It is 1629, and a young English lute-player arrives at the court of Danish King Christian IV to play in the Royal Orchestra. From the moment he learns that the musicians must perform in a freezing cellar, he understands that he's come to a place where Good and Evil are waging a war to the death.
Set in seventeenth-century Denmark, Rose Tremain's dazzling, prize-winning tale is a pungently atmospheric, richly provocative, and masterfully orchestrated romance of point and counterpoint: loyalty and deception...tenderness and violence...community and alienation...peace and conflict...Music & Silence.
Peter Claire is an English lutenist summoned to Denmark to join King Christian IV's royal orchestra. Designated the king's "Angel" because of the purity of his physical beauty, Peter falls helplessly in love with the lovely companion of Queen Kirsten, the king's adulterous wife. The young musician finds himself dangerously torn between loyalties, ensnared in the deep-seated unrest of a royal court where the forces of good and evil, of harmony and dissonance, are ensconced in a battle to the death.