James R. Gaines: Evening in the Palace of Reason. NY: Fourth Estate (an Imprint of HarperCollins), 2005. ISBN 0-00-715658-8.
Exploring the genesis of Johann Sebastian Bach's late masterwork A Musical Offering and its position as a musical/philosophical response to an Enlightenment intellectual's disdain for strict counterpoint may not seem at first to provide the requisite grist for a best seller. But such is the case with Gaines's well-organized historical study of the parallel lives of Bach and the monarch who requested the aged composer to improvise a fugue on a complex chromatic theme, and then "upped the ante" by challenging him to expand its level of difficulty from three to six voices!
That ruler was Frederick the Great of Prussia: a patron who employed composers Johann Joachim Quantz and Bach's second son Carl Philipp Emanuel; an aristocrat who played the flute at home in Potsdam but spent much of his time in military campaigns with his well-disciplined forces; a ruler who had survived both his father's disdain for Frederick's interest in music, and having been forced to witness the court-martial beheading of his best friend.
Interlaced chapters detailing these two highly disparate 18th-century lives move with vigor and mounting interest toward the culminating meeting of king and composer on May 7, 1747, at which time Frederick presented the tricky "royal theme" on which Bach was to improvise as he displayed the musical merits of the king's prized Gottfried Silbermann fortepianos. That meeting is described on page 222 of the 273 narrative pages comprising the book. Notes on the sources of quotations, a well-chosen bibliography, "very selective" discography, useful glossary of musical terms, acknowledgments and index bring the total number of pages to 336.
Gaines's research is up-to-the-moment, including references to Bach's use of the number alphabet [gematria], possibly even in the somber Chaconne of his D minor Solo Violin Partita, thought by some recent writers to be a subtle memorial to the composer's first wife Maria Barbara. Also of interest is the fascinating example of son Carl Philipp's "automatic" counterpoint writing tables, first published by Friedrich Marpurg in 1755, as cited in David Yearsley's erudite and wide-ranging 2002 monograph Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University Press), another book recommended to admirers of J. S. Bach's art.
Several times, after describing a particular Bach masterwork, Gaines admonishes his readers to savor ". . . another of the moments in the course of this story when it makes wonderful sense to stop reading, to find a [recording] . . . , and try to imagine what hearing [this music] would have been like on that particular day . . ." With such sensible advice as well as engagingly jaunty prose, Gaines explores an intriguing intersection of musical ideals in this eminently readable volume, heartily suggested for a place on one's bedside table or, perhaps, to place under a friend's Christmas tree.
Mark Schweizer: The Tenor Wore Tapshoes. Hopkinsville, KY: St. James Music Press, 2005. <www.sjmp.com> ISBN 0-9721211-4-5.
The third Liturgical Mystery featuring Hayden Konig (full-time Chief of Police and part-time organist-choirmaster in the North Carolina mountain town of St. Germaine) continues the contrapuntal layers of skullduggery encountered in previous books The Alto Wore Tweed (2002) and The Baritone Wore Chiffon (2004). Each provides two related murder mysteries connected by the clever device of having the fictional sleuth write a short mystery of his own, utilizing his prize possession--a manual typewriter that was once the property of mystery writer Raymond Chandler. This short story, presented in page-length installments as it rolls off the typewriter batten, regales Konig's choir at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church with Chandleresque tough talk as well as vintage typescript.
Fellow lovers of satire will have another rollicking good time! How about an Immaculate Confection (the Virgin Mary's likeness in a cinnamon roll)? Or Binny Hen, the Scripture Chicken--part of the modus operandi of Dr. Hogmanay McTavish's Gospel Tent Revival Shows (complete with a giggle-inducing send-up of country western music as rendered by the choir of Sinking Pond Baptist Church)? Or the goings-on at an Iron Mike Men's Retreat, complete with pebble envy?
Some of Schweizer's musical references in this latest offering include Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, baroque music by Schütz, Corelli, and Handel (the Nightingale and Cuckoo Organ Concerto as conclusion to another madcap Puppet Ministry presentation at St. Barnabas), and William H. Harris's lovely anthem Behold the Tabernacle of God, a challenge for the choir's alto section.
Suffice it to say that the main tale involving Konig, his long-time lady friend Meg, and the parish clergy, staff, and parishioners, is both diabolic and ingenious--a recreation detective novel that goes by all too quickly.
I await the next installment of this evolving St. Germaine Quartet with the highest expectation that the author's soprano will manage to provide a story equally as humorous as that provoked by her lower-voiced colleagues.
Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275;
