Many believe that God was literally after Adolphe Sax’s life to prevent the instrument called the Saxophone popularly known as the ‘devil’s horn’ from being invented.
This instrument was believed to have the power to conjure the devil and Adolphe himself said he made this instrument after he had a dream about demons playing it to welcome unfortunate souls to hell. Adolphe Sax was born Antoine-Joseph Sax in Belgium in the year 1814 to parents who were instrument designers.
If you think Harry Potter is the only master of death and Ignotus Peverell is the only one to welcome death as an old friend, you have not met Adolphe Sax who without the magical gifts of the aforementioned was able to avoid death on countless occasions.
At the age of 2, he fell from a height of three floors, hit his head on a stone, and was believed dead. A few weeks later his mother found him choking and gurgling on a long needle, which luckily got removed by a physician.
At the age of 3, he accidentally drank a bowl full of acidic water to quench his thirst; his father rushed him to the local doctor.
The concoction should have killed him but Adolphe was practically unkillable. His mother was quoted to have called her child, “a child of misfortune” and his neighbors called him, “little Sax, the ghost”. At the age of 9, he slipped down a flight of stairs and fell into a hot stove, and barely survived after being dragged from the flames.
At age 10, he nearly drowned in a rushing river and was only saved by a villager who saw a floating body. It is also on record that he almost died through asphyxiation by locking himself up in a room with furniture varnish.
At age 11, he contracted measles and was in a coma for 9 days. At 14, he broke his arm and was caught in a carriage door.
At 19, a brick fell on him and at age 23 he almost killed himself by drinking tainted wine.
Once he became an adult and after surviving all these unfortunate events, he started to believe that there was a higher calling for his life and took his luck to Paris.
But it didn’t take long for danger to locate him, as one day he was standing by a small gunpowder dump talking to a friend when the gunpowder exploded throwing him 60 feet away, and just like every unfortunate event in his life, he survived. His destiny could not be stopped.
At 29, he invented the saxophone. The creation led him to inherit countless enemies who either tried to hire away all his staff or assassinate him. And just like all previous brushes with death, he survived the assassination.
Late in life, Adolphe survived one last encounter with death. What started as a dark spot on his lip, developed into a large cancerous growth to the point where he could only eat via a feeding death. He visited an Indian doctor who saved his life by making him a host of herbal concoctions.
Not even the great Adolphe Sax could completely outrun death and finally, at the age of 79 he succumbed to pneumonia; welcoming death as an old friend. If for nothing at all, Adolphe gave us the saxophone, Kenny G, and a life that can be turned into a Netflix series.
Author-Ahanta Bred
