page_title: Michael Bach (musician)
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Bach (musician) / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Ausstellung der Fingerboards von Michael Bach Bachtischa in Trier 2012
context_page_description: Michael Bach, also known as Michael Bach Bachtischa, is a German cellist, composer, and visual artist.
context_section_description: He studied cello with Gerhard Mantel, Boris Pergamenschikow, Pierre Fournier, and János Starker, then embarked on a career of international concert activity as well as performances on radio, recordings, and television.
  He made numerous significant contributions to the art of contemporary cello performance; his publication Fingerboards & Overtones proposes new ideas concerning overtones and harmonics and is considered a pioneering work in the literature on contemporary technique. In 1990 he developed the curved bow (BACH.Bogen) for the cello, violin, viola and bass, which, in polyphonic playing, permits the simultaneous sounding of multiple strings, with the high arch of the bow allowing for full, sustained chords. During the years 1997 to 2001 Mstislav Rostropovich has been intimately involved in its development. In 2001 he invited Michael Bach to Paris for a presentation of his BACH.Bow (7th Concours de violoncelle Rostropovitch).
  In 2012, during an exhibition on the theme BACHLAEUFE – The Imprint of Johann Sebastian Bach on Modern Times, held at Arnstadt, Germany, the first prize was awarded to the BACH.Bow. His work as cellist and composer was awarded the Gaudeamus Prize Amsterdam, the Kranichstein Prize Darmstadt, the Japan Record Academy Prize, the Millennium Prize Würzburg.
  Several contemporary composers, among them John Cage, Dieter Schnebel, Walter Zimmermann and Hans Zender, have composed works especially for the BACH.Bow. 
  Bach Bachtischa is also a composer. His purely musical compositions are idiosyncratic and highly personal, described by him as “free from compositional conventions.”
  In collaboration with the visual artist Renate Hoffleit he has created strikingly original string installations. Their projects (zwischen e and f)² in Stuttgart and IM KLANGSTROM in Ulm, Germany were supported i. a. by the Innovationsfonds Kunst of the State of Baden-Württemberg. The project Schloss Kapfenburg besaitet... was listed in the Guinness Book of Records in 2000.
  In the two blogs the bach update and the cello upgrade, Michael Bach documents and analyzes projects and aspects of contemporary music as well as new insights into the solo works for violin and cello by Johann Sebastian Bach.
  Michael Bach's visual works include Fingerboards (1990–2010), which capture the hand's choreography on the cello fingerboard as color impressions, Fieldwork (1994), Mit diesen beiden Händen (1994), Lagauche (1995), and Olévano (1995–).
  The German postage stamp 75 Jahre Donaueschinger Musiktage, Deutschland 1996 shows his composition and drawing 18–7–92, Scetches to Ryoanji (1992).
caption: Exhibition of the Fingerboards in Trier, Germany 2012
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