2024 the best composers of 21st century review

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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 In the other, a devout if bad-tempered old composer of ‘outdated’ music, a scorned genius in his last years.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.

From the Publisher

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial (October 28, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0007153937
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0007153930
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.99 x 5 x 0.82 inches
Reviewer: LuelCanyon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: an extraordinary experience
Review: One of the great books of a lifetime, a masterpiece of soaring imagination, history, and invigorating writing. 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 is Frederick's challenge to 'old Bach' that resulted in his composing 'A Musical Offering', Gaines' exploration of Bach's mind, life, faith, and music is so attuned, and wondrously rendered in such engaging prose that any plot artifice is subsumed in a dire, burning truth that never falters. It's a book of such pleasure and vision one ends recharged with love for 'old Bach'. One example - chapter 6 (The Sharp Edges of Genius) details Bach's funeral cantata 'Actus tragicus' (BVW 106) and offers a cogent summation of its musical parts, but ultimately provides an unforgettable rumination on the godly essence of Bach's music, indeed of those divine dimensions of human experience we hunger for. I've gifted it to many friends, each in turn confirmed my trust with their own experience of wonder. Everything's here - Bach's music, his towering mastery, orneriness and orderliness, his divine business, and a profound look into our common spiritual history. Evening in the Palace of Reason will change your life. No other recommendation truly suffices.

Reviewer: Witheld
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: An awesome book for fans of Bach and students of his time period.
Review: Tremendous presentation of the clash of baroque (high classical) values with the emerging enlightenment. Centers on the one meeting between two great, iconic figures who represent these competing values, Johann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great.Students of Music, history and philosophy will all thoroughly enjoy this wonderful true story, and benefit from the analysis of its significance.

Reviewer: H. Schneider
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Bleating goat
Review: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750) .... (Says Wikipedia).Here is what the back cover of this book says:(Bach) `created ...the most celestial and profound body of music in history; Frederick the Great built the colossus we now know as Germany... Their fleeting encounter in 1757 signals a unique moment in history where belief collided with the cold certainty of reason.'Awesome, isn't it? Fritz met Bach 7 years after Bach died. Truly a unique moment.And Fritz built Germany, though he himself died in 1786. That was 85 years before the Hohenzollern's Germany was founded by Bismarck in 1871, during the reign of Wilhelm I, who was Fritz' nephew's son's nephew, or something like that.The cold certainty of reason can get a lot done.This is all not the author's fault, so far. The book is generally well worth reading: an entertaining `double biography' of the two men, who were not really meant for each other. Different worlds and different times, despite their overlapping. Bach's Thuringia and Saxony, his music and his religion were not suitable for Fritz' Prussia. Their meeting happened in 1747, when one of them was nearly on his way out (3 more years for him), and the other still relatively fresh in his career as king.Still: Gaines shouldn't have said that the Hohenzollern had ruled Germany for 300 years by then. No, they hadn't. They had started with ruling a small patch in the patchwork, and succeeded in growing their patch to a substantial size inside the total carpet. Germany as an entity didn't exist during Fritz' time. His Prussia had grown to challenge the leadership of the Habsburgs inside the Holy Roman Empire though.(The book has a not altogether bad map at the contents section. The map could have been improved if the edges hadn't been cut off, which would have allowed to see the neighbors, specifically the `original' Prussia. Isn't it a joke that the book's map has `Prussia' outside its frame and needs to place an arrow to the NE?)I feel more competent about Prussia and the Hohenzollern than about Bach's music. I tend to believe what Gaines writes about Bach, but I am often a little skeptical about his Fritzology. This book was recommended to me by a bassoonist. That supports my trust in its musicology, and it makes me chuckle at the story of young Bach's fist fight with the bassoon student who was offended when Bach said that his bassoon sounded like a bleating goat. You must have forgotten that one, Maestro!

Reviewer: Charles S. Houser
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Engaging contrapuntal biographies
Review: James R. Gaines cleverly juxtaposes and interweaves the life stories of composer J. S. Bach and Prussian king Frederick the Great to depict a world in transition--from the Age of Faith to the Enlightenment (and subsequently, the Romantic and Modern eras). The point of contact upon which this dual biography pivots is a visit (make that "a respsonse to a summons") in which the elderly composer is invited to the young king's palace where he is given a challenge to extemporize a musical composition upon a theme presented by the King. The result is a masterpiece known as "Musical Offering" (BWV 1079). Gaines does an excellent job of bringing history to life, giving modern readers just enough detail to communicate a sense that the story he's recounting actually took place in another era when different customs and values held sway. (The many deaths of close family members that Bach lived through growing up and in his early adulthood are unfathomable today in developed nations; and the psychological and physical abuse prince Frederick suffered at the hands of his father would be classified as criminal.) Gaines, likewise, does an excellent job of concisely explaining musical terms and concepts. EVENING IN THE PALACE OF REASON is a lively story well told. Gaines provides a very helpful selected bibliography and discography. If you're like me, you'll want to intersperse your reading of this book with careful listenings to Bach's choral and instrumental works. I recommend having at least Bach: The Art of Fugue; Musical Offering on hand.

Reviewer: Robert H Silverman
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: By the time Bach was writing his masterpieces, probably the most complex musical works that hold a firm place in the classical repertoire, he was considered by many to be a has-been. The Enlightenment, intellectual and secular was in full swing. Frederick the Great's court was home to many thinkers, artists, and musicians who had adopted the precepts of that new age, and had little use for art that they viewed as unnecessarily complicated and infused with religious fervour, especially Lutheranism. Karl Phillip Emanuel Bach, Sebastian's son, was one of the Court's most important musicians. Our old music history texts described a two-day visit by Johann Sebastian, as a way the son had of honouring his father. But it was much more than that, not very pleasant, and resulted in Bach's sending Frederick a collection of intricate contrapuntal fugues and canons, plus a great Trio Sonata, all based on a theme that Frederick supposedly had written: collectively known as A Musical Offering. Gaines begins by describing the visit, and then weaves together parallel biographies of Bach and Frederick, comparing and contrasting their upbringings and their adult lives. A wonderful book that brings this fascinating era to life.

Reviewer: Susi Maas
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is a highly intriguing book concerning the parallel lives of Johann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great, and how their paths converged over their only meeting which resulted in Bach's monumental 'Musical Offering'. Gaines takes an original idea and combines meticulously-researched facts with inevitably-imagined circumstances, resulting in a fascinating mélange of fact and fiction. I have told all my musical friends about this book, feeling sure that they will find it equally fascinating.

Reviewer: Nicolas Lombard
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Zwei derart verschiedene Menschen parallel zu beschreiben und in einem grossartigen Finale zusammenzuführen ist eine eindrückliche Leistung. Die beiden Biographien könnten unterschiedlicher nicht sein. Hier Friedrich der Grosse und da der Grosse Bach! Friedrich, der erfolgreiche Feldherr und "Sammler" der wichtigsten Zeitgenossen an seinem Hof, und J.S. Bach, einer der grössten, wenn nicht der grösste musikalische Schöpfer abendländischer Musik.Beide sind sie von unglaublicher Schaffenskraft und unbändiger Energie.Gaines Erzählkunst ist fesselnd und farbig. Die Übersetzung von Reinhard Kaiser ist hervorragend gelungen; sie überzeugt durch Genauigkeit einerseits und gekonnte sprachliche Adaptation. Das englische Original besticht durch seine elegante, einfache und überzeugende Sprache.

Reviewer: Rosemarie
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Anybody interested in the life and times of Johann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great will benefit from this book. Music, history, attitudes of the time in the Age of Enlightenment are well portrayed.

Reviewer: Alexa Ormonde
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I bought this as a present to give some context to a person who was learning to play the Bach cello suites, so cannot say `nothing about the content. I hope it will provide that for the intended reader, I cannot see why it would not.