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From Publishers Weekly
Like contrapuntal voices in a Bach fugue, the lives of an aging composer and a young dictator are intertwined and interlocked in this absorbing cultural history. Gaines (The Lives of the Piano), former managing editor of Time, Life and People magazines, begins by recounting Frederick's abrupt summons of Bach to his court at Potsdam. Here, in an apparent effort to humiliate the old-style composer, Frederick, enamored of the new in philosophy and art, sets Bach a succession of seemingly impossible musical challenges: to each, the composer responds with unthinkable genius, culminating in his Musical Offering. But beneath the biographical counterpoint traced by Gaines is a longer, unfinished duel between two visions of humankind--one that the sensitive and musically inclined Frederick was also fighting within himself. He had been brutally abused by his father and was increasingly committed to the cynical pursuit of military expansion; the sun gradually sets on the Prussian king, who is consumed by disillusionment, inflicting pain on himself and countless others. As night falls on the (un)enlightened despot, Bach's star begins to rise, and later, he will acquire the veneration his genius merits, his music a perennial reminder that "the light of reason can blind us to a deeper kind of illumination." Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
In 1747, Bach met Frederick the Great; it was not a meeting of the minds. Gaines searches for the reasons behind the encounter in this book, which is part musicology, part dual biography. His exploration is clever without being frivolous, and explanatory without being effete. Formerly a magazine editor in the Time-Warner empire, Gaines writes very accessibly about classical music. He doesn't smother his topic in scholasticism, communicating his main idea that Bach's music is emphatically "message" music, that is, aural expressions of Lutheran theology. By contrast, Frederick, 27 years younger than Bach, regarded music as entertainment. Indeed, Frederick's choleric royal father thought music was effeminate and expressed his disapproval by beating Frederick and executing one of his friends. Thus Frederick brought a misanthropic cynicism to his night with Bach and thought it would be fun to embarrass the kapellmeister. In Gaines' rendition, Bach turned the tables and defied earthly power with one of his great works, Musical Offering. A marvelous story that will captivate the classical-music audience. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars (42 customer reviews)
88 of 92 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, wonderful book, Mar 3 2005
By Gail Stuart - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Evening In The Palace Of Reason: Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (Hardcover)
I have been playing Bach all my life, I have read everything about him, and I have never come across a book that brought him so vividly alive. I honestly never knew who he was before this book. I never quite understood the forces that motivated him, how and why his music could be as moving as it is, how he could have maintained such integrity in such adverse circumstances (his own sons were against him!), why he was so dismissed during his life. Now I understand that, and a great deal more. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It changed my view of Bach and in a way my view of why the world we live in is the way it is.
56 of 61 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Revenge of Genius, May 3 2005
By J. Brian Watkins - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Evening In The Palace Of Reason: Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (Hardcover)
"Evening in the Palace of Reason" explores Bach's Musical Offering in incredible depth. What brought forth Bach's "Offering" of such unimaginable complexity? An annoyed genius--you just have to love that. For years I have read biography after biography (with one sterling exception--see my early reviews) that portray Bach as a kind of small town savant who was later and fortunately "discovered." Oh, so far from the truth...Mr. Gaines reminds us that Bach was at the very center of his world--that Bach embodied the ideals of the Baroque. For this reason the juxtaposition of Bach and Frederick the Great is an excellent vehicle for demonstrating the ideas that were the power behind Bach's transcendent music. The reader is shown that Bach was no less a King in his own fashion than was Frederick--instead of armies to project power, Bach had an absolute mastery of musical art that despite the passage of 250 years still speaks to billions of people. What this book convincingly argues is that Bach was quite aware of his power and the supremacy of his beliefs and that he used the Offering to send a message.
In visiting Frederick's palace, Bach not only accepted the challenge he knew was coming but he so conquered the rigged game that the other side figuratively left and went home. I had no idea how messed up King Frederick really was, even if he could play a passable flute--this is the kind of "x-files" history that puts the great ideas of history in context and is fun to read.
In reviewing the aged Bach's life, Mr. Gaines leads one to consider the loneliness of a man who knew that he could speak a language of eternal beauty that few people had the patience to hear. We all know that Bach had a temper and demanded excellence from students and justice from his employers; however, in reading this book we are introduced to the mature Bach so confident in his power that he delivered a clear rebuke to a King.
Mr. Gaines makes a compelling argument that perhaps our culture could stand to return to those absolute truths that so moved Bach. That constraint and limitations can bring forth sublime creations denied to those who throw off the perceived shackles of convention. Highly recommended and a must-read for any disciple of Bach.
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
an extraordinary experience, Jan 11 2007
By J. Anderson - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Evening In The Palace Of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (Paperback)
This is one of the great books of a lifetime, a book of soaring imagination, history, and some of the finest writing I've ever encountered. More Bach comes through in these luminous pages of a one-night encounter with Frederick the Great than is found in a dozen books of Bach 'scholarship'. While the book's 'premise' concerns Frederick's challenge to 'old Bach' that resulted in his composing 'A Musical Offering', James Gaines' exploration of Bach's mind and life and faith, and, indeed, his music, is so attuned, so wondrously rendered in the most engaging prose imaginable that any plot artifice is right away overwhelmed with a dire, burning truth, and never leaves it. It really is a book too rich to be 'reviewed'. Impossible? Check it for yourself. There are pages and pages of such fineness, such pleasure that one can only experience it, and be changed and renewed in love for 'old Bach'. One example - chapter 6 (The Sharp Edges of Genius), detailing Bach's famous funeral cantata 'Actus tragicus' (BVW 106), offers not only a brilliant summation of its musical parts, but is, immediately and ultimately, a moving, unforgettable rumination on the great meaning of Bach and his music, indeed, of the human experience in its divine dimensions unlike any I've come across. I'm a man lost for superlatives to express the importance, the resonating beauty of an amazing book. I've given this book to many friends, each in turn has confirmed my trust that this is one of the great books of a lifetime. You'll want for nothing within these pages - Bach's music, his towering mastery, his orneriness and orderliness, his divine business, and an unshakable look deep into our common human history. It's a book of discovery and confirmation. Evening in the Palace of Reason will change your life. No other 'recommendation' suffices.
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