"Fantasia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still play "Rosin the Beau," I wonder? I asked a violinist to play it to me the other day, and he had never heard of the tune. He played me something else, which he said was very fine,—a fantasia in E flat, I think it was; but I did not care for it. I wanted to hear "Rosin the Beau," the cradle-song of the fiddle,—the sweet, simple, foolish old song, which every "blind crowder" who could handle a fiddle-bow could play in his sleep fifty years ago, and which is now wellnigh forgotten. ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... The captive's hornpipe!... A fantasia on the corpse of a representative of the people!... The chloroform polka!... The two-step of the conquered goggles! Olle! Olle! The blackmailer's fandango! Hoot! Hoot! The McDaubrecq's fling!... The turkey trot!... And the bunny hug!... And the grizzly bear!... The Tyrolean ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... countenance of the Honourable Samuel Slumkey, of Slumkey Hall; upon which the Honourable Samuel Slumkey, his blood being up, defied Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, to mortal combat. At this violation of all known rules and precedents of order, the mayor commanded another fantasia on the bell, and declared that he would bring before himself, both Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, of Fizkin Lodge, and the Honourable Samuel Slumkey, of Slumkey Hall, and bind them over to keep the peace. Upon this terrific denunciation, the supporters of the two candidates interfered, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... entertained as the Agha's guest, being introduced to Tahar Ben Hadj and several caids invited for the bridegroom's part of the festivities. There was much feasting, with music and strange dances in Tahar's tent at night, and outside, fantasia for the douar in honour of the wedding; sheep roasted whole, and "powder play." What was going on in the bride's half of her father's great tent Max did not know, but he fancied that, above the beating of Tahar's tomtoms and the wild singing of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... 'Bravo!' but I believe this was rather because the audience wished to show that they appreciated serious music than because they were able to follow and appreciate such music." And regarding the fantasia on Polish airs he says that it completely missed its mark: "There was indeed some applause by the audience, but obviously only to show the pianist that they were not bored." The ultra-Germans, he writes in another letter, did not appear to be quite satisfied; and he relates that one of these, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... preparations and much emotional shilly-shallying, Chopin gave his third and last Warsaw concert. He played the E minor concerto for the first time in public but not in sequence. The first and last two movements were separated by an aria, such being the custom of those days. Later he gave the Fantasia on Polish airs. Best of all for him, Miss Gladowska sang a Rossini air, "wore a white dress and roses in her hair, and was charmingly beautiful." Thus Chopin; and the details have all the relevancy of a male besieged by Dan Cupid. Chopin must have played well. He said so himself, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... non si sente?' 'Egli se n' ando dianzi in quel boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... to dances and crushes, in short, to every possible kind of diversion and frivolity that the gay world of London could devise. He went steadily on with his letters. More photographers wanted him to sit to them. Would he accept the dedication of "The Squire's Daughter Fantasia"? The composer of "The Starry Night Valses" would like a lithographic portrait of Mr. Lionel Moore to appear on the cover. A humble admirer of Mr. Lionel Moore's great impersonation of Harry Thornhill begged to forward the enclosed acrostic, and might he be allowed ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... helmets wore their chin-straps like Portugee earrings. Oh, yes; an' three of 'em 'ad only one boot! I knew what our bafflin' tattics was goin' to be, but even I was mildly surprised when this gay fantasia of Brazee drummers halted under the poop, because of an 'ammick in charge of our Navigator, an' a small but ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... indeed, seriousness apart, might be regarded as a fantasia for barbers; for the different ways of dressing the hair would alone serve as symbols of different races and religions. Thus the Greek priests of the Orthodox Church, bearded and robed in black with black towers upon their heads, have for ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... she had realized the strength of the glamour. She fought against it; nevertheless, in imagination gave herself up to it, as the opium-smoker or haschisch-eater gives himself up to the insidious FANTASIA of his drug. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... humorous references to remarkable performances on various instruments more or less musical in their nature. During the election at Eatanswill the crier performed two concertos on his bell, and shortly afterwards followed them up with a fantasia on the same instrument. Dickens suffered much from church bells, and gives vent to his feelings about them in Little ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... conductor of this wondrous symphony, this beautiful Mozart fantasia, and if you listen, you can hear the strains of the great beautiful melodies wafted now east, now west, now north, now south, rising to great climaxes, falling back to great chords of harmony, or, in an allegro movement, causing you almost to trip with delight ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... ready to acknowledge that in outward show, these processions have greatly improved: we do not deny the introduction of solos on the drum; we will even go so far as to admit an occasional fantasia on the triangle, but here our admissions end. We positively deny that the sweeps have art or part in these proceedings. We distinctly charge the dustmen with throwing what they ought to clear away, into the eyes of the public. We accuse scavengers, brickmakers, and gentlemen who devote their ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... amalgamated with a no-tariff group who are near-Continentalists, is at least entitled to serious regard as a fantastic experiment in administration. But we may trust Hon. Mackenzie King to simulate a vast moving-picture smile of high benevolence and great sagacity as he contemplates such a fantasia—with himself as the chief tight-rope ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... technicalities relating to the politics of the Peninsula. A couple of days later he sets off for the land of sun and sleep with what he calls his Spanish kit in a portmanteau. This he purchased in the "Sierpe" for forty pesetas at a ready-made tailor's, where it was labelled "Fantasia." It is merely a tweed suit, but, wearing it, Cartoner is safe from the reproach that doggeth the step ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... as described to him by the chief actor in it, when the inventor announced to his family that the thing was accomplished, the mechanism perfect, and how that very night they should hear Chopin's great Fantasia, Op. 49, played by ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a strange fantasia that poured itself through his obedient fingers; it held the wistful chants of ancient ritual, the festival roulades and plaintive yearnings of melodious cantors, the sing-song augmentation of Talmud-students oscillating in airless study-houses, the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Mr. Home's demands on the public capacity of swallowing, as sounded through the war-denouncing trumpet of Mr. Howitt, and it is not our intention to revive the strain as performed by Mr. Home on his own melodious instrument. We notice, by the way, that in that part of the Fantasia where the hand of the first Napoleon is supposed to be reproduced, recognised, and kissed, at the Tuileries, Mr. Home subdues the florid effects one might have expected after Mr. Howitt's execution, and brays in an extremely general manner. And yet we observe Mr. Home to ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... however, is less rigid in form than the average sonata. In it, in fact, Beethoven may be said to have broken away from form, for after the word sonata he adds the qualifying phrase "quasi una fantasia," signifying that, although he calls the work a sonata, it has the characteristics ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Beni-Kouidar. I waited, watching the moon rise, till my cigar was smoked out. Then I lit another. Still he did not come. I heard the distant throb of tomtoms beyond the Bureau Arabe in the quarter of the freed negroes. They were having a fantasia. I began to think that I must have been mistaken, and that Marnier had really turned in. So much the better. The ash dropped from the stump of my second cigar, and the deserted camel market was flooded with silver from the moon-rays. I knew there was only one door to the inn. ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... Captain Ali Bey Shukri's place had been taken by Captain Hasan-Bey, an Osmanli of Cavala who, having been forty-eight years in the service, sighed for his pension. He did, however, everything in his power to make us feel "at home;" and the evening ended with a fantasia of a more pronounced character than anything that I had ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... extendia Su cetro de oro y su blason divino? 5 Volabase a occidente, Y el vasto mar Atlantico sembrado Se hallaba de su gloria y su fortuna. Do quiera Espana: en el preciado seno 10 De America, en el Asia, en los confines Del Africa, alli Espana. El soberano Vuelo de la atrevida fantasia Para abarcarla se cansaba en vano; La tierra sus mineros le rendia, Sus perlas y coral el Oceano, 15 Y donde quier que revolver sus olas El intentase, a quebrantar su furia Siempre encontraba costas ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... impression on its contemporaries and had a strong influence on the Romantic movement generally—is a fantasia of nightmare based on the beginning of The Golden Ass, with, again, a sort of prologue and epilogue of modern love. It is undoubtedly a fine piece of work of its kind and beautifully written. But in itself it seems to me a little too much of a tour ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thought of "finding such a one as you." That discovery introduced a new and unknown factor into his scheme of things. The love-poetry of the Dramatic Lyrics and Romances is still somewhat tentative and insecure. The beautiful fantasia In a Gondola was directly inspired by a picture of his friend Maclise. He paints the romance of the lover's twilight tryst with all his incisive vigour; but his own pulse beats rather with the lover who goes forth at daybreak, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... by the publisher of a magazine, at a musicale in Gotham. Our hostess, an accomplished pianist, had played a Chopin Fantasia, and the magazine man was expressing his qualified enjoyment. "What I can't understand," said he, "is why the tune quits just when it's running along nicely." This phenomenon, no doubt, has mystified thousands ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Mr. ARTHUR BROCK, the well-known pyrotechnist, to express his opinion of STRAVINSKY'S orchestral fantasia, "Fireworks," on the occasion of its second performance at Queen's Hall on the 28th inst., has, we are delighted to learn, been fruitful of a series of similar invitations, not only in the sphere of music but also in the domain of art ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... phenomena of executive brilliance are there, or are momentarily expected to appear. We begin after an overture with, say, an air from the Puritani, by a lovely tenor; another, from the Somnambula, by a charming soprano; a fantasia by a legerdemain pianist, with long hair, and who comes down on the key-board as though it was his enemy; the famous song from Figaro—encored; the madrigal, 'Down in a Flowery Vale'—the latter always a sure card; a duet from Semiramide, by two young ladies—rather ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... flamed in the wide grate behind me: warmth has always been to me the first necessary of life. I turned round on the revolving stool and faced the fire, and felt it on my cheeks, and I asked myself: 'Why am I affected like this? Why am I what I am?' For even before beginning to play the Fantasia of Chopin, I was moved, and the tears had come into my eyes, and the shudder to my spine. I gazed at the room inquiringly, and of course I found no answer. It was one of those rooms whose spacious and consistent ugliness grows old into a sort ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Beethoven's Choral Fantasia, and Bargiel's Symphony in C, given in New York City, by ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... suffering humanity, I have never allowed any other motive to influence me, and never required anything beyond the heartfelt gratification that it always caused me. With this you will receive an Oratorio—(A), the performance of which occupies half an evening, also an Overture and a Fantasia with Chorus—(B). If in your benevolent institution you possess a depot for such things, I beg you will deposit these three works there, as a mark of my sympathy for the destitute; to be considered as their property, and to be given at ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... remember that at this time he was only twenty-seven. It was at this time, too, that he wrote the only composition he ever dedicated to the comtesse. In later years, it was almost the only composition of his that she would praise; it was a fantasia on the "Huguenots." The two lovers continued their wanderings through Italy and Austria, he giving concerts for the flood sufferers and the Beethoven monument and she travelling with him. While ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... hovercraft, and the growing Tuareg encampment. His diagnosis had been correct. A contingent of possibly two score Tuareg camelmen had come a-galloping up, shaking rifles above their heads in a small scale gymhana, or fantasia as the Moors ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... all his productions it goes before him like a light sent down from Heaven to guide him, will take it for granted without any evidence that Beethoven was susceptible of the purest love, and that he was conducted by it. What genius could have composed the Fantasia in C, commonly called the "Moonlight or the Moonshine Sonata," without such a passion? It was love, for Bettine, to whom that imaginative composition is dedicated, (and to whom I shall again have occasion to allude,) which inspired him while engaged upon it. This piece will now ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... contributed much to the development of harpsichord music. Jan Swielinck (1562-1621), the great organist of Amsterdam, did not regard his work on composition as complete without placing in it a canon by John Bull, and the latter wrote a fantasia upon a fugue of Swielinck. For the ascription to Bull of the composition of the British national anthem, see NATIONAL ANTHEMS. Good modern reprints, e.g. of the Fitzwilliam Virginal-Book, "The King's Hunting Jig," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... indiscretion of Messrs. Breitkopf and Hartel (to reward me for my abstemiousness, Weinlich induced them to publish this poor composition). From that moment he gave me a free hand. To begin with I was allowed to compose a Fantasia for the pianoforte (in F sharp minor) which I wrote in a quite informal style by treating the melody in recitative form; this gave me intense satisfaction because it won me praise ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... that, when he completed his circuit, the musicians were just arriving, and their silhouettes, headed by that of the burdened bass fiddler, staggered against the light of the glowing doorway like a fantasia of giant beetles. Noble felt that it would be better to let them get settled, and therefore walked round ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... under his arm, while he threw his hands behind him, elevated his head, his features almost distorted with a smile of ecstasy, and his very hair instinct with life, at the conclusion of an unparalleled fantasia! And there he stood, immovable and triumphant, while the theatre rang again with peals on peals of applause, and shouts of the wildest enthusiasm! None who witnessed this will ever forget it, nor are they likely again to see the same effect ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... La Fantasia e il Disinganno/ ed altri metrici componimenti/ di Gaetano Polidori/ colle sue traduzioni/ Del Lamento del Tasso/ di Lord Byron/ ... Londra 1843./ Impresso da J. Wilson e W. Ward nella pri-/vata stamperia dell' autore al numero 15 di/ Park ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Noobian peoples. They come from his dahabeeyah. It is at Luxor, waiting for him. They have nuthin' to do, and so they make the fantasia to-night." ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... The child looked dull, wearied, during this part of the trial, and his master, perceiving it, announced the exhibition closed, when the musician (who was a citizen of the town, by-the-way) drew out a thick roll of score, which he explained to be a Fantasia of his own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... confined himself principally to works of slight calibre, which have been on the whole more successful than many of his earlier and more ambitious efforts. 'Sapho' (1897), an operatic version of Daudet's famous novel, and 'Cendrillon' (1899), a charming fantasia on the old theme of Cinderella, both succeeded in hitting Parisian taste. No less fortunate was 'Griselidis' (1901), a quasi-mediaeval musical comedy, founded upon the legend of Patient Grizel, and touching the verge of pantomime in the characters of a comic Devil and his shrewish spouse. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... had been preceded by a book of poems, the fantasia "The Shaving of Shagpat" and an historical novelette "Farina," was the first book that announced the arrival of a great novelist. It is at once a romance of the modern type, a love-story and a problem book; the tri-statement makes ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... this, the greatest work I have ever written, is well worth 1000 florins C.M. It is a new grand symphony, with a finale and voice parts introduced, solo and choruses, the words being those of Schiller's immortal "Ode to Joy," in the style of my pianoforte Choral Fantasia, only of much greater breadth. The price is 600 florins C.M. One condition is, indeed, attached to this Symphony, that it is not to appear till next year, July, 1825; but to compensate for this long delay, I will give you a pianoforte arrangement of the ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... grand fantasia at the castle of the greatest of Druze sheykhs in honour of a visit from the English Consul-General in Syria; and as an Englishman I was invited to be there. It was a journey of a day and a half. Upon ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... been reserved for outsiders, and presently began to be filled by those who had bought tickets. Miss Beasley and Miss Gibbs took their places, Mademoiselle played an introductory fantasia upon the piano, and ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... comment we select the Menuetto in B minor from the Fantasia for Pianoforte, op. 78; the fourth Impromptu in A-flat major from the set, op. 90, and the B minor Symphony for orchestra. The Menuetto, though one of Schubert's simpler pieces—the first part in an idealized Mozartian vein—yet exemplifies in the Trio one of the composer's most characteristic ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, it came into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed the language so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundred years. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical fantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. He presently recognized what appeared to him to be an altered version of the story of Tannhauser. The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering was realistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did not go to a ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the loss of his mascot, Mahommed Seti was drummed out of line, out of his regiment, out of the Beit-el-Mal. It was opera boufe, and though Seti could not know what opera boufe was, he did know that it was a ridiculous fantasia, and he grinned his insolent grin all the way, even to the corner of the camel-market, where the drummer and the sergeant and his squad turned back from ministering a disgrace ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... difficulty, and nothing but some ferocious pantomime and a shilling persuaded him to forego a choice fantasia of cockney humour. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... may have the dullest possible intelligence and be a portrait painter; but a man must have a serious intellect in order to be a caricaturist. He has to select what thing he will caricature. True satire is always of this intellectual kind; true satire is always, so to speak, a variation or fantasia upon the air of pure logic. The satirist is the man who carries men's enthusiasm further than they carry it themselves. He outstrips the most extravagant fanatic. He is years ahead of the most audacious prophet. He sees where men's detached ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... a part of the man, and this gentle creature seemed a part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside him that whatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia crept into the harmony as by stealth. Doubtless her presence acted on the music, and shaped and softened it; but, he, who never examined how or what his inspiration, knew it not. All that he knew was, that he loved and blessed her. He fancied he told her so twenty times a day; but he never did, for ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... general success. During this period of Schumann's life the most important works he composed were the "Etudes Symphoniques," the famous "Carnival" dedicated to Liszt, the "Scenes of Childhood," the "Fantasia" dedicated to Liszt, the "Novellettes," and "Kreisleriana." As he writes to Heinrich Dorn: "Much music is the result of the contest I am passing through for Clara's sake." Schumann's compositions had been introduced to the public by the gifted interpretation of Clara Wieck, with ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Only 35 are printed: the one in C, containing the adagio in F included in all the collections of smaller pieces, only in London. 4 sonatas for clavier and violin. 8 are published, but 4 of these are arrangements. 9 smaller pieces, including 5 Nos. of variations, a capriccio, a fantasia, 2 adagios and "differentes petites pieces." 1 ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... few readers of these sketches; but if I could put into words the indescribable power which it exercises over my own mood I should be doing something to mitigate its remoteness from normal feelings. It is a wild mad thing, this poem—a fantasia upon a melancholy and terrible truth—but it has the power of launching one's mind down long and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... pronounced 'original, and new in art.' 'He could talk of nothing else,' says the writer, 'for a long time; and every time he speaks of him, he adds: 'Ma che artista, che grand' artista, quel vostro compatriota! Che fantasia! quanto studio della natura!' 'But what an artist, what a great artist, is this countryman of yours! What fancy, what study of nature!' . . . WE are aware of a pair of 'bonny blue een' swimming in light, that will ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Music. — N. music; concert; strain, tune, air; melody &c. 413; aria, arietta[obs3]; piece of music[Fr], work, number, opus; sonata; rondo, rondeau[Fr]; pastorale, cavatina[obs3], roulade[obs3], fantasia, concerto, overture, symphony, variations, cadenza; cadence; fugue, canon, quodlibet, serenade, notturno [Italian], dithyramb; opera, operetta; oratorio; composition, movement; stave; passamezzo [obs3][Italian], toccata, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spare beds. Everybody now sees through the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing a fantasia ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 25, 1841 • Various
... normal standpoint, Beddoes' idea of the drama was something wildly amateurish. As a practical playwright he would be beneath contempt; but what he aimed at was something peculiar to himself, a sort of spectral dramatic fantasia. He would have admitted his obligations to Webster and Tourneur, to all the macabre Elizabethan work; he would have admitted that his foundations were based on literature, not on life; but he would have claimed, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... patience was rewarded; the mystery was solved; I saw the Unknown! While my eyes were fixed upon a certain bush before me, the singer incautiously ventured too near the top of a twig, and I saw him plainly, standing almost upright, and vehemently chanting his fantasia, opening his mouth very wide with every call. I knew him at once, the rogue! from having read of him; he was the yellow-breasted chat. It was well, indeed, that I happened to be looking at that very spot, and that I was quick ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... auditors. In Allegro movements there would be bravura passages, often more difficult than anything in his published works. Sometimes it would be in the form of variations after the manner of his Choral Fantasia, op. 80, or the last movement of the Choral Symphony. All authorities agree as to Beethoven's genius in improvising. His playing was better under these circumstances than when playing a written composition, even when it was ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Rubinstein's musical portrait "Faust," and Gade's "Spring Fantasia" given in New York City, by ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... lamentos, y en lontananza el castillo tradicional,[1] coronado de almenas obscuras, que parecian fantasmas asomadas a los muros, senti una impresion angustiosa, mis cabellos se erizaron involuntariamente, y la razon, dominada por la fantasia, a la que todo ayudaba, el sitio, la hora y el silencio de la noche, vacilo un punto, y casi crei que las absurdas consejas de las brujerias y los ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... be sure, some of the old teachers considered the second F minor sonata of Beethoven the highest peak of execution and confined themselves to teaching Mozart and Field, Cramer and Mendelssohn, with an occasional fantasia by Thalberg—the latter to please the proud papa after dessert. Schumann was not understood; Chopin was misunderstood; and Liszt was anathema. Yet we often heard a sweet, singing tone, even if the mechanism was not above the normal. I am sure those ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... listener at once into a frolicsome mood. It seems to be the most careless of little pieces, drawing none of its material from the music of the play, making light of some of the formulas which demanded respect at the time (there is no free fantasia), laughing and singing its innocent life out in less than five minutes as if it were breathing an atmosphere of pure oxygen. It romps; it does not reflect or feel. Motion is its business, not emotion. It has no concern ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the Toccata was a form of musical composition for the organ or harpsichord, somewhat in the free and brilliant style of the modern fantasia or capriccio; clavichord: "a keyed stringed instrument, now superseded by the pianoforte {now ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... of the Fourth Book is a beautiful fantasia on a similar theme. He paints, too, the tortures of jealousy with the vigour (Odes, I. 13) of a man who ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the house solicited and cajoled, the young ladies bashfully entreated with their eyes, and all pressed around the artist and supported the request, the postmaster even offering extra horses if Chopin would go on with his playing. Who could resist? Chopin sat down again, and resumed his fantasia. When he had ended, a servant brought in wine, the postmaster proposed as a toast "the favourite of Polyhymnia," and one of the audience, an old musician, gave voice to his feelings by telling the hero that, "if Mozart had heard you, he would ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... pleasing people in Manchester. In this matter he is to be noted in connection with national developments much later; for he thus became the first prophet of the Socialists. Sartor Resartus is an admirable fantasia; The French Revolution is, with all its faults, a really fine piece of history; the lectures on Heroes contain some masterly sketches of personalities. But I think it is in Past and Present, and the essay on Chartism, that Carlyle achieves the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... she went to the window and taxed his powers to the utmost, by running up and down difficult roulades, interspersed with the talk of parrots, the shrill fanfare of trumpets, and the deep growl of a contra-fagotto. The bird produced a grotesque fantasia in his efforts to imitate her. The peacock, as he strutted up and down the piazza, trailing his gorgeous plumage in the sunshine, ever and anon turned his glossy neck, and held up his ear to listen, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... obstinately at his own feet. When at last a stray musician with a worn face, long hair, and an eyeglass stuck into his contorted eyebrow sat down to the grand piano and flinging his hands with a sweep on the keys and his foot on the pedal, began to attack a fantasia of Liszt on a Wagner motive, Aratov could not stand it, and stole off, bearing away in his heart a vague, painful impression; across which, however, flitted something incomprehensible to him, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... on her way home, and her spirit revived. It seemed suddenly as if there had been a great ado about nothing! As if someone had known how stupid men could be, and been playing a fantasia on that stupidity. But this gaiety of spirit soon died away, confronted by the problem of what she should ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
