"Harmonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as his fingers snatched at fugitive harmonic experimentings: "It's not all right up town. I wish that you would run up some night. You've not seen Ellenora for months, and perhaps you could induce her to put the brake on." I was puzzled. Putting the brake on a woman is always a risky experiment, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... orchestra (the performance taking place immediately after supper), and a chorus composed of the entire "Sauer Kraut-Verein," the "Wee Gates Association," and choice selections from the "Gyascutus" and "Pike-harmonic" societies. The solos were rendered by Herr Tuden Links, the recitations by Herr Von Hyden Schnapps, both performers being assisted by Messrs. John Smith and Joseph Brown, who held their coats, fanned them, and furnished water ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... corresponded to ancient life—that captivated me, that led me away, and not a substantial knowledge of the work done by the naturalists. I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new—the washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is broken off short, it ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... appeal to the primitive passion for violence and blood which found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story, and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which the new field ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... literally debauched several generations of students. Shall I mention names? Better disturb neither the dead nor the quick. In the matter of writing for more voices than one we have retrograded considerably since the days of Bach. We have, to be sure, built up a more complex harmonic system, beautiful chords have been invented, or rather re-discovered—for in Bach all were latent—but, confound it, children! these chords are too slow, too ponderous in gait for me. Music is, first of all, motion, after that emotion. I like movement, rhythmical variety, polyphonic life. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... even-song at the cathedral. I shall not say what I felt when the white-surpliced boy choir entered, winding down those vaulted aisles, or when I heard for the first time that intoned service, with all its "witchcraft of harmonic sound." I sat quite by myself in a high carved-oak seat, and the hour was passed in a trance of serene delight. I do not have many opinions, it is true, but papa says I am always strong on sentiments; nevertheless, I shall not attempt to tell even what ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... such as air or brass, the rate of vibration of the compound is the least common multiple of the two or more rates. In chemical compounds, such as water or alcohol, the rate is that of the highest, the others uniting in harmonic fractions. ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... douce tolerance remplacant la farouche inquisition; j'y vois un jour de fete; Peruvians, Mexicains, Americains libres, Francois, s'embrassant comme des freres, et benissant le regne de la liberte, qui doit amener partout une harmonic universelle.—Mais les mines, les esclaves, que deviendront-ils? Les mines se fermerout; les esclaves seront les freres de leurs ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... gave it value as a clue to new truths. According to his statement, a body absorbs all the series of vibrations it is, under any circumstances, capable of emitting, as well as those connected with them by simple harmonic relations. This is far too wide. To render it either true or useful, it had to be reduced to the cautious terms employed by Kirchhoff. Radiation strictly and necessarily corresponds with absorption only when the temperature is the same. In point of fact, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... with the courses in practical music. The first-year class, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musical selection played by one of its members, and must decide by internal evidence—such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as applied to the accompaniment and other characteristics—upon the school of the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of the musical selection and the reasons for her decision are ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... became a song in her heart. The snow that had, clung to the pines, muting their needles and stilling their branches, had dropped on during the day. Now the night wind which drove the clouds lingered through the pine tops and set them swaying gently in the vast, harmonic rhythm which is like the surging of a distant ocean. The everlasting whisper of the pines, that ancient hushed voice which through the countless centuries has never been still save when briefly silenced by the snow; which had borne ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... comes the harmonic material for much of what remains of the composition. At each repetition of the theme, the chord in the fourth measure is augmented by the addition of another interval, until in the end it includes every tone of the chromatic scale save C sharp. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... distant from each other frequently perform the same song, and alternately change it, for hours together. While this harmonic correspondence continues, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages chaunt their couplets, the youth of both sexes listen with the greatest attention ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... And music, like ideas, can slay the brain. Wagner borrowed his harmonic fire from the torch of Chopin—" She ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... plagiarism, however unconscious, is a very different thing from that profound indebtedness which makes a great man attain his truest originality; and Gluck's training practically deprived him of Bach's direct influence, useful as that would have been to the attainment of his aims in harmonic and choral expression. The indirect influence no one could escape, for whatever in modern music is not traceable to Sebastian Bach is traceable to his sons, who were encouraged by their father in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... or a thousand years later. Not being perfectly self-confident in this matter, we always took the opinion of Mr. Y——, who, as I said before, was an experienced architect; and he invariably came to the conclusion that the Brahmanical idols formed a harmonic and genuine part of the whole, pillars, decorations, and the general style of the temple; whereas the statue of Buddha was an additional and discordant patch. Out of thirty or forty caves of Ellora, all filled ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Hallelujah chorus, and you may form some idea of the effect of this performance, when I tell you that all the persons who sing at the Queen's Chapel, at St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, were all singing together, besides part of the band of the Sacred Harmonic Society, pupils of the Royal Academy of Music, and many other ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... splendour till the midnight vault Shone like the noon. The fisher knew, that hour, That with vast concourse of the Sons of God That church was thronged; for in it many a head Sun-bright, and hands lifted like hands in prayer, High up he saw: meantime harmonic strain, As though whatever moves in earth or skies, Winds, waters, stars, had joined in one their song, Above him floated like a breeze from God And heaven-born incense. Louder swelled that strain; And still the Bride of God, that church late dark, Glad ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... defrauded, absent foals they make A moan so loud, that all the guild awake; 250 Sore sighs Sir Gilbert, starting at the bray, From dreams of millions, and three groats to pay. So swells each windpipe; ass intones to ass, Harmonic twang! of leather, horn, and brass; Such as from labouring lungs the enthusiast blows, High sound, attemper'd to the vocal nose, Or such as bellow from the deep divine; There, Webster![323] peal'd thy voice, and, Whitfield![324] thine. But far o'er all, sonorous Blackmore's strain; Walls, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... centre, too!—as quickly as lightning passes through the foliage of the tree it strikes. Only the lightning stayed. The figure remained caught. The entire Pattern shivered to its outer fringes, then began to glow and shine all over. As the high harmonic crowns the end of a long cadenza on a violin, fulfilling bars of difficult effort, this point of exquisite beauty flashed life into the Pattern of the story, consummating the labour of construction with the true, inevitable climax. There was something of fairy insolence, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... unusually dirty, but a vast crowd once more greeted her. On arriving at the end of Cheapside, she was hailed out of the glimmering illumination and foggy lamplight by "God Save the Queen," again sung by many hundred voices, accompanied by a band of wind instruments, the performance of the Harmonic Society, and the music was followed all the way by enthusiastic cheering. The Baroness Bunsen remarked of such a scene long afterwards, "I was at a loss to conceive how any woman's sides can 'bear the beating ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... 1767, when Mozart was eleven, they started on a new tour, for which the little prodigy composed four pianoforte concerti, which were interesting on account of certain harmonic effects produced in them, but that second tour, was not a fortunate one, for during it, both Nannerl and Wolfgang were stricken with small-pox, which took a very violent form, and poor Wolfgang lay blind for nine days, and convalescence was slow, and hard to bear. Again they visited Vienna, but ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... on it the conditions of motion upon which its characteristic qualities depended; which is due to the fact that every vocal sound whose vibrations have a complex form can be decomposed into a series of simple notes all belonging to the harmonic series. These harmonics or overtones will be considered later when dealing with the timbre or quality ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott |
