Tuneful Tidbits

• Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba was used at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics to accompany a video of James Bond (aka actor Daniel Craig) arriving at Buckingham Palace, where 007 was received by Elizabeth II. 
• Like Beethoven, William Boyce became increasingly deaf in his later years, but continued to compose.
• Vivaldi wrote over 200 concertos for violin including 10 in the key of E minor. E minor seems to be a dramatic and passionate key for him.
• The second movement “Air” of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 is known as the Air on the G String, although that is not how Bach intended it to be played. In 1871 German violinist August Wilhelmj arranged the piece for solo violin and strings and transposed it down so that it could be played entirely on the lowest string of the violin.