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Judith Armstrong, Honorary Fellow of the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne

Music, silence, love and power: the engrossing story of a child prodigy in the court of Louis XIV

Louis XIV Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

Brilliant. Inventive. Devilish.

This is how 15-year old Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (1699-1742) describes the music that his father Antoine (1672-1745) draws from the viol, aka viola da gamba. The same words could be applied to this novel, a brilliant read inventively devised by Adelaide’s Michael Meehan, but somewhat devilish to review.

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