A Musical Offering: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment - Softcover

"Lively...with a delicious cast of characters...Gaines shows himself a deft writer."--Denver Post

"Intelligent, stylish, wryly witty, serious yet never solemn, and above all passionate in its celebration of a great composer."--The Guardian

"Highly entertaining... Lovers of music, European history, and Western philosophy will find this book an enormous pleasure."--Library Journal (starred review)

"Impossible to put down when one is dancing, swerving, stumbling through [the] extraordinary brilliance...a wonderfully engaging tale."--The Independent (Sunday)

"A book-length romp that is less like a B-Minor Mass than an Italian opera...Wonderful."--Harper's Magazine

"Filled with sensible speculation and insights, Gaines' books is a model for humanities writing."--San Antonio Express-News

"Gaines writes with admirable erudition...No author could want a more promising pair of antagonists."--New York Times Book Review

"Gaines writes very accessibly...A marvelous story that will captivate the classical music audience."--Booklist

"An eloquent and fascinating study, highly debatable at points yet all the more stimulating for that...Accessible and entertaining."--Time magazine

"First rate...[Gaines] writes superbly and makes us feel at home with things that would have sounded arcane otherwise."--Daily Telegraph (London)

The story of the history-making meeting between scorned master composer Johann Sebastian Bach and Prussia's Frederick the Great discusses Frederick's abuse-marked upbringing, his challenge to Bach to improvise an intricate fugue, and their clashes about faith as they reflected the Reformation and Enlightenment periods. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.