Bach, Mozart and Beethoven: great inventors

Musical composers are in reality inventors. They create musical compositions that have never existed before. That’s really what inventions are: created things that never existed before.

Inventing has to do with the creation of new devices, new ways of doing things, and new and useful products, apparatus and even music. Usually inventors obtain patents for their ideas. Musicians obtain the love and fondness of even more people for their great musical compositions. Inventing music has been a most important activity in our world.

My wife, Gabrielle, started to play the piano at the age of 3. At age 6 she became a musical composer. She studied the organ at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, and she has had a fine organ at home for the past 20 years. She played the piano and organ for a number of churches in Connecticut. I view her creation of new musical programs as the act of inventing. She was surprised to hear me tell her this, and she then provided me with information about three composers whom she considers to be among the greatest musical inventors.

These three wonderful musicians are Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. All three lived in the early days, the 17th and early 18th centuries, and their creations continue to be played and enjoyed by millions of people every year across the globe. I believe that will continue for the years to come.

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Bach was born in 1685 to a family of active musicians. Bach is considered by many to be the greatest composer in the history of music. His compositions total more than 1,000, with much focus on the organ and the harpsichord. Bach spent his life as an organist and musician for churches in eight different cities. Leipzig was his last church and he was there for the final 27 years of his life, continuing to create marvels in the musical world until his death in 1750.

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Mozart lived a shorter life, but also a very productive one. He was born in Salz-burg, Austria, in 1756. He died at the age of 35. He was another spectacular inventor of musical compositions of many kinds that remain among the most beloved in the world.

Mozart started playing music on a piano when he was only 3 years old, composed his first musical piece when he was 6 and his first symphony when he was 8. He loved to play the violin and the organ as well as the piano. He is considered one of the greatest composers who ever lived. During his short lifetime he created more than 600 musical compositions, including masterpieces in every genre of classical music: symphonies, concertos, sonatas, operas, string quartets, horn and clarinet concertos, and more.

In 1782, Mozart married Constanze Weber, and he settled down with his new wife in Vienna. He made money teaching and composing and giving public performances of his new works.

While in Vienna, Mozart met the great composer, Joseph Haydn, and they became close friends. Haydn had a strong influence on Mozart, and between 1782 and 1785 Mozart composed a series of six string quartets, which he dedicated to Haydn. After Haydn played through some of these compositions, he said to Mozart’s father, Leopold, “Before God and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer that I know, either personally or by name.�

In 1785 Mozart wrote his opera, “The Marriage of Figaro,� and in 1787 he wrote “Don Giovanni,� just as his father died. These two great operas are still familiar to opera-goers all over the world.

Mozart was especially productive in the last four years of his life, creating one masterpiece after another. One of my favorites is his concerto, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusic.� Ludwig van Beethoven commented on Mozart’s Piano Concerto, Number 20, this way: “Ah, we shall never be able to do anything like this!�

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Beethoven was born in 1770 in Bonn, Germany. His father and grandfather were both court musicians. Beethoven’s first music teacher was his father, who was a tenor in the electoral court in Bonn. When Beethoven was just 8 years old, he was studying the organ and viola in addition to the piano. All this led to the fabulous musical compositions he produced over the course of his life.

One of the many remarkable things about Beethoven is that he began to lose his hearing around 1796 when he was 26 years old. The loss continued until he became completely deaf by 1814 at the age of 44. What is incredible is that, despite his deafness, he continued to compose symphonies and other musical programs until his death in 1827.

Beethoven composed nine symphonies, each of which is still played every year by orchestras all over the world. At the first performance of his last symphony, Symphony No. 9: “Choral,� he sat in a chair, facing the orchestra, but he could hear nothing. At the end of the performance he was turned around in his chair to see the applause of the audience. And, being totally deaf, and hearing nothing, he began to weep.

By the way, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 has been played for a number of years by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass., on the last day of their summer program there. It is great! It is a pleasure to hear, year after year. It is simply incredible that it was invented by a deaf man.

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I do look at music as the inventions of musicians. Symphonies, operas, concertos, songs and varieties of other musical compositions have been created by musicians for millennia. Musical instruments have been invented to play those musical compositions. And singers, men, women and youngsters, continue to present these musical inventions to the public, day after day, year after year, in all the different cultures all around the world.

Sidney X. Shore is a scientist, inventor and educator who lives in Sharon and holds more than 30 U.S. patents.