"Semitone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before the sermon, a well-meaning worshipper in the gallery delivered a leading note, a high one, with great zeal, but small precision, being about a semitone flat; at this outrage on her too-sensitive ear, Julia Dodd turned her head swiftly to discover the offender, and failed; but her two sapphire eyes met ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... I tell?' she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in the broad outlines of her manner and speech. There were the semitone of voice and half-hidden expression of eyes which tell the initiated how very fragile is the ice ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... cried out, "Let the noble family of Eglinton pass," and then added the line which followed the one he had just given out rather mal-apropos—"Nor stand in sinners' way." One peculiarity I remember, which was, closing the strain sometimes by an interval less than a semitone; instead of the half-note preceding the close or key-note, they used to take the quarter-note, the effect of which had a peculiar gurgling sound, but I never heard it elsewhere. It may be said these Scottish tunes were unscientific, and their performance rude. It ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... suspension, resolution. staff, stave, line, space, brace; bar, rest; appoggiato^, appoggiatura^; acciaccatura^. note, musical note, notes of a scale; sharp, flat, natural; high note &c (shrillness) 410; low note &c 408; interval; semitone; second, third, fourth &c; diatessaron^. breve, semibreve [Mus.], minim, crotchet, quaver; semiquaver, demisemiquaver, hemidemisemiquaver; sustained note, drone, burden. tonic; key note, leading note, fundamental note; supertonic^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "It's difficult to say what it was about. Really, the Professor had hardly said anything at all, and the Dragon said she thought he was forgetting the servants. Fossett wasn't even in the room. And then the Dragon said, 'Yes, shut it,' to Athene. Fancy saying 'Yes, shut it,' in a confidential semitone! Really, I can't see that it was so very wrong of Egerton, although he is a booby, to say there was no fun in having a row before breakfast. He didn't mean them to think he ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... was returned, a semitone lower. She approached, he advanced, and the consequence was a salute resonant as the smack with which a Dutch burgomaster may be supposed to set down his mug. I was prepared for anything. Ye gods! if it should ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... motive of all, the one which pervades the drama from beginning to end, is the love-motive. Its fundamental form is that in which it appears in the second bar of the Prelude in the oboe (No. 1).[35] Variants of it occur without the characteristic semitone suspension (1a) or with a falling seventh (1b). The cello motive of the opening phrase of the Prelude may also be considered as derived from the same by contrary ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... on the other hand, is rarely heard, and, though having a piercing whinny which passes through every semitone of the scale, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes |
