Walz of Sound

In his short story, “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes trick two criminals into believing that he is playing the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s opera fantastique, The Tales of Hoffmann, on his violin in his chambers at 221B Baker Street. “Pray make yourself quite at home in my absence,” he instructs them. “Holmes,” we are told, “withdrew, picking up his violin from the corner as he passed. A few moments later the long-drawn, wailing notes of that most haunting of tunes came faintly through the...