"Beethoven" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... absorbed attention, the same spell. The superficial attributed these largely to his appearance and manner; the more thoughtful looked deeper. Here was a player who was a thoroughly trained master in technic and interpretation; one who knew his Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. These things of themselves would not hold an audience spellbound, for there were other artists equally well equipped. In a final analysis it was doubtless Paderewski's wonderful piano tone, so full of ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... far too great a person to be "Mistered." Fancy Mr. Beethoven, or Mr. Paderewski! Joyselle the Great and Glorious would help him. The mater appeared to like him. It was strange, for she had been in a terrible rage the first day or two—but she certainly was as pleased ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... a sense of leadership, or personal magnetism, as it is often called. Seidl asserts[5] that Berlioz, Massenet, and Saint-Saens likewise failed as conductors, in spite of recognized musicianship; and it is of course well known that even Beethoven and Brahms could not conduct their own works as well as some of their contemporaries whose names are ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Elman, Harry Lauder, Sousa, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, Grieg, Moszkowsky, the "latest song hit" from anything you please. Ask and you will find along this thoroughfare. There are no more prosperous looking bazaars on this street than those ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... for nothing that I have seen the sun lifting up the faces of the flowers, and crumbling the countenances of the hills. And I have seen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men. And I have heard the dead Beethoven singing in the feet ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Senator, Member of the Institut, Ingres died in 1869. Within a year of ninety, he was Dominique Ingres to the last, undertaking new works with the enthusiasm and vitality of Titian. A few days before his death he gave a musical party, favourite works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven being performed by skilled amateurs. His funeral was a veritable apotheosis, disciples, admirers and detractors ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and looking at fat German women knitting, while an orchestra played dull music, Adams went with them for the sake of the company, but with no presence of enjoyment; and when Mr. Apthorp gently protested that he exaggerated his indifference, for of course he enjoyed Beethoven, Adams replied simply that he loathed Beethoven; and felt a slight surprise when Mr. Apthorp and the others laughed as though they thought it humor. He saw no humor in it. He supposed that, except ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most delicious perfumes; and harmonies, such as Beethoven may have heard in dreams, but never wrote, floated around me. The atmosphere itself was light, odor, music; and each and all sublimated beyond anything the sober senses are capable of receiving. Before me—for a thousand leagues, as it seemed—stretched a vista of rainbows, whose ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is but to seek on public squares a woman such as Venus, or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... Beethoven's Symphony in A, that knell which ever and ever comes back and beats upon your heart? Yes, I see very well, you feel as I do, music is a communion—Beethoven, ah, me! how sad and sweet it is to be two to understand him ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... in the smallest degree for what anybody who passed down the road outside her house might be thinking of the roulades that poured from her open window: she was simply Emmeline Lucas, absorbed in glorious Bach or dainty Scarletti, or noble Beethoven. The latter perhaps was her favorite composer, and many were the evenings when with lights quenched and only the soft effulgence of the moon pouring in through the uncurtained windows, she sat with her profile, cameo-like (or like perhaps to the head on a postage stamp) against the dark ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... their strength in the sphere for which their own nature fits them. Even though millions of women are enabled to do the work which men could do better the gain for mankind is nil. To put women to do men's work is (Ellen Key has declared) as foolish as to set a Beethoven or ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... effect that genius is a form of insanity, and that therefore one ought to be careful about discouraging the marriage even of epileptics and mentally unbalanced persons for fear a possible Napoleon or Julius Caesar or Beethoven should be lost to the world. "Careful scientific investigation," he says, "has clearly disproved this notion. For one thing, elaborate statistical studies of eminent persons have shown them to be less liable to insanity ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... invective are duly dwelt on, while the charming tone and temper of the work may be gathered from the headings of some of the chapters: "The Curse of Conservatoriums;" "The Tyranny of Tune;" "The Dethronement of WAGNER;" "A bas BEETHOVEN." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... "mysterious island," and we expected him to arrive home in October. For me it would be like becoming acquainted with a stranger. I was somewhat anxious to know whether he would love me when he met me, if he would approve of a thousand little things I did,—how, for instance, my way of playing Beethoven would please him. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Nothing like that. A grand concert piece such as the Masters played. De Beriot's famous "Seventh air varie." A melody with variations, by the great composer De Beriot. To be sure it was not equal to some of the grand works of Haydn or Beethoven, but for those days it was considered a remarkable composition. Since the little Camilla has grown up people have learned more about violin playing, and what was then thought to be a great piece of music would not now be considered ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... There are a million ways to communicate. Michelangelo communicated, Bach, Beethoven, yes, Elvis Presley communicates. Hemingway, Martha Graham, actors, dancers, even ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren
... of Beethoven, experienced by you on duty in the drawing room, it would be curious to know whether it was really something greater than Beethoven had any idea of. You sat and listened, and tried to fix a passage in your mind as a kind of half-way mark, with the deliberate provident ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... dressing for dinner. He changed his riding-clothes for the evening dress of modern civilization, and went at once to the drawing-room. Here all was luxury, nothing to suggest the privations of a new country. A thick red carpet covered the floor, red arras the walls; the music of Mozart and Beethoven was on the grand piano. The furniture was rich and comfortable, the large carved table was covered with ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... place of whispering leaves and gloom, I saw, too dark, too dumb for bronze or stone, One tragic head that bowed against the sky; O, in a hush too deep for any tomb I saw Beethoven, dreadfully alone With his own grief, and ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... the same time picturesque, story of Beethoven and his "Fidelio" is told in "Musical Sketches," by Elise Polko, with all the sentimentality that a German writer can command. Whole paragraphs might be lifted from that book and included in this ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... silky reflections. In the centre of the room was a Roller and Blanchet "baby grand" piano in rosewood, but holding the potentialities of an orchestra in its narrow and sonorous cavity, and groaning beneath the weight of the chefs-d'oeuvre of Beethoven, Weber, Mozart, Haydn, Gretry, and Porpora. On the walls, over the doors, on the ceiling, were swords, daggers, Malay creeses, maces, battle-axes; gilded, damasked, and inlaid suits of armor; dried plants, minerals, and stuffed birds, their flame-colored ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... almost shouted Pinac, pointing to the spot on the wall where that musician's portrait had once reposed. "And Beethoven! And where is Gluck?" Then looking around: "Nom de Dieu! even his metronome have gone—his ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... a conviction that because they were born in Tooting or Camberwell, they were the natural superiors of Beethoven, of Rodin, of Ibsen, of Tolstoy and all other benighted foreigners. Those of them who did not think it wrong to go to the theatre liked above everything a play in which the hero was called Dick; was continually fingering a briar pipe; and, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... polite young man. When I made a mistake yesterday he said: 'Pray, mademoiselle, why do you take so much pains to improve upon Beethoven?'" ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... general belief that the mistake made by the managers of the symphony concert in Central Music Hall night before last was in not opening the concert with Beethoven's "Eroica," instead of making it the last number on the programme. We incline to the opinion, however, that, in putting the symphony last, the managers complied with the very first requirement of dramatic composition. This requirement is to ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... Schloss containing the University, with a library (200,000 volumes) and a museum rich in Roman antiquities. The Muenster (or Cathedral) dates from the 12th and 13th centuries. In the Muensterplatz stands a fine bronze statue of Beethoven, a celebrated German musician, who was born in the Bonngasse, No. 515. This statue faces south, (as do most of the statues that I have seen in Europe, except when the surroundings are unfavorable). One side of the pedestal contains ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... paraphrased Walther's song to his masters, and signaled the composers who had aided him most in his development. To-day, the debt is very plain. At every turn, one sees him benefiting, and benefiting very beautifully, by the work of Beethoven. The structure of his great and characteristic works is based on the symphonic form. The development of the themes of "Tristan" and "Die Meistersinger" and "Parsifal" out of single kernels; the fine logical ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Beethoven? He was one of the greatest musical composers that ever lived. His great, his sole delight was in music. It was the passion of his life. When all his time and all his mind were given to music, he became deaf—perfectly ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... him in notoriety. His sole rival as a popular hero is Admiral Dewey, whose name is in every mouth and on every boarding. He is the one living celebrity whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their pantheon, where he rubs shoulders with Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and the Venus of Milo. It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year, President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds, and on returning was confronted by a sentry, who dropped his rifle and bade him halt. "I ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... would pass quickly away, in reading Shakspeare, Corneille, Racine, Metastasio, or the modern writers of English literature: after which we would remain till the night had far advanced, enjoying the beautiful compositions of Beethoven, Gluck, and Mozart, or the brilliant overtures of Donizetti, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... from Mrs. Carnaby, that you are back in town. Could you spare us tomorrow evening? It would be so nice of you. The quartet will give Beethoven's F minor, and Alma says it will be well done—the conceit of the child! We hope to have some interesting people What a shocking affair of poor Mrs. Carnaby's! I never knew anything quite ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... create it. All the girls in the "dancings" and sportsmen at the bar who like a fox-trot or a maxixe have been given to believe, by people who ought to know better, that they are more sensitive to music than those who prefer Beethoven. The fact that Stravinsky wants his music to be enjoyed in the cafes gives pub-loafers fair ground for supposing that Stravinsky respects their judgement. Well, the music of Brahms is not enjoyed by pub-loafers; but formerly the concert-goers were allowed to know better. Stravinsky ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... which now grandiloquently assumes the title of 'German culture' is a sort of cosmopolitan aggregate, which bears the same relation to the German spirit as Journalism does to Schiller or Meyerbeer to Beethoven: here the strongest influence at work is the fundamentally and thoroughly un-German civilisation of France, which is aped neither with talent nor with taste, and the imitation of which gives the society, the press, ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the preceding, second daughter of Madame Guenee, and sister of Madame Auffray. Having taken pity on Pierrette Lorrain in her sickness, she gave to her, in 1828, the pleasures of music, playing the compositions of Weber, Beethoven or ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and Max linger were expected, and Miss Lavinia Clendenning, completing with Richard a quartette for 'cello, flute, piano, and violin, for which Unger had arranged Beethoven's Overture ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... effects of the twin great London institutions for teaching music upon the individualities of the young geniuses entrusted to them, and if not that the part played by the most earnest amateurs in the destruction of opera, and if not that the total eclipse of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner since the efflorescence of the Russian Ballet. And always there ran like a flame through the conversations the hot breath of a passionate intention to make Britain artistic in the eyes of ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... who accuse Landor of having sacrificed all things to style: it were as wise to assert that Beethoven sacrificed harmony to time. If his accusers would but read Landor before criticising, a proper regard for their own reputations would prevent them from hazarding such an opinion. "Style," writes Landor, "I consider as nothing, if what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... virginal decay, I view her as she enters, day by day, As a sweet sunset almost overpast. Kindly and calm, patrician to the last, Superbly falls her gown of sober gray, And on her chignon's elegant array The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste. She talks BEETHOVEN; frowns disapprobation At BALZAC'S name, sighs it at 'poor GEORGE SAND'S'; Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands; Speaks Latin with a right accentuation; And gives at need (as one who ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... take pains. How very pretty is that scrap on a country church! Mrs. Browning is at Florence, but is going to Rome. She says that your countryman, Mr. Story, has made a charming statuette, I think of Beethoven, or else of Mendelssohn, which ought to make his reputation. She is crazy about mediums. She says (but I have not heard it elsewhere) that Thackeray and Dickens are to winter at Rome, and Alfred Tennyson at Florence. Mrs. Trollope ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Shakespeare write the sonnet, 'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes', gave Milton five pounds for 'Paradise Lost', kept Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chesterfield's doorstep, reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, killed Keats, cracked jokes on Glueck, Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner, and committed so many other impious follies and stupidities that a thousand letters like this could not suffice even ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... full well the deep resounding swell Of mighty symphonies with chords inwoven; But sometimes, too, a song of Burns—don't you? After a solemn storm-blast of Beethoven. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... happy days spent under the Roman sky, and, by directing the attention of others to what they have overlooked, may open a door to a new pleasure. Chi sa? The plainest Ranz des Vaches may sometimes please when the fifth symphony of Beethoven would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... by the hand of Quilter-Beckett, who sits at a table grim with knobs, buttons, dial-faces, in a cabinet near a saloon where Hogarth, Loveday, and five lieutenants are lunching; and where he sits he can hear the band in an alcove rendering for the eaters Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: hear, not heed: for two gunners in each casemate have sighted a ship through pivoted glasses, whose fixing, disturbing an electrical circuit, prints the ship's distance on an indicator ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... view of these facts, does it not appear that if there is any one distinctively feminine characteristic, it is the mother-instinct for government? But now with clearer vision we reread the record of the past. True, we find no Raphael or Beethoven, no Phidias or Michael Angelo among women. No woman has painted the greatest picture, carved the finest statue, composed the noblest oratorio or opera. Not many women's names appear after Joan of Arc's in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... minutes, and then breaks suddenly into a rhythmic clatter, always changing in distance and intensity. When it comes near, you should get into a tunnel, and stand there while it passes. I did that once, and it was like the last page of an overture by Beethoven—thunderingly impetuous. I cannot conceive how any person can hope to disparage a train by comparing it with a stage-coach; and I know something of stage-coaches—or, at least, of diligences. Their effect on the men employed about them ought to decide the superiority of steam without ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. Mozart composed his great operas, and last of all his "Requiem," when oppressed by debt and struggling with a fatal disease. Beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... described, let us ask how we are to interpret the development of the musical faculty. I will not enlarge on the family antecedents of the great composers. I will merely suggest the inquiry whether the greater powers possessed by Beethoven and Mozart, by Weber and Rossini, than by their fathers, were not due in larger measure to the inherited effects of daily exercise of the musical faculty by their fathers, than to inheritance, with increase, of spontaneous variations; ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... sing his song again; but he protested that he did not wish to torture the ears of the musical German, and suggested to Lisa that they should attack Beethoven's sonata. Then Marya Dmitrievna heaved a sigh, and in her turn suggested to Gedeonovsky a walk in the garden. "I should like," she said, "to have a little more talk, and to consult you about our poor Fedya." Gedeonovsky bowed with a smirk, and with two fingers picked ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... organically defective, as were the ears of the great composer, Beethoven, but tone-deaf, as a person ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... philosophy. How the imagination is piqued by anecdotes of some great man passing incognito, as a king in gray clothes!—of Napoleon affecting a plain suit at his glittering levee!—of Burns, or Scott, or Beethoven, or Wellington, or Goethe, or any container of transcendent power, passing for nobody!—of Epaminondas, "who never says anything, but will listen eternally!"—of Goethe, who preferred trifling subjects and common expressions in intercourse with strangers, worse rather than better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... of Clara Wieck, on September 13, 1819, took place at Leipsic. That city had not yet entered upon the period of musical greatness that it was soon to enjoy. The day of Beethoven and Schubert was apparently passing, and only the lighter and more trivial styles of composition held sway. Her father, however, Friedrich Wieck, was a piano teacher of extensive reputation and most excellent qualities, and did his best to raise the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... marriage should have robbed his relations of the charm of illegality, of the delight of the prohibited, Mary would discover some orchestra leader who bore a still greater resemblance to the other man, or some ugly violinist with long hair and possessed of youth who would remind her of Beethoven in his boyhood. Besides, he was of different race, different customs and passions; he was tired of her shamefaced reserve in love, of her resistance to final submission which had pleased him at first, but which had come at last ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... two sages were obliviously engrossed in a heated battle as to whether Berlioz or Beethoven had exposited in their compositions the deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. Clearly, his goal was to find his hostess again. But she had joined two of the girls in the whispering, giggling seclusiveness of one of the big chairs, and, most of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... time; for the whole real secret of versification is a musical secret, and is not attainable to any vital effect, save by the ear of genius. All the mere knowledge of feet and numbers, of accent and quantity, will no more impart it, than a knowledge of the 'Guide to Music' will make a Beethoven or a Paisiello. It is a matter of sensibility and imagination; of the beautiful in poetical passion, accompanied by musical; of the imperative necessity for a pause here, and a cadence there, and a quicker ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... their enthusiasms. There are schools of painting to suit every conviction, and the work that one man would give his all to possess would not find hanging space upon the wall controlled by another. But before Velazquez even artists forget their controversies; he stands, like Bach and Beethoven in the world of music, respected even by those who do not understand. No controversy rages round him; he has marched unchallenged to the highest ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... church of Saint Hilaire, where the clergy of the four parishes had assembled. High mass was performed by the full choir. The Miserere of Beethoven was given, and some exquisite pieces from Mozart. Deep emotion was produced by the introduction, in the midst of this beautiful music, of some popular airs from the romance of Franconnette and Me Cal Mouri, Jasmin's ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... had none, for she now had sense. Had she not brought her husband to be sensible, so that they moved together in Milanese society, instead of stupidly fighting at Rome? so that what he could not take to himself—the marvellous voice—he let bless the multitude! "She is the Beethoven of singers," Pericles concluded. Wilfrid thought so on the night when she sang to succour the Lombard widows. It was at a concert, richly thronged; ostentatiously thronged with Austrian uniforms. He fancied that he could not bear to look on her. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nothing more than an abstracted frown over the tip-top edge of his paper, I defiantly swung into The Humming Coon, which apparently had no more effect than Herman Lohr. So with malice aforethought I slowly and deliberately pounded out the Beethoven Funeral March. I lost myself, in fact, in that glorious and melodic wail of sorrow, merged my own puny troubles in its god-like immensities, and was brought down to earth by ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Cathedral. They waver and float through those vast halls until the ear catches only a faint echo from some far, dim aisle. "How many centuries elapsed before this subterranean organ gave forth its delightful tones!" It lacked only the soul of a Beethoven or Chopin to interpret them aright. How like many noble lives whose talents perhaps shall only bud "unseen" or waste upon the desert air of environment. One thinks of Keats, whose wonderful Ode to the Nightingale and lovely Nature Poems might never have ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... myself," Roly-Poly immediately commenced to grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military fashion, "a right honourable privy frequenter of the local agreeable establishments, Prince Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski—Mister Beethoven! Mister Chopin!" he greeted the musicians. "Play me something from the opera The Brave and Charming General Anisimov, or, A Hubbub in the Coolidor. My regards to the little political economist Zociya.[5] A-ha! Then you kiss only at Easter? We shall write that down. Ooh-you, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Prel and Professor Fortescue arrived on the scene, I had about enough privileges; but no, Destiny, waking up at last to her duties, remembers that I have a maniacal passion for music, and that this has been starved. So she hastens to provide for me a fellow maniac, a brother in Beethoven, who comes and fills my world with music and my soul with——But I must not rave. The music is still in my veins; I am not in a fit state to write reasonable letters. Here comes Mr. Temperley for our practice. No ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... whether all the best love-poetry in existence (except, perhaps, the "Sonnets from the Portuguese ") has not been written by men; whether the song which embodies the ideal of pure and tender passion—"Adelaida "—was written by Frau Beethoven; whether it was the Fornarina, or Raphael, who painted the Sistine Madonna. Nay, we have known one such heretic go so far as to lay his hands upon the ark itself, so to speak, and to defend the startling paradox that, even in physical ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... lingering notes of an andante from one of Beethoven's sublime symphonies clashed ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... Being no painter; and bad luck Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! Old Tycho Brahe, and modern Herschel, Had something in them; but who's Purcel? The devil, with his foot so cloven, For aught I care, may take Beethoven; And, if the bargain does not suit, I'll throw him Weber in to boot. There's not the splitting of a splinter To chuse 'twixt him last named, and Winter. Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido Knew just as much, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... involved once more in the evergrowing holiday crowd, and Millard saw with vexation that his opportunity was slipping away from him. When they had traversed the length of the Mall and were approaching the bust of Beethoven, Phillida ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspired Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Lubotshka kept repeating some unbearably tedious passage on the piano about a hundred times in succession, while Woloda, who was dozing on a settee in the drawing-room, kept addressing no one in particular as he muttered, "Lord! how she murders it! WHAT a musician! WHAT a Beethoven!" (he always pronounced the composer's name with especial irony). "Wrong again! Now—a second time! That's it!" and so on. Meanwhile Katenka and I were sitting by the tea-table, and somehow she began to talk about her favourite subject—love. I was ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... career; and Ghirlandajo may be excused if, without being positively jealous of the young eagle settled in his homely nest, he failed to do the utmost for this gifted and rough-natured child of promise. Beethoven's discontent with Haydn as a teacher offers a parallel; and sympathetic students of psychology will perceive that Ghirlandajo and Haydn were almost superfluous in the training of phenomenal natures ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... few things that I can play. I always had a taste for music; and up in one of the forts there was an old melodeon, so I hammered away for years. I had to learn difficult things at the start, or none at all, or else those I improvised; and that's how I can play one or two of Beethoven's symphonies pretty well, and this song, and a few others, and go a cropper with a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... What was the motive? Hypocrisy was very generally assigned. We only affected to love music. It was intellectual, spiritual, in all respects creditable to our moral nature, to be able to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, and so we set up for connoisseurs, and martyrised ourselves that Europe might think us musical. Is there more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally so lasting as the musical fervour has proved ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... power, one must give full play to all the force that is in him. It is significant that the men of creative genius are, as a rule, men of the greatest productive power. One marvels at the magnitude of the work of such men as Michelangelo and Rembrandt, as Beethoven and Wagner, as Shakespeare, Balzac, Thackeray, Carlyle, and Browning; not discerning that, as these master workers gave form and substance to their visions and insight, the power to see and to understand deepened and ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... there was a hush in the house, and then a short burst of applause, and Josephine, looking down, saw John standing alone upon the platform in front of the great bronze statue of Beethoven. He looked exactly as he did when she met him in society; there was no change in the even color of his face, nor any awkwardness or self-consciousness in his easy attitude as he stood there, broad-shouldered and square, his strong hand just resting on the plain desk that ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... constantly with her under the very eyes of her tiresome courtiers. What an interest in her life! She took up music again for her poet's sake, and revealed the world of sound to him, playing grand fragments of Beethoven till she sent him into ecstasy; and, happy in his delight, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, The substance of my dreams took fire. You built cathedrals in my heart, And lit my pinnacled desire. You were the ardour and the bright Procession of my thoughts toward prayer. You were the wrath of storm, the ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... literature in the works of a few great masters who have set the pace and established the limits for all the rest. In the line of purely instrumental music this has been done by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. The latter, who exercised a vast influence upon the manner of developing a musical thought and in the selection of the orchestral colors in which it can be expressed advantageously, ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... which at that time surged through my soul, I have never been able to discover. It must have been an old church hymn, like those which many a time stirred the rugged soul of our Luther. I never heard it again, but many a time even now when I hear an adagio of Beethoven's, or a psalm of Marcellus, or a chorus of Handel's, or a simple song in the Scotch Highlands or the Tyrol, it seems to me as if the lofty church windows again glistened and the organ-tones once more surged through my soul, and a new world revealed itself—more beautiful than the ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... placed permanently in the Civic Auditorium, the two most important musical items found on the schedule of Exposition enterprises are the engagements of Camille Saint-Saens and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The former, who maintained that "Beethoven is the greatest, the only real, artist, because he upheld the idea of universal brotherhood," is perhaps better fitted than any living composer to write special music for the Exposition. This he has done,—writing two compositions in fact; and their presentation has been ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... The great white and red roses of the d'aubusson carpet are spread enigmatically about her feline feet; a grand piano leans its melodious mouth to her; and there she sits when her visitors have left her, playing Beethoven's sonatas in the dreamy firelight. The spring-tide shows but a bloom of unvarying freshness; August has languished and loved in the strength of the sun. She is stately, she is tall. What sins, what disappointments, what aspirations lie in those grey eyes, mysteriously still, and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... free, wide horizon and background for culture. She was passionately devoted to music, which inspired some of her best poems; and during the last years of her life, in hours of intense physical suffering, she found relief and consolation in listening to the strains of Bach and Beethoven. When she went abroad, painting was revealed to her, and she threw herself with the same ardor and enthusiasm into the study of the great masters; her last work (left unfinished) was a critical analysis of the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of Beethoven, And the grandmother by in her chair, And the foot of all feet on the sofa Beating delicate time ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... Sordello. Nowhere in Browning's poetry can we find any very exhaustive study of any of the great men who are the favourites of the poet and moralist. He has written about philosophy and ambition and music and morals, but he has written nothing about Socrates or Caesar or Napoleon, or Beethoven or Mozart, or Buddha or Mahomet. When he wishes to describe a political ambition he selects that entirely unknown individual, King Victor of Sardinia. When he wishes to express the most perfect soul of music, he unearths some extraordinary persons called Abt Vogler and Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... sadness of a grand and aspiring order. Let, for instance, (since without individual illustrations there is the greatest risk of being misunderstood,) any person of musical sensibility listen to the exquisite music composed by Beethoven, as an opening for Burger's "Lenore," the running idea of which is the triumphal return of a crusading host, decorated with laurels and with palms, within the gates of their native city; and then say whether the presiding feeling, in the midst of this ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the beholder is fundamental; there is an intelligent activity in the one that is not in the other. Now no scientific analysis of a body will reveal the secret of this activity. As well might your analysis of a phonographic record hope to disclose a sonata of Beethoven latent in the waving lines. No power of chemistry could reveal any difference between the gray matter of Plato's brain and that of the humblest citizen of Athens. All the difference between man, all that makes a man ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Gardens in 1739, was exhibited at the Royal Military Exhibition, London, in 1890. Owing to its faulty construction and weak rattling tone the double bassoon fell into disuse, in spite of the fact that the great composers Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven scored for it abundantly; the last used it in the C minor and choral symphonies and wrote an obbligato for it in Fidelio. It was restored to favour in England by Dr W. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... unconsciously or with that imitation that is sincerest flattery is very evident. Many passages suggest Wagner, and one can easily imagine the ardent young American worshiping the great German master, as he in turn had adored Beethoven. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... appearance, the{54} vibration of each one fibre giving rise, it is believed, to the sensation of one particular tone, and combinations of such vibrations producing chords. It is by the action of this complex organ then, that all the wonderful intricacy and beauty of Beethoven and Mozart come, most probably, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... that—it was known by Dante, who all his life possessed the soul of Beatrice; and Beethoven, who was united from afar with Therese von Brunswick, knew it, though she was the wife ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... out, following the two Cathedral servants. He seemed to go unwillingly, as though forced to a task that was to him both irksome and painful. He hummed absently while giving his hand to Gabriel, who thought he recognised a fragment of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in the low and uneven tones that came from the lips of the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... form, in other arts than that of painting. The art of music is most germane to the Austrian spirit; and we have a ready key to the peculiarities of the Austrian disposition in the difference between Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Johann Strauss, on the one hand, and Haendel, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner on the other. Moreover, the Austrians are in all respects conservative, in literary taste no less than in politics and religion. The pseudo-classicism of Gottsched maintained its authority in Austria not merely after the time of Lessing, but also after ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word. So may you paint your picture, twice show truth, Beyond mere imagery on the wall,— So, note by note, bring music from your mind, Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived,— So write a book shall mean beyond the facts, Suffice the eye and save the ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... when Baron Spaun, an old Viennese character and a friend of Beethoven's, entered the composer's lodgings, he found the man, every line of whose face denoted, above all else, strength of character, bending over a portrait of a woman and weeping, as he muttered, "You were too good, too angelic!" A moment later, he had thrust the portrait into ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... them, or rather to let them see through my eyes. It is the mind after all that really sees, shapes, and colors all things. What visions of beauty and sublimity passed before the inward and spiritual sight of blind Milton and Beethoven! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... melodies was attributed to remoter and remoter periods; the most soulful hymns were adapted to frivolous airs. Later still, at a time when German music had risen to its zenith, when Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven flourished, the Jewish strolling musician Klesmer, a mendicant in the world of song as in the world of finance, was wandering through the provinces with ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Music risky? Bach? Beethoven! No, I don't agree. On the contrary, I think it is most elevating—most morally inspiring. No, I tremble before it because it is so wonderful ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... a disharmony to have an active spirit in a sickly body. It is a disharmony to have, like one of the very greatest of Christ's disciples, "a thorn in the flesh to buffet him." Who shall deliver us from this body of death? When you hear of a Beethoven deaf or of a Robert Louis Stevenson spitting blood, are you not conscious of disharmony? Where there is perfect harmony—perfect, I say—such a dislocation could not be. Epilepsy has been called "la maladie des ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... Vienna, and the internal consumption is apparently as great as ever: there is now-a-days no Mozart or Haydn to supply imperishable fabrics for the markets of the world; but the orchestras are as good as ever. The Sinfonia-Eroica of Beethoven catching my eye in a programme, I failed not to renew my homage to this prince of sweet and glorious sounds, and was loyally indignant on hearing a fellow-countryman say, that, though rich in harmony, he was poor in melody. No; Beethoven's wealth is boundless; ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... of Bonn is one of the most beautiful of all those situated on the banks of the Rhine, and being the birthplace of no less celebrated a composer than Beethoven, it naturally attracts a goodly number of pilgrims every year, these coming from many distant lands to do homage at the shrine of genius. But Bonn and its neighbourhood have older associations than this—associations ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... music from Bach to Beethoven and from Beethoven to Wagner—yes, even to Richard Strauss—but enthusiasm with discipline? German music has been our mobilization; it has gone on just as in a partitur by Richard ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... Shakespeare's power, I find I am not regarding it simply as a drama, but am grouping it in my mind with works like the Prometheus Vinctus and the Divine Comedy, and even with the greatest symphonies of Beethoven and the statues in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... course of this story, the author has had occasion to refer to Beethoven's Sonata Appassionata as containing a suggestion of the opening theme of the Fifth Symphony. He has often seen this stated, and believed that the statement was generally accepted as true. Since writing, however, he has heard ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... miracles than anyone of us has faculties to appreciate fully. So that, in some of Titian's pictures and Michael Angelo's frescoes, the great Greek sculptures, certain cantos of Dante and plays of Shakespeare, fugues of Bach, scenes of Mozart and quartets of Beethoven, we can each of us, looking our closest, feeling our uttermost, see and feel perhaps but a trifling portion of what there is to be seen and felt, leaving other sides, other perfections, to be appreciated by our neighbours. Till it comes to pass that ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Empire was to be republican. But it quickly passed away; and no Frenchman, except perhaps Carnot, made so manly a protest as the man of genius at Vienna, who had composed the "Sinfonia Eroica," and with grand republican simplicity inscribed it, "Beethoven a Bonaparte." When the master heard that his former hero had taken the imperial crown, he tore off the dedication with a volley of curses on the renegade and tyrant; and in later years he dedicated the immortal work to the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... double lines of cavalry and led by a military band. At Osborn Hall they turned to the right and moved slowly along College Street to the Battell Chapel, where they turned again and advanced diagonally across the green, the band playing Beethoven's funeral march. ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... music, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, advanced this art beyond the limits of their predecessors by identifying themselves more closely with the development of active life itself. By their creative power they invested the life of the nation and mankind with profounder ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... fellows. Good at their job, they tell me, but no polish. I suppose I oughtn't to say that—ungrateful of me! But I'm sick of it all, the invasion of the classes, the women in trousers, the beggars on horseback, the Jazz music. I want the old world back—the womanly women, everybody labeled, and Beethoven." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... getting a bow of hair with rosin, is a blaspheming wretch, and shall die the death,"—I ask you, what effect would that have had upon music? If that course had been pursued, would the human ears, in your judgment, ever have been enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven? Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, had said: "That crooked stick is the best plow that can be invented: the pattern of that plow was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and that twisted ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... hands had unconsciously wandered into the mazes of a rich Beethoven voluntary, and the notes, firm, grand, and harmonious, rolled out in the silence with a warm deep tenderness that thrilled the air as with a rhythmic beat of angels' wings. Lost in thought, she scarcely knew what she played, nor how she was playing,—but she was conscious ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... book. Handel's Israel in Egypt—the wonder of the scientific musician in his closet—yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds, under the divine teaching of genius, have known how to clothe their works in a beauty ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Poor Naldi, whom most of us remember, and all who remember must respect, said to our poet once at a concert—"That he did not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed." Coleridge answered, "It sounded to me exactly like nonsense verses. But this thing of Beethoven's that they have begun—stop, let us listen to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... perceived things were not right, Home suddenly returned at dead of night. His boots he'd taken off; He was careful not to cough; And his plans so well were woven, That they still performed Beethoven. But, neither being deaf, They at last heard Pozdnisheff. Poor wife! He so affrights her, That she plays ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... boy! Opera!" repeated Spouter. "I expect some day that he will thrill great audiences with exquisite renderings of the famous solos by Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, Donizetti——" ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... monster the Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspireth Buddha and Shakespeare and Beethoven and Darwin and Plato? No, not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and rape, in black revenge and in deadly malice, in slavery and polygamy, and the debasement of women, and in the pomps, vanities and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... music for a profession in preference to an offered commission in the East Indian army. His talent as a composer, especially of sacred music, was marvellous, and, though he became blind, his loss of sight was no more hindrance to his genius than loss of hearing to Beethoven. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... yet more memorable by the unveiling of a statue to Beethoven. But, by an unlucky contretemps, the royal party on the balcony found the back of the statue presented to their gaze. The Freischutzen fired a feu-de-joie. A chorale was sung. The people cheered and the band played a Dusch—such a flourish of trumpets as is given ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... spiritual heritage of Germany: when one thinks of Herder, Schiller and Goethe; Tauler, Luther and Schleiermacher; Froebel, Herbart and Richter; Kant, Fichte and Novalis; Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner; one feels that something of the old German heritage must survive. When the German people find out what has happened to them and why, that heritage surely ought to show in some reaction against the present autocratic regime, after the War closes, if not ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... gentle music, quivering like the voice of a great-grandmother in powdered hair. Mozart, he's the precursory genius—the first who endowed an orchestra with an individual voice; and those 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 ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... exaltation of mind, the same intellectual transport, which the trained musician feels when listening to the celestial harmonies of a great orchestra. In proportion as one conceives, or can imagine, the fineness of the musical endowment of a Bach or Beethoven, and in proportion as he can realize in his own mind the infinity of training and preparation which has contributed to the development of such a master musician—in such proportion may he comprehend and appreciate the unusual ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... She floated forth with the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the still atmosphere of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs formed suave and enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most spiritual symphony of Beethoven the divine, to watch the harmonious flow of lines. This, indeed was a pleasure cheaply purchased at any price. What cared I if I had waded to the portal of this wonder through another's blood. I would have given my own to enjoy one such moment of ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... said Millard. A rush of feeling came over him. He remembered Mina Schulenberg as she sat that day about a year ago—the day of his engagement—near the bust of Beethoven in the park. She had been the beginning and in some sense she had been the ending of his engagement. Millard walked away from Rudolph in a preoccupied way. Suddenly he ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... sequence, however, rather fits a collection aiming at instruction than at pleasure, and the Wisdom which comes through Pleasure:—within each book the pieces have therefore been arranged in gradations of feeling or subject. The development of the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven has been here thought of as a model, and nothing placed without careful consideration. And it is hoped that the contents of this Anthology will thus be found to present a certain unity, "as episodes," in the noble language of Shelley, "to that great Poem which all poets, like the co-operating ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in England, he never wished to see it again; the memories which it would arouse would be too bitter.... The shade of Beethoven touched him as it passed; Mozart, Mendelssohn, Chopin. But he was thinking only of his loneliness, and the marvelous touch of the hands which evoked the great spirits was ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... upwards of an hour. All the vocal and instrumental talent of the city was present, and the audience was treated to a rare and most happily rendered repertoire. Miss Hartmann had just finished an Arietta of Beethoven's, which was rapturously received, when Alice Merivale stole up behind me, radiant in pale green mist—as it seemed to me—to ask ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Sonata" is an absurd title which has for years been attached, both in Germany and England, to one of Beethoven's sonatas. It is said to have been derived from the expression of a German critic comparing the first movement to a boat wandering by moonlight ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... achievements in scholarship and science, at our universities, at our systems of education, at our literature, our music, and our painting; at our great men of thought and imagination: at Luther, Duerer, Goethe, Beethoven, Kant." ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... explained. Painting and sculpture began slowly to emit their rays through the eclipse of more than a century. The allied art shared in this second and secondary renaissance. Haydn was in full fruit, Mozart ripening, and Music watched, in the cradle of Beethoven, her budding Shakespeare. A fourth Teuton was studying the symphonies of the spheres; and within the first five years of the century, while the "crowning mercy" of Yorktown was maturing, a planet that had never before dawned on the eye of man took its place with the ancient six, and "swam ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... getting her coat and hat when Mr. Clendon began to play; she changed her mind about the walk and went to the door to open it an inch or so, that she might hear more distinctly the soft strains of the Beethoven Sonata which came floating up to her. As she opened the door, she heard a strange sound rising above the notes of the music; it was that, perhaps, most terrible of all sounds, the unbidden, irresistible groan, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... the pupils a few facts about Beethoven and, if possible, will have shown them his picture. He will also have asked them to read the lesson at home and become familiar ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... we find not the slightest evidence of their having been inspired by any outward agencies. Not till the art stood upon its own independent foundations does it appear that any musicians ever thought of turning such natural sounds to account; and—though with Beethoven's exquisite Pastoral Symphony ringing in our ears, with its plaintive clarionet cuckoo to contradict our words—we should say that no compositions could be of a high class in which such sounds were conspicuous.—Murray's Reading ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... electricity, for example. Why may it not be so with the world? Why may there not be different points of view for surveying it, within each of which all data harmonize, and which the observer may therefore either choose between, or simply cumulate one upon another? A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. Just so a thorough-going ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... that child, father, for she is getting entirely beyond my control. If I attempt to make her study she writes poetry instead of her exercises, draws caricatures instead of sketching properly, and bewilders her music teacher by asking questions about Beethoven and Mendelssohn, as if they were personal friends of his. If I beg her to take exercise, she rides like an Amazon all over the Island, grubs in the garden as if for her living, or goes paddling about the bay till I'm distracted ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... upright, noble beyond description, if Christianity be true, is in hell this moment. That is what they call "solace"—"tidings of great joy." LaPlace, who read the heavens like an open book, who enlarged the horizon of human thought, is there too. Beethoven, Master of melody and harmony, who added to the joy of human life, and who has borne upon the wings of harmony and melody millions of spirits to the height of joy, with his heart still filled with melody—he is in hell today. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... sense! They would hardly say that Handel or Beethoven speaks to a wider audience than Homer or Shakspeare, and certainly no musician or painter or sculptor can hope to delight mankind for as many centuries as a poet. And, then, to think what an idea can accomplish—what Greek ideas have done in England, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... another piece of Beethoven, Die Schlacht bei Vittoria. Malbrook is introduced at the beginning of the performance, as indicative of the brisk advance of the French army. Then come drums, trumpets, thunders of artillery, and groans of the dying, and at last, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has been, like all young bridegrooms, very careless about every thing else but his beloved, since he got it. Painting, sculpture, architecture, all must yield to music. Nor can all the fascinations of Raphael or Rubens vie in his estimation with the melodies of Mozart, or the harmonies of Beethoven. So, yesterday, when we found the picture gallery shut, he profanely remarked, "What a mercy!" And this morning I could enlist none of the party but W. to go with me. We were paid for going. There were two or three magnificent ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in words. Any one must admit the futility of the attempt to give a dramatic interpretation or language to instrumental music, who reads the description attempted by Lenz and other writers of some of Beethoven's sonatas. Instrumental music does not lend itself to these interpretations, since it is an art with an independent existence. We have observed that in its first development it was used as an accompaniment ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... of the top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary and insulted. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... Laws of Harmony made before his day and set down new ones—and these marked his limitations, that was all. Beethoven upset all these, and Wagner succeeded by breaking most of Beethoven's rules. And now comes Grieg, and writes harmonious discords that Wagner said were impossible, and still it is music, for by it we are transported on the wings of song ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... lingering, Lay music's bud too long unblown, Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring: Then bloomed the ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... with the Dante et Virgile (1822) and the Massacre de Scio (1823). In music Berlioz, at this time a student in the Conservatoire, was fighting hard against Cherubini and the bewigged ones for liberty of expression and leave to admire and imitate the audacities of Weber and Beethoven, and three years hence, in the year of Hernani, was to set his mark upon the art with the Symphonie fantastique. On the stage as early as 1824 Frederick and Firmin had realised in the personages of Macaire and Bertrand the grotesque ideal, the combination of humour and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Kew only sang a few bars of Beethoven in a small voice. He was rather sad, because of Jay. He had not realised till he came home how very thoroughly Jay had disappeared. He led the conversation to Jay. It often happened that Kew led conversations, because conversations, like the public, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... at his garden table writing the "Ode to Autumn," the lonely Shelley in the Cascine at Florence composing the "West Wind," Wordsworth pacing the narrow walk behind Dove Cottage and mumbling verses, Beethoven in his garret writing music. But the creative act thus performed in solitude has a singular potency, after all, for arousing that communal feeling which in the moment of creation the artist seems to escape. What he produces in his loneliness the world ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Sermon on the Mount are discoveries in God, but so are the advances in knowledge made by Plato, Aristotle, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Edison. He shows Himself through Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, but also through Homer, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Beethoven, Darwin, George Eliot, William James, and Henry Irving. I take the names at random as illustrating different branches of endeavour, and if I use only great ones it is not that the lesser are excluded. No one department of human effort is specially His, or is His special expression. The ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... with strange characters, in a language entirely unknown to him. The initial letters were splendidly illuminated, the margins ornamented with elaborate designs. Cecil gazed on the scrolls, as one who loves music but who is ignorant of its technicalities might look at a sonata of Beethoven or an opera of Wagner, and be moved ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... and was wondering how on earth they were to get through the evening. Various dreadful possibilities occurred to him; music (Miss Tancred and Beethoven on the grand piano); family prayers; cards; in some places they sat up half the night playing whist, a game that bored him to extinction. Thank heaven, as there were but three of them, it would not be whist. Meanwhile it was past ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... I make it a point to know the accompaniments, for in case I am ever left without an accompanist, I can play for myself, and it has a great effect on audiences. They may not know or care whether you can play Beethoven or Chopin, but the fact that you can play while you ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... direct line the piano cannot have been more than ten feet from the reader's chair; and the strain of reading aloud for an hour against a powerful rendering of the most vigorous compositions of Liszt, Wagner, Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin was a most trying ordeal for voice, brain and nerves. Mr. Pulitzer could apparently enjoy the music and the reading at the same time. Often, when something was played of which he knew the air, he would follow the notes by means of a sort of subdued whistle, ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... German talks of symphonies he means Beethoven; the two names are to him one and indivisible; his joy, his pride. As Italy has its Naples, France its Revolution, England its Navigation, so Germany has its Beethoven symphonies. The German forgets in his Beethoven that he has no school of painting; with Beethoven he imagines ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various |
