by Eileen Atkins
Dr. Arne was a personal friend of Handel, who was twenty-five years his senior and thought a great deal of him. It was of Arne's famous tune ' Rule, Britannia!' that Wagner, many years later, said, the first eight notes contain the whole character of the British people.'
Arne could invent other good tunes, as his still popular songs attest, and as we may gather also from the Sonata in A, which however, is not one of the fully-developed Mozart or Beethoven type, but on the earlier, simpler pattern.