{"id":38771,"date":"2026-03-04T12:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/odiseimusic.com\/?p=38771"},"modified":"2026-03-04T16:03:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T15:03:28","slug":"saxophonists-pioneers-elise-hall-kathryne-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/odiseimusic.com\/usa\/saxophonists-pioneers-elise-hall-kathryne-thompson\/","title":{"rendered":"Saxophonists, rebels and pioneers: The untold story of Elise Hall and Kathryne Thompson"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Masters of tone, technique, and expression<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

On March 8th we celebrate Women’s Day, and we want to do our part by explaining how two women were highly influential in the early history of the saxophone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I ask you to imagine a saxophonist, what do you see? Probably a man wearing a hat in a smoky jazz club in New York, or perhaps the silhouette of Adolphe Sax fighting with half of Paris over his patents. But reality is much more interesting. The saxophone, both in its classical facet and in its jazz roots, owes its survival and dignity to two absolutely exceptional women: Elise Hall, the deaf patron who forced the great composers to look at the instrument, and Kathryne Thompson, the virtuoso who wrote the instruction manual for jazz when nobody even knew what to call it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we are not talking about inspiring muses. We are talking about women who took control, put up the money, wrote the methods, and took to the stage when society told them their place was in the living room embroidering cushions. Get ready to discover the hidden history of the saxophone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1. Elise Hall: \u201cThe saxophone lady” who bought posterity (and pissed off Debussy)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To understand the magnitude of Elise Hall, we must travel to late 19th-century Boston. Imagine a straitlaced, puritanical, and classist society: the “Boston Brahmins.” Into this scene steps Elizabeth Boyer Coolidge (later Elise Hall), born in Paris in 1853, the daughter of a wealthy, cultured, and well-connected family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elise wasn’t destined to be a musician. She was destined to be a trophy wife. She married Dr. Richard J. Hall, a prestigious surgeon (famous for performing the first appendectomy in the United States). The couple lived a life of luxury between New York and Santa Barbara, California. But fate has a macabre sense of humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The diagnosis that changed music history<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Midway through her life, Elise contracted typhoid fever. The disease left severe sequelae: progressive hearing loss that would leave her practically deaf. Her husband, concerned about her lung health and hearing, gave her a medical recommendation that today seems surreal but was providential: “Darling, you should play a wind instrument. The air pressure will help open your Eustachian tubes and improve your hearing.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, playing the saxophone doesn’t cure deafness. But Dr. Hall, without knowing it, had just gifted the world the first great classical saxophone soloist. Elise, who was already nearly 50 years old, wasn’t satisfied with playing the flute or the clarinet. She chose the saxophone, an instrument that at the time was considered vulgar, hybrid, military, and definitely “unfit for a lady.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elise was widowed shortly after (irony of ironies, her surgeon husband died of acute appendicitis), inheriting an immense fortune. Deaf, rich, and alone, she decided that if society wouldn’t give her a space, she would buy one.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Boston orchestral club: A custom made orchestra<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Elise Hall didn’t want to play alone in her dining room. She wanted to play with an orchestra. But professional orchestras didn’t admit women, let alone saxophonists. The solution? She founded her own orchestra: the Boston Orchestral Club<\/strong> (1899-1912).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an “amateur orchestra” only on paper. Thanks to her money, Elise hired the best musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to bolster the ranks, rented the best halls, and, most importantly, appointed herself president and principal soloist. For over a decade, this deaf woman stood before audiences, sax in hand, defying all the conventions of her time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The war with Claude Debussy: “The old bat”<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Here is where the story gets juicy. Elise quickly realized there was no quality repertoire for saxophone and orchestra. So she grabbed her checkbook and went to Paris to commission works from the most famous composers of the moment. In total, she commissioned 22 new works between 1900 and 1918.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most famous and controversial case was that of Claude Debussy. Elise paid him a considerable sum in advance to write a rhapsody for her. Debussy, who was a genius but also a snob (and often broke), took the money… and wrote nothing for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debussy’s letters are cruel and hilarious. He referred to Elise Hall as “The Saxophone Lady” (La Dame au Saxophone<\/em>). In his private correspondence, he complained bitterly about the commission: “This woman has the tenacity of a fly. She wants her rhapsody and I don’t know what to do with this ridiculous instrument.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He even went so far as to describe her as an “old bat dressed like an umbrella” (une vieille chauve-souris<\/em>). Debussy died without finishing the work. It was his friend Roger-Ducasse who had to complete the Rapsodie pour orchestre et saxophone<\/em> posthumously. And despite the composer’s insults and contempt, today this work is one of the fundamental pillars of the saxophone repertoire. Without Elise’s money and infinite patience, it wouldn’t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hall Manuscript, measures 312-314. Courtesy of the New England Conservatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Beyond Debussy: An impressive legacy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But it would be unfair to reduce Elise Hall to the Debussy anecdote. Other composers were more professional and saw a real opportunity in her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n