"Sonata" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laughed Mary. "Don't you dare give her a stick, Tom." But Tom did dare, and Mrs. Norris, with her smiling benignity, stood waving the stick back and forth over the fire in time with the andante movement of her favourite Brahms sonata. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... and waiters but worldly priests and acolytes; his profound knowledge of cookery sprang from a genuine interest in his stomach, and he could compose a menu in a fashion to command the respect of head-waiters and to excite the envy of musicians composing a sonata; he had the wit to look in early and see to the flowers; above all he was aware what women liked in the way of wine, and since this was never what he liked in the way of wine, he would always command a half-bottle of the extra dry for himself, but would have ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Honesty and which was Rockit, and the difference had been pointed out to him many times. He liked Larkspur and Canterbury bells, or was it their names that he loved them for? He sometimes mistook one for the other just as Ellen mistook one sonata for another, but she always liked ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... and return an hour later to find the discussion approaching a close. Or, if he had no business to attend to, he would go for a walk on the Mall, whence he commanded the lovely panorama of the Loire valley, and take a draught of fresh air while his wife was performing a sonata in words, or a ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... to tell you! No, not Beethoven; a little, just a little music. Heavens!" cried Reginald, as she crashed into a fortissimo, "another sonata! Listen, I am not equal to sonatas. Nay, Miss Beecham, play me a ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... earth should it bother him?" rejoined M. Verdurin. "I'm sure M. Swann has never heard the sonata in F sharp which we discovered; he is going to play us ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... about poverty? This is some eau-de-vie old Martelet the solicitor gave me for playing the Wedding March at his daughter's marriage. 'The Wedding March was magnificently rendered by the organist, Mr John Sharnall,' you know, as if it was the Fourth Organ-Sonata. I misdoubt this ever having paid duty; he's not the man to give away six bottles of anything ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... little fellow," he said, "I played at a reception at a Russian count's, and, for an urchin of seven, I flatter myself that I swung through Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata' ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... The latest and most atrocious outrage on good taste in this respect is the labelling of Beethoven's great B flat sonata as "the Hammerklavier." All musicians of finer feeling should unite to ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... So judging, he cannot fail to be impressed by the solidity of the composition, to which the colour is not an added charm, but of which it is an integral part; he will feel that the picture holds together as a unity in the way that a good sonata holds, in a way that nothing else does in this exhibition; also he will feel a certain dissatisfaction which may cause him to inquire whether Mr. Lewis has altogether succeeded in expressing himself. We believe that he has not. There is a laboriousness about this work ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the same subject with a passage taken from a piano and violin sonata of Beethoven. The non-legato passages here are not to be played on the violin in a way approaching the staccato, although they are written as detached notes; and the piano part follows the ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... upon her brother and Monsieur Parole for some more of their concerted music, they sat down to a sonata of Beethoven. The remainder of us broke up into little coteries; Min and I having a long quiet talk, under cover of the deep tones of the vicar's violoncello, in a corner by the piano, where we entrenched ourselves ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... like a piece of music, like a movement in a sonata by Beethoven. The chords, the volume of sound are gravely added to, till that solemn close on a single note. It is emotion, perfectly rendered, so grave, so sincere, so restrained as to be almost inimitable. And alike in the music of the words and sentences and in ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... of absorbing, while whole Joachim quartets flowed and rippled all round, but never into, us; and then, some other time, our soul seems to have drunk up (every fibre blissfully steeping) a few bars of a sonata (it was Beethoven's 10th violin, and they were stumbling through it for the first time) heard accidentally while walking up and down under ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... you write me the numbers of the "Tempest" sonata, and some others that I liked particularly? The op. 14, No. 2, I have got, and Timm played it to me on Monday. How inexorable is this space, that will not let me crowd in that I am ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... the harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, E, ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lads were holding a pair of rawboned nags, that resembled saddlers about as much as a cigar-store Indian does a sonata. Croyden looked them ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... Frau von Genzinger that threatened Polzelli's supremacy. Nor was it Madame Bartolozzi, for whom Haydn wrote a sonata and three trios; nor Mrs. John Hunter, who wrote words for many of his canzonets. Nor yet Mrs. Hodges, for whom he composed, and whom he called "the loveliest woman I ever saw." Nor yet again the fascinating actress, Mrs. Billington, of whom the pleasant story ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Pianoforte often talks of you; in various keys, tunes, and expressions, I allow—but be it Lesson or Country Dance, Sonata or Waltz, you are really its constant theme. I wish you could come and see us, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... it was with the most delighted cordiality on the part of both. "Mein lieber Herr," Thrum would say (with some malice), "your sonata in x flat is divine." "Chevalier," Baroski would reply, "dat andante movement in w is worthy of Beethoven. I gif you my sacred honour," and so forth. In fact, they loved each other as gentlemen in their ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tried to procure from him "Ramona" in California, or "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains" in Tennessee, or "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" in Ohio, or "The Grandissimes" near New Orleans, the nearest he could come to my modest demand was "The Kreutzer Sonata" or the last effort of Miss Laura Jean Libbey, a popular American novelist, who describes in glowing colours how two aristocratic Englishmen, fighting a duel near London somewhere in the seventies, were interrupted by the heroine, who drove between them in a hansom and pair and received the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... after the lesson, Christopher Fedoritch," he said. "Lisa Mihalovna and I are going to play a duet of Beethoven's sonata." ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... charming. The negroes here get so tired of salt fish and occra broth, that they eat dirt by way of a relish. Mr O'Brien, how remarkably well you played that sonata ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... piano of the very grandest scale. Or, I might have asked her to sit down to that old-fashioned instrument, and have asked her to let me hear her sing, for my nieces were in need of a new teacher. I might have engaged Franz, with promise of a high salary, to write me the music of songs, or a new sonata. But I had neither the salary nor the nieces. I had not even an excuse for standing there. It was very foolish of me, but I could not help feeling that it was exceedingly impertinent of me to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... fingers found the Maestro's bowed shoulders; his arms went tight about the Maestro's neck. In his passionately whispered confidence the old gentleman must have found solace, for he presently smiled,—a real smile,—and then still keeping Kirk beside him, began playing a sonata. Ken and Felicia, sunk unobtrusively in the big chairs at the hearth, were each aware of a subtle kindredship between these two at the piano—a something which they ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... The fascination of his character acted at once as a spell. Froude attended his sermons, and was fascinated still more. For a time, however, the effect was merely aesthetic. The young man enjoyed the voice, the eloquence, the thinking power of the preacher as he might have enjoyed a sonata of Beethoven's. But his acquaintance with the reading men was not kept up, and he led an idle, luxurious life. Nobody then dreamt of an Oxford Commission, and the Colleges, like the University, were left to themselves. They were not economically ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... I stand at E's, and I therefore proceed with a sonata in F, composed, not by Beethoven, but by a horse-breaker, with certain amplifications of my own: "The young horse was in famous fettle, and framed splendidly over the flakes; but he seemed all of a flabber-gaster when he caught sight of the water, put himself into a regular ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the most extraordinary instances of inspiration in dreams is told of Tartini, the Italian musician, whose "Devil's Sonata" is well known to musicians. He dreamed that the father of evil played this piece to him, and upon waking he put it on paper. It is a strange wild performance, possessing great ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that entered by his eyes met that which entered by his ears, and they were one ere he noted a difference. Barbara was the music, and the music was Barbara. He saw her with his ears; he heard her with his eyes. But as the last sonata sank to its death, suddenly the face and the tones parted company, and he knew that his eyes and her face must part next, and the same moment her face was already far away. She had left him; she was looking for her fan, and preparing ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole of Beethoven's Sonata in B, to let him know that I was within hearing, but he never ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more need to practise. All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time. But there must ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... seated at an ivory pianoforte on a mother-of-pearl music-stool, trying a sonata of Herz. She rose when thus apostrophized. Miriam de Mendoza rose and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... confidant. — We found the knight sitting on a couch, with his crutches by his side, and his feet supported on cushions; but he received us with a hearty welcome, and seemed greatly rejoiced at our arrival. — After tea, we were entertained with a sonata on the harpsichord by lady Bullford, who sung and played to admiration; but Sir Thomas seemed to be a little asinine in the article of ears, though he affected to be in raptures, and begged his wife to favour us with an arietta of her own composing. — This arietta, however, she no sooner ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... enjoyment; and since he had, shamefully, never yet heard the great pianist, he had bought the best stall procurable some weeks before, and now, after a taxing day in the law courts, had foregone his after-dinner coffee in order not to miss one note of the opening Appassionata; it was a sonata he was very fond of. He sometimes picked out the air of the slow movement on the piano with heavy deliberation; his musical equipment did not carry him ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... soaring at once to the highest peaks of orchestral achievement without wasting any time on the humble foot-hills." He sought to make a new departure, and, compared to the grandeur of his own composition, "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony appeared like a simple Pleyel Sonata." To facilitate the reading of his astounding score, he wrote it in three kinds of ink—red for strings, green for the wood-wind, and black for the brass instruments. He writes that this overture was the climax of his absurdities, and although the audience before which an accommodating ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... sonata we all applauded Cleopatra just as loudly as we could, in the hope that she would faint with surprise and stop playing, but ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... Serenade (Staendchen), the 13th and following bars of the Crescendo in the Largo Appassionato of Beethoven's Op. 2. Or if you wish to have an example where all is exception, like one of the south nave windows in York Minster, the opening of the "Sonata ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... knew that they were parting to face death. Carl felt Forrest Haviland's hand on one shoulder, then an awkward pat from tough Jack Ryan's paw, as Tony Bean's violin turned the plaintive half-light into music, and broke its heart in the "Moonlight Sonata." ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Lancelot, when Peter went at ten. "My poor Beethoven! What you must have suffered! Never mind, I'll play you your Moonlight sonata." ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... wore a white poudesoy gown, embroidered with gold, and the prettiest high-heeled satin slippers, and a head-dress of wonderful workmanship. "For I have been at a concert of music, cousin Dick, and heard two overtures of Mr. Handel's and a sonata by Corella, done ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... arrival in Rome, not unduly tired, and with all the dear instruments intact, unharmed by rough hands of porters and Custom House officers, that, one of these days, in three or four months, when I am well, I look forward to contributing the viola da gamba part of a sonata to the concert of the old instrumental music which he will give when he has put his choir in order: you know I used to play that instrument in my young days. A more innocent wish never entered into the heart of a human ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... may come when a German street-band will be recognized as a powerful tonic; a cornet solo will take the place of a blister; a symphony or a sonata may be recommended instead of morphine; the moxa will give way to Wagner, and opium to Brahms. A prolonged shake by a singer will drive out chills and fever, according to the theory of Hahnemann. Cots at symphony concerts may yet command ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... natural as the original form, and does not strikingly alter its character. Such are, for instance, the theme of Bach's Kunst der Fuge, most of Purcell's contrapuntal themes, the theme in the fugue of Beethoven's sonata, op. 110, and the eighth of Brahms's variations on a theme by Haydn. In such cases inversion sometimes produces harmonic variety as well as a sense of melodic identity in difference. But where a melody has marked features of rise and fall, such as long scale passages or bold skips, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... sonata is to me anathema as a rule, there are none of MacDowell's works that I like better than his writings in this form. They are to me far the best since Beethoven, not excepting even Chopin's (pace his ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... her Nicolo a great violin player; he gave her a token of consent;—and the effect which this dream had upon all concerned, we sober-minded people can have no idea of. Young Paganini redoubled his perseverance. In his eighth year, under the superintendence of his father, he had written a sonata, which, however, along with many other juvenile productions, he lately destroyed; and as he played about three times a week in the churches and at private musical parties, upon a fiddle nearly as large as himself, he soon began to make himself known among his townsmen. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... down the letter. His head was in a whirl. He only half heard the notes of the tutor's sonata as they rose and fell on his ear. Presently, with ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Sonata-Fantasia in C minor. She played very well, though rather over correctly and precisely. She sat upright and immovable, her eyes fixed on the notes, and her lips tightly compressed, only at the end of the sonata her face glowed, her hair came loose, and a little lock ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... both instinctive and cultivated. One case in our returns carries a bit of wood in his vest-pocket and bites it when he begins to feel the aura of temper. Girls often play the piano loudly, and some think best of all. One plays a particular piece to divert anger, viz., the "Devil's Sonata." A man goes down cellar and saws wood, which he keeps for such occasions. A boy pounds a resonant eavespout. One throws a heavy stone against a white rock. Many go off by themselves and indulge in the luxury of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... possibility be free, so long as they are strained by our own personal effort. So long as our nervous force is misdirected in personal strain, we can no more give full and responsive attention to the music, than a piano can sound the harmonies of a sonata if some one is drawing his hands at the same time backwards and forwards over the strings. But, alas! a contracted personality is so much the order of the day that many of us carry the chronic contractions of years constantly with us, and can no more free ourselves for a concert at ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... brings to light valuable inspirations, we have only to subtract from it the dream disguise as a feat of dream-work and a mark of assistance from obscure forces in the depth of the mind (cf. the devil in Tartini's sonata dream). The intellectual task as such must be attributed to the same psychic forces which perform all such tasks during the day. We are probably far too much inclined to over-estimate the conscious character even of intellectual and artistic ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Spencer who brought it in—when It came in, Dick, who pretends to be abashed upon such occasions, gave one swift glance upward and then emitted a long, low, expressive whistle. When Beethoven found himself throbbing with undescribable emotions he composed a sonata; when Keats felt odd things stirring within him he wrote an ode to an urn, but my friend Dick, quite as evidently on fire with his emotions, merely whistled—and then looked around evidently embarrassed lest he should have infringed upon ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... his daughter's authority, described Emily's income as falling short even of two hundred a year. Having made that disheartening reply, he opened another music book. "You know this sonata, of course?" he said. The next moment, the violin was under his chin and the ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... this critical specter [the Doctor's work was no doubt a tenant of the shelf in some favorite publisher's shop]; and Mr. Norris's Poem on Friendship, a work, which I doubt, though honored with a ghost's approbation, we may now seek for as vainly as Correlli tormented his memory to recover the sonata which the devil played to him in a dream. Presently after, from former habits we may suppose, the guest desires a cup of tea; but, bethinking herself of her new character, escapes from her own proposal by recollecting ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... replied promptly. "Jim has been eating his heart out in the den every since dinner; Dal played the Sonata Appasionata backward on the pianola—he wanted to put through one of Anne's lingerie waists, on a wager that it would play a tune; I played craps with Lollie, and Flannigan has ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... can only give you nimbleness and strength. Well, you shall acquire your nimbleness and strength by playing what is worth playing. Take good music, take Chopin or Bach or Beethoven, and practise one particular etude or fugue or sonata; you may choose anything you like, and learn your nimbleness and strength that way. Read, too; read for a couple of hours every day. The written language of music must become so familiar to you that it is to you precisely what a book or a newspaper ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... a concert on Saturday and heard Halle and Norman Neruda play that Sonata of Beethoven's you remember, and I felt very funny. But I went and took a long spanking walk in the dark and got quite an appetite for dinner. I did; that's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or that indescribably affecting capriccio of his marked as "Opus 33"? Which is higher as a work of art,—that in its sadness unparalleled song of Shakespeare, "Blow, blow, thou Winter wind," or his "Othello"? Or again; which is a higher work of art, a nocturne by Chopin, or a sonata by Beethoven; an Essay by Macaulay, or a "Decline and Fall" by Gibbon? Lastly, which is higher as a work of art,—the wonderfully accurate spiritedness of Schreyer's painting of a horse, or the indescribable power of Wagner's Race in a Roman Circus? On its plane ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... the rhythmic pulses | | which come most naturally to us are in twos and threes and | | their multiples; while even to beat time in fives requires a | | special effort. In music 5/8 or 5/4 time is extremely rare. | | There is an example of the latter in Chopin's Sonata I (the | | larghetto ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... the keys, he shook off his morbid mood, and plunged into Scarlatti's Sonata in A, his fingers frolicking all over the board, bent on a dominating exhibition of technique. As he stopped, there was a storm of hand-clapping. Rozenoffski gave a masterly start of surprise, and turned his leonine head in dazed bewilderment. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... friends to be seated side by side in the concert hall, listening to the performance of a violin sonata by an artist of about mediocre ability. Suppose one of the friends to be a highly trained musical critic, the other to be almost unacquainted with music of this class. Let us now inquire how the tones of the violin will impress these two hearers; and further, let the inquiry be limited strictly ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... happily in with 'e con l'aura di fortuna' with which this pastorello sailed along. The character of the music is ease and largeness: as the shepherd lived, so God Almighty walked on the wind. The music breathes ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. Beethoven's Sonata—Op. 14—is meant to express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... tents, we are rude enough to look in. Most of them are furnished with telephones and the city water; here a bride bends over a chafing dish; another glance discloses an oil-painting that was once shown in the Royal Academy. From the next tent float the strains of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and, as we stop to listen, a gentleman and his wife step out. An auto picks them up and off they whirl to Jasper Avenue. The Lord o' the Tents of Shem disappears into his bank and Milady drives on to the Government house to read before the Literary Club a paper on Browning's ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... something." She turned from me and explored the rack of music rolls, became interested and took a piece, the first part of the Kreutzer Sonata, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... said often," he replied, and he crashed into the master's B minor Sonata, "The Invitation to Hissing and Stamping," as Gumprecht has ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... me think at once of the first movement of Beethoven's sonata, called Appassionata. There is one here who plays that, and because it tells him a story, he plays it sometimes rather well and makes the others see.... The slow movement is deeply rich; the inspiration seems to go out of the sonata after that, but of the first movement ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... When his contadini have done their day's work he takes it on him to read aloud to them the poems of the revolutionary Venetian poet Dall' Ongaro, to their great applause. Then I must tell you of his music. He is strong in music for ten years old—and plays a sonata of Beethoven already (in E flat—opera 7) and the first four books of Stephen Heller; to say nothing of various pieces by modern German composers in which there is need of considerable execution. Robert is the maestro, and sits by him two hours every day, with an amount of patience ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... satisfaction of the connoisseur in collegiate architecture, and mentally limned the remainder of the plan. His sensations were like those of a skilled musician who has heard the first movement of a masterly sonata and is left to imagine the perfect whole. The sun, now mounting toward the zenith, was shortening the shadows of the tower on the slate roof that shone in the bright atmosphere like dull silver. Not a student was in sight, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... enough to get my glass on the little lyrist, and then I found it was only the house-wren! "How could you be led astray by so familiar a song?" you inquire. Well, that is the humiliating part of the incident, for I have been listening to the house-wren's gurgling sonata for some twenty years—rather more than less—and should have recognized it at once; only it must be remembered that I was in a strange place, and had my ears and eyes set for avian rarities, and ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... is hoped will lend additional brightness to the vivacious criticisms of The Times, is not to be confined to Opera. The ASTRONOMER-ROYAL will be asked to record his impressions of BEETHOVEN'S "Moonlight Sonata", and the officials of our leading lightships will be asked to report upon PARRY'S "Blest Pair ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... term in music to indicate quick or lively time, coming between andante and presto; it is frequently modified by the addition of qualifying words. It is also used of a separate piece of music, or of a movement in a sonata, symphony, &c. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that she never did. They are not satisfied with hearing her once. They ask for more, and they get it. The other evening I had to keep quiet on my chair while she thumped through four pieces one after the other, including the Beethoven Sonata. We knew it was the Beethoven Sonata. She told us before she started it was going to be the Beethoven Sonata, otherwise, for all any of us could have guessed, it might have been the 'Battle of Prague.' We all sat round with wooden ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... his father. The pupil was Rose Cannabich, to whom the sonata referred to is dedicated. Her father, whom Mozart admired greatly as an able conductor, was Chapelmaster of the excellently trained orchestra at Mannheim. He lived from 1731 to 1798. [The Andante from which trouble was expected was that which Mozart wrote with ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... deliberately withdrew, having—so at least it seemed to those who were its object—having, without the tremor of an eyelid, scanned them like an open page: it was the look, impenetrable, all-seeing, of the physician for his patient. At the piano, a young man was playing the Waldstein Sonata. So intent was he on what he was doing, that his head all but touched the music standing open before him, while his body, bent thus double, swayed vigorously from side to side. His face was crimson, and on his forehead stood out beads ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the laird?' said Willie, interrupting a sonata of Corelli, of which he had whistled several bars ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... is no first subject, second subject, development and recapitulation. All that had to be worked out nearly a century later. The set forms of Purcell's day were the dances. The principle of Purcell's sonata form is alternate fast and slow movements. Nothing more can be perceived; there is nothing more to perceive. Sometimes he commences with a quick piece; then we have an adagio or some slow dance; then another ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... hubbub, intoxicated her; she made up stories by the dozen, as her dark eyes followed the gay equipages. When Fraeulein summoned her she went away reluctantly; the stories got into her head, and stopped there all the time she laboured through that long sonata. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... (1811-1886) was a pianistic miracle. He could play anything on site and composed over 400 works centered around "his" instrument. Among his key works are his Hungarian Rhapsodies, his Transcendental Etudes, his Concert Etudes, his Etudes based on variations of Paganinini's Violin Caprices and his Sonata, one of the most important of the nineteenth century. He also wrote thousands of letters, of which 399 are translated into English in this second of a 2-volume set of letters (the first volume contains ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages—twenty times repeated—of a sonata by Dussek. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... guest, the poetic thought, that comes to us like a homing bird from out the mystery of the blue sky—we put this confiding stranger straightway into that iron bed, the "sonata form," or perhaps even the third rondo form, for we have quite an assortment. Should the idea survive and grow too large for the bed, and if we have learned to love it too much to cut off its feet and thus make it fit (as did that old robber of Attica), why we run the risk of having ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... I saw that it was useless to have pity on my man, for the sonata on the violin had bathed him in perspiration, I resolved to let him do as he would. So behold him seated at the piano, his legs bent, his head thrown back towards the ceiling, where you would have thought he saw ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... During his second visit to London he came in contact with a certain amateur violinist whose professed fondness for the extreme upper notes of his instrument was such as to incite Haydn to perpetrate a joke at his expense. He therefore wrote a seemingly simple sonata for piano and violin, which he called 'Jacob's Dream,' and dispatched it anonymously to the conceited violinist. The player was charmed with the manner in which the piece began. It was apparent that the composer thoroughly understood the instrument! As he proceeded, however, the notes rose ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... literature by the beauty and simple directness of their style. Two short stories and one long novel, all written with a didactic purpose, are of this period, and added to their author's reputation: "The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreuzer Sonata," and "Resurrection." ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... time I had under this French roof on German soil. Our days were spent in walks and drives, our evenings entertained with music and declamation. Now we had the Kreutzer Sonata exquisitely performed by amateur musicians, now we listened to selections from Lamartine, Nadaud, Victor Hugo and others, as admirably rendered by a member of this accomplished family, all the members of which were now gathered together. I saw something alike of their poorer ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... intervals. Pan pipes. Portable organs. Monochords with keys. Guido d'Arezzo. Clavier type. Virginal in Elizabethan age. Early clavier masters. First woman court clavier player. Scarlatti and Bach. True art of clavier-playing. Sonata form. Where Haydn gained much. Mozart and Clementi. Pianoforte and improvements. Viennese school. Clementi school. Giant on lofty heights. Oscar Bie on Beethoven. Golden age of pianoforte. Piano composers and virtuosi, from Weber to the present time. Teachers ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... didn't, for it came direct, you see, and the last address I gave him was a place in Florida. This deed shall be remembered of you when I am with the just in Paradise. But one thing you did not ask him to do, for you didn't know about it. He has sent me his latest work, the new sonata, the most ambitious thing he has ever done, and you are to play it for me directly, though it looks horribly intricate. But first for the letter; I think you would better read ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... was peaceful now with the exception of a gent in lower No. 4, who had a strangle hold on a Beethoven sonata and was beating the ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... composed his "Devil's Sonata'' under the inspiration of a dream. Coleridge, through dream influence, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Sanya's. Her technique was not perhaps all that it might have been; she might not have won the Gold Medal of our white-shirted academies, but she had enough temperament to make half a dozen Steinway Hall virtuosi. From valse to nocturne, from sonata to prelude, her fancy ran. With crashing chords she dropped from "L'Automne Bacchanale" to the Nocturne in E flat; scarcely murmured of that, then tripped elvishly into Moszkowsky's Waltz, and from that she dropped to a song of Tchaikowsky, almost heartbreaking in its childish beauty, and then ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... played him a sonata—let me see! "Medulla oblongata"—key of G. Then they began to sing That extremely lovely thing, "Scherzando! ma ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Boswell, that a man of your taste in music, cannot play upon the Jew's harp; there are some of us here that touch it very melodiously, I can tell you. Corelli's solo of Maggie Lauder, and Pergolesi's sonata of The Carle he came o'er the Craft, are excellently adapted to that instrument; let me advise you to learn it. The first cost is but three halfpence, and they last a long time. I have composed the following ode upon it, which exceeds Pindar as much ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... inexplicable charm, but it had not changed the simplicity of her home life. This beautiful girl, in her quaint Norwegian costume, was able to give tranquilly her opinion on the deepest scientific subjects, or seat herself at the piano, and play with consummate skill a sonata of Beethoven. But her greatest charm was the absence of all pretension, and her perfectly natural manners. She no more thought of being vain of her talents, or of making any display of them, than she did of blushing on account of her rural costume. ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... mathematicians, so Bach is the musician for musicians. While Handel may be considered a purely independent and parallel growth, it is not too much to assert that without Sebastian Bach and his matchless studies for the piano, organ, and orchestra, we could not have had the varied musical development in sonata and symphony from such masters as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Three of Sebastian Bach's sons became distinguished musicians, and to Emanuel we owe the artistic development of the sonata, which in its turn became the foundation of ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... a core, si e messo alla letteratura per altro gia suo studio favorito. La nostra musica di chiesa e assai differente di quella d'Italia e sempre piu, che una Messa con tutto il Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, la Sonata all' Epistola, l'Offertorio osia Motetto, Sanctus ed Agnus Dei, ed anche la piu solenne, quando dice la Messa il Principe stesso, non ha da durare che al piu longo 3 quarti d'ora. Ci vuole un studio particolare per queste sorte di compositione, e che deve pero essere una Messa con tutti ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... the last harpsichords made. The date upon the case was 1802. Beethoven's famous "Moonlight Sonata" was written for either harpsichord or piano. It was published in 1802. Hummel played on the harpsichord as late as 1805, but it had to give way, though most reluctantly, to the new invention called the pianoforte. Just how slow the public was in accepting the innovation and improvement upon ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... with me have been those in which pain and pleasure, yearning and satisfaction, knowledge and seeking, have been so exquisitely and so intangibly blended, in listening to some deep sonata, some stately and pathetic old ciacconna or gavotte, some concerto or symphony; the thing nearest heaven is to sit apart with closed eyes while the orchestra or the individual performer interprets for one the mystic poetry, or the dramatic fire, or the subtle cobweb ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... laughing. "In England, at least, people do not know what is meant by IMPROVISING. They think it is to take a little theme and compose variations on it—the mere ABC of the art. But to sit down to the piano and plan a whole sonata or symphony in your head, and play it while planning it, is a thing they do not and will not understand. They come to hear, and they wonder and go away, and the critics declare it ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... playing. All afternoon he had been practising with fury; first scales, then exercises. Then a pause; and now, his fingers slipped into the first movement of the Waldstein Sonata. ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... lay on the couch, trying to regain his vital spirits, Herr Carovius went to the piano and played the rondo from Weber's sonata in A flat major. His technique was superb; his emotion ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... revealed. These a young man longs to know of, they are his life. He imagines himself sitting by her, when the others have gone, holding her hand, calling on her name; sometimes she moves away and plays the moonlight sonata. Letting her hands droop upon the keys she talks sadly, maybe affectionately; she speaks of the tedium of life, of its disenchantments. He knows well what she means, he has suffered as she has; but could he tell her, could she understand, that in his love reality would dissolve into ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... than by singing beautiful songs to the weary people of this earth. To wear out a voice like that on pinchbeck hymn tunes is a crime." Then, as if becoming conscious of a neglect of the girl, he added: "Now that you are in the mood, Miss Lambert, you must try that sonata again." ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Lawrence Hotel at Luray, the Moonlight Sonata floated dreamily upon the calm night air, and we seemed to feel the beauty ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... seemed that everyone must recognise the air—"The Ride of the Valkyrie;" and now the driving rain and the salt spindrift, the flapping of the leech of our brown sail, every note of accompaniment is being given to that great air that runs through Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, which the wind is singing louder and louder. Tim sits up well to windward, the tiller quivering in his hand, the rain beating on one side of his face, his beard blowing out from the other. Tim doesn't think what a good model for a Viking he makes just now. The real actual Viking must have ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... delight of the poor peasant parvenu when he heard his charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing a ballad; when he saw her writing French correctly, or making sepia drawings of landscapes, or listened while she read aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the beauties ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... voluptuous delights with more heroic ones, and sweeten the reverie by the toil. So far as they go, the enjoyments of the healthy body are as innocent and as ardent as those of the soul. As there is no ground of comparison, so there is no ground of antagonism. How compare a sonata and a sea-bath or measure the Sistine Madonna against a gallop across country? The best thanksgiving for each is to enjoy the other also, and educate the mind to ampler nobleness. After all, the best verdict on athletic exercises ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... chatting together, the two little girls were amusing themselves in the drawing room, which communicated with the parlour by folding doors, and just as the Doctor was remarking how quiet they were, the piano was struck, and a pretty sonata played. Mrs. Sherman was surprised to find it was Fanny, and still more so, on hearing that Helen had been her sole instructress, as she played very prettily. The Doctor, who was passionately fond of music, was ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... and several manipulations, each accompanied with a painful distortion of countenance, he commenced a long and tedious sonata,—tedious, because ill-timed. On a suitable occasion it would have been grand and acceptable. Of course the music was wasted on the air, because it had only a ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... The sonata ended, Honor let her hands fall into her lap, and sat very still. She had lost all thought of her companion in the joy of interpretation; but Desmond's voice at her side recalled ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver |
