Saxotromba - Richard Wagner and The Saxotromba

Richard Wagner and The Saxotromba

In November 1853, the German composer Richard Wagner began the composition of the first of his Ring operas, Das Rheingold. A few days later he drafted a provisional list of the musical instruments he intended to use in the work. It was written on one side of a sheet of paper the other side of which contained an early draft of the opera's opening scene. This list includes the following items:

In October of the same year Wagner had paid a visit to Adolphe Sax's workshop on the Rue St Georges in Paris, where he had seen several new instruments, including the saxhorns and saxotrombas. Wagner must have felt that the saxhorns would make suitable adjuncts to the large complement of horns he intended to use in the Ring, as their appearance in the list of instruments in parenthesis after the "8 Hörner" clearly indicates that he originally intended four of his horn players to double on them.

As for the "Saxtromp", this is clearly an abbreviation of Saxtrompete, Wagner's German translation of saxotromba. It seems clear, then, that Wagner's original plan was to use a saxotromba as the bass member of his trumpet group; but between then and 1876, when the Ring was given its premiere, Wagner fell out with Sax and altered his plans more than once. In the event, the three trumpets were supported by a bass trumpet designed especially for the occasion by the instrument maker C. W. Moritz.

Nevertheless, we can deduce that one of the early saxotrombas was pitched in E♭, was equipped with four piston valves, and had a compass that was presumably capable of playing the bass trumpet part in Das Rheingold (which is notated throughout for an instrument in E♭, sounding a major sixth lower than written). This latter covers almost two-and-a-half octaves from sounding C3 (one octave below middle C) to G5♭ (at the top of the treble clef). This four-valved saxotromba in E♭ presumably corresponded to the tenor saxhorn, whose sounding range according to Berlioz ran from A2 to G5, thus encompassing the bass trumpet part in Das Rheingold. The top note, however, would have been produced by overblowing the tenth harmonic (sounding G5) while engaging the second valve (lowering the open note by one semitone to G5♭).