"Pianist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... MENTER, the famous pianist, now inhabits a castle in the Tyrol (Schloss Itter), where she has just received the Abbe Liszt, who passed several days there, getting up at 4 o'clock A. M., to work, attending mass at 7.30, and then continuing work until midday. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... about 1832. Daughter of the artist, J. T. Kaerling, who was her principal teacher. She practised her art as a painter of portraits, genre subjects, and still-life in Budapest during some years before her marriage to the pianist Pacher, with whom she went to Vienna. She there copied some of the works of the great painters in the Gallery, besides doing original work of acknowledged excellence. In addition to her excellent portraits, she painted in 1851 "The Grandmother"; in 1852, "A Garland ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Miss Norton, the pianist of the program. "It took me a long time to acquire the taste. But I've got it now," she added, as she helped herself bountifully ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... chapter, the subject matter of the volume falls into three main divisions. Chapters II and III are based on the fact that we must all use words in combination—must fling the words out by the handfuls, even as the accomplished pianist must strike his notes. Chapters IV and V are based on the fact that we must become thoroughly acquainted with individual words—that no one who scorns to study the separate elements of speech can command powerful and discriminating utterance. Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and IX are based on the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the abilities of Josef Hofmann. In 1898, he met the pianist, who was then twenty-two years old. Of his musical ability Bok could not judge, but he was much impressed by his unusual mentality, and soon both learned and felt that Hofmann's art was deeply and firmly ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... rather remarkable pianist staying at this same pension," she wrote; "and she plays for us very often. Something in the charm and delicacy of her touch makes me think of Blue Bonnet's, when she plays her little 'Ave Maria.' I have talked with her about ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... good musician fears, I know, that machine-made music will not stop with annihilating vulgar display, but will do to death all professional music as well. This fear is groundless. Mechanical instruments will no more drive the good pianist or violinist or 'cellist out of his profession than the public library, as many once feared, will drive the bookseller out of business. For the library, after persuading people to read, has taught them how much pleasure may be had from owning a ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... gentleman of the Indo-European Telegraphs. A burly, jolly Dutchman stood drinks all round to members of the Russian and English Banks alike, and a French sage-femme just arrived discussed her prospects with the hotel proprietress. The Shah's A.D.C. and favourite music-composer and pianist came frequently to enliven the evenings with some really magnificent playing, and by way of diversion some wild Belgian employees of the derelict sugar-factory used almost nightly to cover with insults a notable "Chevalier d'industrie" whose thick skin ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... resident of this metropolis, will delight this company by singing one of those soul-moving plantation melodies which have made his name famous over two hemispheres. Mr. 'Pussy Me-ow' Simmons, the distinguished fiddling pianist, late of the Bowery, very late, I may remark, and now on the waiting list at Wallack's Theatre—every other month, I ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Lockman, the 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 to the window of the room where she sat, 'and listen to the air apparently with the most pleasing emotions,' ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... may believe the turnkey at the Marshalsea prison, William Dorrit had been a pianist, a fact which raised him ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... the wish that I should bring some music. I wrote to Delle Sedie and begged him to advise me what I should sing; he answered that he would come himself and talk it over with me, and Monsieur Plante, a young, budding pianist, who was ordered from the Tuileries to accompany my songs, was sent for, and Delle Sedie came at ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... merely loving melodious sounds. Once, at the place where she was living, the home of a married cousin, Hollister heard her play the piano for the first time. He listened in astonishment, forgetting that a pianist does not need to see the keyboard and that the most intricate movements may be memorized. But he did not visit that house often. The people there looked at him a little askance. They were courteous, but painfully self-conscious ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... top of the stairs, "you needn't be frightened for tonight. Nothing so meek and mild as a pianist ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... were new and the indescribable smartness of their cut, a genre which had never been obtruded on her notice before, astonished Mrs Fyne, who came out into the hall with her hat on; for she was about to go out to hear a new pianist (a girl) in a friend's house. The youth addressing Mrs Fyne easily begged her not to let "that silly thing go back to us any more." There had been, he said, nothing but "ructions" at home about her for the last three weeks. Everybody in the family was heartily sick of quarrelling. His governor ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... while), who "wreaks" it, to borrow Byron's word, on conversation as the natural outlet of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely to talk better than the poet, who plays on the instrument of verse. A great pianist or violinist is rarely a great singer. To write a poem is to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour or two, and to expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than the Great Organ that shakes New England every time ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The pianist struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on one side, the boys on the other, a long line, with Mrs. Van Buren in the center. Another chord, rather a long one. Mrs. Van Buren curtsied to the girls. The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... adding numbers together, he will gradually acquire a certain ability of mind whereby he can add together a long row of figures placed in a sequence he never saw before, and having a sum he never attained before. Or a pianist, having acquired the mastery of the technic of the keyboard and the ability to read music, can sit down before a piano he never sat at before and play off instantly a piece of ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... in shorthand, where the pupil acquires the knowledge of a number of signs, only for the purpose of discarding them when he is proficient enough to make an individual system. It is also accepted in music, where only the advanced pianist or singer can afford to play tricks with tempo. And I am sure it should be ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... battery, and Cpl. Thomas J. Brennan, of Pottsville, Penna., were candidates for the divisional foot ball team that played at Souilly with a number of other divisional elevens. Philip J. Cusick, of Parsons, Penna., the battery's favorite pianist, was selected to make a tour with the regimental minstrel show that was put on to tour the circuit of A. E. F. playhouses. Cusick was recalled to the battery the latter part of February when he received notice ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... ambition to distinguish himself in a field so different from that in which his comrades won their spurs. It was only when, with the end of his schooldays in sight, he was putting away childish things, that he seriously turned his attention to the piano and his hands. They were those of the pianist, broad, strong and supple, and the new occupation soon engrossed him deeply; he gave up all his spare time to it, and, in a few months, attained so creditable a proficiency, that he went through a course of instruction with a ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... was altogether an exceptional pianist, her interpretation of items by Schumann and Mendelssohn being little short of a revelation. She was pretty, too, and her scarlet dress with its white pompons, and her pierrot's hat to match, ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... idea that its leaves are the chief grace of a tree is a vulgar one, on a par with the idea that his hair is the chief grace of a pianist. When winter, that healthy ascetic, carries his gigantic razor over hill and valley, and shaves all the trees like monks, we feel surely that they are all the more like trees if they are shorn, just as so many painters ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... was grinding out, with great diligence and conscientious energy, "Irish Eyes." Barry picked up his violin from the floor, mounted the stage, laid his violin on the piano, then he took his place behind the pianist and, bending over him, reached down, caught him under the legs and while still in full tide of his performance, lifted him squarely off the stool and deposited him upon a chair at one side of the stage. Then, ignoring the ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... had been a concert pianist; now she had such large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she had long since given up the piano. Her knees also had large arthritic knobs; this proud ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... more feet than a caterpillar, and they have steel toenails which take it over the ground; its hide is more resistant than an armadillo's, and its beauty of form would make the diplodocus jealous. No pianist was ever more temperamental; no ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... graceful Tempo di Menuetto brings the work to an effective close. The other Sonata in E flat[76] is much more difficult to play. The writing is fuller, and it contains passages which even a modern pianist need not disdain. It is really strange that the sonata is not sometimes heard at the Popular Concerts. In the opening Allegro the exposition section contains more than the two orthodox themes, and the development section ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... said, with a shiver, as he stopped a moment to listen, while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture and its arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to be hung—the pianist, too! Don't they know what horrid discord they are making? It brings that heat back. I believe, upon my soul, I shall have to bathe ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... of this sort was organized and sustained under the leadership of Nelson Kneass, who, while skilful in his manipulations of the banjo, was quite an accomplished pianist besides, as well as a favorite ballad-singer. He had some pretensions as a composer, but has left his name identified with no work of any interest. His company met with such success in Pittsburg, that its visits were repeated from season to season, until about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... "you don't reckon you could be a star pianist, do you? Fifteen hundred dollars a concert, and so on?" And, as she was sitting next to him, he affectionately pinched ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... all Welsh singers, the critic condemns his habit of resorting to an emotional tremolo which frequently degenerates into a mere "wobble." The PREMIER, he continues, shows agility and spirit in florid passages, but his declamation lacks dignity and his articulation is often indistinct. As a pianist he is equally unsatisfactory; his repertory is extremely limited and he is quite unable to interpret the complex harmonies of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... the time she was a member of this boarding-school has given these reminiscences of Marian's life there: "She learned everything with ease," says this person, "but was passionately devoted to music, and became thoroughly accomplished as a pianist. Her masters always brought the most difficult solos for her to play in public, and everywhere said she might make a performer equal to any then upon the concert stage. She was keenly susceptible to what she thought her lack of personal beauty, frequently ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... distinguished honors. His musical ability was as widely recognized in Germany as in England,—indeed his profound musical scholarship and mastery of problems in composition were more appreciated there. Mr. Statham, in an admirable sketch, pronounces him a born pianist, and says that his wonderful knowledge of the capabilities of the piano, and his love for it, developed into favoritism in some of his concerted music. A friend of the composer, recalling some reminiscences of him in "Fraser," ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Barton glided across the floor, and, with insinuating gestures and intonations of voice, would beg of them to continue. She declared that it was la grace et la beaute, etc. The merriment did not cease until half-past six. Some of the company then left, and some few were detained for dinner. A new pianist and fresh officers arrived about nine o'clock, and dancing was continued until one or two in the morning. To yawning subalterns the house in Mount Street seemed at first like a little paradise. The incessant dancing was considered ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... introduced, the etiquette of the ball-room is also the etiquette for the evening party. It is best for the hostess to provide a pianist, if she does not herself preside at the piano, as it is excessively ill-bred to expect part of the guests to play for the remainder to dance. Many good-natured people find themselves thus victimized—invited "because ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... celebrated pianist and composer, for whom Beethoven wrote a testimonial in 1805 (see No. 42). He gave lessons to Beethoven's nephew in 1815, and naturally protested against any payment, which gave rise to the expressions on the subject in many of his notes to Czerny, of which there ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... books[134] have been preserved and edited, and they illustrate, most vividly, Beethoven's method of composing: slow, cautious, but invincible in its final effect; an idea frequently being altered as many as twenty times. At the age of twenty-two he was chiefly known as a pianist with wonderful facility in improvisation; his compositions had been insignificant. The next eight years—up to 1800, when Beethoven was thirty—were spent in acquainting himself with the Viennese aristocracy and in building up a public clientele. Then follows the marvellous period until 1815 ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... notable pianist (1788-1874)—lived a long time in Paris] and several other people have spoken much to me of four concertos that you have lately finished, and the reputation of which is already making a stir in Paris. I should be very much pleased, my dear Master, if you would commission me to get them ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... from her knees, dried her little scarlet claws in her apron, and stood to attention. Having opened the debate by calling fervently upon her God to witness that she knew nothing of the matter, she proceeded, like a solo pianist, to run her fingers, as it were, lightly over the keys. Passing swiftly from her own birth, upbringing, invincible respectability, and remoteness from all neighbours, or knowledge of neighbours, she coruscated ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... note that the only disappointing answer was received from Signor Crinuto, the famous pianist, who replied, "I have never had a close shave, and never intend to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... that quadrille sound in my ears; long did that phenomenon-pianist haunt me; how long I ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... [Performance of Music.] — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer^, trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral waits. vocalist, melodist; singer, warbler; songster, chaunter^, chauntress^, songstress; cantatrice^. choir, quire, chorister; chorus, chorus singer; liedertafel [G.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... appreciation in Germany and Vienna, when he first went there to test his musical powers. Some of the papers indeed had a good word for him, but, as in the case of Liszt and later of Rubinstein, it was rather for the pianist than for the composer. On his first visit to Vienna he was greatly petted, and he found it easy to get influential friends who took care that his concerts should be a success, because he played for their benefit, asking no pecuniary recompense. But when, some ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... same department is in some ways an accomplished fellow. He has read widely and remembers what he has read; he plays the violin; he is an excellent pianist, and he is a member of the college male quartet, which is to spend the summer in the North, endeavoring to raise money for new buildings greatly needed at Talladega. After this summer campaign he also hopes to begin the study of law at Columbia or Harvard. The ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... pay a good salary to any respectable boy of good parentage and education who is a good moonist." When it gradually dawned upon the British intellect that these and similar devices of the lecturer—such as the soft music which he had the pianist play at pathetic passages—nay, that the panorama and even the lecture itself were of a humorous intention, the joke began to take, and Artemus's success in England became assured. He was employed as one of the editors of Punch, but died at ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of Belgium commanded the sympathy of the civilized world in the winter of 1914-15, the conditions in Poland were even worse. At the end of March the great Polish pianist, Ignace Paderewski, paid a visit to London on behalf of the suffering Poles and his efforts resulted in the formation of an influential relief committee. Among the members were such men as Premier Asquith, ex-Premier ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... any other art or occupation in which the highest executive ability is required, we shall see that we give insufficient opportunity for the painter's hand to acquire the subtle skill we find in the successful violinist or pianist, and which is due to the early and incessant practice in the manual operations of his art. The fact is recognized, that the education of a violinist must begin in the early years, when the will and hand are flexible, and not merely the training, but the occupation, is almost exclusive, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... for young Gould had bragged about his friend's voice, which was indeed a good one though untrained. But he only sang Tubal Cain, Simon the Cellarer, and one or two others of that sort, of which the music was not forthcoming. At last, however, Julia Gould, who was the pianist, found John Peel, which he knew, and he found himself standing by that young lady, confused and shamefaced, trying to make his voice master a great lump there seemed to be in his throat. To make it worse the hubbub of voices ceased at the ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... tenor or a forced-up baritone without hearing or seeing you. Tenors are generally short, stubby men with brief necks, while baritones are for the most part tall, spare and long-necked. It was HANS VON BUELOW who said that a tenor was a disease, but he was a pianist and a conductor. Do not "grouse" if you can sing tenor parts and yet retain the volume and virility of a baritone. JEAN DE RESZKE began as a baritone and is said to have earned L20,000 a year. The nasal tone that you speak of, when it approximates to the whinnying of a horse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... the open street, with not a soul to listen to him. The house from which the instrument had been dragged was smashed beyond repair; save for some scrapes on the varnish the piano had suffered no harm, and its tone was agreeable to the ear. The pianist possessed technique and played with feeling and earnestness, and it seemed weirdly strange to hear Schumann's "Slumber Song" in such surroundings. But the war has produced more impressive incongruities ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... great anatomist, who was at the head of the hospital, and curator of the museum, was to have come to the Palazzo Castelmare that morning to show the Marchese an interesting experiment connected with the action of a new anodyne; and Signor Folchi, the pianist, was to have been with him at one, to try over a little piece of the Marchese's own composition. And both these appointments, either of which was far more interesting to the Marchese Lamberto than driving out in the cold to meet the stage goddess, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... a matter, as I have previously said, of daily observation. Whether we regard a juggler, a pianist, or a billiard-player, a child learning his lesson or an actor his part by frequently repeating it, or a thousand other illustrations of the same process, we see at once that there is truth in the cynical definition of a man as a 'bundle of habits.' And the same, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... that, I wonder? Rudolf Maesterling, the dramatist, stands behind her there in the corner. He is talking to the wonderful Cleo, whom all the world knows. Monsieur Guyer there, he is manager, I believe, of the Alhambra; and talking to him is Marborg, the great pianist. One of the ladies talking to my brother is Esther Braithwaite, whom, of course, you know by sight; she is leading lady, is she not, at the Hilarity? The other is Miss Ransome; they tell me that she is your ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is small—but I am sure it is very good—so far as it goes. I give my pianist ten pounds a night—and his washing. (That a good pianist could be hired for a small sum in England was a matter of amusement to Artemus. More especially when he found a gentleman obliging enough to play anything he desired, such as break-downs and airs ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... that my difficulty lay: I had prepared too big a canvas for him. Intellectually his scope was considerable, but it was like the digital reach of a mediocre pianist—it didn't make him a great musician. And morally he wasn't bad enough; his corruption wasn't sufficiently imaginative to be interesting. It was not so much a means to an end as a kind of virtuosity practised for its own sake, like a highly-developed ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... on Forty-second Street, was a romantic discovery. Though it had "popular prices"—plain omelet, fifteen cents—it had red and green bracket lights, mission-style tables, and music played by a sparrowlike pianist and a violinist. Mr. Wrenn never really heard the music, but while it was quavering he had a happier appreciation of the Silk-Hat-Harry humorous pictures in the Journal, which he always propped up against an oil-cruet. [That never caused him ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... seems to think, and that this girl, who by all accounts is very pretty and charming, and a marvellous pianist, has been lured out to act as maid and housekeeper, and save the pocket of Herr Krauss. Now, as I have two legacies, I want to know if you will take one of them off ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... correction of the day and year of Frederick Francis Chopin's birth, which have been discovered since the publication of the second edition of this work. According to the baptismal entry in the register of the Brochow parish church, he who became the great pianist and immortal composer was born on February 22, 1810. This date has been generally accepted in Poland, and is to be found on the medal struck on the occasion of the semi-centenary celebration of the master's death. Owing to a misreading of musicus for magnificus in the published copy of the document, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... cafe in Rome sipping vermouth with Rozenoffski, the Russo-Jewish pianist, and Schneemann the Galician-Jewish painter, when he ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... there should be so few inaccuracies either in dress or deportment. There were some very pretty women, and almost all were dressed with simplicity and good taste. The island does not afford a band, but a pianist and violinist played most perseveringly, and the amusements were kept up with untiring spirit till four in ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... other, to give pleasure, and to enjoy it together. But there is something beyond this which is not harmless but detestable, and that is the deliberate playing on sexual attraction in order to extract homage and to demonstrate power. A girl will sometimes play on a man as a pianist on his instrument, put a strain on him that is intolerable, fray his nerves and destroy his self-control, while she herself, protected not by virtue but frigidity, complacently affirms that she ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... make allowances for us business men, Mr. Hodder. I mean, of course, we're sometimes a little lax in our duties—in the summer, that is. Don't shoot the pianist, he's doing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... under his breath. A chorus quickly gathered round. A battered Naval Song Book was propped up on the music-rest—more from habit than necessity, since the Indiarubber Man could not read a note of music and everybody knew the words of the time-honoured chanties. The pianist's repertoire was limited: half a dozen ding-dong chords did duty as accompaniment to "Bantry Bay," "John Peel," and "The Chinese Bumboatman" alike; but a dozen lusty voices supplied melody enough, the singers packed like herrings round the piano, leaning over each other's shoulders, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... what their refinement consisted, but I am sure it was there, just as I am sure of the humor of the two brothers who next appeared as 'Singing and Dancing Comedians' of the coon type. I know that they sang and they danced, and worked sable pleasantries upon one another with the help of the pianist, who often helps out the dialogue of the stage in vaudeville. They were not so good as the next people, a jealous husband and a pretty wife, who seized every occasion in the slight drama of 'The Singing Lesson,' and turned it to account in giving their favorite airs. I like to have a ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... has taught music in Kansas longer than any other teacher in the state and incidentally writes verse. She remodeled Elizabeth Browning's "A Drama of Exile" and wrote the musical setting for Simon Buchhalter, the Viennese pianist and composer. A sister, Mary Freeman Startzman, while living in Fort Scott, wrote a volume of ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... gloves, is warbling inaudibly in a corner, to the accompaniment of another. 'The Great Cacafogo,' Mrs. Botibol whispers, as she passes you by. 'A great creature, Thumpenstrumpff, is at the instrument—the Hetman Platoff's pianist, you know.' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the House of Congress at Washington developed a unanimous sentiment, that a good cook is more cultured than a pianist, and that girls should not be allowed piano lessons until they learn how to cook good biscuits. We have read of girls "whose heads were stuffed with useless knowledge, but not one in twenty knew the things that would be serviceable to her through ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... The pianist paused to thumb his nose casually at the entire audience, and then amid shouts and hisses sat down at the piano and began ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... with care, remarkable only above the neck—and then what a head! It was large, and had a copious mop of limp hair combed back from the high forehead—hair of a disagreeable blond tint, dutch-cut behind, falling over the pinkish soft neck almost to the shoulders. In this pianist's or artist's hair, which shook en masse when the owner walked, two large and outstanding and altogether brutal white ears tried to hide themselves. The face, a cross between classic Greek and Jew, had a Reynard expression, something distinctly wily and perfectly disagreeable. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... personally, three ladies who have exchanged the woman's work for the man's. One was deserted by her husband, and left with two young children. She hired a capable woman to look after the house, and joined a ladies' orchestra as pianist at two pounds a week. She now earns four, and works twelve hours a day. The husband of the second fell ill. She set him to write letters and run errands, which was light work that he could do, and started a dressmaker's business. The third was ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... play." Each one straightened her shoulders and leaned eagerly forward, fairly holding her breath in anticipation, for Azzie's fame as a pianist was far-reaching. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... ... the divine sorrow of Chopin ... I have played better.... He was a pianist then, and surely a great one. Olive remembered the slender brown hands that had seemed to her so supple and so strong. But the name of Avenel was strange to her, and she was sure she had never seen it on posters, or in the ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... A pianist practises for hours to command his fingers and gain a touch which will bring the soul from his music, without in the least realizing that so long as he is keeping other muscles in his body tense, and allowing the ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... I had been in the company of people who spent at least as much in a week as I did in a year. Why was I, a penniless and unknown young man, admitted there? Simply because, though I was an execrable pianist, and never improved until the happy invention of the pianola made a Paderewski of me, I could play a simple accompaniment at sight more congenially to a singer than most amateurs. It is true that the musical side of London ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... giving a party in honour of a foreign Personage. It had been intimated that some kind of music would be expected. The hostess had neither the means nor the desire to secure for her entertainment stars of the first magnitude, but she gathered together some lesser lights—a violinist, a pianist, and a singer of French drawing-room melodies. On the morning of the day on which her concert was to be given, the hostess received a telegram from the singer of French drawing-room melodies to say that she had got a bad cold, and could not possibly sing that night. The hostess was in despair, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... living soul in the room could play a note on the spinet except the tallest and spookiest and, to all appearances, the stupidest of the two young men, whom the Heffern girl had brought and who turned out to have once been the star pianist in some dance-hall on the Bowery. And the scribe remarks, parenthetically and in all seriousness, that the way that lank, pin-headed young man revived the soul of that old, worn-out harpischord, digging into ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... This pianist, like all other pianists, was a German. A German, like the eminent Liszt and the great Mendelssohn, and Steibelt, and Dussek, and Meyer, and Mozart, and Doelher, and Thalberg, and Dreschok, and Hiller, and Leopold Hertz, Woertz, Karr, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and yet the text of the opera is a work of literature independent and complete in itself, and the music of the opera has its own life. Again, every musical work demands the performer. The orchestra must play the symphonies, the pianist or the singer must make the melodies living, the actors must play the drama. But the music is a perfect work of art even before it is sung or played on an instrument, just as a drama is complete as a work of literature even ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... was also a competitor; but, although many essays were sent in, for some reason the prize was never awarded, and we had our trouble for nothing. On my way to Chicago I stayed at a mining town to lecture on effective voting. I found the hostess of the tiny hotel a brilliant pianist and a perfect linguist, and she quoted poetry—her own and other people's—by the yard. A lady I journeyed with told me that she had been travelling for seven years with her husband and "Chambers's Encyclopedia." I thought they used the encyclopaedia as a guide book until, in a sort of postscript ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... getting on very well indeed. That governess of theirs—we won't have any more mystery; it was I who undertook the trifling expense. A really excellent teacher, I have every reason to believe. I am told that Bella promises to be a remarkable pianist, and Lily is uncommonly strong in languages. But my interest in them is merely that of a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... to talk. Like a pianist who strikes the notes of his instrument tentatively, feeling about for the right key, he touched on one subject after another, confident that in the end he would light on something really interesting to his passenger. Michael Kane was happy in this, that he could talk equally well on all ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones,—touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... quartette followed a few moments of general conversation, during which—after embracing the child pianist, who immediately left the room—the songstress walked to the window. She leaned out as if to breathe the fresh air, and her profile was sharply relieved against the bright light behind her, in which the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hours seemed unending. Allison came to the house frequently, but seldom spoke of his music; for more than a week, he did not ask her to play at all. On the rare occasions when he brought his violin with him, the old harmony seemed entirely gone. The pianist's fingers often stumbled over the keys even though Allison played with new authority and that magical power that goes by the name of "inspiration," for want of a ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... in the first paper I happen to take up, that the violinist and the pianist are "a perfectly matched pair"; the applause, at the concert, was even more enthusiastic for Busoni than for Ysaye. I hear both spoken of as artists, as great artists; and yet, if words have any meaning, it seems to me that only one of the two is an artist at all, and ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... pianist, a boatman dressed in red with a huge straw hat, began a waltz, Yvette grasped her companion and they danced so long and madly that everybody looked at them. The guests, standing on the tables, kept time with their feet; others threw glasses, and ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... obscuration, some penumbra, mist, or subtle vapour which, as he gazed, seemed to struggle to take human form. He ceased playing for a moment and rubbed his eyes, but as he did so all dimness vanished and he saw the chair perfectly empty. The pianist stopped also at the cessation of the violin, and asked ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... 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 and pianist ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... pass over the painful evening in question with suitable delicacy of touch. Nothing obvious or crass took place. Madame Nelson sang three enchanting songs, accompanied by a first-rate pianist. A friend of the house of whom the hostess had requested this favour took Madame Nelson to the buffet. A number of guileless individuals surrounded that lady with hopeful adoration. An ecstatic mood prevailed. The ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... influence,—been pointed out to her? Has she ever been enlightened as to the consequent unspeakable importance of personal character as the source of influence? In a word, have any means, direct or indirect, prepared her for her duties? No! but she is a linguist, a pianist, graceful, admired. What is that to the purpose? The grand evil of such an education is the mistaking means for ends; a common error, and the source of half the moral confusion existing in the world. It is the substitution ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... friend and ardent admirer, Frederic Chopin, was recovering from a chest attack, the first presage of the illness that caused his early death. The eminent pianist and composer had also been recommended to winter in the South, and greatly needed repose and change of air to recruit him from the fatigues of the Parisian season. It was arranged that the convalescent should make one of the expedition to Majorca. He joined Madame ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... cried Bixiou, ruffling his locks till they stood on end. Gifted with the same talent for mimicking absurdities which Chopin the pianist possesses to so high a degree, he proceeded forthwith to represent ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... any one, at least," he added with much conscientiousness, "as far as I can learn. Every fellow in the Quarter bows to her and she returns the salute gravely, but no man has ever been known to obtain more than that. Her profession, judging from her music-roll, is that of a pianist. Her residence is in a small and humble street which is kept in a perpetual process of repair by the city authorities, and from the black letters painted on the barrier which defends the street from traffic, she has taken the name by which we ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... have inherited the Welsh musical gift, for they were all accomplished musicians. While a mere child, David could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this talent attracted the notice of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in America, who procured for him the professorship of music in the College of Bardstown, Kentucky. Mr. Hughes entered upon his academical career at Bardstown in 1850, when he was nineteen years of age. Although very fond of music and endowered by Nature with exceptional powers for its cultivation, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... rather big, anyhow. Then I went on to Park Lane to hear a new pianist and some other ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... high-class music. Grieg, when he finally consented to make the voyage to America, placed his price at two thousand five hundred dollars for every concert—a sum which any manager would regard prohibitive, except in the case of one world-famous pianist. Grieg's ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... form in the years of Mr. Smith's ministrations, and the church grew steadily and surely. Rev. George W. Moore became pastor on June 1, 1883. His work was a thorough success, due in no small measure to the personality of his wife, Ella Sheppard Moore, who had been pianist of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and with them had circled the globe. Dr. Moore resigned in 1893. Subsequent pastors have been Rev. Eugene Johnson, A. P. Miller and Sterling N. Brown. Dr. Brown was followed by Rev. Emory B. Smith, an enterprising young man who has brought the church to the very foremost ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... exercising his skill" upon the instrument. Thereupon he graciously condescended to play for his hostess, and the sensitiveness of his ear was no longer shocked. She never dared to undeceive him, but mentioned the fact to another musician, a violinist, who exclaimed, greatly amused, "The idea of a pianist pretending to be fastidious about concord in music! Why, the instrument at its best is a bundle of discords." Both of these musicians were guilty of affectation; for, although the piano's chords are slightly dissonant, the intervals of the chromatic scale are made the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the body merely a material encasement, it was no wonder that they valued the body less and held mind as of great value. They failed to see that mind without a material organ of expression is, in this world, of no account. A great pianist with no piano could not make music, and he would be considered a strange being if he did not care for his instrument most scrupulously. Think of a Rubinstein voluntarily breaking the piano strings or smashing ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult composition without thinking about it; it's ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... he was forever tramping off to the pine-hooded hills, with his painting-kit over his shoulders and his camp-stool under his arm. Later, Elsa began to understand that he was a true scholar, not merely an educated man. He was besides a linguist of amazing facility, a pianist who invariably preferred as his audience his own two ears. Arthur would have been a great dramatist or a great poet, if . . . If what? If what? Ah, that had been the crux of it all, of her doubt, of her hesitance. If he had fought for prizes coveted by mankind, if ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... pleasure in the society of one who had seen so much of the world and was reputed to own some of the biggest hotels in France. Such a person (as his father agreed) was well worth knowing, even if he had not been the charming companion he was. Villona was entertaining also—a brilliant pianist—but, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Von Barwig what you know. If he can teach such a finished pianist as Helene, I am determined that you shall have ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... precious word of appreciation for the work of the weary exile! The quotation given is only a sample of the messages that Liszt was constantly sending to his exiled friend. And we must understand that at this time Liszt had a world-wide reputation as a composer himself, and was the foremost pianist of his time. And Wagner—Wagner was only an obscure dreamer, with a penchant ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... but Paganel found it easier to believe it was some Australian bird imitating the sounds of a Pleyel or Erard, as others do the sounds of a clock or mill. But at this very moment, the notes of a clear ringing voice rose on the air. The PIANIST was accompanied by singing. Still Paganel was unwilling to be convinced. However, next minute he was forced to admit the fact, for there fell on his ear the sublime strains of Mozart's "Il mio ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... sings very sweetly and looks very nice and pretty. Then we had a little rosebud of a Chelsea girl who sang, and a pianist. I read 'Minister's Housekeeper' and Topsy, and the audience was very jolly and appreciative. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... be flabby-wristed when they are trying to learn to play, and to drop the wrists below the level of the keyboard seems to be the chief aim and object of every young pianist. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 46, September 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... her wish and her father's that she should become a pianist by profession, and she studied hard for many years in almost every capital, and under almost every master in Europe, and she gave ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... outlines of the theme with rare emotional skill and mastery of technique," "purest lyricism lifted to heights of poignancy,"—all that sort of stuff, you know. Next time a writer, or, better still, a fiddler or a pianist comes to your town, look in your home paper the morning ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... to Marie Pachler-Koschak, a pianist whom Beethoven regarded very highly. "You will play the sonatas in F major and C minor, for ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... Alkan to Zarembski. These recitals were privately given in the presence of a few friends. Old Fogy played all the concertos, sonatas, studies and minor pieces worth while. His touch was dry, his style neat. A pianist made, not ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the second form, and in the "Huntsman and Hounds" the third. A most original and commendable arrangement of three figures by W. L. Hollinger appears in "The Pose in Portraiture," the members of a trio, violin, cello and piano. The pianist is designated by the suggestion of her action which is completed out of the picture. In her position however she accomplishes the balancing of two ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... is over, the entertainment begins with the announcement that the Opera-Singer and the Polish Pianist are unable to appear, owing to indisposition—which really means an ingrowing disposition not to do so. They have, however, sent "liberal donations" to the Fund. We then find that "we are nevertheless so ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... resourcefully, "I hope you will all keep your seats and indulge the management for a few moments. A fuse has burned out, but it will at once be remedied. Our pianist, I will add, has suffered a fainting spell, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... high tenor heart must be broken to bits." "He is going," put in Mlle. Cadet. "What a shame!" Sileno vanished and the pianist began to play waltzes. ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... While pianist plays last half of song slowly, children take hold of corners of skirts, and with waltz step dance from side to side, still with sleepy look ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... is in appearance most like her mother, and perhaps in character and tastes, as she lives a life of quiet retirement, is a devoted wife and-mother, yet often giving her time and energies to a good work, or an artistic enterprise. She also is exceedingly fond of music and is an accomplished pianist. A passion for music belongs to this family by a double inheritance. Even poor, old, blind George the Third consoled himself at his organ, for the loss of an empire and the darkening ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... up poor old Fritz Von Hammer, the former Eos pianist—whose breath was still as fetid as ever ... who still insisted on seizing you by the coat lapel and talking right into your nose—dug him up from the moving picture ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... insurrection—Roeckel, Bakunin, and Heubner; personal friends of Wagner—were captured and imprisoned; he himself was so lucky as to escape to Weimar, where Franz Liszt took care of him. It so happened that Liszt, who had given up his career as concert pianist (though all the world was clamoring to hear him), and was conducting the Weimar Opera, had been preparing a performance of "Tannhaeuser," to which Wagner would, under normal conditions, have been invited as a matter of course. He was now there, but as a political fugitive, wherefore it was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... talkative and cheerful, so charming a hostess, so considerate and gentle a friend? Or the mystic-eyed Lady Sybil, who many an evening had led him away into the wonder-land of Chopin, for she was an accomplished pianist, if her own compositions were but feeble echoes of the masters? Or the more quick-spirited Lady Rosamund, the imperious and petulant beauty, who, in a way most unwonted with her, had bestowed upon him exceptional favor? Or that atrocious little flirt, Miss Georgie Lestrange, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... with flurried rapidity, as if he were searching for a lost article of which he was in desperate need. Presently he placed some sheets upon the piano and began vehemently to explain something to the pianist. The pianist stared at the music doubtfully—he was a plump old man with a rosy, bald crown, and his shiny linen and neat tie made him look as if he were on his way to a party. The violinist bent over him, suggesting rhythms with his shoulders and running ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... regular attendant with his mother at the Queen's Hall and Albert Hall concerts. Ballad singing did not appeal to him in the same degree as operatic and orchestral music. Thanks to instinctive gifts and assiduous practice he became a scholarly and an accomplished musician. A brilliant pianist, his playing was marked by power and passion, and the colour and glow of an intense and sensitive personality. He could memorise the most intricate composition, and would play for hours without a note. Music was ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones |
