the attention of brass players all over Europe. In 1872, he was called to his homeland to to present his new inventions to the brass department of the Brussels Conservatoire , and found enthousiasts in important teachers as trumpet player Jean-Hyppolyte Duhem (1828-1911), horn player Louis-Henri Merck (1831-1900), and notably in the new director of the Conservatoire, François-Auguste Gevaert (1828-1908). All of them were thoroughly impressed with the instruments, their design, playing capacities and acoustical caracteristics, and their versatility. Although the use of the system was heavily promoted by several prominent musicians, the use of independently valved trumpets and horns would fade out a few years later. Correspondence between Sax and the direction of the Ghent conservatoire and documents as Merck's Méthode pour le Cor Sax à 6 Pistons Indépendants reveals interesting details about the history, construction and everyday use the instruments that were delivered at the time to the Ghent and Brussels conservatoires in the early 1870’s, notably on the cor à 6 pistons indépendants, of which 3 instruments were acquired by the Brussels conservatoire in 1872 and of which 1 specimen is still in the collection of the MIM