Johann Bernhard Logier

Johann Bernhard Logier (9 February 1777 – 27 July 1846) was a German composer, teacher, inventor, and publisher resident in Ireland for much of his life. He invented the chiroplast, a device to help students learn the piano, and developed one of the first systems for attempting to teach music in groups, which faced heavy opposition at the time. Except for a three-year stay in Berlin (1822–26), he spent the remainder of his life in Dublin, where he died in 1846.

Logier invented the chiroplast, a sliding frame meant as a pedagogical device to guide the hands and fingers while playing the piano, the intention being to improve and control the position of the hand and wrist. Green's music shop in London had sold 1,600 chiroplasts by 1824.

He also developed his own teaching method, later called the Logierian System of Musical Education, which he published in a series of pamphlets and instruction books beginning with The First Companion to the Royal Patent Chiroplast, or Hand-Director (1815). In this method, several pupils are taught at a time, with technical instruction done together with instruction in principles of harmony. This method of teaching multiple students simultaneously was novel because until the early 19th century, both London and most other European capitals had no central institution to provide musical tuition to a number of students, and because it was heavily opposed by musicians who resisted the idea of losing their pupils to a school.

Music Logier's achievements as a composer have always been overshadowed by his successful inventions and educational methods, to the extent that many brief biographies don't mention his compositional activity at all. His work-list includes music for piano, flute, harp, bugle, and military bands. He also arranged popular and traditional songs for solo piano. One of Logier's largest compositions is the opera Brian Boroihme [sic!] (1810) on an Irish historical episode, which achieved some success and is an important work in the history of nationalism in Irish opera. He also wrote an ambitious concerto for piano and orchestra, Op. 13 (1816). For a performance of his Battle of Trafalgar (1810) he gathered seven military bands, and The Battle of Vittoria (1813) was performed by 150 instrumentalists.