Evening in the Palace of Reason [Hardcover]

James R. Gaines (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2005

In one corner, a godless young warrior, Voltaire's heralded 'philosopher-king', the It Boy of the Enlightenment. In the other, a devout if bad-tempered old composer of 'outdated' music, a scorned genius in his last years. The sparks from their brief conflict illuminate a turbulent age. Behind the pomp and flash, Prussia's Frederick the Great was a tormented man, son of an abusive king who forced him to watch as his best friend (probably his lover) was beheaded. In what may have been one of history's crueler practical jokes, Frederick challenged 'old Bach' to a musical duel, asking him to improvise a six-part fugue based on an impossibly intricate theme (possibly devised for him by Bach's own son). Bach left the court fuming, but in a fever of composition, he used the coded, alchemical language of counterpoint to write 'A Musical Offering' in response. A stirring declaration of faith, it represented 'as stark a rebuke of his beliefs and world view as an absolute monarch has ever received,' Gaines writes. It is also one of the great works of art in the history of music. Set at the tipping point between the ancient and the modern world, the triumphant story of Bach's victory expands to take in the tumult of the eighteenth century: the legacy of the Reformation, wars and conquest, the birth of the Enlightenment. Brimming with originality and wit, 'Evening in the Palace of Reason' is history of the best kind -- intimate in scale and broad in its vision.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his lively history, Evening in the Palace of Reason, James R. Gaines sets two remarkable--and remarkably different--historical figures on a collision course toward a single night in Potsdam in 1747: the composer Johann Sebastian Bach--"old Bach," as he was called then at the age of 62--and the still-young Prussian king, Frederick II, already known as Frederick the Great after less than a decade on the throne. Having long employed old Bach's son Carl--a more celebrated composer at the time--Frederick summoned the father from Leipzig and challenged him, with an offhanded cruelty, to a public compositional puzzle designed to humiliate the great wizard of the waning art of counterpoint.

Gaines is a pleasant guide through the incestuous patchwork monarchies of middle Europe, with a breezy tone fitting for a former editor of People. ("The Hohenzollerns were a funny bunch," he writes at one point.) But he is also a passionately learned student of the intricacies of the era's musical theories and the secret languages of its coded compositions. (One is thankful that he and his publisher resisted calling the book The Bach Code.) Gaines leads up to his pivotal encounter with a double biography of his two principals, told in alternating chapters. Bach's mostly homebound life, which left few documents for historians, is often no match for the grotesque dramas of Frederick's parallel story, which climaxes when his father the king forces Frederick to witness the execution of his best friend (and perhaps lover). The weight that keeps the two stories in balance is the genius of Bach's work, particularly the masterful Musical Offering that he composes in response to the king's challenge. The encounter itself may not bear the full burden that Gaines wants to give it, as a clash between two epochal worldviews, the faith of the Reformation versus the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but the two life stories he so vividly describes make the journey there more than worthwhile. --Tom Nissley

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.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st ed edition (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007156588
• ISBN-13: 978-0007156580
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #434,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, wonderful book, March 3, 2005

By 

Gail Stuart (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evening in the Palace of Reason (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.

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Revenge of Genius, May 3, 2005

By 

J. Brian Watkins (Laie, Hawaii) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evening in the Palace of Reason (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.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an extraordinary experience, January 11, 2007

By 

J. Anderson (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (P.S.) (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.