Johann Sebastian Bach created what may be the most celestial and profound body of music in history; Frederick the Great built the colossus we now know as Germany, and along with it a template for modern warfare. Their fleeting encounter in 1757 signals a unique moment in history where belief collided with the cold certainty of reason. Set at the tipping point between the ancient and modern world, "Evening in the Palace of Reason" captures the tumult of the eighteenth century, the legacy of the Reformation, and the birth of the Enlightenment in this extraordinary tale of two men.

About the Author

Jim Gaines was the first Editor in Chief of People Magazine, as well as the Editor of Time Magazine. His first book, 'Evening in The Palace of Reason' was published in2005. He lives in Paris with his family

Reviews

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.

The making of Bach's "A Musical Offering"; from the past managing editor of Time, Life, and People. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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