The instruments were intended for military bands, to serve as replacements for oboes and bassoons which at the time lacked the carrying power required for outdoor marching music.

Although originally designed as double-reed instruments, single-reed mouthpieces were later developed for use with the larger bass and contrabass sarrusophones.

This similarity caused Adolphe Sax to file and lose at least one lawsuit against Gautrot, claiming infringement upon his patent for the saxophone.

However, around the turn of the 20th century, the contrabass sarrusophones in EE♭ and CC enjoyed a vogue, the latter as a substitute for the contrabassoon (the French model patterned after the German Heckel model, having been introduced later around 1906 by Buffet et al.) so that it is called for in, for example, Jules Massenet's Esclarmonde (1889), Visions (1891) and Suite parnassienne (1912); Maurice Ravel's Shéhérazade overture (1898), Rapsodie espagnole (1907) and L'heure espagnole (1907–09); Ignacy Jan Paderewski's Symphony in B minor "Polonia" (1903–08; 3 sarrusophones are called for); Frederick Delius's Requiem (1913–16) and Songs of Sunset (1906–07); Claude Debussy's Jeux (1913), Lili Boulanger's Psalm 129 (1916) and Psalm 130 (1917) and Arrigo Boito's Nerone (1924).

Although the CC contrabass sarrusophone, with its range down to B♭0 identical to the contrabassoon, was perhaps envisioned for these and other orchestral works, only relatively few instruments were ever made and were most likely to become the property of orchestras or opera companies.

[4] In the concert band literature, Percy Grainger used the EE♭ contrabass in the original scoring of his piece "Children's March: Over the Hills and Far Away".

In early 20th century Italian band scores, parts for the B♭ tenor, E♭ baritone, and B♭ bass sarrusophones as well as the contrabass are common.

Frank Zappa used the E♭ contrabass sarrusophone in his scores for "Think It Over", "Big Swifty", "Ulterior Motive", "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary", "For Calvin", "Waka/Jawaka", and many others.

A soprano sarrusophone is seen and heard in the song "Humpty-Dumpty Heart" played by Kay Kyser's band in the 1941 film Playmates.

In the 1970s and 1980s the American jazz musician Gerald Oshita (based in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area and associated with Roscoe Mitchell) played avant-garde jazz on an EE♭ contrabass manufactured by Conn. More recently (1990–2006), recordings using sarrusophone have been released by saxophonists Scott Robinson, Lenny Pickett, James Carter, and Paul Winter.

The somewhat harsh tone quality of the sarrusophone and the need for a double reed may have contributed to it not becoming a standard member of the wind band.

Additionally, although originally intended to replace the oboe and the bassoon, the practical ranges of the corresponding sarrusophones, the soprano and bass, as per famed band conductor Edwin Franko Goldman and organologist Anthony Baines, did not lend themselves to proper playing of oboe and bassoon parts, especially in orchestra transcriptions for wind band.

As per advertising of the time, the well-known American saxophone manufacturer, Buescher imported a number of these instruments into the United States during the late 1920s or early 1930s, perhaps as an answer to C.G.

In the 1930s the band at the University of Illinois under Austin Harding had a full sarrusophone section from soprano to E♭ contrabass that included at least the tenor rothphone.