Canonly one of Dr. John H. Watson’s favourite pieces. In A Study in Scarlet, it is one of the pieces he has Sherlock play to test his aptitude with the violin. Mendelssohn’s songs without words are notorious for their romanticism.
And, before they were communicating well with words, they were communicating deeply with music.
When left to himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognised air. Leaning back in his arm-chair of an evening, he would close his eyes and scrape carelessly at the fiddle which was thrown across his knee. Sometimes the chords were sonorous and melancholy. Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful. Clearly they reflected thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply a result of a whim or fancy, was more than I could determine. I might have rebelled against these exasperating solos had it not been that he usually terminated them by playing in quick succession a whole series of my favourite airs as a slight compensation for the trial upon my patience.
-A Study in Scarlet
(Source: lullalunekjaer)
