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Day 792: A rough day
May. 19th, 2022 08:39 pm( Many tears. )
May. 19th, 2022
Book completed
May. 19th, 2022 11:21 pmEvening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment, by James R. Gaines. This is another book for the Bach Festival book club, probably the best so far. The author, James R. Gaines, had been editor of People, Life, and Time, and in his retirement he's writing books on topics that interest him. And he's quite a fine writer.
In this one, we get the life stories of J.S. Bach and Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, alternating chapters for each. Frederick's father was extraordinarily abusive, wow. Eventually, the teenage Frederick tried desperately to escape. His father caught him, put him in prison, and forced him to watch the execution of his best friend. Anyway, Bach and Frederick were both musicians, but with very different worldviews. Bach's music reflected his elaborate understanding of the role of God in the universe (as was appropriate, given his Lutheran upbringing and his employment responsibilities. Frederick, conversely, belonged to a new age in which the point of music was to be light and pretty and entertain its audience, as in the "galant" style that came at the end of the Baroque era and just before the classical. Eventually, the two met, and Frederick gave Bach a highly challenging musical puzzle to solve, and Bach went home and did so - the author uses this as the framework for his storytelling and ends with a great discussion of their opposing worldviews.
In this one, we get the life stories of J.S. Bach and Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, alternating chapters for each. Frederick's father was extraordinarily abusive, wow. Eventually, the teenage Frederick tried desperately to escape. His father caught him, put him in prison, and forced him to watch the execution of his best friend. Anyway, Bach and Frederick were both musicians, but with very different worldviews. Bach's music reflected his elaborate understanding of the role of God in the universe (as was appropriate, given his Lutheran upbringing and his employment responsibilities. Frederick, conversely, belonged to a new age in which the point of music was to be light and pretty and entertain its audience, as in the "galant" style that came at the end of the Baroque era and just before the classical. Eventually, the two met, and Frederick gave Bach a highly challenging musical puzzle to solve, and Bach went home and did so - the author uses this as the framework for his storytelling and ends with a great discussion of their opposing worldviews.