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21st Oct 2018

The musical world of Sherlock Holmes

“My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes, the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.”

The only surviving evidence of Sherlock Holmes’ career as a composer is a single remark by his friend and colleague Dr. Watson. However, Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories often mention music and so permit us to have some idea of the great detective’s musical world.