"Pianissimo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a different theme in extreme pianissimo, accompanied by the swelling vibrations of the first violins, which was intended to represent a Fata Morgana. I had secured three pairs of trumpets in different keys, in order to produce this exquisite, gradually dawning and seductive theme with the utmost niceties of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... that carried his men along like chips in a high surf. The free-fantasia of the poem was reached, and, roaring, the music neared its climacteric point. "Now," whispered Pobloff, stooping, "when the pianissimo begins I shall watch for the Abysm." As the wind sweepingly rushes to a howling apex so came the propulsive crash of the climax. The tone rapidly subsided and receded; for the composer had so cunningly scored ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... soft, gentle strain of music played pianissimo by the orchestra, and, surrounded by a chorus of mothers and maidens, the Virgin Mother enters with the Divine Child in her arms. The Madonna is a strapping young girl named Gutierrez, a very clever actress; and the Child has been bought in the neighboring toy-shop, a most ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... sweeter; singing always with the same constancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for the snufftaker, for the suffragist,—"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys (nothing offensive is intended by "boys," it is put in for euphony, and sung pianissimo, not to offend the suffragists), it's-almost-here." And what a brightening up of their faces there is when they say, "it's-al-most-here," not doubting for a moment that "it's" coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeon also wails its wheezy suggestion that "it's-al-most-here," ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a pianissimo, we soon reach a con molto expressione, a crescendo, a molto furore quickly following. Every musical term, adjectival, substantival, occurs to us as we read the thousand and odd pages of the two volumes. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... tum tum taaaa-tum. Pizzicato pianissimo, says the direction on the score. So we are all set for a melodrama. Here is the Great City back-drop. Here are the grim-faced crowds shuffling by under the jaundice glare of electric signs. And Christmas is coming. A vague gray snow trickles out of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... beautiful; it would be delightful to have the privilege of placing her pretty fingers on the keys. But, joking apart, her soul is endowed with true musical feeling, and one does not need to tell her whether she is to play crescendo, piano, or pianissimo. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... steel was like a tonic; heart and blood responded immediately. Its discovery had been a fortunate chance, for again the illumination in the west died down the final pianissimo before the full crash of the orchestra—and the darkness returned deeper ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... operatic horrors; it is unearthly, uncanny, in its wild beauty. The climax is immensely powerful, but very simple, and, above all, sheer art of the theatre. There is a crash as Frederick rushes in to be instantly killed; a bass passage tears down the scale to the depths; and the horns sustain two pianissimo chords, two notes in each; then silence, broken only by soft drum-beats to make the silence felt. Elsa has fainted, and as she revives we hear a bit of the duet—Lohengrin's tenderness as he tends her, and a fleeting dream ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... he was swearing monotonously, between each rub of his brush, using a list of twelve words beginning with "blast" uttered very softly and increasing in volume of sound and violence of meaning at the twelfth word, when he would start pianissimo again. Marcella's eyes closed; she was not asleep, she was thinking very vividly of Louis, but all the murmur of sounds about her intruded on her consciousness, making clear thought impossible. The peculiar ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... she did, too. While I am talking nonsense with Little Handsome, I hear her amusing my good aunty, and I catch a few words, her utterance having a peculiar distinctness, and the lowest tones being fine and clear, like those of a good singer on a pianissimo strain. It is a peculiarly ladylike articulation; was she born and bred in Ratborough, I wonder? She never speaks while we are singing. Does she like music, then? I asked her once, but what sort of answer is "Yes!" to such a question? And ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... sleep in some bed by himself with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
