The Saxophone Stephen Cottrell

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Series:: Yale Musical Instrument Series
Format:: Hardback
Publication date:: 15 Jan 2013
ISBN:: 9780300100419
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 352 pages: 244 x 171mm
Sales territories:: World

Categories:

Arts »
Music »
Musical Instruments & Instrumental Ensembles »
Wind Instruments »

In the first fully comprehensive study of one of the world’s most iconic musical instruments, Stephen Cottrell examines the saxophone’s various social, historical, and cultural trajectories, and illustrates how and why this instrument, with its idiosyncratic shape and sound, became important for so many different music-makers around the world.

After considering what led inventor Adolphe Sax to develop this new musical wind instrument, Cottrell explores changes in saxophone design since the 1840s before examining the instrument's role in a variety of contexts: in the military bands that contributed so much to the saxophone's global dissemination during the nineteenth century; as part of the rapid expansion of American popular music around the turn of the twentieth century; in classical and contemporary art music; in world and popular music; and, of course, in jazz, a musical style with which the saxophone has become closely identified.

Stephen Cottrell is Professor of Music at City University London. Formerly a professional saxophone player, he is also the author of Professional Music-making in London (2004).

“Everything you wanted to know about sax – but were afraid to ask.”—The New York Post

Winner of the Bessaraboff Prize given by the American Musical Instrument Society.