Back to Bach: From Mozart to Moog - A Listener's Guide

In Back to Bach: From Mozart to Moog George Michell explores the story of Bach’s impact on composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Stravinsky and Shostakovich, as well as on jazz pianists, rock guitarists and pop singers, all of whom set off on their own Back to Bach journeys.

According to the French composer Olivier Messiaen, ‘Bach’s music reaches all times, all places’. In Back to Bach: From Mozart to Moog George Michell explores the story of Bach’s impact on composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Stravinsky and Shostakovich, as well as on jazz pianists, rock guitarists and pop singers, all of whom set off on their own Back to Bach journeys. Readers are invited to become listeners, to feast on Michell’s musical banquet. Under his guidance, they will discover works, both familiar and unfamiliar, that reveal the persistent influence of Bach’s art. As Michell shows, George Bernard Shaw was right when he predicted that ‘Bach belongs not to the past, but to the future’. An accessible, indispensable reference for all Bach lovers, the book will appeal to the musically curious, willing to explore the incarnations of Bach into acoustics that he could never have known, from the modern grand piano, electric keyboard, saxophone quartet and big band to the Moog synthesiser.

Trained in Melbourne on the piano and cello, as well as in music theory and composition under the watchful eye of his Bach loving, German speaking mother, Michell was not sufficiently talented to contemplate a professional career. Instead, he backpacked around India and then returned to Melbourne to study architecture. But architecture did not satisfy, so he relocated to London to pursue his growing fascination with the archaeology and art of South Asia at the School of Oriental African Studies, receiving his PhD there in 1974. Since then, he spent time in India each year, accompanying visitors and carrying out research projects, notably at the ruined imperial city of Hampi Vijayanagara. In 2020 Michell returned to his original passion by assuming the role of musical sleuth, tracking the pervasive influence of Johann Sebastian Bach.