Evening in the Palace of Reason : Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
by James R. Gaines
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Book Summary Information
Author: James R. GainesEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2005-03-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 352
Book Reviews of Evening in the Palace of Reason : Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
Book Review: Evidently A Sadly Neglected Book
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this book as a "bargain" because it looked interesting. I was most pleasantly surprised to find an articulate, informed and evidently very knowledgeable introduction to the lives of two fascinating individuals - Sebastian Bach ("The" Bach) and Fredrick the Great. Gaines' prose is informal and "homey" with an occasional "aside" where he speaks directly to the reader. It is a bit jarring to have him mention to me during a very complex description of counterpoint music to "not worry, this will be over soon." I suppose this is his way of acknowledging that in a Post-Modern culture the reader has to constantly have his feathers smoothed. Other than that, Gaines' prose is lucid and direct.
What Gaines does very well is introduce us to the lives of these two very great but very different individuals. Along the way he illumines the age in which they lived, reminding us of its vagaries as well as its temper. It was the day when the great question of truth was addressed at every level. Does one find "truth" by being conformed to the harmonies of the universe through its self-evident symmetry (Bach, counterpoint music, etc. all the way back to Pythagoras) or does one rise to "truth" in the open ended quest for answers in a world of infinite possibilities, being stirred by passion and reflecting it in expression (Fredrick, the incipient romantic style, etc. all the way back to Aristotle). Quite frankly I had no intimation that such a philosophical tone had been consciously pursued in the underpinnings of Baroque music although I have long admired it. I am indebted to Gaines for this insight.
Further, the historical figure of Fredrick the Great is worth this books reading alone. Gaines' understands him well and his treatment is even handed when such fairness with such a figure is difficult to maintain. Fredrick is one of those men that we feel compelled to justify or castigate. Even to this day his controversial nature moves people to take sides (much like Andrew Jackson in our own history. Gaines does a good job.
I think this book has an awful lot to commend it and so - five stars though I admit that I am insufficiently acquainted with the more technical aspects of the book to affirm their accuracy. I would trust other specialists to that task.
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Summary of Evening in the Palace of Reason : Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
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.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
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