Innovative Cincom® VisualWorks® Application Leads to a Historical Discovery about a Famous Composer

Georg Heeg, a premier partner who uses Cincom Smalltalk for custom application development projects throughout central Europe, tells a story about a unique and interesting use of Cincom VisualWorks. The goal of the project was to determine the house in which composer Johann Sebastian Bach had lived during his time in Cöthen, Germany. Heeg―a Cöthen resident―found several innovative uses of VisualWorks as part of the effort to discover which house it was.

Bach, whose celebrated work during the Baroque era includes “The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” and the Brandenburg concertos lived in Cöthen from 1717 until 1723, where Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen hired him to serve as Kapellmeister, the director of music for the chapel. The town of Cöthen was interested in finding out where Bach had lived, to promote locations related to one of the town’s most famous residents in support of tourism. The problem was that no one knew exactly where Bach had lived.

Bach-Gesellschaft, a Bach society, initiated a project to find out everything they could about Bach’s life when he lived in Cöthen. More specifically, the project, which was funded by the European Commission and the State of Saxony, was charged with locating the house in which Bach lived at that time.

Realizing that this study would not only require research but also some sophisticated technology, the project leaders hired Georg Heeg to use whatever applications were necessary to support the research. Heeg chose Cincom VisualWorks.

You won’t believe what Georg found! Check out the story here.