Explorations in musical materials Book

This book is itself a beautiful counterpoint composition. Its alternating chapters on Frederick the Great and J. S. Bach provide a biography of each man in such a way that they both echo and contrast each other. The biographical writing is full of interesting tidbits that make it pleasurable and rarely dry history.

Yet this is also biography framed by a single event. And while it was no minor meeting of these two giants, neither was it the defining moment for either of them. Still, this evening encounter and the composition it engendered form a perfect subject for the book's fugue-like biographies.

Beyond biography, though, there is much in the way of musical analysis. I wish I had had a complete collection of Bach's works to listen to each piece that Gaines describes in illustration of Bach's talent as I read about it. I was particularly enthralled by the explanation of the Baroque doctrine of affections. I remembered studying it in music history classes, but I had never completely grasped its depth. Understanding it as the musical equivalent of rhetoric was an "aha!" moment for me. And it made me fall more deeply in love with Baroque music than ever before.

All this would make Evening in the Palace of Reason a remarkable and worthwhile read, but it offers even more. At its heart, this book is a consideration of the question which is better: a worldview that includes spirituality and transcendence or a worldview that leaves room only for reason and humanity. Bach stands for the former and Frederick for the latter. Between them cuts the sharp edge of the Enlightenment.

I love finding historical events that encapsulate the spirit of their times and help me understand why a certain era tended the way it did. In this unique book, Gaines helps us understand not just one era but the bridge between two quite different eras, all based on a meeting between two men who wholeheartedly followed the tenets of their times. What the reader walks away with is not only new insights into history and music, but also a compelling urge to ponder the roles that rationalism and transcendence ought to play in our own lives. It is precisely the sort of true intellectual contemplation that should be the joy of every thinking human being.