Ok, my first 221B challenge. Whew, that was good exercise! Kai's icon started it all. It's one of my absolute favorites. Then later, I re-stumbled onto Watson's sublime observation on Holmes' music:

"Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the result of a whim or fancy was more than I could determine."

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His concentration is clean as he poises the bow.

I watch him, face still, face set, as if he does not know what effect the music will create inside him until the notes are released.

He is a maestro, and I am his only audience.

I wonder: does he play for anyone else? Mrs. Hudson and I are his violin's only audience. It is both private and generous. I wonder what extension of trust that must mean, for he never plays in the company of Kings. He does not even play in the presence of his brother. There are days, even nights when the sky is warm when he plays by his open window and the Irregulars stop in their labours to listen…I think in some way he plays for these dirty urchins; their eyes shine in the way a head of state's cannot. He fooled Count Sylvius with his recording of Offenbach; I think he would have never sullied his instrument by playing it in such a fiend's presence.

Our rooms may be small, but the music opens the walls to Creation.

I have heard him speak gently and affectionately of his violins. His Stradivarius, to be sure; but also the instruments of the greats. Paganini; Wagner; Norman-Neruda; Sarasate; Mendelssohn…it was Mendelssohn's Songs without Words that appealed to us both.