"Pianist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... learned the piano in his younger days this might not have happened. But if he had been a pianist the president would probably have wiped him out—and very rightly. There can be ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... 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 ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... troubles soon caused the separation of Wieck and his wife, the latter marrying the father of Woldemar Bargiel, while the former also entered into a second union, with Clementine Fechner at Leipsic. A daughter of this second marriage, Marie Wieck, won some fame as a pianist, but was far surpassed by ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... a dim apartment, in which two or three people are leaning over a barrier in front of a small Stage; the Curtain is lowered, and a Pianist is industriously pounding ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... naturally ought. Within it was equipped for electric lighting; and there was a low-browed aesthetic parlor, where, when Gaites arrived and passed to a belated dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the closing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted a self-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pillars, and a college-student ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... the foundation is Bach, and Bach alone. Nine-tenths of organ playing is comprised in the Bach works. Upon the piano his influence has been little less. While it is true that at least four works are necessary for making a pianist of the modern school, viz., the "Well Tempered Clavier," of Bach; the "Gradus ad Parnassum," of Clementi; the "Studies," of Chopin, and the Rhapsodies, of Liszt, the works of Bach form, on the whole, considerably more than one-third ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... 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 others formed a group around ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... babble commences. Place for the foreign train, the performers par metier! Full of confidence are they; amidst all their smiles and obsequiousness, there is a business air about the thing. As soon as the pianist has asked the piano how it finds itself, and the piano has intimated that it is pretty well, but somewhat out of tune, a collateral fiddler and a violoncello brace up their respective nerves, compare notes, and when their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... his lively face, stumped heavily into the room, fell in a heap on the floor against the opposite wall, and in a magnificent bass growled out the resentment of Ortrud, while a rising but not yet prosilient pianist, with a long blonde wig from Miss Dwight's property chest, threw his head back, shook his hands, adjusted a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and banged out the prelude to Lohengrin with amazing variations. Elsa, with her profile against ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... going to bring a young man in, a Signor Pozzi-Egregio Pozzi, or some such name. She says he is the coming pianist." Cecilia's face was spiced with faint amusement. Some strain of her breeding (the Carfax strain, no doubt) still heard such names and greeted such proclivities with an ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... o'clock came Mr. Scheidemantel, a genuine lover of music and a fine pianist, to take me to the Maennerchor, which meets every Wednesday night for practice. Quickly we came to a hall, one end of which was occupied by a minute stage with appurtenances, and a piano; and in the middle thereof a long table, at which each singer sat down as he ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... pursued Venn, "is the hero of that paragraph"—Langholm kicked him under the table—"that—that paragraph about his last book, you know. Severino, Langholm, is the best pianist we have had in the club since I have been a member, and you will say the same yourself in another minute. He always plays to us when he drops in to dine, and you may think yourself lucky that he ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... operatic conductor knows that the chord in the orchestra must be played "after the voice," as the technical phrase has it. But not every pianist or organist is familiar with this usage, and the effect would be very disagreeable if given as written. It ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... well with Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman's abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom. But then the common little American woman invited his Majesty's 'cheres amies' to her house; and the amateur pianist was content to lose money to him ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... began 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 ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... 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 in ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... 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 almost a ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... pianist at six, and gave concerts at nine. Verdi was appointed musical director at Milan in youth. Rossini composed an opera at the age of sixteen, and ceased to compose ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... 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 ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... a sinking of hearts as Eustace Hignett moved down the room and took his place at the piano. A pianist! This argued more singing. The more pessimistic began to fear that the imitation was going to be one of those imitations of well-known opera artistes which, though rare, do occasionally add to the horrors of ships' ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... old, with possibly half a dozen women. At the piano, engaged in marking a sheet of manuscript music, was a short, heavy-set person, with a leonine mane and deep, brilliant eyes: a man known all over Europe, and to be known throughout America: one Anton Rubinstein, pianist, a maker of music. At his elbow, but talking to a frail-looking woman, was his brother, Nicholas, destined always to be overshadowed by Anton, but to whom the cause of Russian music was to owe far more, in the end, than to the more showy virtuoso. In the knot about ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... 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 ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... "they are extremely nice people, and Mrs. Benson is very musical; in fact, Mr. Benson does something in that line himself. They have with them for a few days a violinist, Fairman I think his name is, from Boston, and a pianist—what was it, Juliet?" ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... each 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 "can take care of herself." The ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... as a pianist," responded the man, rather enviously. "His looks would crowd St. James's Hall even if he couldn't play a note. I never can understand how Cresswell manages to have such a complexion in London. He must take ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 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
... scale, and now she was scarcely ever out of prison. It was very difficult to realize that this poor soul, who now was never known to use any but vile language and oaths, was once a beautiful young woman, a linguist, pianist, singer, also otherwise accomplished person. Though all efforts (there had been many) in her behalf had proved futile, I determined to make an attempt to save her. Accordingly I paid a special visit to the women's quarters. So far ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Caesar, "his high tenor heart must be broken to bits." "He is going," put in Mlle. Cadet. "What a shame!" Sileno vanished and the pianist ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... in the love of classical quartet and trio music by the great masters,—in the piano poems of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven, there will be abundant opportunities. The Mendelssohn Quintette Club, the German Trio, Mr. Satter, the pianist, and would we might add Otto Dresel, will give series of concerts in the pleasant Chickering Saloon, that holds two hundred. Alas! we may be disappointed there. The Masonic Temple has been sold to the government for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... house on Saturday evening, and I must get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to charm his ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well. Won't you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand can spare you? There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our accompaniment. Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play Chopin! He is charming, poor young man! an exile, and in poverty; but he is cared for by those ladies, who take him everywhere. That is the sort of life I should like—the life of Madame Strahlberg—to ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... knew what. Some one was singing Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet. Her shoulder touched his arm and lingered there. "Oh, my dear!" she was saying to herself. The pianist banged; the vocalist bawled, while Mr. Heatherbloom sat ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 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"; ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... 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
... test of a deep mind is to respect forms and at the same time recognize how little comparatively they are worth. The technical skill of the pianist requires years of laborious effort, and yet it has no value unless he can also appreciate the intention and spirit of the composer whose music he plays. So it is in art, politics, religion,—and all human affairs. When the national government was captured by ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... debate in 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 ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... magnificent Erard grand piano sang and rang again with music, now martial and loud, now soft and solemn, now gay and sparkling. I made the very pleasant discovery that Harold Beecham. was an excellent pianist, a gifted player on the violin, and sang with a strong, clear, well-trained tenor, which penetrated far into the night. How many, many times I have lived those nights over again! The great room with its rich appointments, the superb piano, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... saw the priest sleeping with a Congregational Chaplain. Or in the same state of mind you'll be in when you look down and see the sexton keeping your tombstone up to date. The truth of Joachim offsets the repose of Paganini and Kubelik. The repose and reputation of a successful pianist—(whatever that means) who plays Chopin so cleverly that he covers up a sensuality, and in such a way that the purest-minded see nothing but sensuous beauty in it, which, by the way, doesn't disturb him as much as the size of ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... the boomerang to dreams—usually a fruitful subject, afloat or ashore—but this time the output was poor. Then it passed to instances of extraordinary memory—with better results. Blind Tom, the negro pianist, was spoken of, and it was said that he could accurately play any piece of music, howsoever long and difficult, after hearing it once; and that six months later he could accurately play it again, without ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... affect to laugh at all such contrivances, but that is no more than a pale phosphorescence of an outraged wille zur macht. Setting aside half a dozen—perhaps a dozen—great masters of a moribund craft, who will say that the average mechanical piano is not as competent as the average pianist? ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... the plastic 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 after, and you'll ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... 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 skill in cannoning ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... most romantic, and does your son the greatest credit. You will order Clive not to sell his pictures, won't you? I know it is not wrong, but your son might look higher than to be an artist. It is a rise for Mr. Ridley, but a fall for him. An artist, an organist, a pianist, all these are very good people, but you know not de notre monde, and Clive ought to belong ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive airs—for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand, operas, like Fidelio. Have you never heard this by ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... 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
... the Streets; A Woman's Triumph in Paris; A Woman's Bible; Work for Women; Mrs. Stanton on the Jubilee; Electricity; Progress of the Telegraph; The Mystery of the Ages; Progress of the Marvellous; A Grand Aerolite; The Boy Pianist; Centenarians; Educated Monkeys; Causes of Idiocy; A Powerful Temperance Argument; Slow Progress; Community Doctors; The Selfish System of Society; Educated Beetles; Rustless Iron; Weighing the Earth; Head and Heart; The Rectification ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... impassioned phrase (and love often deeds that to a young person for a 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 ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... went and found Tescheles, and they dined together with a famous pianist, Louis Brassin, and afterwards there was music, and Barty felt the north, and his bliss was transcendent as he went back to Malines by the last train—talking to Martia (as he expressed it to himself) in a confidential whisper which he made audible to his own ear (that she, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the Black Cat—a real pianist, not just a person who plays the piano. She is a striking figure in a quaint, tunic-like dress, greying hair and a keen face, and a personal friend of half the frequenters. She has an uncanny instinct for the psychology ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... was greeted with a loud burst of applause. He wore a dress suit that he had hired in Boston, and there was a large white rose in the lapel of his coat. He was accompanied by Miss Tilly James, the pianist, who wore a handsome wine-colored silk dress that had been made for the occasion by the best dressmaker in Cottonton. As she took her place at the piano and ran her fingers over the keys, she, too, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... 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 fatiguing, but there were interludes ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... 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 ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... world, but the more perceptible the more closely you approached her. This lingering diffidence seemed to give a peculiar value to what was definite and assured in her manner; it made it seem like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent, something that one might compare to an exquisite touch in a pianist. It was, in fact, Madame de Cintre's "authority," as they say of artists, that especially impressed and fascinated Newman; he always came back to the feeling that when he should complete himself by taking a wife, that was the way he should like his wife to interpret him to the world. The only ...
— The American • Henry James
... period developed in him a speculative tendency and taught him the power of forcible expression. Herbart learned to play on several musical instruments, and at the age of eleven displayed considerable talent as a pianist. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... of Leitmotive should be avoided, since they give a totally wrong conception of the music. We cannot study an edifice by looking at the bricks of which it is built. Lectures with musical illustrations, provided they are really well done, by a competent pianist, are valuable, and it is also of use to study selected scenes at the piano with text and music, the scene on the stage being always kept before the mind, and the voice part being sung as far as possible. For those who are quick of musical apprehension ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... fading fast. I can remember, when a little boy, seeing the great Carnival of 1859, when the Prince of Wales was in Rome, and the masks which had been forbidden since the revolution were allowed again in his honour; and before the flower throwing began, I saw Liszt, the pianist, not yet in orders, but dressed in a close-fitting and very fashionable grey frock-coat, with a grey high hat, young then, tall, athletic and erect; he came out suddenly from a doorway, looked to the right and left in evident fear of being made a mark for 'confetti,' crossed the street hurriedly ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... is the soul of good dancing as well as of wit, and you will be wise to heed this from the very start of your professional stage career. Never show a dance to any prospective employer unless your dance has been thoroughly set and properly rehearsed with whoever is to play the music, pianist or orchestra. Never offer any excuses at such a time. Be sure of yourself, and only do one dance, your very ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... the 19th; I said the 21st. Order the dinner from Chevet for fifteen persons, and send for your client Bixiou to make you out the list. Tell him you want the chief men of the press, a lawyer to settle the terms of the contract, and a pianist to accompany the signora. Let her know what hangs upon it. Sir Francis Drake and I will make up the number. Useless to tell you that I am your friend Comte Halphertius, who, having no house in ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... rather troublesome to play, offers an effective contrast to the major. A 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 assumes considerable magnitude; the ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... 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
... called upon to act. Wise people always go about their tasks this way. Unwise people try the other way, of acting first and thinking it out afterward, and, of course, they always fail. You can now understand that a great pianist is one who has great thought with which to command the hands. And to be sure they will obey his commands at once, he has made them obey him continuously for years. This teaching the hands to obey ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... others a tempest. The tempest made Haydn despair, and he sat at the piano, banging away in a reckless fashion, while the director stood behind him, raving in a disconnected way as to his meaning. At last the distracted pianist brought his fists simultaneously down upon the key-board, and made a rapid sweep ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... prominent nose, with which he would assuredly have gesticulated had it been movable; his ears wide open, so as to better catch all that was said, even when it was out of range of ordinary auditory apparatus; his fingers unceasingly tapping the table in front of him, like those of a pianist practicing on the mute; and his body so long and his legs so short, and his feet perpetually crossing and recrossing, as he sat in state ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... Co., New York City: Manufactured for our use and loaned to us one of the handsomest pianos they could make, with beautiful Louis XV decorations in ormolu, which was used on state occasions or when some well-known singer or pianist was available. It was ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... friends chose to give most of her time to music. Without being a genius, she played remarkably well, and she made her work available for others by playing the organ in a church which was rich, in everything but money. I knew another fine pianist who gave lessons to children who could not otherwise have had them. In both these cases the ladies were as much bound by their self-imposed tasks as if they had been earning their living, and their characters received almost as great benefit; but it would ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... respects certain conventions. There are some I respect profoundly; and not the least that one which forbids right-minded gentlewomen to receive men of notoriously disgraceful lives. One should draw the line; one should draw it at that Hungarian pianist who was here this afternoon. Your aunt, of course, is a Frenchwoman; she has different ideas. But you, I can't believe that you care for this society, for people like Kronopolski and—and Rainham. Oh, it hurts me, and I imagine how distasteful it must be to you, that you must ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... we are so sorry for you!" Thus the two girls. And concurrence comes in various forms from Vereker, Fenwick, and the pianist, whom we haven't mentioned before. He was a cousin of Miss Wilson's, and was one of those unfortunate young men who have no individuality whatever. But pianists have to be human unless you can afford a pianola. You may speak of them as Mr. What's-his-name, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Barwig what you know. If he can teach such a finished pianist as Helene, I am determined that you shall have the advantage of ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... 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 ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... inspiration; but his pathos was ambition. His laughter was lonely; he would have laughed on a desert island. But his grief was gregarious. He liked to move great masses of men, to melt them into tenderness, to play on the people as a great pianist plays on them; to make them mad or sad. His pathos was to him a way of showing his power; and for that reason it was really powerless. He could not help making people laugh; but he tried to make them cry. We come in this novel, as we often do come in his novels, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... the present writer, who was a brilliant pianist, frequently went to play to Mr. Clarke, and, as she touched the piano, he would rouse himself and take his flute and try to accompany her. It is not a little remarkable, that Mr. Clarke's widow, after a few years married again, a Medical Practitioner, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... Polish musical composer and pianist, was born at Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw, on the 22nd of February 1810 (not the 1st of March 1809). His father, of French origin, born at Nancy in 1770, had married a Polish lady, Justine Krzyzanowska. Frederic was their third child. His first musical education he received from Adalbert Ziwny, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... close friendships confined to the young. Among his most steadfast admirers was an old-bachelor German musician by the name of Plich. Herr Plich was a piano-teacher, and it was under his tuition that the afterward favorite prima-donna Caroline Richings made her first public appearance as a pianist in 1847. This old teacher induced Mickley to take him as a boarder, and he lived for a number of years in one of the upper back rooms of No. 927. One night a fire broke out in a building directly contiguous with the rear of the Mickley mansion. There was great consternation, of course, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... communication among men, works which still remain, in our time, the indispensable corner-stones of the literature of these three instruments. The violinist gets a large part of his mastery through the sonatas of Bach for violin solo, the organist learns his art from Bach, and the pianist finds "The Well-tempered Clavier," and many other works of Bach written for the clavecin of indispensable importance for the development of ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... will become his ordinary voice; for not only does the established habit assist him, but the organs daily develop and fit themselves to his purpose, and he learns to transfer the stress from his throat to his lungs as easily and quickly and instinctively as the pianist passes his fingers from the treble to the base notes ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... FACULTIES.—The maestro Augusto Rotoli, the great Italian Tenor and singing teacher; Herr Carl Faelten, foremost pianist and teacher; Leandro Campanari, Violin Virtuoso teacher; Prof. W. J. Rolfe, the eminent Shakespearean Scholar and Critic; Mr. William Willard, the famous portrait painter; Mlle. Emilie Faller, artist from Paris, and Mr. Jas. E. Phillips, steward and caterer, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... finally produce the most elaborate forms of organized life on Lamarckian lines without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection at all. If you can turn a pedestrian into a cyclist, and a cyclist into a pianist or violinist, without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection, you can turn an amoeba into a man, or a man into a superman, without it. All of which is rank heresy to the Neo-Darwinian, who imagines that if you stop Circumstantial Selection, you not only stop development ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... said 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
... was the adopted son of Mrs. Scott Siddons, the English actress and dramatic reader—a famous beauty. He had been an infant prodigy as a pianist, but was overdriven by his father and Mrs. Siddons intervened and bought his freedom. She sent him to Woolwich Academy, the great Royal Artillery and Engineering School of Great Britain, where, curiously enough for a musician, he graduated at the head of his class in mathematics. Waller was a class-mate ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... a piano in her room, and we have sometimes had music in the evening. One of The Teacups, to whom I have slightly referred, is an accomplished pianist, and the two Annexes sing very sweetly together,—the American girl having a clear soprano voice, the English girl a mellow contralto. They had sung several tunes, when the Mistress rang for Avis,—for ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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 ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... "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 ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... October, 1811, Franz Liszt, the greatest pianist of the last half century, was born at Raiding, in Hungary, and the entire musical world was united in celebrating his seventieth birthday, which took place ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... Cornucopia,' late of the sunny South, and now a 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 am told—will ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and blood, 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 in this department ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... of Mayfair the pencil of DU MAURIER furnishes the best comment. Before 1869, woman-violinists were only single spies; now they are to be reckoned in battalions. And they no longer "play the easiest passages with the greatest difficulty," as was once said of an incompetent male pianist, but in all departments of technique and interpretation have fully earned Sir HENRY WOOD'S tribute to their skill, sincerity and delicacy. When the eminent conductor goes on, in his catalogue of their excellences, to say, "They do not drink, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... a great neglected wilderness of a garden, as untidy and unkempt as a fashionable pianist's hair, but growing the most wonderful collection of fruit. Here pears, peaches, lemons, guavas, and strawberries flourished equally well in the accommodating Argentine climate, and the pears of South ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... of 1817, to Marie Pachler-Koschak, a pianist whom Beethoven regarded very highly. "You will play the sonatas in F major and C minor, for me, will ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... personality into clear light, and study it as if it were an external thing; one must become intensely self-conscious. The initiation to every art is through this door of rigid scrutiny of self and entire surrender of self to the discipline of minute study and exacting practice. The pianist knows the artistic value of every note, and strikes each note with carefully calculated effect. The artist gives himself up to a patient study of details, and is content with the monotony of laborious imitation; subjecting every element of material and manner ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 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
... return from Germany in the sixties, contributed much to the national art of Norway by his excellent arrangements of hallings and spring dances for piano and violin. Thomas Thellefsen (1823-1874), a pupil and friend of Chopin, was distinguished as a national composer as well as a pianist, and Carl F.E. Neupert (1842-1888), who lived in America six years, did much by his concert tours and teaching to ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... coming into fashion. For every dance ordered by the guests, they received thirty kopecks for an easy dance, and a half rouble for a quadrille. But one-half of this price was taken out by the proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other, however, the musicians divided evenly. In this manner the pianist received only a quarter of the general earnings, which, of course, was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich played as one self-taught and was distinguished for having no more ear for music than a piece of wood. The pianist was constantly ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... little notice of the singer. The regular patrons of the 'Jolly Tar' were accustomed to her beauty and her singing, and thought very little about her. The girl was very quiet, very modest. She came and went under the care of the old blind pianist, whom she called her grandfather, and she seemed to shrink alike ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and 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 the keys, while ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... you have?" he asked, glancing from one to the other in imitation of the manner of his friend, the pianist in the Tucson honkytonk, on a ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... "After he [the pianist] had retired, there was a general hush of expectation to see the entrance of the vocalist of the evening; and presently there appeared a lady of a decidedly dark color, rather inclined to an embonpoint, and with African formation of face. She advanced ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... their endeavors to lure back the dancers, determined to join the excitement, and ceased playing. The leader laid down his violin, the pianist trailed up the key- board with a departing twitter and quit his stool. They all crossed the hall, headed for the crowd, some of them making ready to bet. As they approached the Bronco Kid, his lips thinned and slid apart slightly, while out of his heavy-lidded eyes there ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... purpose of writing this narrative, so my original offence having been purged, I need offer no apology for referring to them. There was no sort of order in the bundle of documents; you might as well look for the quality of humour in a dromedary, or of mercy in a pianist, as that of method in Paragot. I managed however to disentangle two main sets, one a series of love letters and the other disconnected notes of travel. In both was I ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... with humor. "I will listen with great pleasure; but don't ask a chemist to judge a pianist. I love music—it is a sweet noise in my ears—but I can hardly distinguish Chopin from Schumann." He faced the girl. "Play for me. I shall be very deeply indebted." As she still hesitated he added: "Please do, or I will certainly think you ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... that," said Mr. May, "I can accompany some of them myself, when I'm not operating the film. I'm not an expert pianist—but I can play a little, you know—" And he trilled his fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina, cocking his eye at ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... 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 he had thrown ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... garden. Lucky indeed were those persons driven forth by the strains of Chopin's dirge, for a few moments later came the earthquake, when in a trice the whole hotel was swallowed up in the yawning chasm of the earth. Everybody inside the walls was killed, and the body of the poor pianist was actually discovered later amidst the wreckage, crushed down upon the instrument which had struck the warning notes of impending disaster. The horrors of that night still linger vividly in the memory of the people, and many are ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... contract he signed called for more—but when he went to managers and told them that he wanted to separate from his sextet and go on as a regular pianist, they laughed at him aud told him he was crazy—it would he an artistic suicide. He used to laugh afterward at the phrase "artistic ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... sick longing for Catherine's shelter. Then all the pride in her rushed to the rescue and held that swooning dismay at the heart of her in check. And forthwith she capped Langham's minute account of the scale-method of a famous Berlin pianist by some witty stories of the latest London prodigy, a child-violinist, incredibly gifted, dirty, and greedy, whom she had made friends with in town. The girl's voice rang out sharp and hard under the trees. Where, in fortune's name, were the lights of the rectory? Would ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... making it change ends, and catching the bowl, they were ready for a general applause. In striking the bowl and thus manipulating his chop-sticks, his hands moved almost as rapidly as those of an expert pianist. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... 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
... Joan's "best" as a pianist did not amount to very much at any time, and she altogether lacked that intuitive understanding and sympathy which is the sine qua non of a good accompanist. Diana, accustomed to the trained perfection of Olga Lermontof, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... with visitors: some celebration or holiday had called the people out. Muffles, in expectation, had had the piano tuned and had sent to town for an orchestra of three. The cornet and bass-viol had put in an appearance, but the pianist had been ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... perfect' is 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 ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler |
