Violin Music of Sherlock Holmes

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     My last music blog was based on the A. Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes. As he is inextricably linked with the violin. I decided to put together another music post on him. In the first Holmes' story, "A Study in Scarlet", Watson mentions "that he could play pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn's Lieder, and other favourites." In "The Red-Headed League", Holmes and Watson attend a concert of Sarasate at St. James' Hall. In "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" Holmes say he is going the other room to play the Hoffman Barcarolle on his violin. Sherlock often plays pieces by Bach or Mozart, he prefers German music to French or Italian, he tells anecdotes of Paganini and he wrote a monograph about Orlando di Lasso. In "Dressed to Kill" Rathbone's Holmes plays "Londonderry Air" (not London derriere), also known as "Danny Boy". At the end of episode two of the television series Elementary, Miller's Sherlock plays Bach's Partita No. 2. The BBC Sherlock series ended with Cumberbatch's Holmes playing the violin with his sister and so my playlist ends with that as well.

Hear what Sherlock might have played on his Stradivari here:

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