Adolphe Sax’s Brass Wars

The largest legal confrontation in 19th-century France began not over revolutionary machines or innovative pharmaceutical products, but musical instruments. This was a time when the economy was in a state of significant acceleration – what would come to be known as the second French Industrial Revolution. The July Monarchy was concerned about the growing discontent of intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen who could channel the rage of the working class. Keen to hold onto power, the monarchy sought ways to limit the influence of those merchants and industrialists who might have Republican sympathies.

In 1845 King Louis-Philippe’s military acolytes, headed by general Marie-Théodore Rumigny, aide-de-camp and one of his closest advisers, decided to regulate the instrumental make-up of French military bands in order to stifle the business of French instrument makers and reduce their influence. Bands were now to include saxhorns, saxotrombas, and saxophones, the patents for which were held by the Belgian inventor Adolphe Sax. This afforded the military the pretence of impartiality, but meant that if instrument makers wanted to continue to sell to the military – and profit from the industry – they would have to make a costly agreement with Sax. 

Instead, in 1846, a group of instrument makers filed a civil suit against Sax contending that his patents were not legitimate and that the instruments had been invented long ago, not only in France, but also in the German states. The first stage of the civil trial lasted seven years (1847-54). Sax won the initial rounds and the technical dossier – a report on the instruments provided to the court in November 1847 – supported his case.

But the Revolution broke out in February 1848, bringing with it the collapse of the July Monarchy and the resurgence of the Republic. People were changed in the organs of government, and the military bands were again redefined: Sax’s disputed instruments were removed. The new Minister of Justice of the Republic was sympathetic to French instrument makers, and in August 1848 the first judgment struck down the saxhorn patent and completely invalidated the saxotromba’s. Only the saxophone was exonerated. In February 1850 both parties appealed, but the Court of Appeal continued to consider Sax’s brasswinds patents illegitimate.

Sax then appealed to the Court of Cassation – the interpretive apex of the entire French legal system – which would involve a wait of over four years. During that time, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte definitively seized power and re-established the Empire in France. Sax’s fortunes changed again. While going through his first bankruptcy (1852) – a result of both the court cases and his preoccupation with creating new, spectacular, and unsaleable instruments – Sax received one of the highest prizes in the Great Universal Exhibition of London. Back in France, he had returned to favour. Napoleon III, hoping to use music to seduce the people with military marches and brilliant brasswinds, named Sax ‘Manufacturer of the Military Household of His Majesty the Emperor’. In June 1854 the final outcome of the civil trial legitimised Sax’s patents: he was compensated with 10,000 francs. Less than two months later, the emperor decreed that the bands of the Imperial Guard should be equipped with saxhorns, saxotrombas, and saxophones.

But that was not the end of it. In December 1854 Sax embarked on a crusade to seize instruments, ledgers, and machinery from several of his competitors, claiming that they were manufacturing and selling brasswinds based on the saxotromba patent. These seizures took place not only at the companies’ workshops, but also at the newly opened Parisian Universal Exhibition in May 1855 – publicly humiliating the instrument makers. One of the companies affected was that of Pierre-Louis Gautrot, then the most important wind instrument maker in France. The dispute became heated, and the case went several times to the Courts of Appeal and Cassation. These procedural ups and downs finally ceased when the two contenders reached, in 1859, a financial settlement of more than half a million francs and Gautrot accepted a licensing agreement for as long as the saxotromba patent was active. As patents typically lasted for 15 years, this was, presumably, only for one more year. However, Sax and his allies in government had been working on a masterstroke: in 1860 France passed a state law so that he could enjoy a five-year extension to his patents on the saxotromba and saxophone, therefore confirming his double monopoly.

Sax also attacked Gustave Besson, another fierce adversary. Besson fought intelligently against Sax’s monopoly through the courts, but he was also able to innovate, realising early on that the brass sector was increasingly shifting towards the civil rather than military market, and thus towards a middle-class consumer base who were more price-conscious than the military. He used novel commercial strategies, adapting his advertising, organising exhibitions of the instruments, extending his standard guarantee by several years, approaching municipal institutions, and even expanding abroad. Around 1855 he had established his business in London and there protected new inventions, such as valves for his instruments.

The day before the extended saxophone patent expired (20 March 1866), Sax orchestrated several simultaneous raids on the establishments of various makers. He reported them for infringing on his patent by trading with pieces that made it possible for the saxophones to sound (mouthpieces, ligatures, reeds) or even for repairing the instruments. The attacks were declared null and void. This judicial episode, and the expiry of those patents, was the end of Sax’s monopoly.

The brasswinds of the 19th century were the battlefield that embodied how political power used economic power, and vice versa. Did Napoleon III really care about Sax and the French brass industry? Of course not; it was the power of music that mattered. There was nothing special about brasswinds; they were ordinary consumer items that obeyed the rules of capitalism.

Although they lost the (legal) battle, those makers – especially Gautrot and Besson – realised that the manufacture and marketing of brass were shifting towards a civilian and more heterogeneous clientele. Sax, despite his tremendous advantage, went bankrupt three times and died in 1894, ruined, but the brasswinds he helped develop are still very much in demand today – largely due to the popularity they enjoyed in the 19th century.

José-Modesto Diago Ortega is the author of The Battle for Control of the Brass and Instruments Business in the French Industrial Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2024).