Re: 20 questions : round 244
Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2024 12:43 pm
It is Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax
Inventor of the saxophone, key contributor to the modern-day bass clarinet design, and inventor of the saxhorn, which lead to the invention of my personal favorite instrument... the flugelhorn! Though Adolphe Sax wasn't a composer, he commissioned many famous composers to write pieces for his new inventions, with Hector Berlioz famously writing of his approval of the, originally, widely disliked saxophone.
It's a miracle we ever got to see Sax's inventions, as he had a Kenny-like disposition to fatal danger as a child. This wiki entry sums it up pretty well.. As a child, he once fell from a height of three floors, hit his head on a stone and was believed dead. At the age of three, he drank a bowl full of acidic water, mistaking it for milk,[4] and later swallowed a pin. He received serious burns from a gunpowder explosion and once fell onto a hot cast-iron frying pan, burning his side. Several times he avoided accidental poisoning and asphyxiation from sleeping in a room where varnished furniture was drying. Another time young Sax was struck on the head by a cobblestone and fell into a river, almost dying.[5]
His mother once said that "he's a child condemned to misfortune; he won't live". His neighbors called him "little Sax, the ghost".[5]
Very nice guess cdngooner, I was thinking this one might go to 20 questions