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.

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

Denver Post
"Lively…with a delicious cast of characters…Gaines shows himself a deft writer."

San Antonio Express-News
"Filled with sensible speculation and insights, Gaines’ books is a model for humanities writing."

People (four stars)
"A moving portrait...Gaines has a deep understanding of music and an infectious zeal for narrative history."

Walter Isaacson, author of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
"James Gaines writes with great beauty and intelligence…an exciting saga that brings the turmoil of the Enlightenment alive."

Mary Karr, author of THE LIARS CLUB and CHERRY
"History winningly told , with the immediacy of a great novel...Gaines paints a whole age with the skill of Tuchman."

Booklist
"Gaines writes very accessibly…A marvelous story that will captivate the classical music audience."

Entertainment Weekly
"Gaines maps sweeping cultural history with dazzling virtuosity…You won’t find a more lucid and engaging guide."

Sunday Telegraph
"Articulate, well-informed and rigorous…Gaines makes this dauntingly technical subject accessible."

Daily Telegraph (London)
First rate...[Gaines] writes superbly and makes us feel at home with things that would have sounded arcane otherwise."

Harper's Magazine
"A book-length romp that is less like a B-Minor Mass than an Italian opera…Wonderful."

Book Description

One Sunday evening in the spring of his seventh year as king, as his musicians were gathering for the evening concert, a courtier brought Frederick the Great his usual list of arrivals at the town gate. As he looked down the list of names, he gave a start.

"Gentlemen," he said, "old Bach is here." Those who heard him said there was "a kind of agitation" in his voice.

So begins James R. Gaines's Evening in the Palace of Reason, setting up what seems to be the ultimate mismatch: a young, glamorously triumphant warrior-king, heralded by Voltaire as the very It Boy of the Enlightenment, pitted against a devout, bad-tempered composer of "outdated" music, a scorned genius in his last years, symbol of a bygone world. The sparks from their brief conflict illuminate a pivotal moment in history.

Behind the pomp and flash, Prussia's Frederick the Great was a tormented man. His father, Frederick William I, was most likely mad; he had been known to chase frightened subjects down the street, brandishing a cane and roaring, "Love me, scum!" Frederick adored playing his flute as much as his father despised him for it, and he was beaten mercilessly for this and other perceived flaws. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape, Frederick was forced to watch as his best friend and coconspirator was brutally executed.

Twenty years later, Frederick's personality having congealed into a love of war and a taste for manhandling the great and near-great, he worked hard and long to draw "old Bach" into his celebrity menagerie. He was aided by the composer's own son, C. P. E. Bach, chief keyboardist in the king's private chamber music group. The king had prepared a cruel practical joke for his honored guest, asking him to improvise a six-part fugue on a theme so fiendishly difficult some believe only Bach's son could have devised it. Bach left the court fuming. In a fever of composition, he used the coded, alchemical language of counterpoint to write A Musical Offering in response. A stirring declaration of everything Bach had stood for all his life, it represented "as stark a rebuke of his beliefs and worldview as an absolute monarch has ever received." 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, and the birth of the Enlightenment. Most important, it tells the story of that historic moment when Belief -- the quintessentially human conviction that behind mundane appearances lies something mysterious and awesome -- came face to face with the cold certainty of Reason. 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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"James R. Gaines's Evening in the Palace of Reason sets up what seems to be the ultimate mismatch: a young, glamorously triumphant warrior-king, heralded by Voltaire as the very It Boy of the Enlightenment, pitted against a devout, bad-tempered composer of "outdated" music, a scorned genius in his last years, symbol of a bygone world. The sparks from their brief conflict illuminate a pivotal moment in history." "Behind the pomp and flash, Prussia's Frederick the Great was a tormented man. His father, Frederick William I, was most likely mad; he had been known to chase frightened subjects down the street, brandishing a cane and roaring, "Love me, scum!" Frederick adored playing his flute as much as his father despised him for it, and he was beaten mercilessly for this and other perceived flaws. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape, Frederick was forced to watch as his best friend and coconspirator was brutally executed." "Twenty years later, Frederick's personality having congealed into a love of war and a taste for manhandling the great and near-great, he worked hard and long to draw "old Bach" into his celebrity menagerie. He was aided by the composer's own son, C. P. E. Bach, chief keyboardist in the king's private chamber music group. The king had prepared a cruel practical joke for his honored guest, asking him to improvise a six-part fugue on a theme so fiendishly difficult some believe only Bach's son could have devised it. Bach left the court fuming. In a fever of composition, he used the coded, alchemical language of counterpoint to write A Musical Offering in response. A stirring declaration of everything Bach had stood for all his life, it represented "as stark a rebuke of his beliefs and worldview as an absolute monarch has ever received." 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 e

FROM THE CRITICS

Edmund Morris - The New York Times

While Gaines is no match for Hofstadter as a thinker or stylist (he tends to be chatty), he writes with admirable erudition. The story he tells is a reminder that there was once a time when heads of state valued high culture as much as high finance, and when artists won fame through mastery rather than media manipulation.

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. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. (Mar. 4) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The best-documented event in the life of J.S. Bach was his meeting, three years before his death, with Frederick the Great of Prussia. The two were polar opposites: Bach, the learned contrapuntalist, was the devout composer of ornate, "old-fashioned" liturgical music, while Frederick the enlightened philosopher-king favored the lighter secular music of the era. At their meeting, in front of a distinguished audience of court musicians, Bach improvised a three-voiced fugue on a theme presented to him-and ostensibly composed by-the king himself. A few months later, Bach completed one of his greatest works-the Musical Offering-a collection of ten canons, two fugues, and a trio sonata based on the same theme and dedicated to the king. In this highly entertaining book, Gaines masterfully weaves parallel narratives of the lives of Bach and Frederick leading up to their momentous meeting. Gaines is not a musicologist but has drawn extensively on numerous up-to-date sources, and his journalistic background is evident in the stylish, often humorous prose, which never bogs down in dry musical or historical minutiae. There is some needless speculation, but lovers of music, European history, and Western philosophy will find this book an enormous pleasure. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/04.]-Larry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews