"Musical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the noontide of the moon, and when[mg] The wind is winged from one point of heaven, There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then Is musical—a dying accent driven Through the huge Arch, which soars and sinks again. Some deem it but the distant echo given Back to the night wind by the waterfall, And harmonised by the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... keeping my temper, so, of course, I keep it. If I do break out, it will be over our lessons—not over our French, our grammar, history, and globes—but over our music. No words can say how I feel for her poor piano. Half the musical girls in England ought to have their fingers chopped off in the interests of society, and, if I had my way, Miss Milroy's fingers should ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the delightful sadness that came into my heart on the musical voice of the reader. The lines, simple as they were, opened a new gate in my imagination beyond which I heard often the sound of music and flowing fountains and caught glimpses, now and then, of magic towers and walls ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... some account of these, illustrated with specimens of three—Tagalan, Harayan, and Visayan—with the alphabet used by the Filipinos. He also praises the politeness, in word and act, of the Tagalos, and gives them credit for much musical ability. A chapter is assigned to the native alphabet and mode of writing. All, women as well as men, write and read; and they have already learned to do so in the Spanish language as well as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... emotion no longer correspond to the genuine feelings of the worshipper, seem attenuated and transformed when they are intoned, and creeds which when plainly read shock the understanding and the conscience are readily accepted as parts of a musical performance. Scepticism as well as belief sometimes fills churches. Large classes who have no wish to cut themselves off from religious services have lost all interest in the theological distinctions which once were deemed supremely important and all strong belief in great ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... bird perched on the threshold, chirped a few questioning notes, then flew away to his own nest. Acorns fell from the oaks across the road, and the musical hum and whir of Autumn came faintly from the fields. The taper lights burned in the sunshine like ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... long-drawn musical moan: it must be the sound of some muffled instrument! Verily night was the time for strange things! Could sounds be begotten in the fir trees by the rays of the hot sun, and born in the stillness of the following dark, as ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... their chamber, and the others having disposed themselves with as little discomfort as they could, Don Quixote sallied out of the inn to act as sentinel of the castle as he had promised. It happened, however, that a little before the approach of dawn a voice so musical and sweet reached the ears of the ladies that it forced them all to listen attentively, but especially Dorothea, who had been awake, and by whose side Dona Clara de Viedma, for so the Judge's daughter was called, lay sleeping. No one could imagine who it was that sang so sweetly, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Nobody, for example, is holding them from greatness in poetry, which needs no special education, and music, in which they have always been specially educated; yet where is the great poem by a woman? where the great musical composition? In the grammar of literature what is the feminine of Homer, of Shakspere, of Goethe, of Hugo? What female names are the equivalents of the names of Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Wagner? Women are not musicians—they "sing and play." In short, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... this was done, easily done, by forbearing to angle with it in the press of nibblers. They ranged about her, individually unnoticed. Seeming unaware of its effect where it kindled, she smote a number of musical female chords, compassion among them. A general grave affability of her eyes and smiles was taken for quiet pleasure in the scene. Her fitful intentness of look when conversing with the older ladies told of the mind within at work upon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sweet they seemed to him now, and how far away! Marian, too, the dainty friend of his youth—would he ever see her again? He had thought of her very often of late, and each time with increasing desire to hear her clear voice and musical laugh, and see her eyes light ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... yellow and blue, of red, green, and blue, of purple and green, and a vast array of other combinations. A mixture of red and green lights may produce an exact match for a pure yellow. Thus it is seen that the mixture of lights will cause some difficulty. For example, the components of a musical chord may be picked out one by one by the trained ear, but if two or more colored lights are mixed they are merged completely and the resultant color is generally quite different from any of the components. In music of light, the components of color-chords ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the notes of a musical instrument, a mandolin, and the chords are peculiarly sad and yet ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... sharply, and is apt to transform a fond smile into a scornful one. Thus the picture that raised Caracalla to the level of an Achilles made Melissa shrug her shoulders over the man she dreaded; and while she even doubted Caesar's musical capacities, Diodoros's young, fresh, bell-like voice rose doubly beautiful and true upon her memory's ear. The image of her lover finally drove out that of the emperor, and, while she seemed to hear the wedding song which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Just at the time of the building I became acquainted with the family. The eldest son, who might have been some years older than I, was a well-formed young man, devoted to music, and practised to play skilfully on both the piano and the violin. The second, a true, good soul, likewise musical, enlivened the concerts which were often got up, no less than his elder brother. They were both kindly disposed towards me, as well as their parents and sisters. I lent them a helping hand during the building up and the finishing, the furnishing ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... may boast of excelling In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille; And seek admiration by vauntingly telling Of drawing, and painting, and musical skill: But give me the fair one, in country or city, Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart, Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty, While plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... officers, an occasional Staff Officer, and an occasional most devoted Padre—perform the journey as best they may. Sometimes they skirt a wood or hedge, sometimes they keep under the lee of an embankment, sometimes they proceed across the open, with the stealthy caution of persons playing musical chairs, ready to sit down in the nearest shell-crater the moment the music—in the form of a visitation ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... 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 musical society has not the courage ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... in texture than most woods, of white color, sometimes almost as white as ivory; requires great care in its treatment to preserve the whiteness of the wood. It does not readily absorb foreign matter. Much used by turners and for all parts of musical instruments, for handles on whips and fancy articles, draught-boards, engraving blocks, cabinet work, etc. The wood is often dyed black and sold as ebony; works well and stands well. Most abundant in the lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf States, but occurring ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... with its fairy isles, the waters of Lake Huron so darkly, deeply, beautifully green, and the storied waves of Superior with their memories of the martyr missionaries, of old French broils and the musical flow of Hiawatha. The very thought is enough to make one enthusiastic. How came you to think ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... attorney's house, advanced stealthily, and followed her at a little distance. Unconscious that she was dogged, and seemingly fearless of all danger, the girl went lightly on, swinging her basket playfully to and fro, and chaunting, in a low but musical tone, some verses that seemed rather to belong to the nursery than to that age which ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... custom now falling into desuetude is the waits, who originally were musical watchmen, who had to give practical evidence of their vigilance by playing on the hautboy, or flageolet, at stated times during the night. In the household of Edward IV. there is mentioned in the Liber niger Domus Regis, "A Wayte, that nightely from Mychelmas to Shreve Thorsdaye, pipe ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Yellin' Kid said he was going to send to Kansas City for a flute he could play on. This must be part of it! He dropped it here; though that couldn't 'a' been him sneaking around the tunnel. But this is Yellin' Kid's musical instrument all right! Oh, won't I rag him, though! I wonder which ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... hardly be contended that the preservation of any race of men in the struggle for life ever depended on such an extreme delicacy and refinement of the internal ear,—a perfection only exercised in the enjoyment and appreciation of the most perfect musical performances. How, then, could either the minute incipient stages, or the final perfecting touches of this admirable structure, have been brought about by vague, aimless, and indefinite variations in all conceivable directions of an organ, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... his whereabouts. So Arakho was dragged forth and chastised; in revenge of which he pursues both sun and moon, and whenever he comes to hand-grips with one of them, an eclipse occurs. To help the lights of heaven in their sad plight, a tremendous uproar is made with musical and other instruments, till Arakho is scared away." [292] "Referring to the Shoo, Pt. III., Bk. IV., parag. 4, we find this sentence: 'On the first day of the last month of autumn the sun and moon did not meet harmoniously in Fang.'" [293] In ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... few begrimed vellum-bound books in foreign languages (which he could not always read); and now and then a friend who was "breaking up" would give him a bit of Capo di Monte or an absurd enigmatic musical instrument from the East Indies. And he had a small department of Americana, dating from the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... indeed, but your affecting tale might better suit the intention of an opera, especially when we consider the musical genius of the feline race: were a sufficient number of these animals put under the tuition of proper masters, nobody can tell what an astonishing chorus might be produced. If this proposal shall be embraced, I make no doubt of its being ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... the town it was a cold and cheerless spot for a rendezvous, Foster surmised from this that secrecy was important, but after all there was nothing to indicate that the matter had anything to do with him. As he went back he heard a musical humming in the tops of the pines and a lump of wet snow, slipping from a branch, struck his face. The humming grew louder until the wood was filled with sound, and he began to feel clammy and hot. A warm Chinook ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... privilege of writers of romance to palm off on the public some of his earliest efforts at versification. These poems, distributed impartially among the various characters, are introduced with the same laborious artlessness as the songs in a musical comedy. Megalena, though suffering from excruciating mental agony, finds leisure to scratch several verses on the walls of her cell. It would indeed be a poor-spirited heroine who could not deftly turn a sonnet to night or to the moon, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... was probably twenty-five years old, and was very much out of tune. But even if it had been a Chickering Grand, her playing would hardly have captivated a musical ear. She had little taste, and the lessons she had taken had only given her the ability to ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... musical but poisoned with a malicious triumph that grated upon the nerves of P. Sybarite; he ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Boston, they went from Newport to Petersham, in the highlands of Worcester County, where they were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. John Fiske, at their summer home. Among the other visitors were the eminent musical composer Mr. Paine, the poet Cranch, and daughters of Hawthorne and Longfellow, so that they found themselves in the midst of a particularly cheerful and delightful party. From Petersham they proceeded to Buffalo, the meeting-place that year of the American Association ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... chaplains, and he was popular with them all; because when they inquired into the state of his soul he represented it as humble, penitent, and purified. Two of these gentlemen were High-Church, and he noticed their peculiarities: one was a certain half-musical monotony in speaking which might be called by a severe critic sing-song. Perhaps they thought the intoning of the service in a cathedral could be transferred with ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... returned from a long trip, crowded with many concerts, when I called at the New York residence of this ideal musical pair and their charming family. Mme. Homer was at home and sent down word she would see me shortly. In the few moments of waiting, I seemed to feel the genial atmosphere of this home, its quiet and cheer. A distant ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... souls when we read in the Nya Pressen, the day before leaving for the musical festival at Sordavala, the following: "Sordavala has only thirteen hundred inhabitants, and some ten thousand people have arrived for the Juhla. They are sleeping on floors and tables, and any one who can get even a share in a bed must ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... floated high above the wailing of the storm; a wild, musical cry, beginning on a low note, and thrilling swiftly up to a ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... without expense by any one who desired. He finally hit upon the simple plan of substituting free scholarships for the premiums then so frequently offered by periodicals for subscriptions secured. Free musical education at the leading conservatories was first offered to any girl who would secure a certain number of subscriptions to The Ladies' Home Journal, the complete offer being a year's free tuition, with free room, free board, free piano in her own room, and all travelling expenses ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... there! Nothing new besides the sun, is there? Why only yesterday I picked up a musical-comedy score that mast have been at least twenty years old; and there on the cover it said "The Shimmies of Normandy," but shimmie was spelt the old ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... I want you to wire the editor of the Chelton paper that, owing to the sudden illness of Miss Jeannette Blake, her niece, Miss Mabel Blake, has been compelled to stop her musical studies, and postpone her debut as a singer. That is all true and if the other notice does appear you can arrange to have ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... on the page opposite is a beautiful lyric poem. She might be called "A Hymn to the Night." Every line of her figure is musical, every move suggested, rhythmical. Seen at night, she croons you a slumber song. How subtly Mr. Weinman has told you that she comes to fold the world within her wings - to create thru her desire a "still and pulseless world." ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... I said it, for the Lord deliver me always from a sarcastic woman. But I've a feeling that the name is going to stick, whether we want it or not. At any rate, Alabama Ranch has rather a musical turn to it.... ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... most soul-depressing melody that has been chanted since the days of The Captivity. The mournful tone bore you down irresistibly; Mark Tapley would have subsided into melancholy gloom, before the slow versicles were half dragged through. But the parson was not the only musical culprit, nor the worse, by many degrees. It would be absurd to expect much cheerfulness here; a hoarse roar breaks out now and then at some coarse practical joke; but a frank, honest laugh—never. Yet I do wish that imprisoned discontent would vent itself otherwise than in ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... interviews with Mr. Monk concerning the wrong delivery of cheese and bacon. I was aware of the means by which news of the outer world got to Clayton. It came in a popular halfpenny paper, and that outer world must therefore have seemed to Clayton to be all aeroplanes, musical-comedy girls, dog shows, and Mr. Lloyd George. The grocer's boy got his tongue free at last, and talked. He was halt and obscure, but I thought I saw a mind beating against the elms and stones of the village, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... again, until at last the tinker showed the teakettle to a friend of his, who said, "This is certainly an accomplished and lucky teakettle-you should take it about as a show, with songs and accompaniments of musical instruments, and make it dance and walk on ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... pierce into the adyta of causation; and all that laborious conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of fancy. Under that despotism of the eye (the emancipation from which Pythagoras by his numeral, and Plato by his musical, symbols, and both by geometric discipline, aimed at, as the first propaideuma of the mind)—under this strong sensuous influence, we are restless because invisible things are not the objects of vision; and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... could scarce read and write; but he spoke in two languages, played at least one musical instrument as a matter of course, and possessed a number of other accomplishments, from the imping of hawk's feathers, to the mystery of venery, with knowledge of every beast and bird, its time of grace and when ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the hotel, dressed for dinner, and went down to the dining room, stopping on the way to obtain a ticket for a musical revue that was the talk of the town ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... seemed so deep and tender, while in it floated fleecy clouds of delicate amber, rose, and gold, like gossamer robes of happy spirits invisible to human eyes. The leaves and grass just stirred in the breeze, making a slight, musical murmur, and across them fell long shadows cast by the westering sun. A sentiment so sweet and pleasurable as to be tinged with pain, took possession of these young, susceptible souls, as the influences of the time ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... The merry, musical laugh of the maiden rung out through the forest-arches, and the Rifleman, for the time, lost all thoughts of Indians and danger; but this delightful forgetfulness could not last long. As the faint rumble of ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... the early part we had some pleasant hours to improve acquaintance in the open air; but towards nightfall the wind freshened, the rain began to fall, and the sea rose so high that it was difficult to keep one's footing on the deck. I have spoken of our concerts. We were indeed a musical ship's company, and cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations. Good, bad, or indifferent—Scottish, English, Irish, Russian, German or Norse,—the songs were received ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the first day of the vacation was devoted to the distribution of prizes, in the presence of parents, guardians and friends. An Entertainment was added, comprising those merciless tests of human endurance called Recitations; light refreshments and musical performances being distributed at intervals, to encourage the exhausted audience. The local newspaper sent a reporter to describe the proceedings, and some of Miss Ladd's young ladies enjoyed the intoxicating luxury of seeing ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the card. "He's headed in the wrong direction. What does he want to get back into a grass country for? Now, there are lots of good live towns down on the Santa Fe, and everybody down there is musical. He could always get a job playing in saloons if he was dead broke. I've figured out that I've got no years of my life to waste in a Methodist country ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... been torn by thorns and cut by thongs. His hands and feet look as though huge spikes had been forced through them. But the glory-light of another world is in His eyes, and illumines His face radiantly, and a glad ring is in His low, musical, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... will surely come to those who wait in trust, a glow, a heat in the heart announcing the awakening of the Fire. And, as it blows with its mystic breath into the brain, there is a hurtling of visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound as of great waters vibrant and musical in their flowing, and murmurs from a single yet multitudinous being. In such a mood, when the far becomes near, the strange familiar, and the infinite possible, he wrote from whose ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... drink, Lyaeus and Telemachus went to the inn door and looked out on the broad main street of the village where everything was snowy white under the cold stare of the moon. The dancing had stopped in the courtyard. A group of men and boys was moving slowly up the street, each one with a musical instrument. There were the two guitars, frying pans, castanettes, cymbals, and a goatskin bottle of wine that kept being passed from hand to hand. Each time the bottle made a round a new song started. And so they moved slowly up the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... readers that then existed, in comparison with the number of readers in the present age. These had the advantage over Marot's of being set to tunes of greater spirit. Beza, in his preface, says, that "these Psalms are admirably suited for the violin and other musical instruments;" and our readers will learn, not without surprise, that through the instrumentality of the gloomy Calvin, these compositions were set to most beautiful and simple airs. He wisely took advantage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... as ever in an unattractive portrait of an awkward little girl, happily not rendered additionally ridiculous by a musical title." ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... meditation than the lightly-moved children of the South. Sighs, as from the boughs of Yggdrasil, ever breathed through his poetry from of old. He was a smith, an artificer, and a delver in mines from the beginning. The old Teutonic Pan was far more musical and awe-inspiring than his Grecian counterpart The Noon-spirit of the North was more wild than that of the South. How all the ancient North was alive in its Troll-haunted hillocks, where clanged the anvil of the faery hill-smith, and danced and banqueted the Gnome and Troll,—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... expected to surprise the brig, but now, from having seen the boats ahead, they knew that we should be on the alert. Again bursting forth into shouts and shrieks, and making all the noise they could with their musical instruments, they opened a fire from their gingalls and muskets, followed up by a shower of darts. Although we could hear the missiles come rattling on board, being sheltered by our high bulwarks, no one, as far as I could ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... front garden, the little wicket-gate, and the blue sky beyond. How still everything was! By degrees the footsteps of a few late church-goers vanished along the road; the bells ceased—first the quick, sharp clang of the new church, and then the musical peal that rang out from the grey Norman tower. There never were such bells as those of Oldchurch! But they melted away in silence; and then the dreamy quietness of the hour ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... always liked his little joke. But where do you dine? I have brought a new song with me, a march out of the last musical thing on. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... it such fun, you'll stay in for earnest," I assured her, for she had shown a bit of inventive genius that I felt sure would make good in a little musical turn. ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... trees. No sooner was one felled than he would set to work to scrape off the bark at the upper part, and to run deep and straight lines down it; he then fixed the wedges in a long row, and went from one to another, driving them in as if playing on a musical instrument. When they were all firmly fixed, he would call the rest of the party with their hammers, and at a signal make them all strike at once, seldom failing to separate an ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... scruple — Thus favoured, she conceived too great an idea of her own importance, and when the dutchess left Rome, resolved to have a conversazione that should leave the Romans no room to regret her grace's departure. She provided hands for a musical entertainment, and sent biglietti of invitation to every person of distinction; but not one Roman of the female sex appeared at her assembly — She was that night seized with a violent fit, and kept her bed three days, at the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... procession had its own music. The Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines resound. The slang men, not a very musical race, still clung to the goat's horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of the twelfth century. The Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced; among its music one could hardly distinguish some miserable rebec, from ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... better making a romance of campaigning than that about us. Chilhowee and the great Smoky Mountains piled their deep blue masses against the eastern horizon, whilst at our feet rolled as beautiful a river as ever bore a musical Indian name. The grassy banks rise about a hundred feet above the water, and then the hills roll and rise around us in charming variety. Near the water's edge a great spring pours out from the bank in a swift steady stream two yards ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... to mean 'all,' gave occasion to fanciful interpretations. He was so called, it was said, because he gave delight to all the Immortals;[1331] or his person and his musical and other instruments were supposed to represent universal nature—his horns the rays of the sun and the horns of the moon, his spotted fawnskin the stars, his pipe of seven reeds the harmony of the heavens, his crook the year, which returns on itself, and so on.[1332] The Stoics and ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his way into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different from his own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical, and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly swallowing his r's and generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a man calling out to his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was indicative of dissipation and the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of Thorwaldsen a musical-poetic academy was established, and the poets, who were invited to do so by Heiberg, wrote and read each one a poem in praise of him who had returned home. I wrote of Jason who fetched the golden fleece—that ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... bits of paper fluttered wide and disappeared in the sea of white Breton head-dresses; there was a rhythmic clatter of wooden shoes, an undulation of snowy coiffes, then a low murmur as the people slowly read the circulars aloud, their musical monotone accompanying the strident nasal voice of Byram, who stood on the tarnished band-wagon shouting his crowd ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the other senses so accurate and well made out as those of visible form: what I chiefly mean is, that the feelings belonging to the sensations of our other organs, when accidentally recalled, are kept more separate and pure. Musical sounds, probably, owe a good deal of their interest and romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that of a blind ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... publicly performing or representing any dramatic or musical composition, for which copyright has been obtained, without the consent of the proprietor of the said dramatic or musical composition, or his heirs or assigns, shall be liable for damages therefor, ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... more subtle than arithmetical conclusions; what more agreeable than musical harmonies; what more divine than astronomical, what more certain ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... serious, "perhaps he may turn out a poet yet. You never can tell where the lightning is going to strike. He has some idea of rhyme, and some perception of reason, and—yes, some of the lines were musical. His general attitude reminded me of Piers Plowman. Didn't he recall Piers ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... away, while Gorman, leaning out to the utmost to catch the dying notes, strained his hearing to drink them in. All was still, and then suddenly, with a wild roulade that sounded at first like the passage of a musical scale, she burst out into a fit of laughter, crying 'Non mi amava,' through the sounds, in a half-frantic mockery. 'No, no, non mi amava,' laughed she out, as she walked back into the room. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... laughed at Schafroff, too, in her pretty way, tossing back her head and showing her white, shapely throat. Hers was a rich, musical laugh. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... when they were cast down and disheartened. Thus, as Plato says, he was able to prove that oratory is the art of influencing men's minds, and to use it in its highest application, when it deals with men's passions and characters, which, like certain strings of a musical instrument, require a skilful and delicate touch. The secret of his power is to be found, however, as Thucydides says, not so much in his mere oratory as in his pure and blameless life, because he was so ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... fire-lighted courtyard, and then putting his hands to his lips chanted the Mohammedan call to prayers. The music and merrymaking instantly ceased, and the sweet weird chant rang out far and wide through the still evening air over the silent village, dying away at last in a long musical cry of La illaha il Allah! ("There is no God but God"). Amid profound silence Kazi Mullah—for the gray-bearded stranger was that renowned priest—stretched out his hand over the crowded courtyard and with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... The intensity of the man had been transferred to his listeners. A whispered 'all right' reached the priest from the lips of the Sacristan behind, and Father Collins stopped. His voice dropped back to the tone with which he began his discourse. It was a soft, musical voice, that people till now did ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... instantly stopped, threw his arm over his breast, and covered his eyes, in an attitude of deep devotion, as if oppressed by the presence of the spirit. The voice after ejaculating three 'Oh's,' one rising above the other, in tones very musical, burst into a flow of unintelligible jargon, which, whether it was in English or in gibberish I could not discover. This lasted five or six minutes, and as the voice was silenced, another woman, in more passionate and louder tones, took it up; this last spoke in English, and words, though ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... sound. The serene peace of the starlit night settled over The Locusts like brooding wings. The clock struck one, then two, and the long hand was half-way around its face again before any other sound but the musical chime broke the stillness. Then a succession of strangled moans began to penetrate the consciousness of even the soundest sleeper. Whoever it was that was trying to call for help was evidently terrified, and the terror of the cries ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the cricket, now like an obstinate virtuoso, persisted in his musical exercises, which were truly somewhat monotonous, until the sky was brightened by the placid smile of dawn. At the very first rays of the sun the performer relented, doubtless content with the perfection of his artistic efforts, and a quail took up his solo, giving the three ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabrick of English verse, and habituated himself to that only which he found the best; in consequence of which restraint, his poetry has been censured as too uniformly musical, and as glutting the ear with unvaried sweetness. I suspect this objection to be the cant of those who judge by principles rather than perception; and who would even themselves have less pleasure in his works, if he had tried to relieve ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... people were sullen. They resented the incursion of an armed force. Among the party was Sergeant Clarke, who brought his bagpipes with him. There may be some people who have a prejudice against the bagpipes. This proceeds from defective musical education. Sergeant Clarke's bagpipes proved a potent factor in securing the personal goodwill of the people. He played "Auld Scottish airs," and many of the old men, mellowed with whiskey, wept in the bar-room of the little hotel at Stornaway. The courtesy of Major Dugas, and the ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... occurred to me." She laughed also, and sitting down at the piano struck a few chords. Captain Chariot, who had his foot on the threshold, turned back—Simone had described the scene to her grandmother afterward. "Some of the brutes, it seems, are musical," the old lady explained; "and this was one of them. While he was listening, some soldiers appeared in the court carrying another who seemed to be wounded. It turned out afterward that he'd been climbing a garden ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... we do not discern the musical note, or the acknowledgment of the "Old German God." Yet, ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... in her soft, musical voice, "if I had to do it to protect myself or my friends. But you must not hold it like that, you might wound yourself if the person you were going to stab were to draw back." Then, sitting up in bed, "See," she added, "you must strike like this—upward! If ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... evidently accepted his offer of silence, and lying back in her soft couch stares with unseeing eyes at the bank of flowers before her. Behind her tall, fragrant shrubs rear themselves, and somewhere behind her, too, a tiny fountain is making musical tinklings. The faint, tender glow of a colored lamp gleams from the branches of a tropical tree close by, and round it pale, downy moths are flitting, the sound of their wings, as every now and then they approach too near the tempting glow and beat them against ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... then and the flowery garlands and perfumes of both troops emitted equal fragrance. And, O bull of Bharata's race, fierce was the collision that took place when the serried ranks arrayed for battle encountered each other. And the sound of musical instruments, mingled with the blare of conches and the noise of drums, and the shouts of brave warriors roaring fiercely at one another, became very loud. O bull of Bharata's race, dreadful was the collision ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is addressed to the young philosopher Boethius, a man whose varied accomplishments adorned the middle period of the reign of Theodoric, and whose tragical death was to bring sadness over its close. To this man, whose knowledge of the musical art was pre-eminent in his generation, Cassiodorus addresses one of the longest letters in his collection (it would occupy about six pages of an ordinary octavo), only one or two sentences of which relate to the business in hand. The letter begins: "Since ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... and STRAVINSKY may flatter The ears of the brainy elite, But the musical numbers that matter Express what is simple and sweet; You may easily miss, by aspiring too high, Both the lump in the throat and the tear ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... the dense crowd that blockaded the stairway, I heard a frightened cry that made the blood freeze in my veins. There was but one woman in the world blest with so sweet a voice—musical ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... eminent an actor-manager as Mr Beerbohm Tree, was no great success on the stage, is a fair proof that the piece lacked some of the essentials, good or bad, of dramatic success. Now a drama, like a picture or a musical composition, must have a certain unity of key and tone. You can, indeed, mingle comedy with tragedy as an interlude or relief from the strain and stress of the serious interest of the piece. But you cannot reverse the process and mingle tragedy ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... letters. He was so genuinely an artist that he could not do the thing ill. Any one of these stories will prove his capacity: the first, for instance, about that princess on the "bare, brown, lonely moor" who was "as sweet and as fresh as an opening rosebud, and her voice was as musical as the whisper of a stream in the woods in the hot days of summer." There is not a flaw in it. It is so filled with simple beauty and tenderness, and there is so much of the genuine word-magic in its language, that one is carried away as ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Praxiteles designed them all, one after another; then from all these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The first man who created a musical instrument and who gave to that art its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets who understand life, after having known much of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... distance. "I wish the Nightjar wouldn't make that noise when one wants to sleep," said the Kangaroo. "It hasn't got any voice to speak of, and the tune is stupid. It gives me the jim-jams, for it reminds me I've lost my baby Kangaroo. There is something wrong about some birds that think themselves musical," she continued: "they are well behaved and considerate enough in the day, but as soon as it is a nice, quiet, calm night, or a bit of a moon is in the sky, they make night hideous to everyone within ear-shot—'Mo-poke! mo-poke!' Oh! it gives me ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... wore rich traveling-suits, and carriages waited to convey the immediate members of the family to the wedding breakfast. The younger bridegroom saw nothing but the sweet face at his side, though he started perceptibly when the service revealed that his father's bride and his own bore the same musical name ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... the work done to it; and incline to think it helps the oar, not only by keeping the time true, and the spirit alive, but also by its favorable action on the lungs. It is sung in a peculiar way; the sound is, as it were, expelled from the chest in a sort of musical ejaculations; and the like, we know, was done by the ancient gymnasts; and is done by the French bakers, in lifting their enormous dough, and ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... much to tell," she sighed, as she seated herself beside me. "I was only eight years old when the musical examiners condemned my voice and so I do not remember much about the music school. In the other school where they train girls for the life on the Free Level, they taught us dancing, and how to be beautiful, and always they told us ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... these were Doctor Jeddler's daughters - came bustling out to see what was the matter, and who the deuce played music on his property, before breakfast. For he was a great philosopher, Doctor Jeddler, and not very musical. ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... birthday, young Riley turned his back on the little schoolhouse and for a time wandered through the different fields of art, indulging a slender talent for painting until he thought he was destined for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a few weeks," he said, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... and Tom couldn't help envying them as he followed, and watched the dog cart lessening rapidly down the empty street, and heard the notes of the yard of tin, which Blake managed to make really musical, borne back on the soft western breeze. It was such ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... there came this transcendent creature, with a form more glowing than all his dreams; a voice more musical than a seraphic chorus, though it had uttered but one thrilling word: there came this transcendent creature, beaming with grace, beauty, and love, and had fallen upon his ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... volume and effect is the Philippic or iconoclastic article, mingling in varying proportions the resounding musical cadences of Ingersollian oratory and the pungent, audacious epigrammatic twists on which Hubbard, with cleverer salesmanship, built a more profitable, if not more ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... respected by his brother officers and by all who knew him. He inherited some of the talents of his mother, particularly music, in which he was remarkably proficient. His apartments at Toulon, where he was stationed, were crowded with musical instruments and the works of the greatest masters. All the musicians traveling back and forth between Italy and France made his house their headquarters. The Chevalier accorded them a generous welcome on all occasions; the only return demanded ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... bustle just now, and then they got the steam up, and now the engine is beginning to work. Oh! how slowly we are going! I could walk faster. Oh! we are stopping again—no, it is only my fancy. Is not the shriek of the whistle musical for once?" ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... just off to sleep, forgetful of all troubles and strife, when you are rudely awakened and brought back to the present by the most awful screechings under your window. Morpheus flies, he has a musical ear has that god, and when once, "Oh, come let us adore him," with a concertina accompaniment, both voices and instrument woefully out of tune; when once these harmonious strains have started, that good old deity goes, to return no more ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... figures, around which are miniatures of our Saviour, David, and some of the apostles. In a line at the bottom the word CATVSVIR is inscribed. Very much inferior to this in point of art is the illumination, at folio 31, representing David playing his harp, surrounded by a musical coterie; it is probably the workmanship of a more modern, but less skilful scribe of the Saxon school. The smaller ornaments and initial letters throughout the manuscript display ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... feel the lowest notes of her voice, and upon both the chest and the top of her head to feel the highest, and endeavoring to get him to recognize the similarity in vibratory sensation between what he now feels and what he previously felt on the musical instruments. The last step in this series of exercises to awaken a recognition of vibratory sensations is to lead him to feel in his own chest and head the vibrations set up by his own voice in shouting and ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... the present day. It may therefore be acknowledged that no custom has been so universal and continuous as the drinking of wine from the earliest period of human existence. The vine is a mysterious plant; it is so peculiarly sensitive that, like a musical instrument which produces harmony or discord at the hands of different performers, the produce of the same variety is affected by the soil upon which the plants are grown. Thus ten thousand young vines may be planted upon one mountain, all of the same stock; but various qualities of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... went on with Warbleton happenings, improvements and openings; and the runaway. Cornish tried hard to make himself agreeable, not ingratiatingly but good-naturedly. He wished profoundly that before coming he had looked up some more stories in the back of the Musical Gazettes. Lulu surreptitiously pinched off an ant that was running at large upon the cloth and thereafter kept her eyes steadfastly on the sugar-bowl to see if it could be from that. Dwight pretended that ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... jugglery and over all the members of this jovial fraternity. It must not be imagined that these jugglers merely recited snatches from tales and fables in rhyme; this was the least of their talents. The cleverest of them played all sorts of musical instruments, sung songs, and repeated by heart a multitude of stories, after the example of their reputed forefather, King Borgabed, or Bedabie, who, according to these troubadours, was King of Great Britain at the time that Alexander the Great was King of Macedonia. The jugglers of a lower order ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... (brother unmarried, sister with several children) and am the youngest of a family of five. My brother is abnormal, but I don't know exactly in what way or from what cause. I have a strong suspicion that he masturbates to excess. My father is artistic and my mother musical. I have no aptitude for either, but appreciate both enormously, though not until about ten years ago. My principal reading is religion, science, and philosophy, with an occasional standard novel, or a modern novel of the 'improper' type by way of relaxation. I became a convinced ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... harmony, but even the true metric time of their odes!—music and metre, which must have surely been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. One thing we can understand—how this musical form of the drama, which still remains to us in lower shapes, in the oratorio, in the opera, must have helped to raise their tragedies into that ideal sphere in which they all, like the "Antigone," live and move. So ideal and yet ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... next room my mother asked me to show her what I could play on the piano, wisely hoping to divert my father's thoughts by the sound. I played Ueb' immer Treu und Redlichkeit, and my father said to her, 'Is it possible he has musical talent?' ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... There was a sweet though rather close odor, which wrought powerfully upon my imagination. Walking cautiously, since the floor seemed as slippery as glass, I followed my conductor. He drew the curtain aside a little—enough to let me slip through—said something in Spanish, some one musical word which I did not understand, and the curtain closed behind me. I stood there feeling like a doll, absurd, small ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... apparently with the perfect freedom of real dialogue; in fact, it is of course far more pointed and compressed than any dialogue could ever be. The dramatic vivacity with which the whole scene is given, shows that he could use metre as the most skilful performer could command a musical instrument. Pope, indeed, shows in the Essay on Criticism, that his view about the uniformity of sound and sense were crude enough; they are analogous to the tricks by which a musician might decently imitate the cries of animals or the murmurs ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... ringing of bells and the musical clang of chimes I hear a sound like the breaking of chains, all through these Christmas times. For the thought of the world is waking out of a slumber deep and long, And the race is beginning to understand how Right can ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
