Year 1788 (MDCCLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Saturday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Jacek Kaczmarski ['jat​͡sɛk kat​͡ʂˈmarskʲi] ( listen) (March 22, 1957, Warsaw - April 10, 2004, Gdańsk) was a Polish singer, songwriter, poet and author.

Kaczmarski was a voice of the Solidarity trade union movement in 1980s Poland, for his commitment to a free Poland, independent of Soviet rule. His songs criticized the ruling communist regime and appealed to the tradition of patriotic resistance within Poles. He remains best known for his protest songs on social and political subjects ("Mury" (Walls) based on "L'Estaca" by Lluís Llach, "Obława" (Wolf hunt (lit. Raid))). However, he was more a poet than a political singer, and his texts have not lost their relevance with the demise of the Soviet union and its communist bloc.

He made his debut in 1977 at the Student Song Festival, where he was awarded first prize for his work "Obława" (Wolf hunt (lit. Raid)) based on song "Охота на волков" by Vladimir Vysotsky. In 1980 he won Second prize at the Opole Song Festival for "Epitafium dla Włodzimierza Wysockiego" (Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotsky).

Antonio Salieri (18 August 1750 – 7 May 1825) was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy.

Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protege of Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers.

Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Hapsburg court, a post he held from 1774 to 1792, Salieri dominated Italian language opera in Vienna. During his career he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Venice, Rome, and Paris. His dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought after teachers of his generation and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt were among the most famous of his pupils.

James Watt, FRS, FRSE (19 January 1736 – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.

While working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, Watt became interested in the technology of steam engines. He realised that contemporary engine designs wasted a great deal of energy by repeatedly cooling and re-heating the cylinder. Watt introduced a design enhancement, the separate condenser, which avoided this waste of energy and radically improved the power, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of steam engines. Eventually he adapted his engine to produce rotary motion, greatly broadening its use beyond pumping water.

Watt attempted to commercialize his invention, but experienced great financial difficulties until 1775 he entered a partnership with Matthew Boulton. The new firm of Boulton and Watt was eventually highly successful and Watt became a wealthy man. In his retirement, Watt continued to develop new inventions though none were as significant as his steam engine work. He died in 1819 at the age of 83. Watt has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788) was a German classical period musician and composer, the fifth child and second (surviving) son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. His second name was given in honor of his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann, a friend of Emanuel's father.

Emanuel Bach was an influential composer working at a time of transition between his father's baroque style and the classical and romantic styles that followed it. His personal approach, an expressive and often turbulent one known as Empfindsamer or 'sensitive style', applied the principles of rhetoric and drama to musical structures. Bach's dynamism stands in deliberate contrast to the more mannered rococo style also then in vogue.

Emanuel Bach was born in Weimar in 1714 to Johann Sebastian Bach and his first wife, Maria Barbara. The composer Georg Philipp Telemann was his godfather. When he was ten years old he entered the St. Thomas School at Leipzig, where his father had become cantor in 1723. He was one of four Bach children to become a professional musician; all four were trained in music almost entirely by their father. In an age of royal patronage, father and son alike knew that a university education helped prevent a professional musician from being treated as a servant. Emanuel, like his brothers, pursued advanced studies in jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig (1731). He continued further study of law at Frankfurt (Oder) (1735). In 1738, at the age of 24, he obtained his degree. He turned his attention at once to music.