Steven Poole usic and silence, as Rose Tremain knows, are not necessarily opposites. They inhabit each other.
Silence is given meaning by the music built around it.
And much of the meaning of music resides in the unique character of silence that it engenders at its end. This is a truth unknown to those who begin clapping on the very instant the music has stopped sounding. A work's one true live performance, with seconds of contemplative reverberance dissolving into stillness, can only happen on its world premiere. Divorced from the taming, creative influence of music, silence becomes an avatar of despair. It is 1629, and Peter Claire has arrived at the palace of King Christian IV of Denmark to join the court orchestra.