Music & Silence - Hardcover

Tremain, Rose

3.95

4,536 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 186056027X ISBN 13: 9781860560279

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 1999

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In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realises that the musicians have to perform in a freezing cellar underneath the Royal apartments, he understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of Good and Evil, Light and Dark are waging a war to the death. Designated the 'King's Angels' because of his blond good looks, he finds himself falling in love with a young woman who is the companion of the King's adulterous and estranged wife, Kirsten. With his loyalties fatally divided, how can Peter Claire find the path that will realise his hopes and save his soul? (1999-03-22)

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Review:

Rose Tremain deserves a Hallelujah chorus dedicated just to her: a decade after the appearance of Restoration--and with a range of stunning novels and short story collections before and after it--now comes her glorious and enthralling Music and Silence.

This treasure house of delights, as haunting as it is pleasurable, teems with characters, real and imagined; with intrigues, searches, betrayals, in vivid scene after scene which loop in and out, back and forth, like overlapping and repeated chords.

King Christian IV of Denmark is, in the year of 1630, living in a limbo of fear and rage for his life, his country's ruin, and his wife's not-so-secret adultery. He consoles himself with the weaving of impossible dreams and with music--played by his Royal Orchestra in the freezing cellar at Rosenborg while he listens in his cosy Vinterstue above. Music, he hopes, will create the sublime order he craves. Kirsten, his devious wife, is a continual maker of Beautiful Plans to outwit, avenge, feed her greed. And she detests music.

The awkward duty of assuaging the King's miseries falls to his English lutenist, Peter Claire, his "Angel", whilst Emilia Tilsen must bend to Kirsten's every whim. Yet what Peter and Emilia seek is each other, largely in silence both necessary and cruelly imposed. Other stories, each of them full of fabulous and often joyful and witty invention, intertwine through the Royal Court's machinations: the King's mother who hoards her gold in secret; his boyhood friend, Bror, a tormenting memory; the villagers who suffer and wait in the frozen Numedal; Emilia's mute young brother Marcus. And in Ireland, Johnnie O'Fingal, once a kind father and husband, is driven mad by hearing music of utter divinity in his dreams, but which neither he nor Peter Claire can make earthbound. His devoted but spirited wife has distracted herself with Claire, but now finds herself rejected. Palpable with desire and longing, this extraordinary narrative builds its grand themes in storytelling that is both profound and wonderfully satisfying. --Ruth Petrie

Review:

"The best historical novelist of her generation. She evokes the past--with sensuality, wit and superb sleights of hand." - A. N. Wilson "Lyrical, voluptuous--splendid--A sumptuous drama lit by the glamorous torchlight of the courtly past." - "Sunday Times" "Historical fiction so epic in scope and so moving and imaginative that the reader lives a second life." - "Time Out" "Superb--a wonderful, joyously noisy book." - "Guardian" "Tremain's achievement in "Music & Silence" is extraordinary--A narrative as funny as it is compelling." - "Daily Telegraph" "Magnificent--shot through with Tremain's unique blend of psychological acuity and charm." - "The Times" "From the Trade Paperback edition."

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