The book is principally a meditation on the respective claims of feeling--the senses (including religious faith)--and reason, to fulfill humanity's deepest needs. J. S. Bach represents the former, Frederick the Great of Prussia, the latter. I think the volume promises more than it delivers. Why? Because Gaines' principal metaphor (the encounter of Bach and Frederick in the latter's palace) is inadequate to convey Gaines' thesis. His statement of that thesis is, "[A] world without a sense of the transcendent and mysterious, a universe ultimately discoverable through reason alone, can only be a barren place; and that the music sounding forth from such a world might be very pretty, but it can never be beautiful" [p 12].

The author's extensive forays into music theory and the biographies of his principal characters (and others, C. P. E. Bach, for example), although not superficial, do not, ultimately, enlighten us as he apparently expects that they will.

This book is a prose hymn of praise to J. S. Bach and his heavenly music, set to a counterpoint of Enlightenment empirically-based reason. ( )

Starting from the remarkable and historical meeting of "old Bach" and Frederick the Great of Prussia, Gaines builds an interesting double biography of a musical and a military genius. The book is a quick, "almost chatty" read, focusing primarily on Bach and his music, but giving Frederick his due as well.

Despite the frame Gaines attempts to place on his protagonists I am unpersuaded that using these two as emblematic of faith (Bach) and reason (Frederick) works. First, Bach, as even Gaines admits, was as much a revolutionary in music as post-Enlightenment figures like Beethoven. Second, Frederick's pose as the "philosopher king" is pretty much that - a pose. The theoretical "enlightened monarch," while far more liberal than many of his contemporaries, was still a militaristic despot at heart.

The book has other flaws. Switching back and forth between Bach and Frederick can cause whiplash if one does not keep in mind they were barely contemporaries. Gaines' breezy style is amusing, but I can't help feeling he'd sacrifice accuracy for style. And his explanation of musical theory can cause the non-technical reader's eyes to glaze over. But Gaines keeps the focus on Bach's music, and more than once he directs his reader to set aside the book and listen to Bach's work, an exhortation that does more to make his argument than whole chapters on counterpoint could do. ( )

Evening in the Palace of Reason is a joint biography of J. S. Bach and Frederick the Great-two prominent, and very different, historical figures. Gaines begins his tale with their first and only meeting. Frederick, the Enlightenment's poster child, scorns Bach and his music as old fashioned, unsightly and-worst of all- religious. He presents Bach with two musical challenges, which Bach responds to in his typical fashion.

After this initial introduction, Gaines begins the biographies of these two great men, recording their extreme dissimilarities and showing how these would culminate into Fredrick's difficult test, and Bach's equally difficult rejoinder. Into their stories, Gaines weaves many different threads-musical history, musical theory, theology, religious history, philosophy and the basic history of their time and place-to create a complex background on which to place the two, making for a detailed and fascinating story.

There were few "dull" places, though I did find some of the music theory hard-going, due to my lack of pre-knowledge. However, I came away from reading Evening in the Palace of Reason with a firmer grasp of not only Bach and Frederick, but counterpoint, Lutheranism, the 18th century, Prussian history and many more things I knew nothing about before I picked up the book!Though this is a scholarly work, Gaines did not target a purely scholarly audience, and as a result it can be enjoyed by layperson or historian alike.

I did find a few faults with this work, the most aggrieving being the lack of dates. Though I am a history enthusiast myself, I still need solid, concrete dates to place an incident within the framework of what was occurring in other parts of the world. Despite knowing when the Enlightenment "occurred", I would have preferred dates on the essential issues, such as the year of their births, the year in which they met, the year in which anything occurred. I found this lack of dates to be a continual frustration.

Otherwise, except for a few passages that were simply not well written, Gaines has done an admirable job with Evening in the Palace of Reason. This is a great read for amateur social or music historians, or biography aficionados. I thoroughly enjoyed it and rate it a solid four out of five. ( )