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 n