Bach & God explores the religious character of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Noted musicologist Michael Marissen offers wide-ranging insights from detailed investigations of both words and music. Bach is inexhaustible, and Bach & God suggests that through close contextual study there is always more to discover and learn.
In Bach against Modernity, author Michael Marissen contests the common perception that J.S. Bach is a modern figure and instead suggests that, by eighteenth-century standards, Bach and his music in fact reflected and forcefully promoted a premodern world and life view. He provides overlooked or misunderstood evidence of Bach's private engagement with religious and social issues that the composer also addressed in his public vocal compositions, and exposes intellectual and ethical problems with prevalent anachronistic views of Bach.