A Symphony of Narrative Voices in Rose Tremain’s Music and Silence
A Symphony of Narrative Voices in Rose Tremain’s Music and Silence

Summary/Abstract: This paper looks at Rose Tremain’s historical novel Music and Silence (1999) as illustration of an ingenious Postmodernist masterpiece relying on literary representations of music and musicians and aspiring to turn literature into music. On the one hand, our intention is to shed some light on the role and functions of music and musicians at the textual level, on the other hand, our analysis will focus on the multiple narrative voices used to change perspectives and to move backwards and forwards in time and space. The novelty of the approach and the intricate narrative structure have become incredibly appealing to a 21st century reader unawares of what to expect from a novel set in 1629 at the court of the Danish king Christian IV. The same as Jens Ingemann, the Music Master in the novel, Tremain creates a unique symphony out of different types of discourse and points of view.

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