Why is there no Saxophone in the Orchestra? 

Because they're saxist.

As a band person, I always feel that the orchestral repertoire has been missing out by excluding saxophones and euphoniums. Both incredibly beautiful instruments that add so much color to an ensemble, and both work great for solos as well.

Because some people are saxophobic

The sax is too sexy. Born out of wedlock from the union of a clarinet and a basson, it had to be sent into exile.

I came here expecting to roll my eyes at some saxophone fan boy who didn’t know much about classical music but instead it just turned out that I knew nothing about saxophones.

It's a shame. Sax is a beautiful instrument. Of course, if you include it in a full orchestra, along with string instruments, there will be a lot of people who shun the performance because of the sax and violins.

I so appreciate someone who when they hear a lie cannot sit by but must instead clarify and reveal the truth.

I've often wondered if it had been named 'German Horn' instead of 'Saxophone' might that have helped? The English and French horns both have places in the orchestra.

“Not blending”? Made me think immediately of that smooth Glenn Miller Orchestra sound. Blending like caramel, cream and a dash of treacle.

Excellent and well-argued. At age 70+ I just wish I'd "found" the sax in my youth. I'm now only just starting to learn to play alto so don't expect to get all that far - but it really is a brilliant instrument.

I love the saxes in Shostakovich's Waltz No. 2. I get this nostalgic feeling from them.

🎷I can’t even imagine the luscious “Old Castle” solo from “Pictures at an Exhibition” played on anything but an alto saxophone.🎷 I’ve performed it several times…always a thrilling experience!😊

Sir as a Jazz Pianist composer and former alto and bari player I thank you for this very sane level headed and informative survey/assessment. Long needed.

As a “classical” saxophonist, this is one of the finest explanations of the instrument’s unfortunate orchestral situation. I also appreciated the exposé of how marketing and word-of-mouth affected and continues to beleaguer the orchestral saxophone. Thankfully, the sax quartet has become quite popular and the instrument has found its voice in chamber music and wind bands. Hopefully orchestras of the future will catch on...

THANK YOU. Thank you. The use of using saxes as a robust glue and filler in wind/string sections of ever decreasing Broadway musical pit sizes has been an essential tool of the contemporary Broadway orchestrator!! Justice for saxes haha

We had saxes in my high school orchestra and later in my college orchestra, I played tenor sax which used clarinet music when the piece didn’t call for sax. Later in life I acquired a “c” melody sax which could play along with a piano without transposing. Ah, those were the days!

I'm a budding composer as well as a saxophonist, and the utter versatility of the horn is unparalleled. Its uniqueness of timbre per player, blending, section sound, range, ability to play microtones and multiphonics, extreme breadth of extended techniques... It's a magical instrument and I plan on writing SATB saxophones into my orchestral works due to the amazing color that they bring to the table. Great video!

I love Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet...in Dance of the Knights when the lone sax comes in on the melody...one of my favorite parts of the whole ballet!

The Sax really took a long time to win acceptance, even in the early stages of jazz in the 1920's it was not a frontline soloist instrument. Trumpet, Trombone and clarinet were most popular. It was Tenor Saxophone star Coleman Hawkins who showed the world how wonderful the sax could be in the early 1930s which led to Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Parker and thus the sax finally found true acceptance

I remember when I played sax in High School, when we did orchestra pieces, the pieces used saxes to replace stringed instruments.

The other reason I've heard from classical snobs, second only to 'it just doesn't blend,' is that 'people find the saxophone unpleasant to listen to.' This is usually delivered in a tone of voice that does not welcome an answer back. Another fun factlet about saxophones that probably did nothing to help the instrument's acceptance by classical orchestras was their enthusiastic adoption by movie studio orchestras. It seems that early recording technology did not reproduce the sound of certain woodwinds terribly well so guys like Max Steiner and other composers, some of whom came from dance band backgrounds as often as not, routinely swapped in a saxophone or three and carried on. Apparently when Erich Wolfgang Korngold came to Hollywood and was first learning about movie scoring nobody dared to broach the subject and suggest the great composer alter his music to include the sax but once he was told why he was fine with it and embraced the instrument with every bit of gusto one might expect. But the fact that motion pictures used saxophones would certainly not have endeared the instrument to the classical world. (By the way, I'm new to this extraordinarily interesting channel - does anyone know if David is the same Bruce who wrote "Gumboots"?)

I find it very classy that you didn't named the "nameless RU-vidr". Thank you.

In my country, the Dominican Republic, the sax is a very popular instrument and part of the traditional merengue ensemble. During the last half of the XX century several composers wrote sonatas, nocturnes and other type of pieces. The one I like the most is the concert for alto sax and orchestra by maestro Bienvenido Bustamante. It was recorded by the the London Philharmonic, in 1993, under Dominican-born conductor Jose Antonio Molina.

The Old Castle from Pictures At An Exhibition is beautiful.

Soon, my brothers. We’ve already conquered jazz bands and wind ensembles. Orchestra is next.

_Sax was clearly a brilliant and talented inventor; but he also had a rather brusque, arrogant manner, and he wasn't afraid to push his accomplishments - even if it meant getting on people's nerves._ This is essentially how people who buy into the "they don't blend" myth see the saxophone.

Eye roll. How much progress has been held back, in all fields, by pettiness?

I’d be interested in knowing why the Baritone/Euphonium was relegated to just a band instrument.

Ravel's use of saxophone is, of course, as great as Ravel's orchestration in general.

I honestly thought that it was not in the orchestra because of the year it was invented

Ralph Vaughan Williams ninth symphony has three saxophones. A gorgeous sound.

Thank you! It is honestly eerie how similar the sax can sound to so many instruments...

Will it blend!? Also, amazingly thought out video

Just found your videos and can't stop watching them! Really great delivery and research. Straight up subscribed. It so good to see people with real expertise joining youtube and sharing their knowledge. Keep up the great work.

Great insights! I hope and pray that the modern orchestra will continue to evolve and have the saxophones permanent members of the the classical orchestra.

David, Thank you for your brilliant presentation of a subject which has interested me for quite some time. I have been researching the use of the saxophone in the orchestra and can affirm that well over 2500 pieces exist where the saxophone is integrated in the orchestra. This number excludes its use as a solo instrument in concerto's (you can add a several hundred of those). I believe that, with so many pieces existing out there, an important factor for the lack of use in the orchestral realm is the same reason many modern composers don't get performed: music directors who program their concerts have a limited amount of space to introduce as many modern pieces as they would like. Once orchestras choose to perform more living composers during their programs, the opportunity of hearing saxophone in an orchestral context will also increase. As for my personal favourite pieces, I have always enjoyed listening to Louis Andriessen’s works of which he has chosen to use the saxophone family on multiple occasions. ‘De Materie,’ ‘Reconstructie’, and ‘Spektakel’ come to mind.

I heard a world premiere performance of Péter Eötvös‘s Saxophone concert with the Symphony Orchestra of Basel most recently. It was a stunning performance! And the instrument did match perfectly fine with the rest of the orchestra.

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! I am a long-time Saxophone player. I play in Orchestra and Symphony with it. It can do all sorts of sounds and can Blend with so many things. I do Trumpets, Clarinets, French horn parts, and others. I have spent years making my alto sound like a French Horn timbre! I even got some other Professionals French Horn players giving it complements (that was a great day). But again thank you so much for making this video! It meant so much to me that it was the first one that popped up in search!

When I was in High School we had different levels of band (wind instruments) and an orchestra (strings). The orchestra teacher took members of our top band to fill out the winds in the orchestra. She had me transposing French horn parts when a sax part wasn’t available. I ended up doubling on oboe due to a lack of oboe players.

"Comical aspects?" What about the silly trombone?

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Symphony No. 6 in E Minor, Third Movement Scherzo, Trio Section = Tenor Saxophone solo.

I'm a composer and my favorite brass instruments are the Wagner tuba and the euphonium. They have such a clear sound. Pure bliss.

Is it just me or Adolphe Sax is the coolest name ever ?

4:09 I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THAT BASS REED SOUND! Love the Barry sax too. The Saxophone section is always my favorite section in 'the band.' A harmony and blending that gives me goose bumps... just as well as violins.

thanks so much for this video! Even with smaller ensembles, it bums me out that you can have a sax quartet and...that's basically it. Wind quintets even include french horn over sax. This did not stop my band director in junior high from rewriting other parts (like horn parts) for sax to play lol.

Wow, this channel really is consistently fantastic! Thanks so much for the videos, and for making all the material you cover so accessible. I think there's a perception that you need a bucketload of technical knowledge to *get* classical music, compared with say literature and visual arts, and you're doing a great job providing bite sized pieces of context to make it all more approachable. Having links to papers below the video is great as well

Your channel is full of wondrous stories! Thanks for making videos - from Korea

This was really, really fun (and slightly infuriating) to watch as someone who played alto sax all through middle and high school!! I should see if I can find some classical pieces to play sometime soon… It really is a shame saxophones didn’t make it into the orchestra; I would’ve loved to play in something other than band!

It has all the brazen attitude and colorful depth of the brass and all the subtlety, dexterity and emotion of the winds and can play with or over anything else. Why on Earth wouldn't you want that in your orchestra?... Oh, right. Politics.

Very interesting, thank you for your time and work.

Not orchestra, but when I tried to join my schools jazz band with my Bb clarinet I was given a trumpet part on the first day. The second day they gave me a tenor Sax

Boy, did I get a chuckle when I saw this wonderful vid. I am a composer, I use Beethoven's orchestra, and added saxes and a drum kit. You'd be surprised if you heard how I got to use them.

Thank you for another great vid. One of my favourite examples of the sax at it's mellowest and melancholy is in Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's 'The Old Castle' from Pictures at an Exhibition. Of the relatively new instruments that could blend into the orchestra, consider the hang drum.

My favorite is the tenor saxophone’s solo in ‘Dance of The Knights’

Short answer : they're scared of Kenny G stealing everyone's soul for his dark experiments

The world of classical missed out, but jazz produced John Coltrane and genus proved the worth of the sax.

My favorite sax solo in classical music: Waltz no. 2 by Shostakovich.

The Ravel rendition of Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky is one of my favorites.

Very cool history lesson, David! Excellent work, as always!

I normally play Alto but today my band director was standing next to a bari and told me to play it the fealing was both amazing and humbling

You got my boy Claude Delangle in there playing the Ibert! Yeah, I love the classical saxophone, and love performing it. This whole situation bums me out.

My favorite orchestral piece with saxophones in it is Overture Rhapsody in Blue and Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue🥰🎷

Superbly done. I’ve played the sax for 45 years and didn’t know some of this information about its creator, bravo.

I am so thrilled I found your channel. Brilliant and fascinating.

I can appreciate this explanation. I was a French Horn player who dared to also play the Alto Horn, or what the British call the Tenor Horn. I was criticised and warned away from the Alto by my university music faculty. They didn't want to see the instrument on campus. Oddly, the most fun had with it was playing saxophone duets where I'd play the Eb part, and my friend would play his Soprano Sax. The two instruments complimented each other beautifully.

Now the Scottish bagpipe,... it truly doesn't blend,... with anything!

Love your beautiful videos,thanks!

Thank you! I HAD always wondered why it was underrepresented in orchestral works. I love hearing orchestral pieces with it.

In 1976 my high school band teacher had personally recommended me to University of Oregon school of music for the education department. But because the person in charge of deciding who can attend was a clarinet player who I found out later hated sax and any non-classical style of music. My teacher had to intervene with him for me to get accepted and told me sax is not liked by that guy. At the time I didn't understand the controversy. I got in and found myself at a disadvantage in a music school oriented purely to classical music. As a sax player fresh from high school, I had no experience playing classical music except for a couple solo ensemble competition pieces and a couple things our concert band played. No rich history of classical music like the other students, especially the string players. Only classical lessons were taught, where you were required to excel. There was a jazz band 1 and 2 as an elective. The main jazz band had fought its way into existence, but the second jazz band they just kept failing to schedule (even though it was planned for) so we got no credit for it. We had to go early in the morning before all other classes if we wanted to practice, because they didn't want to encourage yet a second jazz band elective. So we practiced at 7am or so. If you were going for an education degree, you were required to do two seasons of marching band (football season), which took about 20 hours a week for only 2 credits. Financially, the whole music department seemed to exist only to support the football team. The music school was practically an old barn and temp trailers, while the sports buildings were modern, always updated, and worth millions. BTW, that marching band class didn't teach marching band... that was another class. The experience was good for me overall but I came away with a jaded attitude toward those anti-everythingbutclassical snobs who dismissed or oppressed sax out of hand, and college/sports priorities in general. A well played tenor sax in the classical style sounds very close to a cello. There is no good reason to keep classical sax players out of orchestras. I feel sorry for any classical saxophonist trying to make a living with it.

Folks, may I suggest for your listening pleasure Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 9, his last. Not one, not two, not four, but no less than _three_ saxophones from one end to the other, brother! Oh, a a flugelhorn is tossed in for good measure.

Nothing feels nicer than being enlightened by surprise. Thanks, David Bruce, for sharing this video.

Thanks for a great lecture. Ravel's Bolero, Mussorgsky's Old Castle (from Pictures at an Exhibition) and Claude T. Smith's Fantasia for Saxophone are my favourite classical works featuring a solo saxophonist.

Here in Brazil, when rock music started to become popular in the 60's, some popular musicians started a march against eletric guitar, it was a complete failure, never thought that something similar had reapen with sax.

Bartok- The Wooden Prince and several of Villa Lobos symphonies are my favs that include sax parts

This video is fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for this great commentary. Started playing sax at 9 and I'm 45 now. Have met some of the aforementioned biased against the instrument.

HALO 3 ODST's soundtrack I believe had saxophones in it.

Apparently Elgar thought of using a quartet in Caractacus (1897-8) but dropped the idea. There are sketches that suggest this. I suppose the 1898 Leeds Festival wouldn't co-operate.

John C. Worley was my music appreciation teacher as a high school student at Daycroft School in Greenwich, CT. He was one of the few modern composers who wrote classical music for saxophone.

Awesome presentation. Thank you very much!

Glenn Miller blended saxes and trombones and created his own sound.

Rhapsody in Blue (Gershwin) is one of my favorite orchestral pieces with sax

Your channel is awesome! Congratulations, great job!

Really interesting mate, I really enjoyed learning this.

Hindemith's Opera _Cardillac_ uses a saxophone as a solo instrument.

Favorite classical piece with Saxophone: Darius Milhaud "La Creation du monde" (I´m enjoing so much your videos!)

I don't know how I only just saw this video after years of playing alto sax and being asked 'so are you in orchestra?' (and not having a good answer). This is an amazing video, made me want to pick up my sax and play just for the hell of it which I haven't done since I got to uni. Thanks so much!

Great video, very interesting!

What about the Kazoo?

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has saxophones, soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone.

What a great, well researched video. Thank you

That quote by Hector Berlioz is beautiful. The romance shared between a musician and the instrument mirrors the emotions shared with people.

glazunov sax concerto is so fantastic

Dire Straits "Your Latest Trick" has a good sax intro and throughout the song.

This is a fascinating, well-researched, and marvelously presented video. Who knew there was such a history behind its exclusion? Also a familiar story of people resisting change, because it feels too radical. Thank you!

Duo Eccletico in Australia are playing wonderful repertoire for sax and piano. Tim Dagerfeldt and Katy Abbott are two Australian composers writing gorgeous work for classical sax. And Ned Rorem's works for classical sax and piano are just stunning.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Glazunov's Saxophone Concerto

1:13 thanks from a clarinet player! I'm switching to saxophone next year. Nice video!

thank you - i played tenor sax in my high school band - i never understood why the saxes hardly appeared in orchestras - except as "guest" performers

Loved this video. I primarily play the sax and spent most of my training in the high school band and only a short time in the jazz band (should’ve spent more time in jazz) but my compositions are heavily inspired by band and orchestra and I do tend to include the saxophone when I can. If I could record each instrument instead of through midi, the sax would be even more included in my work.