Propelled by the prophecy that all musicians are the descendants of Cain, the story centers on two friends: a bastard peasant boy burdened with a great talent and the only heir to an Austrian aristocratic family desperately clinging to the prerogatives of noble birth. Theirs is the age-old tale of the doppelganger reimagined: companions, perhaps brothers, and, inevitably, lethal enemies.

The lives of the main characters intertwine in a mysterious and magical fugue, in which music is at once threat and consolation. Immortality, history, and an all-consuming passion come to play in this artfully layered, erudite narrative. Maurensig's sensuous prose brings to life an age, an art, and the spirit of music.