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 In the other, a devout if bad-tempered old composer of ‘outdated’ music, a scorned genius in his last years.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.
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Evening in the Palace of Reason
BACH meets FREDERICK THE GREAT
in the AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
JAMES GAINES
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published by Fourth Estate 2005
Copyright © James Gaines 2005
PS section copyright © Louise Tucker 2005, except ‘How I Came to Write This Book’ by James Gaines © James Gaines 2005
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
James Gaines asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover images: Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Portraits of Johann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great © Bettman/CORBIS
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Source ISBN: 9780007153930
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007369461 Version: 2017-08-15
From the reviews of Evening in the Palace of Reason:
‘A wonderful work of popular history, intelligent, stylish, wryly witty, serious yet never solemn, and above all passionate’
JOHN BANVILLE, Guardian
‘Wonderfully engaging … a piece of theatre that is witty, instructive and often bizarre … It is a book that is almost impossible to put down when one is dancing, swerving, stumbling through the extraordinary brilliance, blood-thirst, cruelty, fecundity and religious and other feuds of the society that helped to inspire Bach and sustain Frederick’
Independent on Sunday
‘Gaines’s style is readable, crisp and compelling. He is an excellent guide: informed, unpretentious and frank … The impressive research is lightly worn … The minor parts are well played: Voltaire, Handel, Maria Theresa and George II all contribute beautifully drawn cameos. The reader retains a strong sense of their deeper and more complex historical characters. Above all, the musical prose is first-rate. Gaines is thoroughly acquainted with the repertoire, and his ability to convey a sense of Bach’s unique sensibility and spiritual power is often remarkable … A story told with wit, knowledge, the odd flight of fancy, and love’
Times Literary Supplement
‘James Gaines vividly brings to life the personalities involved … [A] dramatic story, told with great pace and gusto’
Scotland on Sunday
CONTENTS
II. BIOGRAPHY OF A TEMPERAMENT
III. THE HOHENZOLLERN REAL ESTATE COMPANY
IV. A SMALL, UNREADY ALCHEMIST
V. GIANTS, SPIES, AND THE LASH: LIFE WITH “FATTY”
VIII. SONG OF THE ENDLESSLY ORBITING SPHERES
IX. A CHANGELING AMONG THE SWANS
X. THE ARTIST IN A PAINT-BY-NUMBERS WORLD
XI. WAR AND PEACE AND A MECHANICAL DUCK
XII. THE NIGHT OF A MUSICAL OFFERING
P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features …
How I Came to Write This Book by James Gaines
FREDERICK THE GREAT HAD ALWAYS LOVED TO PLAY the flute, which was one of the qualities in him that his father most despised. Throughout his youth, Frederick had to play in secret. Among his fondest memories were evenings at his mother’s palace, where he was free to dress up in French clothes, curl and puff his hair in the French style, and play duets with his soulmate sister Wilhelmina—he on the flute he called Principe, she on her lute Principessa. When Frederick’s father once happened unexpectedly on this scene, he flew into a rage. Even more than his son’s flute playing, Frederick William I hated everything French—French clothes, French food, French mannerisms, French civilization, all of which he dismissed as “effeminate.” He had of course been educated in French, like most German princes (he could not even spell Deutschland but habitually wrote Deusland), so he had to speak French, but he hated himself for it. He dressed convicts for their executions in French clothes as his own sort of fashion statement.
