"Virtuoso" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the spider was a sort of pet of an old virtuoso to whom he owed many obligations in his boyhood; and the conversation turned from this subject to others suggested by topics of the day and place. His Lordship was affable, and Redclyffe could not, it must be confessed, see anything to justify the prejudices ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sauce, a pancake and minced collops and a bottle of sherry—D'ye think I wad come and ask you to go to keep company with ony bit English rider that sups on toasted cheese, and a cheerer of rum-toddy? This is a gentleman every inch of him, and a virtuoso, a clean virtuoso-a sad-coloured stand of claithes, and a wig like the curled back of a mug-ewe. The very first question he speered was about the auld drawbrig that has been at the bottom of the water these twal score years—I have seen the fundations ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... more limited sense of the term, which embraces personal as well as incorporeal goods; as, for instance, the labors of the doctor, teacher; virtuoso, of the statesman, judge, and of preachers, whose office it is, by way of eminence, to produce and preserve the immaterial wealth, known as ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... shaving virtuoso; really a comical and strange character, and has oddities enough to compensate one for the debasement of talking with ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... art of drawing agreements relative to the cloak and suit trade in all its phases of buying, selling, employing or renting, he was a virtuoso, and his income was that of six Supreme Court judges rolled into one. For the rest, he was of impressive, clean-shaven appearance, and he was of the opinion that a liberal sprinkling of Latin phrases rendered his conversation more pleasing to ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... had runabouts together in foreign lands. His house in town, and the island home called Dorsoris, which he had made for himself, might not inaptly be described as very shrines of hospitality and art, the master of the house a virtuoso in music and painting no less than in letters. One might meet under his roof the most diverse people, but always interesting and agreeable people. Perhaps at times he carried his aversions a little too far. But he had reasons for them, and a man of robust temperament and habit, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Encyclopaedia, for which he wrote so many biographies, and "indeed all the articles signed A. B. M."? At times, however, the statements are not so vague. For instance,—in the anecdote already referred to, Marx makes the two Rombergs and Franz Ries introduce the "fifteen-year-old virtuoso" to Sterkel,—that is, in 1785 or '86. At that date, (see Schilling,) Andreas Romberg was a boy of eighteen, Bernard a boy of fifteen; moreover, they did not come to Bonn until 1790, when Beethoven was nearly twenty years old. In 1793-4 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... 83, a character of a virtuoso is given which in many ways suits Walpole:—'It is never without grief that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expense rather than by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... he had; daily evening Concert, though from himself there is no fluting now. One of his Berlin Concert people who had been sent for was Fasch, a virtuoso on I know not what instrument,—but a man given to take note of things about him. Fasch was painfully surprised to see his King so altered in the interim past: "bent now, sunk into himself, grown old; to whom these five years of war-tumult ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Schumann, he was spoiled for briefs by the stronger pull of music and the cacoethes scribendi. (Grandpa John Huneker had been a composer of church music, and organist at St. Mary's.) In the year mentioned he set out for Paris to see Liszt; his aim was to make himself a piano virtuoso. His name does not appear on his own exhaustive list of Liszt pupils, but he managed to quaff of the Pierian spring at second-hand, for he had lessons from Theodore Ritter (ne Bennet), a genuine pupil of the old ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... sum and totality, and the world-decree is that he is an artist, and an admirable one. He plays upon his instrument with all power and grace. But he is no mere virtuoso. There is something in him beyond the executant. Of Malibran, Alfred de Musset says, most beautifully, that she had that "voice of the heart which alone has power to reach the heart." Here, also, behind the skilful player on language, the deft manipulator of rhyme and rhythm, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... (says the virtuoso Gregoire,) where the National Club justly struck at the tyrants even in their tombs, that of Turenne ought to have been spared; yet strokes of the sword are still visible on it."—He likewise complains, that at the Botanic Garden the bust of Linnaeus ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth cannot express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life as can the master. But a girl comes into his life, and through his passionate love for her, he ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... Italy and Switzerland were written during the two years with which he prefaced his quarter-century of labor as composer, director, and virtuoso. They relate much to Italian painting, the music of Passion Week, Swiss scenery, his stay with Goethe, and his brilliant reception in England on his return. They disclose a youth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... his Cincinnati experience, the virtuoso knew when he had enough. Strakosch's later associates were his brothers, Ferdinand and Max. The former was the European agent for the firm, and the latter what might be termed the acting house man ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... province, more especially if he has conquered in himself the passions of jealousy and envy, which tear the covetous mind; why may not the man whose object is money, be understood to lead a life of amusement and pleasure, not only more entire than that of the spendthrift, but even as much as the virtuoso, the scholar, the man of taste, or any of that class of persons who have found out a method of passing their leisure without offence, and to whom the acquisitions made, or the works produced, in their several ways, perhaps, are as useless as the bag to ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... Savelli, the self-willed, temperamental daughter of an Italian violin virtuoso, furnished much of the interest of the book. The efforts of Grace and her chums to create in this girl a healthy, wholesome enjoyment for High School life, and her repudiation of their friendship, and subsequent attempts to revenge herself for ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... fiddle was unaccustomed to so vigorous a virtuoso, and its bridge fell with a bang. The Parson blurted an expletive, inflected like the profane. Then he straightened the bridge, gave the fiddle a tremendous saw, and resumed his bellow. But with the accident, his first tune had gone glimmering, and he dropped ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... emotion. If we ask what equipment he had for his task, we answer: enthusiasm, so deep, so tempered in all its qualities, that, though in a few years he became the ablest performer of his time upon the harpsichord and organ, yet never once is the term "virtuoso" associated in our thought with the purity of aspiration which characterized him. His enthusiasm was religious, deep-seated, his vision far and wide, and no temporary triumph, no sunlit cloud of fame, could ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... deficient in its shadings and minor attractions, it is adapted only for concerts and chamber music." This dissertation closes as follows: "In order to judge a virtuoso, one must listen to him while at the clavichord, not while ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... to superintend a new edition of the Plays of Shakespeare, is particularly desirous of inspecting the first folio edition. This is probably very scarce, and may be found only in the cabinet of some distant virtuoso. But the owner of this rare book will be very gratefully thanked if the editor can have permission to consult it for a short season." Later on (April 14, p. 119) Dennie confesses some further "wants:" "During some weeks ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... Said of code and designs which exhibit both complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to {hairy} but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic 'most studly' or as noun-form 'studliness'. "Smail 3.0's configuration parser ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... 120 miles in a day. Twenty-two nations obeyed him, and he could speak the dialect of each. A veneer of Greek refinement was spread thinly over the savage animalism of the man. [Sidenote: Pseudo-civilisation of his court.] He was a virtuoso, and had a wonderful collection of rings. He maintained Greek poets and historians, and offered prizes for singing. He had shrewdness enough to employ Greek generals, but not enough to keep him from being ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... harassing time for him, that summer of 1784, and the more since the woes of the distracted lover were added to those of the disappointed playwright and the impecunious debtor. A German savant observes that Schiller was not, like Goethe, a virtuoso in love. And so it certainly looks, albeit the difference might perhaps appear a little less conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up his recollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. He did not lack ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... exhortation from the press, in an age when the nobility and gentry began to read and to reflect, he knew would do more. A proper person for the purpose therefore was sought and found; a man of family, fortune, and learning; an experienced planter; a virtuoso, and not a little of an enthusiast in his own walk. Such was Mr. Evelyn: and to this occasion we are indebted for the Sylva, which has therefore a title to be regarded as a national work... It sounded the trumpet of alarm to the nation ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... one of Horace Walpole's letters in which that virtuoso expresses his regret, after a visit to the ancestral "hotels" of Paris, whose contents had afforded him such intense gratification, that the nobility of England, like that of France, had not concentrated their treasures of art, etc. in London houses. Had he lived a few years longer he would probably ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... anxious to know, I'm an architect on a holiday, and I'm sketching any old thing I come across. I don't pretend to be a painter, my youthful virtuoso, and that's why I go wrong sometimes on colour. Do you ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... we grieve to have to record a circumstance calculated to throw a temporary shade upon the name. In the course of the social and harmonious evening just mentioned, one of the captain's men, who happened to be something of a virtuoso in his way, and fond of collecting curiosities, produced a small skin, a great rarity in the eyes of men conversant in peltries. It attracted much attention among the visitors from beyond the river, who passed it from one to the other, examined it with looks of lively admiration, and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... shrieked aloud; 'what for will I lose my precious throat?' 'What for?' said I; 'if for no other reason, for this—that you put alum into your bread. But no matter, alum or no alum, (for I was resolved to forestall any argument on that point,) know that I am a virtuoso in the art of murder—am desirous of improving myself in its details—and am enamored of your vast surface of throat, to which I am determined to be a customer.' 'Is it so?' said he, 'but I'll find you custom in another line;' and so saying, he threw himself into a boxing attitude. The ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... desired to afford all aid and help to the young artist Bocklet from Prague. He is the bearer of this note, and a virtuoso on the violin. We hope that our command will be obeyed, especially as we subscribe ourselves, with the most ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... religion in England than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment which may seem extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... cabinet, the court, and the legislature, his own intercourse with those characters who became remarkable for brilliant social and intellectual qualities, and his reputation as a wit, a scholar, and a virtuoso, cannot fail, it is hoped, to render his memoirs equally ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... the doctor's coach; Here, there, by various fortune toss'd, At last in Gresham Hall[3] was lost. Charmed with the wonders of the show, On every side, above, below, 20 She now of this or that enquires, What least was understood admires. 'Tis plain, each thing so struck her mind. Her head's of virtuoso kind. 'And pray what's this, and this, dear sir?' 'A needle,' says the interpreter. She knew the name. And thus the fool Addressed her as a tailor's tool: 'A needle with that filthy stone, Quite idle, all with rust o'ergrown! ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... breathing, authentic reality of Miss Cather's painters and musicians. Musicians she knows best among artists—perhaps has been most interested in them and has associated most with them because of the heroic vitality which a virtuoso must have to achieve any real eminence. The poet may languish over verses in his garret, the painter or sculptor over work conceived and executed in a shy privacy; but the great singer must be an athlete and an actor, training for months and years for the sake of a few ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... and a dissenting academy in the town. he was sent (1739) to Edinburgh to study theology with a view to becoming a minister, his expenses being paid from a special fund set aside by the dissenting community for the education of their pastors. He had already contributed "The Virtuoso, in imitation of Spenser's style and stanza'' (1737) to the Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1738 "A British Phillipic, occasioned by the Insults of the Spaniards, and the present Preparations for War'' (also published separately). After he had spent one winter as a student ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mouth-organ then remained the sole music machine in all that immense area. I did not feel equal to the position of organist but Steward boldly took up the study, and practised so faithfully that he became a real virtuoso. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... stupidity, this fanatical insistence on the exasperating attraction of the sordid and the disagreeable; and it is by such stages that we come to A Rebours. But on the way we have to note a volume of Croquis Parisiens (1880), in which the virtuoso who is a part of the artist in Huysmans has executed some of his most astonishing feats; and a volume on L'Art Moderne (1883), in which the most modern of artists in literature has applied himself to the criticism—the revelation, rather—of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Constance Gladowska musically idealized—the Krakowiak and an improvisation. The affair was a success. From these concerts he cleared six hundred dollars, not a small sum in those days for an unknown virtuoso. A sonnet was printed in his honor, champagne was offered him by an enthusiastic Paris bred, but not born, pianist named Dunst, who for this act will live in all chronicles of piano playing. Worse still, Orlowski served up the themes of his concerto into ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love.... The Gothic monuments of the Scaliger princes pleased me, but 'a poor virtuoso am I.'"—Letter to Moore, November 7, 1816, Letters, 1899, iii. 386, 387. The tombs of the Scaligers are close to the Church of Santa Maria l'Antica. Juliet's tomb, "of red Verona marble," is in the garden of the Orfanotrofio, between the Via Cappucini and the Adige. It is not "that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... built, and was of the type which passes in Germany for classic beauty; he had a large brow that expressed nothing, large regular features, and a curled beard—a Jupiter of the banks of the Rhine. Old Jean Michel enjoyed his son's success; he was ecstatic over the virtuoso's tours de force, he who had never been able properly to play any instrument. In truth, Melchior would have had no difficulty in expressing what he thought. The trouble was that he did not think; and he did not even bother ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... there seems to be as little reason to suppose that Tradescant's stuffed specimen was a fabrication. He used to preserve his own specimens; and there could be no motive at that period for a fabrication. I had hoped to have found some notice of it in the Diary of that worthy virtuoso Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, who visited the Ashmolean Museum in 1710; but though he notices other natural curiosities, there is no mention of it. This worthy remarks on the slovenly condition and inadequate superintendence of our museums, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... virtuoso's sense At that part of my prospect take offence, By which the meaner cabanes are descried Of my imperial river's humbler side; If they call that a blemish, let them know, God and my godlike mistress think not so; For the distressed and the afflicted lie Most in ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... under my good friend's care is very pleasant. It is placed among meadows, washed by a clear trout-stream, and flanked on both sides with downs. His house, indeed, would not much attract the admiration of the virtuoso. He built it himself, and it is remarkable only for its plainness; with which the furniture so well agrees, that there is no one thing in it that may not be absolutely necessary, except books, and the prints of Mr. Hogarth, whom he calls a ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... her nervous, high-pitched, vacant little laugh, which she used to fill in gaps in conversation much as a distinguished virtuoso might interlude his own important efforts with selections of light ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth, has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... companion wondered a person so eprouvee could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained after all something of a public performer, condemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... from the time she became his wife, loved him jealously and sincerely, and thought to confine him within the narrow world of domestic life. But his affections became restive, and he lost his heart to a Spanish actress (it was always an actress, a virtuoso, or a part) and left poor Ophelia, and went off with Marie Recio, the Ines of Favorite, the page of Comte Ory—a practical, hardheaded woman, an indifferent singer with a mania for singing. The haughty Berlioz ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... their taste soon after broke out in less seemly terms; for Shadwell permitted himself to use some very irreverent expressions towards Dryden's play of "Aureng-Zebe," in the Prologue and Epilogue to his comedy of the "Virtuoso;" and in the Preface to the same piece he plainly intimated, that he wanted nothing but a pension to enable him to write as well as the poet-laureate.[19] This attack was the more intolerable, as Dryden, in the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and tolerate fools Deep learning is generally tainted with pedantry Deepest learning, without good-breeding, is unwelcome Desirous of pleasing Dictate to them while you seem to be directed by them Dissimulation is only to hide our own cards Do not become a virtuoso of small wares Does not give it you, but he inflicts it upon you Endeavors to please and oblige our fellow-creatures Every man pretends to common sense Every numerous assembly is a mob Eyes and the ears are the only roads to the heart Few dare dissent from an established opinion ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... a leisure hour at my disposal, I stepped into a new museum, to which my notice was casually drawn by a small and unobtrusive sign: "TO BE SEEN HERE, A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION." Such was the simple yet not altogether unpromising announcement that turned my steps aside for a little while from the sunny sidewalk of our principal thoroughfare. Mounting a sombre staircase, ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was almost equally famous in the world as a physician and, in a smaller but equally refined circle, as a virtuoso and collector of objects of art. His opinions about the beneficent effects of vaccination were known to be at the opposite pole from those of ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... that had rusted, and ought to have been oiled. Its voice is now that of an angel; but, Lord! here in the club I dare not wake it! Conceive my impatience to be in my own backwoods and raise the sound of minstrelsy. What pleasures are to be compared with those of the Unvirtuous Virtuoso. - Yours ever affectionately, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... playing except in handy keys. In the modern orchestra the A and B flat clarinets are the most used; in the military band, B flat and E flat. The C clarinet is not much used now. All differ in tone and quality; the A one is softer than the B flat; the C is shrill. The B flat is the virtuoso instrument. In military bands the clarinet takes the place which would be that of the violin in the orchestra, but the tone of it is always characteristically different. Although introduced in the time of Handel and Bach those composers made no use ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... former days with Guy. A Parisian Castilian, more Parisian than Spanish, he spoke with exquisite finish the classic tongue, and with the free-and-easy manner of a frequenter of the boulevards, chatted in the slang of the pavement or of the greenroom; he was an eminent virtuoso and collector, an author when the desire seized him, but only in his own interest, liberal in his opinions, lavish in his disposition, attractive in his manners; an eager traveller, he had, at thirty years of age, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... helped us to move to Sanford, and father has been writing articles off and on for the magazine ever since then. It's better for all of us to be here. Uncle John isn't quite like other people. When he was a young man he studied to be a virtuoso on the violin. He overworked and had brain fever just before he was to give his first recital. After he got well he never played the same again. He had spent all the money his father left him on his musical education, so he had to ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... been built by the last proprietor, Northmour's uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso—presented little signs of age. It was two stories in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers, and looked, with its shuttered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... teachers, numbered among his pupils, Liszt, Doehler, Thalberg and Jaell. The Clementi school was continued in that familiar writer of Etudes, Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858), and began to show respect for the damper pedal. Its most eminent virtuoso was John ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... their dotage and even sympathize with their fancy. But a true original style is never achieved for its own sake: a man may pay from a shilling to a guinea, according to his means, to see, hear, or read another man's act of genius; but he will not pay with his whole life and soul to become a mere virtuoso in literature, exhibiting an accomplishment which will not even make money for him, like fiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... in the south, who had shown me kindness, took a fancy to them; and, smit by the charms of a gorgeous paint-box which he had just sent me, I made them over to him entire. They found their way to London, and were ultimately lodged in the collection of some obscure virtuoso, whose locality or name I have been unable ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... carriages, caleches, and drojkis were drawn up in the vicinity of a handsome mansion in one of the best quarters of St Petersburg. It had been the residence of a rich virtuoso, lately deceased, and whose pictures, furniture, and curiosities, were now selling by auction. The large drawing-room was filled with the most distinguished amateurs of art in St Petersburg, mingled with brokers and dealers on the look-out for bargains, and with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... it would be immense; at least, so they said. The Little 'Un himself fairly chuckled with glee at the prospects of being an amateur virtuoso of the fiddle, even for one night only. The remainder of the programme was quickly made up. One or two brief sketches and a rather rough and tumble arrangement for the close, which the enterprising ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... angry the other morning when I took to her the early mail and she discovered that Mrs. Van Varick Shadd had got ahead of her in the matter of Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye, and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for the purpose, ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... is that rather of a virtuoso than of a student in the strict sense of the term. He projected a great History of the Navy, which might have immortalised him in a very different fashion from that of the immortality which the Diary has ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... amusement, which he manifested by roars of laughter, we are informed by Seyfried, who saw more or less of him during a period covering a quarter of a century. "All his friends," says Seyfried, "recognized that in the art of laughter, Beethoven was a virtuoso of the first rank." He often laughed aloud when nothing had occurred to excite laughter, and would in such case ascribe his own thoughts and fancies as the cause. Naive and simple as a child himself, he could only see the naivete in the worthless compositions above referred to, and ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... attention. By thus analyzing settled and established cooerdinations, their elements are set free and may be organized into new combinations, so that the former is the first stage toward becoming a virtuoso with new special skills. This is the road to inner secrets or intellectual rules of professional and expert successes, such as older athletes often rely upon when their strength begins to wane. Every untrained automatism must be domesticated, and every striated muscle capable ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Virago (fig.) drakino. Virgin virgulino. Virginal virga. Virginity virgeco. Virgin, The Blessed La Sankta Virgulino, Dipatrino. Virile vira. Virility vireco. Virtue virto. Virtuous virta. Virtuoso virtuozo. Virulent venena, malboniga. Virus veneno. Visage vizagxo. Vis-a-vis kontrauxulo. Viscera internajxo. Viscuous gluanta. Visible videbla. Visibly videble. Vision (sense) vido. Vision ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the parlors were crowded with guests and villagers, but no performers. After waiting until expectancy and curiosity had almost toppled over from tiptoe to disgust and indignation, Field stepped to the piano with preternatural gravity and attacked it with all the grand airs of a foreign virtuoso. Critics would have denied that Field was a pianist, and, technically considered, they would have been right. But his fingers had a fondness for the ivory keys, and they responded to his touch with the sweet ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... not the hundredth part of what remains, a Catalogue of which is a Work of many Years, and without any other Subject, would swell to a large Volume, and requires the Abilities of a skilful Botanist: Had not the ingenious Mr. Banister (the greatest Virtuoso we ever had on the Continent) been unfortunately taken out of this World, he would have given the best Account of the Plants of America, of any that ever yet made such an Attempt in these Parts. Not but we are satisfy'd, the Species of Vegetables in Carolina, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... for four hands, based on Hans Christian Andersen's lore. Two concertos for piano and orchestra are dazzling feats of virtuosity; one of them is reviewed at length in A.J. Goodrich' book, "Musical Analysis." He has written also a book of artistic moment called "Twelve Virtuoso-Studies," and two books of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... and accurate description of real life, I appeal to No. 19, a man who wanders from one profession to another, with most plausible reasons for every change. No. 34, female fastidiousness and timorous refinement. No. 82, a Virtuoso who has collected curiosities. No. 88[646], petty modes of entertaining a company, and conciliating kindness. No. 182, fortune-hunting. No. 194-195, a tutor's account of the follies of his pupil. No. 197-198, legacy-hunting. He has given a specimen of his nice observation of the mere external ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Although religious emotion was the source and inspiration of his work, his work was impersonal. He was aloof from that feverish anxiety for self-revelation which has made much modern art so interesting pathologically, and so detestable otherwise. Nor again had he anything of the virtuoso about him. To him technique was not an end in itself. In Hellenistic art it became so, but not in the Golden Age. Indeed, he was sometimes almost careless of exact modelling, and in architecture he did not use the order as a mere exhibition of scholarship. In his search for beautiful ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... now made by this young man, and lent to his studies that vague touch of romance which made them a delight, and him an adept in many things he might otherwise have cared little about. At eighteen he was a graduate from the Sorbonne, and a musical virtuoso as well. He could fence, ride, and carry off the prize in games requiring physical prowess as well as mental fitness. He was, in fact, a prodigy in many ways, and was so considered by his fellow-students. He, however, was not perfect; he lacked social ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... large lower-case gothic letter, very nearly a quarter of an inch in height. The ornamental or border illuminations have more grace and beauty than the subjects represented; although, to the eye of an antiquarian virtuoso, the representations of the unfortunate monarch ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of a virtuoso. That was really clever of you. The Duchess d'Izes sent him to mother two years ago. You must speak to him. I 'm afraid he feels he ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Free School of Newcastle, and thence to a private academy kept by Mr. Wilson, a Dissenting minister of the place. He began rather early to display a taste for poetry and verse-writing; and, in April 1737, we find in the Gentleman's Magazine a set of stanzas, entitled, "The Virtuoso, in imitation of Spenser's style and stanza," prefaced by a letter signed Marcus, in which the author, while requesting the insertion of his piece, pleads the apology of his extreme youth. One may see something of the future ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... solidity of which caused Rodin to exclaim: "Carriere is also a sculptor!" Slowly and from the most unwilling sitter he extorted the secret of a soul. We speak of John Sargent as the master psychologist among portraitists, a superiority he himself has never assumed; but that magnificent virtuoso, an aristocratic Frans Hals, never gives us the indefinite sense of things mystic beneath the epidermis of poor, struggling humanity as does Eugene Carriere. Sargent is too magisterial a painter to dwell upon the infinite little ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... woman who was preparing to become a virtuoso once applied to a famous musical educator for advice regarding the future career of his daughter. "I want her to become one of the greatest pianists America has ever produced," he said. "She has talent, good health, unlimited ambition, a good general ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the Budapest virtuoso, will be the soloist at the concert this evening of the Philharmonic Society. He will play the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto, Opus 35, and the remainder of the program will consist of Dvorak's Symphony, Aus der Neuen Welt, and the ever-popular ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... the Mikado. The organ of the Residency-General in Seoul, the Seoul Press, made the best excuse it could. "Viscount Tanaka," it said, "is a conscientious official, liked and respected by those who know him, whether foreign or Japanese, but he is an ardent virtuoso and collector, and it appears that in this instance his collector's eagerness got the better of his sober judgment and discretion." But excuses, apologies, and regrets notwithstanding, the Pagoda was ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... Hamburg once a week—a distance for the round trip of 316 miles. In 1887 he went to Berlin and became fourth cornetist of the Philharmonic Orchestra and valet to Dr. Schweinsrippen, the conductor. In Berlin he studied violin and second violin under the Polish virtuoso, Pbyschbrweski, and also had lessons in composition from Wilhelm Geigenheimer, formerly third triangle ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... voice, whose intenseness left him gasping and apoplectic; now a civilised Cherokee with a mission; now a female elocutionist, whose forte was Byron's Songs of Greece; now a high caste Chinaman; now a miniature painter; now a tenor, a pianiste, a mandolin player, a missionary, a drawing master, a virtuoso, a collector, an Armenian, a botanist with a new flower, a critic with a new theory, a ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 4. The Virtuoso, a Comedy; acted at the duke's theatre, printed at London 1676, in quarto, dedicated to the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... virtuoso astonished the court by his brilliant talents. The future Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was particularly delighted with him, and the little Mozart naively said he would like to marry her, for she was so good to him. His father devoted several years to an artistic tour, with ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of four, having an elder brother and two sisters. He was sent to a day school at Shrewsbury in the year of his mother's death, 1817. At this age he tells us that the passion for "collecting" which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in him, and was clearly innate, as none of his brothers or sisters had this taste. A year later he was removed to the Shrewsbury grammar school, where he profited little by the education ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... down to table, and after an excellent dinner they went into the library. Candide, seeing a Homer magnificently bound, commended the virtuoso on his ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... could tell you a little story about him. He has had a love-affair. There was a time when he too joined in the dance and song, as one might say; but all that is over for him. One morning he turned up late, his usual merry call changed to a croak like that of a bull-frog virtuoso. I peered between the curtains to make sure that it was not Number Five (as yet hypothetical); but no—it was Three, with a look on his face that could only bear one interpretation. Belinda had been perverse, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... is only a trickster! There is a fad nowadays among the ladies to run after him." He bowed to the three ladies in turn mockingly, "My friends here tried to get tickets last week in St. Petersburg, but the house was sold out. Bosh—I tell you! I wouldn't cross the street to hear a virtuoso ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... to seem to prefer his drawings and pastels to his pictures. We have seen that he was a supremely able technician in his pot-boiling days and that the color and handling of his early pictures were greatly admired by so brilliant a virtuoso as Diaz. But this "flowery manner" would not lend itself to the expression of his new aims and he had to invent another. He did so stumblingly at first, and the earliest pictures of his grand style have a certain harshness and ruggedness of surface and heaviness of color which his ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Last Duchess', the speaker is a soulless VIRTUOSO— a natural product of a proud, arrogant, and exclusive aristocracy, on the one hand, and on the other, of an old and effete city, like Ferrara, where art, rather than ministering to soul-life and true manliness ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... enlarge his knowledge of the same, let him refer to vol. lx. pt. ii. and vol. lxi. pt. i. of the Gentleman's Magazine. By the kindness of Mr. John Nichols, I am enabled to present the bibliomaniacal virtuoso with a fac-simile of the copper-plate inserted in the latter volume (p. 321) of the authority last mentioned. It represents the GOLDEN COVER, or binding, of this precious manuscript. Of the Queen's attachment to works of this kind, the following ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and died in 1662, having survived his only son ten years; and, having no heir to his treasures, he had previously conveyed them, by deed of gift, to Elias Ashmole, who seems to have contrived to make himself agreeable to him by his pursuits as a virtuoso, and by his alchemical and astrological fancies. When Dr. Hamel was in England, I had the pleasure of indicating to him the site of "Tradescant's Ark" in South Lambeth. It was situate on the east side of the road leading from Vauxhall to Stockwell, nearly opposite to what was formerly called ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... eagles, cranes, storks, bustards, ducks with four wings, or with rabbits of an almost perfect yellow colour.[295] Holland, therefore, where ships brought precious curiosities from all over the world, was a heaven for the virtuoso. Evelyn in Rotterdam hovered between his delight in the brass statue of Erasmus and a pelican, which he carefully describes. The great charm of Dutch inns for Sam Paterson was their hoards of China and Japan ware and the probability you had of ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... which I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my interest in him; increased it rather; it also served to make the extraordinary didoes of which he had been the virtuoso and I the audience more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his appearance, but one afternoon—a few days after my interview ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... intelligible; because what I have to write may turn sometimes upon the company we see: for which reason, I shall also just mention Sir George Stuart, a Scottish gentleman, with whom Mr. B. became acquainted in his travels, who seems to be a polite (and Mr. B. says, is a learned) man, and a virtuoso: he, and a nephew of his, of the same name, a bashful gentleman, and who, for that reason, I imagine, has a merit that lies deeper than a first observation can reach, are just gone from us, and were received with so much civility ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... His later symphonies and operas show us the man at his best. His piano works and early operas show the effect of the "virtuoso" style, with all its empty concessions to technical display and commonplace, ear-catching melody ... He possessed a certain simple charm of expression which, in its directness, has an element of pathos lacking in the ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... pieces, and their intricate melodies—brocaded, embroidered, festooned—poured themselves through the windows into the garden in a procession majestic and impassioned, perturbing the intent soul of the solitary listener, swathing her in intoxicating sound. It was the unique virtuoso born again, proudly displaying the ultimate sublime end of all those slow-moving exercises to which he had subdued his fingers. Not for ten years had I heard him ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... partial imitation of the Dunciad written by Richard Owen Cambridge, a scholar and man of fortune, who, in his residence at Twickenham, surrounded by friends of congenial tastes, enjoyed a life of literary ease. The Scribleriad is an attack on pseudo-science, the hero being a virtuoso of the most Quixotic kind, who travels far to discover rarities, loves a lady with the plica Polonica, waits three years at Naples to see the eruption of Vesuvius; and plays all kinds of fantastic tricks, as if ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... surely, hardly necessary to direct the attention of students to the unique value of the hints and advice given by so experienced and accomplished a virtuoso as the late Mr. Carrodus, so that it only remains to state that the 'Recollections' make delightful reading, and that the book, as a whole, is as entertaining as it is instructive. The value of the brochure is enhanced by an excellent portrait of Mr. Carrodus, as well as of ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... luxurious bedroom, a smaller bedroom for the slave detailed to wait on me, a tiny triclinium and a jewel of a sitting-room, gorgeous with statuettes and paintings, crammed with objects of art and walled with a virtuoso's selection of the best books of the best possible materials ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... occupations of separate individuals are carried on itinerantly. The great founders of religion, the earliest poets and philosophers, the musicians and actors of past epochs, are all great wanderers. Even today, do not the inventor, the preacher of a new doctrine, and the virtuoso travel from place to place in search of adherents and admirers—notwithstanding the immense recent development in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... countrymen do, musically, and (to use a ridiculous word) KNICK-KNACKICALLY. No piping nor fiddling, I beseech you; no days lost in poring upon almost imperceptible 'intaglios and cameos': and do not become a virtuoso of small wares. Form a taste of painting, sculpture, and architecture, if you please, by a careful examination of the works of the best ancient and modern artists; those are liberal arts, and a real taste and knowledge of them become a man of fashion ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... scrutinizing the program, merely drew her wrap closer about her shoulders and sat more erect. At the end of the concerto the applause was generous enough to satisfy the most exacting virtuoso. Diotti unquestionably had scored the greatest triumph of his career. But the lady in the box had remained silent ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... inquire his curious comrade ran. "Sir, did you tell"—relating the affair. "Yes, sir, I did; and, if it's worth your care, Ask Mr. Such-a-one, he told it me. But, by the bye, 'twas two black crows—not three." Resolved to trace so wondrous an event, Whip, to the third, the virtuoso went; "Sir"—and so forth. "Why, yes; the thing is fact, Though, in regard to number, not exact; It was not two black crows—'twas only one; The truth of that you may depend upon; The gentleman himself ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... can't do nothing, they don't know how to begin. They should go to Donegal. The place is silent as the tomb, and if they would learn to do nothing they will there find many eminent professors of the science, who, having devoted to it the study of a lifetime, have attained a virtuoso proficiency. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... were now, however, long since past and gone; and Signor Fortini lived only for his law and his artistic and antiquarian collections. He was like many of his peers in the provincial cities of the Papal dominions—a great antiquary and virtuoso. Antiquarianism is a "safe" pursuit under a government the nature of which makes and finds very many intellectual occupations unsafe. And this may account for the fact, that very many competent historical antiquaries ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... singers, my mother being gifted musically quite out of the common, and active for many years not only as a dramatic singer, but also as a harp virtuoso, I, with my sister Marie, received a very careful musical education; and later a notable course of instruction in singing from her. From my fifth year on I listened daily to singing lessons; from my ninth year I played accompaniments on the pianoforte, sang all ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... his tables. They were principally such bits of antiquity as the soil of Rome and its neighborhood are still rich in; seals, gems, small figures of bronze, mediaeval carvings in ivory; things which had been obtained at little cost, yet might have borne no inconsiderable value in the museum of a virtuoso. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... treasures of the gods thou wouldst not spare, But when they're made thine own, they sacred are, And must be kept with reverence; as if thou No other use of precious gold didst know But that of curious pictures to delight With the fair stamp thy virtuoso sight. The only true and genuine use is this, To buy the things which nature cannot miss Without discomfort, oil, and vital bread. And wine by which the life of life is fed, And all those few things else by which we live All that ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... painted some fine works, like the Buveur d'absinthe and the Vieux musicien. They show the influence of Courbet, but already the blacks and the greys have an original and superb quality; they announce a virtuoso ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... of all Contractions or Expedients for Wit, I admire that of an ingenious Projector whose Book I have seen. [4] This Virtuoso being a Mathematician, has, according to his Taste, thrown the Art of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may, to his great ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fifty very charming people were gathered together to be introduced to the virtues of the new instrument—for Carson was not the kind of man to keep to himself the good things which came into his life; he shared all his blessings, while keeping his woes to himself; a well-known virtuoso was retained to set forth the possibilities of the acquisition, and all was going as "merry as a marriage bell" when suddenly there came a wheeze, and the fingers of the well-known virtuoso were powerless ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... advance over the sum for which it had been pawned. It lay exposed for purchase on Fox's shelf for some months, until, in December, 1895, a tailor named James Dooly visited the shop to redeem a silver watch. Being, at the same time, in funds, and able to satisfy his taste as a virtuoso, he felt the need of and bought a violin for ten dollars, but, Fox urging upon him the desirability of getting a good one while he was about it, was finally persuaded to purchase the Bott violin for twenty dollars in its stead. Dooly took it home, played upon ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... for a time at the outer wharf end, mildly interested when the fisherman drew up a two-pound trout, wondering a little at her own subtle changes of mood. Her surrounding played upon her like a virtuoso on his violin. And this was something that she did not recall as a trait in her own character. She had never inclined to the volatile—perhaps because until the motor accident snuffed out her father's life she had never dealt ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... movements; briefly, as far as was then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature and appreciate art, though he was carefully to avoid the excess which makes the pedant or the virtuoso. He was to cultivate a good style in writing and speaking, and even to learn German. Chesterfield's prophecy of a revolution in France (though, I fancy, a little overpraised) shows at least that he was ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... at once. Io's strong and beautiful hands, which had been lying in her lap, suddenly interlocked, clenching close together. But her face disclosed nothing. The virtuoso, who had been hopefully hovering in the offing, bore down to take the vacated chair. He would have found the lovely young Mrs. Eyre distrait and irresponsive had he not been too happy babbling of his ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... discovered all the aids necessary to the pyrotechnist. I am not a chemist for nothing. If I can paint a fair imitation of a Claude Monet on canvas, I can also produce for you a colourless gas which, when handled by a virtuoso, produces astonishing illusions. In the open air, against the dark background of the horizon, I can show you the luminous dots planewise of the Impressionists; or I can give you the broad, sabrelike brushwork of Velasquez, or the imperial tintings of Titian. I can paint pictures on ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... friend now made us drink a glass of wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabinet; and while sipping it, we ungratefully tried to excite his envy, by telling of various things, interesting to an antiquary and virtuoso, which we had seen in the course of our travels about England. We spoke, for instance, of a missal bound in solid gold and set round with jewels, but of such intrinsic value as no setting could enhance, for it was exquisitely illuminated, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... little bit of tin and horn; I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest; The virtuoso looks on me with scorn; But there's times when I am better than the best. Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea; Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine; Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the grain— There's a lowly, loving kingdom—and ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service |
