Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment

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.

Any music student who has studied the life of Johann Sebastian Bach knows the basic tale of how the Musical Offering was created--how Bach traveled to the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1747, how he tried the newfangled Silbermann pianofortes, how the monarch gave him a theme on which to improvise, and how Bach after his return home used the theme as a basis for one of his most intricate collections of contrapuntal compositions. In this well-crafted and smoothly written popular history, James Gaines fleshes out the personages involved, contrasting the eventful, troubled life of Frederick with Bach's workaday existence as music director of St. Thomas' School in Leipzig. Gaines portrays the meeting of these two men as a symbolic collision between the rising ideas of the Enlightenment and the last gasp of the old Lutheran faith and high Baroque musical language. Though there is little original research, and some necessary speculation about states of minds of people who left scanty personal records (including Bach himself), Gaines by and large succeeds not only at bringing history to life, but also in elucidating, in a clear and non-technical manner, the greatness of Bach's music. He has written a book that appeals to music lovers and history buffs alike.

This book begins and ends with the challenge issued by Frederick the Great of Prussia to Johann Sebastian Bach: a 21-note theme designed to resist having the rules of counterpoint applied to it. Bach was to improvise a three-part fugue on the theme. When he accomplished this to the astonishment of all gathered, Frederick upped the ante: make it six-part. Well, that took a little longer -- two weeks -- and became the Musical Offering, a thirteen-movement rebuke-in-music to the king. The book probes deeply into the events leading to the challenge. Bach, to the author Gaines, represents the Age of Faith, while Frederick represents the Age of Reason. We learn all about the history behind these two ways of thinking about the world as well as each man's individual history. Besides being a book about Bach and about Frederick, this book delves into the structure of Bach's music and what he was trying to say with it. It also explores the history of the Germanic states around the time of Frederick. Toss in the influence of the church, philosophers of the time, scientists, thinkers, and musicians (including Bach's sons), and you have a rich story that goes beyond music, or rather, one that infuses music into every aspect of the universe (indeed, one of the theories of Bach's time was that the universe resonated with a perfect harmony). It's a book about the clash between two men who represented two different worlds, but it's so much more than that. It's easy to read, impeccably researched, and even witty, and touched on so many topics -- religious, geopolitical, philosophical, as well as musical -- that I couldn't imagine just one book covering. I'm a musician myself (though somewhat of a hack). I've played some of Bach's pieces, but never really appreciated what he was trying to say in them. I'm looking forward to approaching them again with this new information. My personal recording collection doesn't currently contain much Bach, but with the selective discography at the back of this book, you can bet that'll be changing! I've also visited Sanssouci (Frederick's palace in Potsdam, which is just as over-the-top as the book describes). Should I ever find myself back there, I'll certainly see it from a more "enlightened" viewpoint.

"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.

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.