"Composer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few German lieder of a more contemporaneous cast. Then his aunt asked him for that last sweet little thing of his own. "I don't believe Bertie has ever heard a composer sing one of his ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Reeves, London, in 1879). This was the first serious attempt at a biography of Chopin. The author reproduced in the book what had been brought to light in Polish magazines and other publications regarding Chopin's life by various countrymen of the composer, among whom he himself was not the least notable. But the most valuable ingredients are, no doubt, the Chopin letters which the author obtained from the composer's relatives, with whom he was acquainted. While gratefully acknowledging his achievements, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... to Miss Fotheringay, of the Theatre Royal,' appearing every week; and other verses of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But as these poems were no longer signed NEP by their artful composer, but subscribed EROS, neither the tutor nor Helen, the good soul, who cut all her son's verses out of the paper, knew that Nep was no other than that flaming Eros, who sang so vehemently the character of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... completed. After they had each copied out their respective verses, they handed them to Ying Ch'un, who took a separate sheet of snow-white fancy paper, and transcribed them together, affixing distinctly under each stanza the style of the composer. Li Wan and her assistants then began to read, starting from the first on the list, the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... The Austrio-Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (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 ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... mere tone-color is not the substance of a musical composition. Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is just as great a work, in all its essentials, in a four-hand piano arrangement as in the original score. Every harmonic and melodic idea of the composer is there; one can trace just as clearly the subtle processes of his mind; every step in the working out of the materials is just as plain. True enough, there are orchestral compositions of which this cannot be reasonably said; their color is so much more important than ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... contempt. Another portrait is Bridgman, a well-known landscape gardener of the time, who is proposing to our young hero some scheme for his estate; while the seated and periwigged figure who runs his fingers over the harpsichord has been suggested as that of the great composer Handel. But when we start forth to knock down the watch, "beat the rounds," intrigue with the fair, and generally keep up the character of a young blood or "macaroni," a little timely assistance is often welcome; and is here proffered (with ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... many journals, the editors of which he first pesters, afterwards serves, and always despises. He may perhaps have dabbled in music, and caused a penniless friend who is musical to write for small pay songs which he honours by attaching his own name to them as their composer. Woe betide the unhappy aspirant to the honours of public singing who ignores the demand of this quasi-musical Turpin that she should sing his songs. For, having become in the meantime a musical critic, he will devote all his talents to the congenial task of abusing her voice in his organ—which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... ANTOINE MADELEINE (1772-1827), French dramatist and song-writer, son of Marc Antoine Dsaugiers, a musical composer, was born at Frjus (Var) on the 17th of November 1772. He studied at the Mazarin college in Paris, where he had for one of his teachers the critic Julien Louis Geoffroy. He entered the seminary Saint Lazare with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... how the wife of a well-known Norwegian composer, in a fit of raging jealousy excited by her husband's prolonged absence from home, burnt the manuscript of a symphony which he had just finished. The circumstances under which Hedda burns Lovborg's manuscript are, of course, entirely ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... was a general feeling that he ought to have shown,—by his personal applause in public,—a proper appreciation of the many gifted artists playing that evening, especially in the case of Louis Valdor, the composer of the Opera itself. But he sat inert, only occasionally glancing at the stage, and anon carelessly turning away from it to converse with ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... song by a new composer, of whom she had never heard till now, and the manuscript lay open on a cushioned stool beside her. For a time she had followed the notes and words carefully with her voice, picking out the accompaniment on her lute from the figured bass, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... especially of fluting, is already known to us. Now a certain Quantz was one of his principal instructors in that art, and indeed gave him the last finish of perfection in it. Quantz, famed Saxon music-master and composer, Leader of the Court-Band in Saxony, king of flute-players in his day,—(a village-farrier's son from the Gottingen region, and himself destined to shoe horses, had not imperative Nature prevailed over hindrances);—Quantz, ever from Fritz's sixteenth year, was wont to come occasionally, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... composer who has just played his newly written revue masterpiece)—"Yes, I've always liked that little thing. Now play one of ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration, to its composer, than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian. A bottle of wine bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases are confused ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the character In the second version of "Evelyn Innes" there is more of Mr. Russell than of Mr. Yeats in Ulick Dean, at least in his appearance and sayings, though Mr. Moore could not divest his composer of the personality of Mr. Yeats. There is less of Ireland in "Sister Theresa" (1901) than in "Evelyn Innes," but "The Untilled Field," short stories written after the removal of Mr. Moore to Dublin and gathered together in 1903, are wholly concerned with Ireland. As ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... grand oratorio of the "Messiah," which is still performed in both Protestant and Catholic cathedrals; and Graun, with whom Frederick the Great played the flute, brought private singing into vogue by his musical compositions. Gluck was the first composer who introduced the depth and pathos of more solemn music into the opera. He gained a complete triumph at Paris over Piccini, the celebrated Italian musician, in his contest respecting the comparative excellencies of the German and Italian ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... (1729-1786). Grandfather of the famous composer. He was a Jewish philosopher and a friend of Lessing's, who, it is supposed, took him as his model for "Nathan the Wise." He freed his German co-religionaries from the oppressive influence of ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... Oct. 7. William Billings, First New England composer, organizer of singing societies, etc. ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... there were several editions of them made, the third in 1654, and the fourth in 1670. The songs in these poems were set to music, or as Wood expresses it, wedded to the charming notes of Mr. Henry Lawes, at that time the greatest musical composer in England, who was Gentleman of the King's Chapel, and one of the private musicians ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... his remarks, with a supposition that Basse "was a musical composer, as well as writer of verses." I believe Mr. C. to be right in this notion, from a passage which I find in the commencement of the 2nd Part of "The Youth in the Boat," where, alluding to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... again. ALEXANDER is surprisingly good as Dr. Bill, and the serious earnestness with which he invests the part intensifies the drollery of the complications. And to think that the adapter of this gay and festive piece should be none other than the sentimental troubadour, song-writer and composer, author of a Lyceum Tragedy and other similar trifles, Mr. HAMILTON AIDE!! "Sir," in future will HAMILTON AIDE say, when being interviewed by a Manager, "I will now read you my Five Act Tragedy entitled——" "Hang your tragedies!" will the Manager ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... business to adapt the words for this agreeable mixture: for the music is but secondary, and subservient to the words; and if there be an artful contrast in the drama, there will be the same in the music, supposing the composer to be a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... "Is that the composer of 'Inasmuch' and 'How so?'" asked Julia, clasping her hands. "I do love his music, and the ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... and harsh and screeching, and sometimes it was low and drawling and singing; but at no time did it harmonize with what he was talking about. Music was the subject of conversation; the praises of a new composer were being sung, when Krespel, smiling, said in his low singing tones, "I wish the devil with his pitchfork would hurl that atrocious garbler of music millions of fathoms down to the bottomless pit of hell!" Then he burst out passionately and wildly, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... there seems to have been no redundance in the supply of capable actors: on one occasion for want of actors a piece of Naevius had to be performed by amateurs. But this produced no change in the position of the artist; the poet or, as he was at this time called, the "writer," the actor, and the composer not only belonged still, as formerly, to the class of workers for hire in itself little esteemed,(14) but were still, as formerly, placed in the most marked way under the ban of public opinion, and subjected to police maltreatment.(15) Of course all reputable ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to Novello, who was the peculiar champion of Mozart and Haydn. Lamb calls him Corelli after Archangelo Corelli (1653-1713), the violinist and composer. It was part of a joke between Lamb and Novello that Lamb should affect to know a great deal about music. See the Elia essay "A Chapter on Ears" for a description of Novello's playing. Mrs. Novello was the mother ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... extraction, would find an excellent Italian alias, closely associated with the operatic and musical professions, and most appropriate to the line he has adopted, in the name of "SIGNOR COSTA." The melody of Mr. CHEVALIER's "Coster's Serenade," of which, I rather think, he is the composer as well as librettist, is as charming as it is strikingly original. After the Chevalier sans peur et sans approche had retired, clever and sprightly Miss JENNY HILL gave as a taste of lodging-house-keeperism, following whom came the Two ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... present, the first series of his "Lyrical Pieces" for the pianoforte, and had afterwards played some of them to the poet, who was especially struck with one melody which Grieg had called "Fadrelandssang" ("Song of the Fatherland"). Bjornson there and then, to the composer's great gratification, protested that he must write words to fit the air. (It must be mentioned that each strophe of the melody starts with a refrain consisting of two strongly accented notes, which suggest some vigorous dissyllabic word.) A day or two later Grieg met Bjornson, who was ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... were lying in wait there. They stripped us, but afterwards of themselves became sorry, and returned our things. As we were going along this wonderful, fearful river, and beheld the mountains on either side covered with beautiful forests, we remembered Mr. Rhea, the composer of the hymn, 'Valley of Ishtazin.' And when filled with wonder at the works of the Great Creator, we all, with one voice, praised him in songs of joy fitting for the mountains. Here the brethren reminded me, that our dear Miss Fiske had trodden these fearful precipices. This greatly ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... Meyerbeer has already completed a grand opera with the title of L'Africaine, and is now engaged on a comic opera. This is probably nothing more than one of the trumpets which this composer knows so well how to blow beforehand. Meyerbeer is not greater in music than in the art of tickling public expectation and keeping the public ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... wiped away the perspiration from his bulging forehead, for the third movement of the sonata, marked in the score Allegro con fuoco, had taxed even the technic of its composer. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... accountant's desk with ledgers; the large Pleyel grand piano; a bookcase, in which all the books were rare copies or priceless MSS. of old-fashioned operas; hanging against the wall an inlaid guitar and some faded laurel crowns; moreover, a fine engraving of a composer, twenty years ago the most popular man in Italy; lastly, an oil-colour portrait, by Winterman, of a fascinating blonde, with very bare white shoulders, holding in her hands a scroll, on which were inscribed some notes of music, under the title Giulia ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... that I went (with Lady Molesworth) to hear "Faust" last night. It is a splendid work, in which that noble and sad story is most nobly and sadly rendered, and perfectly delighted me. But I think it requires too much of the audience to do for a London opera house. The composer must be a very remarkable man indeed. Some management of light throughout the story is also very poetical and fine. We had Carvalho's box. I could hardly bear the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... SAVOY!" (vide old-fashioned duet).—It is rumoured that the separation, on account of incompatibility of temper, between a certain distinguished Composer and an eminent Librettist has come to an end. Its end is peace—that is, an Operatic piece. They have met; the two have embraced, and will, no doubt, live happily ever afterwards, on the same terms as before, with the third party present, whose good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... He found that in the German schools much attention was given to music; he also found many books containing music and songs for children. Returning home, he brought several of these music-books, and placed them in the hands of Mr. Lowell Mason, then a noted composer, organist, and choir leader. Having himself no knowledge of the German language he brought them to me at Andover, where I was then studying theology, requesting me, as I should find time, to furnish him translations of the German ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... can be read in a few moments' time, are intended to give the reader as clear as possible an outline of the great dramatist-composer's work. ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... for me to express in words the admiration I felt on hearing it. It was a most masterly composition, and was moreover entirely original and unlike the writing of any known composer. It possessed an individuality which distinguished it from every other work of a like nature. All one could say with certainty about it was that it was not modern music. There was a simplicity and a severity about it which stamped it unmistakably as belonging ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the changes: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in certain places or degrees; that is to say, by his various employment of it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his intellect is shown, and not in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... part of the poem mentioned. The lyric metre in which it now appears must rather injure than improve the belle nature of the original. Still I wish it to be published, as coming from my hand; because it gives me an opportunity of expressing, in some degree, my unqualified admiration of its composer. Well may he be called THE POET AND HISTORIAN OF THE NEW WORLD. To justify this appellation, one has only to look at Madoc and the History of Brazil. I have heard, from a friend, of a rumor that Southey is ill; and, as ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... his promise, in consequence, it was said by some, of a certain mental shock, the young composer had fallen victim to a rare, insidious disease, arising apparently from an organic derangement, small in itself but deadly in its secondary effects. The chief characteristics of this malady were a general muscular prostration growing ever more ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Sousa, the famous composer and bandmaster, said that the reason why there was not so much great music produced in the twentieth as in the nineteenth century was that religious faith had declined. According to him, creation is based on faith. This ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... outside her house might be thinking of the roulades that poured from her open window: she was simply Emmeline Lucas, absorbed in glorious Bach or dainty Scarletti, or noble Beethoven. The latter perhaps was her favorite composer, and many were the evenings when with lights quenched and only the soft effulgence of the moon pouring in through the uncurtained windows, she sat with her profile, cameo-like (or like perhaps to the head on a ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... are almost all it can define, or even suggest. Certain music is called "characteristic"—anvil choruses, for example, where hammers or triangles or tin whistles are used, but that is not music in its best estate, and musical purpose is best understood after a composer has labelled it, whether the ultra-artistic are ready to ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... education in the Irish Convent, Rue du Bacq, Faubourg St. Germain, at Paris, where the immortal Sacchini, the instructor of the Queen, gave me lessons in music. Pleased with my progress, the celebrated composer, when one day teaching Marie Antoinette, so highly overrated to that illustrious lady my infant natural talents and acquired science in his art, in the presence of her very shadow, the Princesse de Lamballe, as to excite in Her ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... roofed with an awning of white silk which bore the royal arms, flares were burning up to the topmost cornice of the round walls. A temporary altar decorated in white and gold was ablaze with candles, and the choir, conducted by a fashionable composer of opera, were in a golden cage. The King and Queen and royal princes sat in chairs under a velvet canopy, and there were tribunes for cabinet ministers, senators, deputies, and foreign ambassadors. Religion was necessary to all state functions, and the Mass was a ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Halevy, born in Paris on January 1, 1834, was a nephew of Jacques Francois Halevy, the famous operatic composer. Beginning life in the Civil Service, he himself achieved considerable distinction as a dramatic author, "Frou-Frou," written in collaboration with Meilhac, being one of the greatest theatrical successes of his century. He soon, however, forsook the drama for fiction. His first novel, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... curious to catch a glimpse of the quondam Leipzig student, who, it was whispered, would soon return to the town to take up a leading position in the orchestra. Schilsky was now KONZERTMEISTER in a large South German town; but it was rather as a composer that his name had begun to burn on people's tongues. His new symphonic poem, UBER DIE LETZTEN DINGE, had drawn down on his head that mixture of extravagant laudation and abusive derision ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Mehan's big kitchen, the amusements of the evening—dancing and drinking—were on the point of commencing. Shamuth of the pipes, the celebrated composer and musician, was sitting in the corner of the huge fireplace, with a tumbler of punch within reach of his hand, preparing his instrument,—squeaking, and puffing, and blowing in the most approved preparatory style. Mary was working and toiling again for ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... inadequate. Rhythm is infinite. These regular times are no doubt the most important fundamental entities of it, and may even lie undiscoverably at the root of all varieties of rhythm whatsoever, and further they may be the only possible or permissible rhythms for a modern composer to use, but yet the absolute dominion which they now enjoy over all music lies rather in their practical necessity and convenience (since it is only by attending to them that the elaboration of modern harmonic music ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... sensitive to sartorial influences. Unfortunately the force of tradition was so strong that he found it impossible to indulge his tastes. It was de rigueur to conduct in either a frock or an evening coat, but if he had his own way he would vary his garb for every composer. For example, he would like to wear a harlequin's dress for STRAUSS, a full-bottomed wig and ruffles for BACH, HAYDN and GLUCK, a red tie and a cap of Liberty for SCHOeNBERG, and the uniform of a Cossack of the Ukraine for TCHAIKOVSKY. Instead of which the utmost ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... descended. The silly old wretch had disturbed his equanimity as a composer of fiction for the comfort and sustainment of his wife: and no sooner had he the front door in view than the calculation of the three strides requisite to carry him out of the house plucked at his legs, much as young people are affected by a dancing measure; for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the course of years that Frederick Augustus would not take her back, she changed her mind as to the illegality of her divorce and married, September 25, 1907, Enrico Toselli, an Italian composer ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... more precise, it was rendering the waltz-tune in "Faust," an opera by the late M. Gounod. Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken knew nothing of "Faust" or of its composer. But they could ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... thunder, hail and rain frightened a lot more away on Thursday, so may as well discuss Esmeralda, which I hadn't time to do last week. Rather a mixed affair to start with when you have a French libretto, set by an English Composer, and played at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden. No matter. A big success for everyone concerned, from DRURIOLANUS downwards. No one could have wished for a better Esmeralda than Madame MELBA, though she did not make the most of that first charming song, "L'Hirondelle." One Swallow, ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... Of old stone fence." - Jim Crow, 1832. Straaten,(Flem.) - Streets. Stracks - Straight ahead, or onwards. Straight flush - In poker, all the cards of one suit. Strassen,(Ger.) - Streets. Strauss - Name of the celebrated Viennese valse player and composer. Strumpf,(Ger.) - Stocking. Stunden,(Ger.) - Leagues. About four and a half English miles. Sturm und Drang,(Ger.) - Literally Storm and Violence. Sturm und Drang periode, signifying a particular period of German literature. Sweynheim and Pannartz ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... practice which was suspended for some reason during my stay in Venice: at least no gondolier ever did it in my hearing). Shakespear is no more a popular author than Rodin is a popular sculptor or Richard Strauss a popular composer. But Shakespear was certainly not such a fool as to expect the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys of his time to be any more interested in dramatic poetry than Newton, later on, expected them to be interested in fluxions. And when we come to the question whether Shakespear ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... Jonson's bad Pieces we don't discover one single Trace of the Author of the Fox and Alchemist: but in the wild extravagant Notes of Shakespeare, you every now and then encounter Strains that recognize the divine Composer. This Difference may be thus accounted for. Jonson, as we said before, owing all his Excellence to his Art, by which he sometimes strain'd himself to an uncommon Pitch, when at other times he unbent and play'd with his Subject, having nothing then ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... administrator, courtier and man of the world did not prevent him from following his natural bent for intellectual pursuits. He was a man of brilliant parts and of refined and artistic tastes. Acquainted with many languages and literatures, an accomplished musician and musical composer, a generous patron of letters and of art, his poetical efforts are eminently characteristic of the personality of the man. His volumes of short poems—Hofwijck, Cluijswerck, Voorhout and Zeestraet—contain exquisite and witty pictures ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... can be selected for special mention, that of the poet and scholar Samuel Mulder (1789-1862). Besides being active as the editor of several collections of essays, and writing remarkable historical studies, he was the composer of poems very much admired by his contemporaries. Most of them appeared in the Bikkure To'elet ("Useful First Fruits"), which he published at Amsterdam, in 1820, under the auspices of the Maskilim society To'elet. The Talmudic narrative about the seduction ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... to England I said to people, 'You have a brilliant young composer named Pair. Can you put me in the way of procuring his address?' The fortune he had come to seek he would surely have found; he would be a known man. But people looked blank, and declared they had never heard of him. I applied to music-publishers—with the ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... Burana. I have ventured, in translating it, to borrow the structure of a song which occurs in Fletcher's Rollo (act v. scene 2), the first stanza of which is also found in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (act iv. scene 1), and to insert one or two phrases from Fletcher's version. Whether the composer of that song had ever met with the Latin lyric to Lydia can scarcely form the subject of critical conjecture. Yet there is a faint evanescent resemblance ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... delight." This ostentatious stage-display finds its counterpart to some extent at the present day, and may remind us also of the huge orchestras of blaring sound which are the delight of the modern composer and the modern musical audience. And the plays were by no means the only part of the show. There were displays of athletes; but these never seem to have greatly interested a Roman audience, and ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... with a copy of the opening address, I transcribe it. Of course, it loses much from the effect given by its composer in its delivery. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... substitute. I have pictured to myself an illustration: A bright young man is present at a grand concert. It is between the parts. He bends suavely over the back of a lady's chair and talks sweet music to her ear. He says: "Could you not follow every thought of the composer in that symphony?" (which they have just heard). "And was not the effect sublime when the storm reached the heights of the mountains, and all the elements of Nature struggled so stubbornly?" And the young woman demurely gives him an assuring look which conserves all ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... organically defective, as were the ears of the great composer, Beethoven, but tone-deaf, as a person may ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... shrines near one another and probably within the temple's precincts, and, as the passage which records this fact is broken, it is possible that the missing portion of the text recorded the building of shrines to other deities. In any case, it is clear that the composer of the text represents all the great gods as beholding the erection and inauguration of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... is no right or wrong way to give utterance to music. There is but one way, namely, through the living, vital expression of the content of the music; all else is not music but mere pleasure for the ear, a thing of the senses. For the time being we must see through the composer's eyes and hear through his ears. In other words, we must think in his language. The process of creating music is often, to a great extent, beyond the control of the composer, just as is the case with the novelist and his characters. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... insisted upon the old lady joining us, which she eventually did with much coughing and protestation; but I noticed that she finished the tumblerful. For the children he concocted a marvellous mixture, which he called an "eye-composer," the chief ingredients being hot lemonade, ginger wine, sugar, oranges, and raspberry vinegar. It had ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... artists are the typical and representative men of the race, and whatever is true of them is true, in a lesser degree, of men in general. There is in the work of every great sculptor, painter, writer, composer, architect, a distinctive and individual manner so marked and unmistakable as to identify the man whenever and wherever a bit of his work appears. If a statue of Phidias were to be found without any mark of the sculptor upon it, there would be no delay in determining whose work it was; no educated ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... therefore, scarcely fair to put upon record lines intended not to be said or read, but only to be sung. But such scraps of old poetry have always had a sort of fascination for us; and as the tune is lost for ever unless Bishop [Sir Henry Rowley, an English composer and professor of music at Oxford in 1848. Among his most popular operas are Guy Mannering and The Kniqht of Snowdon] happens to find the notes, or some lark teaches Stephens [Catherine (1794-1882): a vocalist ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... from a cabinet, she thrust it boldly under his nose. It was called "The Unrealized Ideal," and was a setting of some words by a real poet then living, whose name caused this reader to murmur, "London Lyrics!" The composer was Sir Julian Crum. But his name was read without a word, or a movement of the strong shoulders and the tanned neck on which ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... us. Lastly, I had a very sufficient knowledge of mineralogy, precious stones, antiquities, and curiosities; but I had at my command every possible resource for acquiring these studies, as one of my dearest and best friends, Aristide le Carpentier, a learned antiquary, and uncle of the talented composer of the same name, had, and still has, a cabinet of antique curiosities, which makes the keepers of the imperial museums fierce with envy. My son and I spent many long days in learning here names and dates of which we afterwards made a learned ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... as are these tombs, the true glory of Dijon is that the great Bossuet was born here and St. Bernard so near, at Fontaine, that Dijon may claim him for her own; and Rameau, the celebrated composer; Rude, whose sculptures adorn the Arc de l'Etoile in Paris; Jouffroy, and a host of other celebrities, as we read in the names of the streets, parks, and boulevards, for Dijon, like so many French cities and towns, writes her ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... all day and all night; it can easily be imagined that things did not go so quietly as at an English whist-party. The incessant rain rendered it impossible to leave the cabin even for a short time. The only consolation I had was, that I made the acquaintance of the amiable composer Lorzing, a circumstance which delighted me the more, as I had always been an admirer of his ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... the "Galette," go with a Parisian or some of the students of the Quarter; but if you must go alone—keep your eyes on the band. It is a good band, too, and its chef d'orchestre, besides being a clever musical director, is a popular composer as well. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... day or earlier. Such a tune I am entirely unable to recall voluntarily; yet when it comes into the mind's ear, so to speak, I readily recognise it as belonging to an earlier day's experience. Other cases show various accidental suggestions, such as the tune Mozart suggested by the composer's name, the tune Gentle Annie suggested by the name Annie, etc. In all these cases it is only after the tune has taken possession of consciousness and after much seeking that the suggesting ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... be deprecated, if merely for the reason that it may debar a singer from interpreting accurately the composer's ideas. How seldom, if ever, even in the best lyric theatres, is the following passage heard as the ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... said to Kallem, "is at school here. I wish you would let him come, now and then, to your house. He is only nineteen years old, but he promises to be a first-rate composer. Your wife plays the piano beautifully. They ought to get ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... to hear me, but went on dreamily, "And the sounds it makes! My God, A W, a composer'd give half the years of his life to reproduce those sounds. High and piercing; soft and muted; creating tonepoems and etudes there ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... for this task, the composer came to Venice in the autumn of 1858, and put up first at Danieli's. Needing a more private abode he came here. From his Autobiography I take the story. "I heard that one of the three Giustiniani palaces, situated not far from the Palazzo Foscari, was at ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... having a letter from a friend in Boston who had lately heard a great chorus rendered. He could not be quite sure of the name of the composer because he had read the letter hurriedly and his friend was a blind-writer, but that made no difference to Harry. He could fill in facts enough about the grandeur of the music from his own imagination to make up for the lack of a little matter like the name of a composer. He was keen enough ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... difficulties that he has devoted especial attention. His object is to reproduce the book in a form as entirely Arabian as possible, preserving the strict division of the nights, and keeping (a more questionable matter) to the long unbroken sentences in which the composer indulged, imitating also the rhythmic prose which is a characteristic of the Arabic. The effect in English remains to be seen, but of the value of Captain Burton's method as an experiment in literature there can be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... leaped suddenly into the rag-time without whose accompaniment it was impossible, anywhere in the civilized world, to dine correctly. That rag-time, committed, I suppose, originally by some well-intentioned if banal composer in the privacy of his study one night, had spread over the whole universe of restaurants like a pest, to the exasperation of the sensitive, but evidently to the joy of correct diners. Joy shone in the elated eyes of the four hundred persons correctly dining together ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... of Paris, at one of its recent concerts, gave a piece of original Russian music, called the "Song of the Cherubim," by BORTNIANSKY, a composer who has written a good deal for the Imperial Chapel at St. Petersburg. It is a chorus without accompaniment, and is spoken of by the critics as most original and striking, in fact unlike any thing familiar to Western ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... reinforcements to Ireland was mentioned as a prelude to the information from Vienna of the birth of a son to the Princess Nikolas: and then; having conjoined the two entirely heterogeneous pieces of intelligence, the composer adroitly interfused them by a careless transposition of the prelude and the burden that enabled him to play ad libitum on regrets and rejoicings; by which device the lord of Earlsfont might be offered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an opera were connected by wastes of recitative that were most aptly called 'dry'; and as it was left to a modern poet to tell, in a series of lyrics succeeding one another without interval, a dramatic story such as that of Maud, so was it a modern composer who carried to completion, in 'Tristan und Isolde', the dramatic expression of passion at the highest point of lyrical utterance. It is no more unnatural for the raptures of Wagner's lovers, or the swan-song of ecstasy, to be sung, than for the young man whose character Tennyson assumes, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... that unto him who hath shall be denied, and unto him who hath not shall be given what the other man could use to such advantage! The composer who can both pucker the lips of the gallery-gods and satisfy the ears of the musical critics, how infrequent a visitor on this planet! so that Offenbach and Sullivan must often have suffered from loneliness. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... the painter Rosalba Carrera, famed throughout Europe for her crayon miniatures; and the place produced in the sixteenth century the great maestro Giuseppe Zarlino, "who passes," says Cantu, "for the restorer of modern music," and "whose 'Orfeo' heralded the invention of the musical drama." This composer claimed for his birthplace the doubtful honor of the institution of the order of the Capuchins, which he declared to have been founded by Fra Paolo (Giovanni Sambi) of Chioggia. There is not much now to see in poor little Chioggia ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... church was built in 1739, and is composed of columns of the ionic and corinthian orders. The interior has some handsomely decorated chapels and altars; the pictures by Vanloo also are fine. Lulli, the musical composer, lies buried here. In the Rue Notre-Dame des Victoires is the immense establishment of the Messageries Royales, from whence start diligences to all parts of France; we will pass through the yard into the Rue Montmartre, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... religious ceremony. Young Zinzendorf composed a cantata for the occasion {March 9th, 1721.}; the cantata was sung, with orchestral accompaniment, in the presence of the whole house of Castell; and at the conclusion of the festive scene the young composer offered up on behalf of the happy couple a prayer so tender that all were moved to tears. His self-denial was well rewarded. If the Count had married Theodora, he would only have had a graceful drawing-room queen. About eighteen months later he married Count Reuss's sister, Erdmuth Dorothea ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... have got half an hour's amusement, followed by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a large-browed composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowed more abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretaries ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... lovers. As a crowning joy, an orgy of happiness, Massimilla pillowed Emilio's head in her arms, and now and then ventured to press her lips to his; but only as a bird dips its beak into the clear waters of a spring, looking round lest it should be seen. Their fancy worked upon this kiss, as a composer develops a subject by the endless resources of music, and it produced in them such tumultuous and vibrating echoes ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... to sing his songs. Ah, how did it go?" and Mrs. Hilbery, who had a very sweet voice, trolled out a famous lyric of her father's which had been set to an absurdly and charmingly sentimental air by some early Victorian composer. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... on the Continent have done more for the growth and elevation of the fine arts than the English government. A great musical composer in Germany and Italy is a great man in society, and a real dignity and rank are universally conceded to him. So it is with a sculptor, or painter, or architect. Without this sort of encouragement ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... every drama. This continuity is an absolute necessity to every spoken play; imagine the effect if Shakespeare or Ibsen had written little pieces of rhyming verse joined up by any jumble of nonsensical prose! Neglect of this fact led every opera composer before Wagner astray. We can imagine a pre-Wagner composer telling his librettist, "Now, mind you arrange that in certain parts the words will allow me to put in arias or choruses." In short, the situation ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... intolerable tyranny; and when Clement the Ninth exempted them from it, he did not abolish the races of Christian boys and old men. The people detested the Jews, hooted them, hissed them, and maltreated them with and without provocation. Moses Mendelssohn, the father of the composer, wrote to a friend from Berlin late in the eighteenth century, complaining bitterly that in that self-styled city of toleration, the cry of 'Jew' was raised against him when he ventured into the streets with his little children by daylight, and that the boys threw stones at them, as they passed, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... three of the sages, said to have been contemporary with Rama, namely, Visvamitra, Atri and Agastya, are frequently mentioned in the hymns of the Rig-Veda; whilst Valmiki, the sage dwelling at Chitra-kuta, is said to have been himself the composer of the Ramayana. Again, the sage Atri, whom Rama visited immediately after his departure from Chitra-kuta, appears in the genealogical list preserved in the Maha Bharata, as the progenitor of the Moon, and consequently as the first ancestor of the Lunar race: whilst his grandson Buddha [Budha] ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... crucial element is a desire that is never crudely overt, and appears on the surface only in a veiled gesture, or in a rhythm of speech. Visualization may catch the stimulus and the result. But the intermediate and internal is often as badly caricatured by a visualizer, as is the intention of the composer by an enormous soprano in the sweet ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... born in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, on the 22d of September, 1788. His father was an eminent musical composer, who "enjoyed in his time success and celebrity"; his elder brother James became Dean of Windsor, whose son is the present learned and eloquent Dean of Chichester; the mother of both was an accomplished lady, and also ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Mozart and Schubert and Wagner, it matters little whether the chiefs of music number two only, or whether they may be so many as four or five. Indeed, it may be admitted at once that the list would need to be widely extended before it would include the name of any composer who was not a ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... subject of surpassing interest to the musician. Whatever may be thought the true purpose of music, there can be no question as to one demand made on each individual instrument,—it must produce tones of sensuous beauty. A composer may delight in dissonances; but no instrument of the orchestra may produce harsh or discordant tones. Of beauty of tone the ear is the sole judge; naturally so, for the only appeal of the individual tone is to the ear. Melody, rhythm, and harmony may appeal to the intellect, but the quality ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... crowding nor hurrying the other, each willing to yield to the other when the right moment comes.[3] The feet must never use the pedals so as to make the harmonies mingle wrongly, but at just the right moment must make the strings sing together as the composer desires. The thoughts can never for a single moment wander from the playing; they must remain faithful, preparing what is to come and commanding the hands to do exactly the right task in the right way. That shows us, you ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... musical composer, has just published a pleasant volume of "Fugitive Pieces and Reminiscences of Lord Byron," with a new edition of the celebrated "Hebrew Melodies," and some never before published, of which the following are three, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... spoiled the pensive picture he was endeavoring to paint. Jo wouldn't be put into the opera at any price, and he had to give her up with a "Bless that girl, what a torment she is!" and a clutch at his hair, as became a distracted composer. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... of some importance to her. Besides, by craning her neck a little to avoid the hat of the rather strikingly dressed young woman in front of her, she could, at least, see the stage. The programme which she held in one hand announced that Miss Agatha Ismay would sing a certain aria from a great composer's oratorio, and she leaned further forward in her chair when a girl of about her own age, which was twenty-four, slowly advanced to the centre ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... skilful hand may draw a scale from wooden blocks set upon ropes of straw, but the great musician must hold the violin, or must feel the keys of the organ under his fingers and the responsive pedals at his feet, before he can expect to interpret fittingly the immortal thought of the composer. The strings must vibrate in perfect tune, the priceless wood must be seasoned and penetrated with the melodies of years, and scores of years, the latent music must be already trembling to be free, before the hand that draws the bow can command the ears and hearts of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... many side-issues are introduced; everything he imagined is cast upon the canvas, too little is laid aside, so that the poems run to a length which weakens instead of strengthening the main impression. A number of the poems have, that is, the faults of a composer whose fancy runs away with him, who does not ride it as a master; and in whom therefore, for a time, imagination has gone to sleep. Moreover, only too often, they have those faults of composition which naturally belong to a poet when he writes ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Writer, and a much better Composer of Latin Verses than either Ovid or Lucan, has with great Judgment taken care to follow Virgil's Example in this and many other Particulars. I mean Vanerius. There are a great Number of Lines in his Praedium Rusticum which are worthy of Virgil ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... verses in his own hand, and written in such a manner, that it was very evident, from the blotting and interlining, that they had not been transcribed from a copy, nor dictated by another, but were written by the composer of them. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... different counties, may be taken as a proof of their antiquity.' He had 'seldom heard two ballad-singers sing a ballad in the same way, either in words or music'; and he holds it 'almost impossible to find the true set of any traditional air, unless the set can be traced genuinely to its composer,' a task, it need hardly be said, still more difficult than that of tracing the ballad words to the original balladist. It is also the opinion of this authority, that it is well-nigh impossible 'to ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... voice. But what was his disappointment to find that oratorio-music was just what Euphra was incapable of! No doubt she sang it quite correctly; but there was no religion in it. Not a single tone worshipped or rejoiced. The quality of sound necessary to express the feeling and thought of the composer was lacking: the palace of sound was all right constructed, but of wrong material. Euphra, however, was quite unconscious of failure. She did not care for the music; but she attributed her lack of interest in it to the music itself, never dreaming that, in fact, she had never really heard ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... cadence, and then, from the first note to the last, gave the secondo triumphantly. Jumping up, he fairly shoved the man from his seat, and proceeded to play the treble with more brilliancy and power than its composer. When he struck the last octave, he sprang ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... who are not disciples of Wagner find it necessary to undergo a process of education ere they acquire an unaffected taste for the composer's masterpieces. Possibly those who have not listened, wet season after wet season, to the light-hearted chant, may be inclined to suggest that there can be no such thing as music in the panting bellows of a North Queensland frog. But music "is of a relative nature, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... changed. The frog is a diligent songster, having a good voice but no ear. The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective—"brekekex-koax"; the music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner. Horses have a frog in each hoof—a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling them to shine in ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... music were invaded by the dispute between the adherents of the King and the adherents of the prince. The King and Queen were supporters {51} of Handel, the prince was against the great composer. The prince in the first instance declared against Handel because his sister Anne, the Princess of Orange, was one of Handel's worshippers, therefore a great number of the nobility who sided with the prince set up, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... For generations these mountain people have been developing a tenderness and pathos that really grips one's heart. The music was composed by a man by the name of Dedler, about one hundred years ago, and while it gives expression to the composer's tender heart, yet experts say that it reminds them of Hayden and Mozart. The paintings in the building are those of great masters. It took an entire year to paint the scenery for the play in 1910, but they could not afford to ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... seemed a trifle strained, as though the music had troubled him. "I know the march, but the composer never wrote what you have played to-night," he said. "It was—may mine be defended from it!—the shuffle of beaten men. How could you have felt what you put ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... celebrated composer, who declares that he once saw a pigeon which could distinguish a particular air. Lockman was visiting a Mr. Lee in Cheshire, whose daughter was a fine pianist, "and whenever she played the air of Speri si from Handel's opera of 'Admetus,' a pigeon would descend from an adjacent dovecot ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... more subtle, weighted with thought, tinged with autumnal melancholy. He was a most fertile composer, and, like all the men of his time and group, produced too much. Yet his patriotic verse was so admirable in feeling and is still so inspiring to his readers that one cannot wish it less in quantity; and in the field of political satire, such as the two series ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... this poem was written Lamartine already knew that she was hopelessly ill. This experience of his colors many poems of his first two volumes. Le Lac has often been set to music; most successfully by the Swiss composer Niedermeyer (1802-1861). For interesting variants in the text see Reyssie, la Jeunesse ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... refers to a habit of Emperor William's, from whom the Italian composer, Leoncavallo, among others, once ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... innocent kind, and we get back to reality. The better side of George Sand's Bohemianism revives in Bohemia itself; and she takes Consuelo to the road, where she adopts male dress (a fancy with her creatress likewise), and falls in with no less a person than the composer Haydn in his youth. They meet some Prussian crimps, and escape them by help of a coxcombical but not wholly objectionable Austrian Count Hoditz and the better (Prussian) Trenck. They get to Vienna (meeting La Corilla in an odd but not badly managed maternity-scene ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... was of some little importance to her. Besides, by craning her neck a little to avoid the hat of the strikingly dressed young woman in front of her, she could, at least, see the stage. The programme which she held in one hand announced that Miss Agatha Ismay would sing a certain aria from a great composer's oratorio. Miss Rawlinson leaned further forward in her chair when a girl of about her own age, which was twenty-four, slowly advanced to the center ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... depression, is leaning back in her chair, smelling salts and nodding assent to the Wagnerite theories, with which she entirely agrees. For my own part, I am neutral; but as the METTERBRUNS are thorough musicians,—the mother being a magnificent pianist, and the eldest daughter a composer,—I am really interested in hearing all they have to say on the subject. Our bias is, temporarily, decidedly Wagnerian, for Cousin JANE, who is really in favour of "tune," and plenty of it,—being specially fond of BELLINI and DONIZETTI,—in scientific ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various |
