Composers with disability from history and today

Composers with disability are gaining recognition for their work today, especially since the implementation of International Day of People With Disability. Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel Besides being some of the Baroque era's most famous composers, Bach and Handel shared a darker bond: their progressive vision loss and botched eye operations. Ludwig van Beethoven "Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others," Beethoven wrote to his brothers in 1802 in a document known as the Heiligenstadt testament which laid bare his hearing loss and the severity of its effects in his professional and social life. When discussing Beethoven's contribution towards understanding musicians with hearing loss, cellist and mathematician Matthew Mack observes that "I can't ask him how he did it, because he's not around anymore." Maurice Ravel French composer Maurice Ravel's last years were marked by progressive brain disease which left its traces in his music.