Saxhorn - The Saxhorn Family

The Saxhorn Family

The saxhorns form a family of seven instruments (although at one point ten different sizes seem to have existed). Designed for band use, they are pitched alternately in E-flat and B-flat, like the saxophone group.

There is much confusion as to nomenclature of the various instruments in different languages. This has been exacerbated by the debate as to whether the saxhorn family was truly new, or rather a development of members of the previously existing cornet and tuba families. The saxhorn is also commonly confused with the flügelhorn, a German instrument which has a different configuration and predates the saxhorn. This confusion is not helped by the fact that most instruments referred to today as flügelhorns are actually soprano saxhorns. If a modern 'flügelhorn' bell has a flare similar to the one shown on the larger saxhorn pictured here, then it may indeed be a soprano saxhorn, but if the conical bell is nearly the diameter of the bell rim until just before a small final flare, then it is a true flügelhorn.

The following table lists the members of the saxhorn family as described in the orchestration texts of Hector Berlioz and Cecil Forsyth, the J. Howard Foote catalog of 1893, and modern names.