"Symphony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is preceded by a series of false promises and followed by a series of calumnies. Between such a prelude and such a finale, you may perform a symphony of frightfulness with Dr. Strauss' orchestration—it will sound as innocent and artless as the three notes of a shepherd's pipe. The violation of Belgian neutrality is bad enough, but if you begin to ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... Painting completed whole. Music passing panorama. Not translatable into words. To follow, even anticipate composer. Bach's absolute knowledge. Fire of Prometheus. Inner sanctuary of art. Science of acoustics. Prime elements. Dr. Marx and Helmholtz. Motive. Beethoven's fifth symphony. Phrase. Period. Simple melody. "God Save the King." Our "America." Masters of counterpoint. Bach's fugues. Monophony and polyphony. Classical and romantic. Heretic and hero. Hadow on musical laws. Form the manifestation of these. Good music ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... still Defied the dog-star. Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope, And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette— Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends To the pervading symphony of peace. No time is this for hands long over-worn To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain Of years that did the work of centuries Have ceased, and we can draw our breath ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... space that would best be represented by a musical rest—a silence in the midst of a symphony. Then her ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... a private reason of his own for it that he never confided to anyone save his nearest crony. They were all here now to witness the resurrection of Alta—the poorest parish in a not too rich Diocese, hopeless three years ago, but now—well, there it is across the lot, that symphony in stone, every line of its chaste gothic a "Te Deum" that even an agnostic could understand and appreciate; every bit of carving the paragraph of a sermon that passers-by, perforce, must hear. To-day it ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... can sigh no longer. Or it may be heard at some Methodist Camp Meeting upon a Welsh hillside, but in the churches it is gone for ever. If I were a musician I would take it as the subject for the adagio in a Wesleyan symphony. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... she then added, "there be other matters wherein certain of us do differ from other. To wit, some of us do love to sing unto symphony [music] the praise and laud of God; the which othersome (of whom am I myself) do account to be but a vain indulgence of the flesh, and a thing unmeet for its vanity to be done of God's servants dwelling in this evil world. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... chuckled the old man, raising the lid to see if the water had boiled sufficiently. "Do you know I think a dinner horn and a singing kettle beat a symphony all hollow for real down-right melody," and he lifted ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... last two or three years of her life there, Rosalind felt she had learned a little something of life. She had read books for one thing, such books as did not come to Willow Springs, books that Willow Springs knew nothing about, she had gone to hear the Symphony Orchestra, she had begun to understand something of the possibility of line and color, had heard intelligent, understanding men speak of these things. In Chicago, in the midst of the twisting squirming millions of men and women there were voices. One occasionally saw men or at least heard ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... Fersen (the same whom the Stockholm mob quartered and lapidated not very long since), and they arrived at an Osteria on the road to Rome or thereabouts. It was a summer evening, and, while they were at supper, they were suddenly regaled by a symphony of fiddles in an adjacent apartment, so prettily played, that, wishing to hear them more distinctly, the Count rose, and going into the musical society, said, 'Gentlemen, I am sure that, as a company of gallant cavaliers, you will be delighted to show your ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... arts. It is clear that there is a gulf between the mere sense of beauty—such as is possessed by primitive man, or, in later stages of civilization, by the connoisseur in the fine arts—and the concrete work of art. Thousands enjoy the statue, the symphony, the ode; not one in a thousand can produce these objects. Mere connoisseurship is sterile. "The ability to produce one fine line," said Edward FitzGerald, "transcends all the Able-Editor ability in this ably-edited universe." What is the ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... have I told you the top part is never easiest? Who do you suppose is going to keep this symphony together—you or me?' ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... ought to have one more fling tonight. While I was waiting for you to come back this afternoon, I looked up what Chicago has to offer in the way of flings, and this is what I found. Here, Barbara," he took a tiny envelope out of his upper waistcoat pocket, "are two tickets for the symphony orchestra. By the greatest of luck they're giving a special concert for some charity or other, a beautiful program; a sort of musical requiem. Sylvia mustn't miss it; you take her. And here," he spun round to face ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... saying that I have no objection to make to the publication of the Andante from the Berg Symphony in the Jubilee Album in honor of Johann Schneider. I only beg, dear friend, that you will look the proof over accurately, and carefully correct any omissions or mistakes ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the oldest of Mr. Punch's young men thought he would like to hear some orchestral music on Monday week last, so he dropped in at the Queen's Hall to assist at a concert of the new British Symphony Orchestra. The name of the founder and conductor, Mr. RAYMOND ROZE, was already familiar, for Mr. Punch's young man was old enough to remember Mr. ROZE'S mother, MARIE ROZE, in her brilliant prime as prima donna of the Carl Rosa Company; and he is glad to know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... words the Journal of Columbus's voyage begins; and they sound a salt and mighty chord which contains the true diapason of the symphony of his voyages. There could not have been a more fortunate beginning, with clear weather and a calm sea, and the wind in exactly the right quarter. On Saturday and Sunday the same conditions held, so there was time and opportunity for the three very miscellaneous ships' companies ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... offered a prize for the best symphony. Eighty-three have been offered, of which one only seems ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... comedies, still there is a general impression among the audience that BOOTH'S has become a place of amusement. And in noting this change PUNCHINELLO does not mean to jeer at the former and normal character of BOOTH'S. BEETHOVEN'S Seventh Symphony, DANTE'S Inferno, JEFFERSON'S Rip Van Winkle, and EDWIN BOOTH'S Hamlet are not amusing, but it does not follow that they are therefore unworthy of the attention of the public, which is pleased with the rattle of De Boots, and tickled with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been a real symphony of sorrow, passing through its rhythmically linked movements to its certain resolution, with that inevitableness that in Art characterises the treatment of every great theme.... I spoke of your conduct to me on three successive days three years ago, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... soil, it rains and the rain fertilises the seed, the sun shines and makes it grow, and when the tree has grown and again bears blossoms and fruit, this fruit is useful to man, is food and not poison to him. Is all this without purpose, without reason? Is it a symphony without a composer? Man, too, needs rain and sunshine, and warmth and darkness; and all this is given to him so that he may live and work and think. What would man be without darkness, without the rest afforded by night? Probably crazy. What would he be without sunshine? Perhaps an Esquimau or ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... bumblebee emerges from the flower, shaking the yellow dust—A Hen comes on the scene as in La Fontaine's fable. A Cuckoo calls, as in Beethoven's symphony. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... have been saying. Let the lungs be worn out by staying indoors without fresh air, and the needle be threaded with nerves exhausted. After one week's household annoyances, he would conclude that Wall street is heaven and the clatter of the Stock Exchange rich as Beethoven's symphony. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... me of the description given of the priestess of. Delphi. She walks along the stage for four or five minutes in silent meditation on the subject proposed, then suddenly stops, calls to the musicians to play a certain symphony and then begins as if inspired. Among the different rhimes in osco, a gentleman who sat next to me proposed to her Cimosco. I asked him what Cimosco he meant; he replied a Tuscan poet of that name. For my part, I had never heard of any other of that ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... recess, a sheltered oasis in the midst of a wind-swept, snow-covered region. The usual Swiss trade of wood-carving appeared to be the principal occupation of the community. The single narrow street was thronged with goats, whose jingling many-toned bells made an incessant and agreeable symphony. Under the projecting roofs of the log-built chalets bundles of dried herbs swung in the frosty air; stacks of fir-wood, handy for use, were piled about the doorways, and here and there we noticed a huge dog ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... master, in which Passion, aroused by Pain as its original ground-tone, raises itself upward on the stepping-stone of conciliation and exaltation to an outburst of Joy conscious of Victory." Paul loved to play the Fifth Symphony as well as to hear it performed by an orchestral band. When playing it he seemed to lose touch with earth and to be transported to celestial heights. In his marginalia he compares the methods of expression ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... two will live mostly because they created Beethoven. Ah, Beethoven! power and strength amidst serene suffering, Michael Angelo at the tomb of the Medici! A heroic logician, a kneader of human brains; for the symphony, with choral accompaniments, was the starting-point of all the great ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... else came cheaply to me. Because I could walk into Hampton Court Palace and the National Gallery (on free days) and enjoy Mantegna and Michael Angelo whilst millionaires were yawning miserably over inept gluttonies; because I could suffer more by hearing a movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony taken at a wrong tempo than a duchess by losing a diamond necklace, I was indifferent to the repulsive fact that if I had fallen in love with the duchess I did not possess a morning suit in which I could reasonably have expected ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... first place, the medulla contains numerous nerve cells, belonging to the vegetative, also called the sympathetic nervous system. But these nerve cells are merely minor notes of the symphony. The motif is settled by a majority of large, granular cells, which stain a distinctive yellowish-brown when the gland is fixed in a solution of bichromate of potash. All chromium salts, in fact, stain the therefore labelled chromaffin cells. The characteristic ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... as when, of yore, The Hebrew poet called the mountain-steeps, The forests, and the shore Of ocean, and the mighty mid-sea deeps, And stormy wind, to raise A universal symphony of praise. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was the organist. It was a most impressive occasion with many evidences of deep feeling, and, although it was a church service, the audience responded with warm applause as Mrs. Catt closed her eulogy with this beautiful comparison: "A significant ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... closes here I shall go to London and bring out my second piano concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, under Nikisch. I shall also ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... attended the Symphony Concerts (on twenty-five cent tickets), and prattled knowingly of Mozart and Beethoven; and here she listened to Patti or Bernhardt from the third balcony of the Boston Theater. If she attended an exhibit of modern paintings she saw no beauty in pictured face ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... in principle it is untenable. Nothing has less to do with the real merit of a work of imagination than the capacity of all men to appreciate it; the true test is the degree and kind of satisfaction it can give to him who appreciates it most. The symphony would lose nothing if half mankind had always been deaf, as nine-tenths of them actually are to the intricacies of its harmonies; but it would have lost much if no Beethoven had existed. And more: incapacity to appreciate ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... and a lot of other things he saw, though a view of the planet as a whole from Darius puzzled him considerably. Then, in the middle of a symphony orchestra concert from Mallorysport Opera House, he wriggled loose, dropped to the floor and caught up his wood chisel, swinging it back over his shoulder like ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... height, and, as I listened, rain and wind and thunder became merged and blended into awful music—a symphony of Life and Death played by the hands of God; and I was an atom—a grain of dust an insect, to be crushed by God's little finger. And yet needs must this insect still think upon its little self for half drowned, deafened, blind, and half stunned though I was, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Now lightly tread As if by elfin minstrels led, And fling no sound upon the air Shall rudely wake my slumbering fair. Softly! Now breathe the symphony, So gently breathe the tones may vie In softness with the magic notes In visions heard; music that floats So buoyant that it well may seem, With strains ethereal in her dream, One song of such mysterious birth ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson evolved New England Transcendentalism, and very early Henry Thoreau added a few bars of harmonious discords to the symphony. Horace Greeley once contended in a "Tribune" editorial that Sam Staples, the bum bailiff who locked Thoreau behind the bars, was an important factor in the New England renaissance, and as such should be immortalized ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... this country in search of the old saga-island are sometimes a little disappointed at finding here, in place of saga-tellers and bards, a modern community, with its own university, a national theatre, and a symphony orchestra. Be this as it may, literature still holds first place among the arts and cultures. A collection of books is indeed considered as essential a part of a home as the furniture itself. For such visitors, there may be some consolation in the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... asked—Is there not in the regions of Poetry an aeolian harp, found in the cave of AEolus, on which the winds of heaven played many a celestial symphony, without the skill or touch of human hand? Grant all that the Poetic Muse assumes, and then we ask—Who made the harp? And whence directed came the musing sylvan Zephyrus and his choir? Came they not from a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... self-supporting. I had to learn to be so; and I tried my hand at a number of things ... adventurous, menial, commercial. ... It's not a bad thing for a man to have to live his life—and we nearly all manage to dodge it. Our first round with the Sphinx may strike something out of us—a book or a picture or a symphony; and we're amazed at our feat, and go on letting that first work breed others, as some animal forms reproduce each other without renewed fertilization. So there we are, committed to our first guess at the riddle; and our works look as like as successive impressions of the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... however, agree in stating that he wrote in the style of the modern Italians, that is to say, what were called the modern Italians in the later part of the last and the earlier part of this century. Elsner tried his strength and ability in all genres, from oratorio, opera, and symphony, down to pianoforte variations, rondos, and dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, imitations, and fugal ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... notes in that great symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live world's throbbing heart shall be One with our heart; the stealthy, creeping years Have lost their terrors now; we shall not die— The universe ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... wood-dove sounds from far away. A cricket shrieks, and stops suddenly, as if shocked at the discordant sound of its own voice. Far off in the hills I can hear the rushing of the wind, like a deep chord that unites in a sacred symphony with the golden sun and the glittering water to voice the infinite joy of living ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... gained from the excellent works of Mr. Oscar G. Sonneck, Mr. E. H. Krehbiel, Mr. Philip Goepp, Mr. George P. Upton, Allston Brown and other writers on the American stage, and above all from the admirable notes of Mr. Philip Hale in the programs of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It would be ungracious to close this preface without acknowledging with gratitude the valuable assistance of Miss Barbara Duncan of the ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... out to him. She had not yet overcome that terror he inspired in her, and was surprised to find him so much at ease. After dinner they talked of music, and Esperance, praising a magnificent duet of Liszt, from the symphony of Orpheus, was overcome when the young man rose, took her hand and led her towards ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... we now pass to instrumental, we may have a specimen of musical oratory in any fine military symphony or march: while the poetry of music seems to have attained its consummation in Beethoven's Overture to Egmont, so wonderful in its mixed expression of grandeur ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... material and practical purpose, of idea or of moral attitude, belongs to the succession, the evolution, the type But the defining characters of the work of art are independent of time. The temple, the fresco, and the symphony, in the moment they become objects of the critical judgment, become also qualities of beauty and transparent ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... to their fatal mark, and below the crash of the exploding shells of the enemy, which toss the earth in dark waves into the air in the black surf of war. Gun after gun now joins the great chorus, swelling and falling in a hideous symphony of discordant sounds. The whole horizon is lit up and aflame. The sky quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns, as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey lights of greenish yellow and white turn the night into ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... ko-ax, ko-ax! We children of the fountain and the lake Let us wake Our full choir-shout, as the flutes are ringing out, Our symphony of clear-voiced song. The song we used to love in the Marshland up above, In praise of DIOnysus to produce, Of Nysaean DIOnysus, son of Zeus, When the revel-tipsy throng, all crapulous and gay, To our precinct reeled along on the holy Pitcher day. ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... It seems hardly possible to us that musicians could ever have been found to deny that the composer of 'Die Meistersinger' was a consummate master of counterpoint. Fortunately the discovery of his Symphony in C finally put an end to all doubts relative to the thoroughness of Wagner's musical education. In this work, which was written at the age of eighteen, the composer showed a mastery of the symphonic form which many of his ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... and nutmeg. An avenue of dadap trees skirts the shore, with varied foliage of amber and carmine. The dark figures sauntering in the shade, and clad in rose-colour, azure, or orange, add deeper notes to the symphony of colour, only marred by the white-washed Dutch conventicle, like an emphatic protest against Nature's response to her Creator. Ruined arches and pillars of white Portuguese houses, standing in a wilderness of verdure amid tumbled heaps of stone and concrete, testify ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... costing a seemingly high price. When you can get a lawn-mower with a pound of tea you may be sure that it is time to be suspicious, regardless of the pretty paint and ornamentation that makes it a symphony of colors. A good mower means that your lawn will look well after being cut with it, and it also means that the first seemingly high cost will be all that you will be called upon to expend in years to come. Such a ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... thus, in ancient days of Caledon, 10 Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd, When lay of hopeless love, or glory won, Aroused the fearful, or subdued the proud. At each according pause, was heard aloud Thine ardent symphony sublime and high! 15 Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed; For still the burden of thy minstrelsy Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... confused and deadly conflict, arousing antagonisms in established orders, unleashing cupidities and passions which had lurked within the breasts of manifold adventurers. The fifteenth century closed to a solemn symphony. After the middle of the sixteenth, discord sounded from every quarter of the Occidental world. Italy lay trampled on and dying. Spain reared her dragon's crest of menacing ambition and remorseless fanaticism. France was torn by factions and devoured by vicious favorites of corrupt kings. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... there is a fellow in a green canoe, and the muscles of his body play into the movement of the waves until he and his green canoe and the white capped waves are all one motif of the whole symphony. Men play around the yacht club like a lot of school boys, and now—"Shoot," they push a long slim racer into the water. Dainty white yachts go dipping to the waves and seem like lovely young girls in among the ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... of many hundred persons surrounded the quay where the Iris was moored, charmed by the symphony of Jerome's fiddle, or astounded by the vociferous melody of the crew, as they tossed off a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... lake the rugged islands lie, Fir-crowned and grim; and further in the view Some shadows seeming swung 'twixt cloud and sky, Are countless shores, a symphony of blue. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... marshal themselves into shapes befitting his triumph: castles rose and fell; faces grew, smiled, and faded away smiling; roses and lilies and palms glowed ruby red, turned to silver, and paled into spiritual gray. The silence of the night seemed resonant with a very symphony of joy. Still Sally and Raby slept on. The boy's sweet face took each hour a more healthful tint; and, as Doctor Eben watched the blessed change, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... true the peasants know nothing of Beethoven's symphony in C, they are not familiar with the melodies of Rossini, Madame Grisi has never in her terrible finale "Qual cor tradisti" made them weep, nor has the orchestra of Monsieur Jullien made them deaf. But what are these splendid wonders of the town to them? ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... we three on this our island, although most unlike in many things, when united, made a trio so harmonious that I question if there ever met before such an agreeable triumvirate. There was, indeed, no note of discord whatever in the symphony we played together on that sweet Coral Island; and I am now persuaded that this was owing to our having been all tuned to the same key—namely, that of love! Yes, we loved one another with much fervency while we lived on that island; and, for the matter of ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... property. The tremendous strides that our country has made in material civilization have been conditioned in part by this type of genius. Creative genius must always compel our admiration and our respect. It may create a world epic, a matchless symphony of tones or pigments, a scientific theory of tremendous grasp and limitless scope; or it may create a vast industrial system, a commercial enterprise of gigantic proportions, a powerful organization of capital. Genius is pretty much the same wherever we find it, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... while along the beach in silence. The sun overhead reverberated rays of heat; the staring sand, the glaring lagoon, tortured our eyes; and the birds and the boom of the far-away breakers made a savage symphony. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deeper and warmer where her heart was beating tumultuously, and then towards her neck it paled again, beneath ruffle and ruffle of lace that lay like foam against the soft, snow-white throat. It was a symphony of colour. A perfect harmony of perfect tones in union with the brilliant fairness of her skin. The sleeves, half open to the elbow, revealed a white, rounded, downy arm, and the thousand subtle pink-and-white tints of her flesh ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... so indignant, please. I am an artist—honestly. But some of these men I've met over here—well, they fascinate me. Such boundless energy and drive ought to go into a symphony. Plenty of drums and crashing brass. Good-bye, Mrs. Lanier," he added. "This has been a lucky ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... silence of the snowy aisles of the forest, the whirring flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful call from the quavering cry of the owl, and I joined the hired man in hunting rabbits from under the piles of brush in the clearing. Once or twice some ferocious, larger animal, possibly a panther, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... it, the dull daubs of Hilton and Haydon, who knew so much more about drawing and scumbling and glazing and perspective and anatomy and 'marvellous foreshortening' than Giotto, the latchet of whose shoe they were nevertheless not worthy to unloose. Compare Mozart's Magic Flute, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Ring, all of them reachings-forward to the new Vitalist art, with the dreary pseudo-sacred oratorios and cantatas which were produced for no better reason than that Handel had formerly made splendid ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... many hundreds of citizens and visitors. Eight Christmas Carols and an anthem were sung, the concluding Carol being "The First Nowell"; and the organist (Mr. J. B. Lott, Mus. Bac., Oxon) played the Pastoral Symphony from Sullivan's "Light of the World," Mendelssohn's March ("Cornelius"), the Pastoral Symphony from Handel's "Messiah," and other exquisite voluntaries. From the anthem, E. H. Sears's ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... in himself," said Tommy enthusiastically, "and is the only living creature that I know of who can tackle a whole symphony without the aid of ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... a symphony by the great Beethoven!" added Magdalen. "How can you say you were not amused? Have you forgotten the yellow-looking foreign woman, with the unpronounceable name? Don't you remember the faces she made when she sang? and the way she courtesied ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... commonplaces of this mortal life, to enter into the mystery of the divine will and conform itself to it; it is the act of the atom which understands its littleness, but which desires, though only by a single note, to be in harmony with the divine symphony. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Not one, but many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern trumpet-tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dream-like symphony of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill, and gave ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... comes an onward phrase to me Of some transcendent music I have heard; No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered, No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory. But a glad strain of some still symphony That no proud ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... well illustrates the mystery of art appreciation. The masterpiece is a symphony played upon our finest feelings. True art is Peiwoh, and we the harp of Lungmen. At the magic touch of the beautiful the secret chords of our being are awakened, we vibrate and thrill in response to its call. Mind speaks to mind. ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... There was a Work upon which I spent only special hours of delicious leisure and infinite labor. It held all that was forbidden to popular compositions; depth and sorrow and dissonances dearer than harmony. I called it a Symphony Polynesian, and I had spent years in study of barbaric music, instruments and kindred things that this love-child of mine might be more richly clothed by a tone or a fancy. Aunt Caroline had interrupted, this morning, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... merrily swayed to the trade wind, now hung limp and motionless, as if they had suffered from a long tropical drought instead of merely a few hours' cessation of the brave, cool breeze, which for nine months out of twelve for ever made symphony in their ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the din. In fact he uses the din as an accompaniment; he is a kind of vocal Tubal Cain. He writes about strap-hangers, chorus girls, moving pictures, convicts, hospitals, bridge-builders and construction gangs—a symphony of noise, where everybody plays some instrument. He is no pessimist and he is not sour; there are a good many "damns" and "hells" in his verse, because, whatever he lacks, he does not lack emphasis. His philosophy ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Montague Nevitt, as a man of taste, found it suited exactly with his temper for the moment. He noted an undercurrent of rejoicing and triumphant cheeriness in the tone of the stream as it plashed among the pebbles on its precipitous bed that suggested to his mind some bars of a symphony which he determined to compose as soon as he got home again to his ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Chorus and symphony as above. Here the TAILOR walks round, accompanied by the SQUIRE'S SON. This form is observed after each subsequent introduction, all the ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... waxing, waning, now joined in wild symphony by the voices, now left alone to counterpoint ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... the artist who feels this effect to impart it to others. I may add that there is no joy in art except this perception of the meaning of things and its communication; when you have felt it, and portrayed it in a poem, a symphony, a novel, a statue, a picture, an edifice, you have fulfilled the purpose for which you were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... same small childishness of lips and nose and chin, the same pale complexion tinged with fragile pink, the same big, blue eyes. Had he taken an interest in her because she was like this girl, this girl whose miniature he had allowed to be the only breaking note in the whole symphony of his scheme of decoration? They were like each other, a likeness sufficiently apparent to suggest the thought to her mind. The miniature was painted in a fashion common to all such works of art a hundred and fifty years ago. She could ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Serchio are diligently pruned, and lack the generous luxuriance of the north), and against the silver background the sentinel cypresses stood black, like sharp music notes striking abruptly into a vague symphony; and among the mulberry gardens and the olives and the cypresses white roads climbed and spiralled up to little cresting cities that took the rosy dawn. Tuscany emerging out of the dim mystery of night had a splendid clarity, an unblurred cleanness of line, an austere fineness, as of a ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... and sapphires. And the birds, you may be sure, have their nests also in the house of the holy one. They are wont indeed to soil the carpets and the mats on which the worshippers kneel, and their nests are so many blots up there amid the gildings of the carved cedarwood; but then their song, the symphony that issues from that aviary, is so sweet to the living who pray and to the dead who ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... will hear the song of peace as in the 'Pastoral Symphony,' but happy already he who has foreknowledge of it amid the tumult! And what does it matter in the end that this magnificent prophecy is fulfilled in the absence of the prophet! He who has guessed this has gleaned great joy upon earth. We can leave it to a higher being to pronounce ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... with the choicest beverages and regalias of Vuelta Abajos' best leaf. The human mob is dense. Wailing, passionate music beats upon the air. There is the cry of lost souls in its under-toned pathos. Villany and sentiment go hand in hand at the El Dorado. The songs of old, in voice and symphony, unlock the gates of memory. They leave the lingerers, disarmed, to the tempting allurements of beauty, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... having secured a lodging, set up as a teacher of music, though I knew next to nothing of the art. There was a professor of law in the town who was an amateur of music, and held concert parties in his house; to this man I had the effrontry to propose a symphony of my own. I worked a fortnight at this production, wrote out the instrumental parts, and on the appointed evening stood up before the orchestra and audience, tapped my desk, raised by baton, and—never since music began has there been such an orgy of discords. The musicians could hardly sit in their ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... predecessors before he came. The Richters and Mottls and Schuchs of our day are a very different race from the Reissigers and Lachners and Costas of a past generation. It was Richter who taught us in London how a symphony of Beethoven ought to sound; before he came, performances were approved which the present day would not tolerate. He, as well as his great compeers, was brought up in the school of Wagner, the essence of which lies in correctness, in rendering the work as the composer intended it, ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... music-hall alone—is vitiated by a vein of vulgar indecency which is simply despicable. The aim of the artist is not to conceal art—there is none to conceal—but to conceal his indecencies decently, and yet in the most readily discoverable manner. The successful stage-piece is too often but a symphony in blue. What the English, with their fashion of spoiling French importations, incorrectly term doubles entendres, are almost indispensable items in the fare of some London theatres of good repute. And the references to things sexual ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... noise never ceases in the Rue Saint-Honore except for a short interval. Kitchen-gardeners carrying their produce to market continue the stir of carriages returning from theatres and balls. Near the middle of this sustained pause in the grand symphony of Parisian uproar, which occurs about one o'clock in the morning, the wife of Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, a perfumer established near the Place Vendome, was startled from her sleep by a frightful dream. She had seen her double. She had appeared ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... galloping hoofs reached her consciousness and even as the third shock came and the door crashed inward carrying the barricade with it, a ringing shout burst upon the air and the staccato rattle of a machine-gun sounded the final note in the symphony of battle. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... bum-ta-ra of music. But, to my mind, in a country like Spain, it is better that our young men should be dissatisfied than that they should go to the laboratory every day in immaculate blouses, chatter like proper young gentlemen about El Greco, Cezanne and the Ninth Symphony, and never have the brains to protest about anything. Back of all this correctness may be divined ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... optimist, Sandy Sawtelle—sounds a flat note in the symphony of disillusion. His humanness rebounds more quickly than ours, who will not fawn upon life for twenty minutes yet. Sandy comes back to the table from the hook whence he had lifted his hat. He holds aloft a solitary hot ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... lover's complaisance, and her pleasure in it was great enough to count for something even in her present happiness. Perhaps she gave to Sir James Chettam's cottages all the interest she could spare from Mr. Casaubon, or rather from the symphony of hopeful dreams, admiring trust, and passionate self devotion which that learned gentleman had set playing in her soul. Hence it happened that in the good baronet's succeeding visits, while he was beginning to pay small attentions to Celia, he found ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... mysterious ten days between His ascension and Pentecost in special intercession that His Church might be endued with power from on high. The pleading Church on earth and the pleading Saviour in heaven were at one. The two voices agreed in perfect symphony, and Pentecost was the Father's answer. The Saviour prayed to the Father, and He gave another Comforter. Nor has He ceased in this sublime quest. It is not improbable that every revival of religion, every fresh and deeper baptism of the Spirit, every new infilling of individual souls, has been ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... should be able to sing very joyously at twenty-two. This morning singer was just that age; and if you had looked at the golden carpet of wheat stretching for scores of miles, before you looked at her, you would have thought her curiously in tone with the scene. She was a symphony in gold—nothing less. Her hair, her cheeks, her eyes, her skin, her laugh, her voice they were all gold. Everything about her was so demonstratively golden that you might have had a suspicion it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sphears;{34} Once bless our humane ears (If ye have power to touch our senses so), And let your silver chime Move in melodious time, And let the base of Heav'ns deep organ blow, And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort{35} to th' angelike symphony. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... real love of art and did not understand it. I went to concerts, but the only part of a sonata or symphony which took hold of me was that which was melodious. The long passages with no striking theme in them conveyed nothing to me, and as to Bach, excepting now and then, his music was like a skilful recitation of nonsense verses. The ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... subordination of their individuality to the general purpose. Without this method a play when acted is at best a disjoined and incoherent piece of work, instead of being a harmonious whole like the fine performance of an orchestral symphony. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... songs, and the playing is like exquisite singing. It fills the mind with pictures, with persons, with scenes, and with that unspeakable content which only such music can give to the lovers of music. "What on earth is it all about?" said the Senator at the Symphony Concert, "and why do people come here?" The Hottentot would have asked the same question if he had heard the Senator upon ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... lovers had done, out of a Deportment of Courtship and Marriage. The whole effect was quite flawless. And it was also sincere. There was no doubt that Roy meant what he said. There was no false note to jar the symphony. Anne felt that she ought to be thrilling from head to foot. But she wasn't; she was horribly cool. When Roy paused for his answer she opened her lips to say her fateful yes. And then—she found herself trembling as if she were reeling back from a precipice. To her came ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... city for its million pulses, the beat of its great heart, and the terrific symphony of its soul, have you ever picked out from its orchestra the plaintive rune of ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... down for a messenger boy and strolled to the window to soothe his nerves still further. Dusk had fallen. Every window of the high stone buildings surrounding Madison Square was an oblong of light. It was a symphony of gray and gold, of which he never tired. It invested business with romance and beauty. The men behind those radiant panels, thinking of nothing less, made their brief contribution to the beauty of the world, transported ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... alternating smoke puff and dull red flare, struck the one jarring note in a symphony blown otherwise on great nature's organ-pipes; but to Thomas Jefferson the furnace was as much a part of the immutable scheme as the hills or the forests or the creek which furnished the motive power for its air-blast. More, it ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... led her out into a broad stretch of hard sandy soil that the moon flooded with great splendor. They floated out like drifting moths under the rich hazy light, and as the fantastic symphony wept and exulted and wavered and despaired Ardita's last sense of reality dropped away, and she abandoned her imagination to the dreamy summer scents of tropical flowers and the infinite starry spaces overhead, ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... love-note dies; And beauty fades in the air, To make the master-symphony immortal, And find new life and ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... of a pretty large lake—where wild-fowl innumerable made the air vocal with their cries by day, and frogs, in numbers inconceivable, chirped and croaked a lullaby to men who slept, and a symphony to beasts that howled and growled and prowled at night in bush and brake—Kambira pitched ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... sun-light where the wayside crosses are hidden under climbing roses, we shall probably couple "Antony and Cleopatra" with "Hamlet" in our love as Shakespeare's supremest works. It was fitting that the same man who wrote "Romeo and Juliet," the incomparable symphony of first love, should also write "Antony and Cleopatra," the far more wonderful and more ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... into the room and its blinding light. The soft, warm fragrance of the night air reminded him of the cozy little place on the grass at the foot of the hill—the little birch-leaf home. Mother Moth, Flutter, and Father Buzz were all down there now, and listening perhaps to the Cob-web Symphony played by the Marsh Grass Vesper Quartette. And this, too, was the evening when the June Bug was to sing the June Bug Wing Solo, composed by himself. Dizzy had heard his father practising the accompaniment; and the melody and words kept ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... in length. In some places, these gray basaltic walls come circling round, and constitute an immense natural theatre, sombre and grand as the forest itself. No sound is there heard save the dashing of a distant cascade, or the wind in deep symphony rushing through the slow-waving tops of the trees. Below is a carpet of the most lively green, variegated with turfs of wild flowers and fruits—one of nature's secret, yet choicest gardens. Through the midst trickles a silvery stream, coming you know not whence, but musical in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... with the accustomed heavy courtesy of the Societe Harmonique. She went early to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the evening—Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young American composer. If she had gone late, it would have seemed an affectation, she reasoned. Her husband kept within doors; she could tell him all. And then, was there ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... magnificently into summer. The grass upthrust. The waterfowl passed on to the northern lake-region. The morning symphony of the prairie-chickens died out, but the whistle of the larks, the chatter of the sparrows, and the wailing cry of the nesting plover ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... does not please them. The Englishman says, 'I do not understand Goethe.' The Frenchman says Shakespeare is a boor. What does all this amount to? Nothing more than the child who says it likes a waltz better than a symphony of Beethoven's. The art consists in discovering and understanding what each nation admires in its great men. He who seeks beauty will eventually find it, and discover that the Persians are not entirely deceived in their Hafiz, nor the Hindoos in their Kalidasa. We cannot understand a ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... strains, Had that cold state he oft maintains. But soon the silence seem'd to say, "Fair mourner, reassume thy lay!" And in the chords her fingers stray'd; For aching Memory found relief In mounting to the source of grief; A tender symphony she play'd, Then ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... necessary to him than bread. His works abound in references to his beloved art, and when he was writing "Massimilla Doni" he employed a professional musician to instruct him about it. Beethoven, in particular, he speaks of with the utmost enthusiasm, and after hearing his "Symphony in Ut mineur," he says that the great musician is the only person who makes him feel jealous, and that he prefers him even to Rossini and Mozart. "The spirit of the writer," he says, "cannot give such enjoyment, because what ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... house looked mellow and beautiful; the Japanese garden was a symphony of green plush sod and brilliant color—the Bougainvillaea almost smothering the little summerhouse and a mocking-bird who must be a grandson of the one of her betrothal night was singing his giddy ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Once bless our human ears, If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime Move in melodious time; And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow; And with your ninefold harmony Make up full concert to the angelic symphony. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... ears, If ye have power to touch our senses so; And let your silver chime Move in melodious time, And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow; And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort to the angelic symphony. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... to a symphony concert. They had to go in by the entrance to a music-hall. They went down a winding passage to an ill-ventilated hall: the air was stifling: the seats were very narrow, and placed too close together: ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... No. III." by Mr. Whistler there are many dainty varieties of tint, but it is not precisely a symphony in white. One lady has a yellowish dress and brown hair and a bit of blue ribbon, the other has a red fan, and there are flowers and green leaves. There is a girl in white on a white sofa, but even this girl has reddish hair; and of course ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... lapped with ceaseless, dainty caresses the sides of the boat. Some mother-bird nestling near the water's edge crooned her good-night message to her mate. A halo surrounded and softened the white face so near and, as part of the evening symphony, two dark eyes rested upon his face, deeply luminous. There are different stories of what he said. He admitted he was never so awkward. But they missed their companions, and the dance, and walked all the way 'round the ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... river, in a sheltered little coulee, there was a group of great bull pines. Sometimes she had gone there and leaned against a tree trunk, and had shut her eyes and listened to the vast symphony which the wind and the water played together. She forgot that she had come to see a picture which she had helped to create. She held her eyes shut and listened; and that horror of high walls and iron bars that had haunted her ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... small. All that he had seen in reaching this isolated spot was dwarfed in comparison. This "Crossing of the Fathers," as Naab called it, was the gateway of the desert. This roar of turbulent waters was the sinister monotone of the mighty desert symphony of great ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, and the mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited to the spirit of the universe, returns; and on this solemn note the poem closes. The symphony of exultation which had greeted the passage of Adonais into the eternal world, is here subdued to a graver key, as befits the mood of one whom mystery and mourning still oppress on earth. Yet even in the somewhat less than jubilant ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Then inquiring whether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friend resided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years had left him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yet I knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without precise knowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound a melody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of its function in the concert? Or if a trombone please, must one know the brassy creature by ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... have music!" he recklessly exclaimed aloud. "Then music shall be heard, though its symphony be ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... be a mistake to confer on such a fictional passage a strict autobiographical importance; but I think it significant that the novel with which Walpole first won an American following, Fortitude, should derive from a theme as simple and as strong as that of a classic symphony—from those words with which it opens: "'T isn't life that matters! 'T is the courage you bring to it." From that moment on, the novel follows the struggle of Peter Westcott, in boyhood and young manhood, with antagonists, inner and outer. At the end we have him partly ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... with such incredible fidelity, and after the lapse of years, demands only a command of mechanical skill, and an abnormal condition of the power of memory; but to play secondo to music never heard or seen implies the comprehension of the full drift of the symphony in its current,—a capacity to create, in short. Yet such attempts as Tom has made to dictate music for publication do not sustain any such inference. They are only a few light marches, gallops, etc., simple and plaintive enough, but with easily detected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... masters—a principle which has done much to bring to the brink of ruin a certain association in Boston—but he has endeavored to do justice to all the composers from Bach to Berlioz and Wagner. If Mr. Thomas makes an effort to introduce to his audience a new symphony by Brahms or a new symphonic poem by Saint Saeens immediately after its issue from the press, we certainly ought to be very grateful to him for his enterprise. When a prominent author writes a new book everybody is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various |
