THE
SOPRANO SAXOPHONE
Although the saxophone is a wind instrument made of brass, it belongs to the woodwind family. It was developed around 1846 by the Belgian inventor, Adolphe Sax. A system of keys is used to close the holes and a single reed is attached to the mouthpiece, similar to that of the clarinet. The soprano saxophone is narrow, becoming wider at the bottom in contrast to the "S" shape of other more ubiquitous saxophones. This soprano saxophone was made by the American company Buescher Elkhart, in 1914. The St. Boniface Museum acquired it through the musician, composer and St. Boniface orchestra conductor, Marius Benoist (1896 to 1983). In the world of music, this musician influenced more than one generation of Francophone Manitobans. Marius Benoist was born in 1896 at Sainte-Anne-des-Chênes in Manitoba and studied the piano, organ and singing in St. Boniface and Montreal. In addition to being the choirmaster at the St. Boniface Cathedral for 40 years, he was the founder and director of a number of musical ensembles: the Sinfonietta symphony orchestra, the choir of the Gounod Lyric Society as well as the Calixa-Lavallée Society, a youth orchestra made up of his music students. In the early days of radio, he worked on broadcasts aimed at making the music of French composers better known in Manitoba. Benoist himself was a composer of many musical pieces and won the Etrog Award (today the Genie Award) of the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television in 1973 for "La légende du vent".
Benoist greatly admired the IXXth century French composers Bizet
and Massenet who used the saxophone in the symphony orchestra.
This instrument was perhaps heard during Sinfonietta concerts
that he conducted for the last time in 1978.
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