"Composer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crowning joy, an orgy of happiness, Massimilla pillowed Emilio's head in her arms, and now and then ventured to press her lips to his; but only as a bird dips its beak into the clear waters of a spring, looking round lest it should be seen. Their fancy worked upon this kiss, as a composer develops a subject by the endless resources of music, and it produced in them such tumultuous and vibrating echoes as ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... personal correlates of the rhapsodia. This being the poem adapted to chanting, those were the chanters. And the only important question which we can imagine to arise is, How far in any given age we may presume the functions of the poetical composer and the musical deliverer to have been united. We cannot perceive that any possible relation between a rhapsody considered as a section of a poem and the whole of that poem, or any possible relation which this same rhapsody considered as a thing to be sung or accompanied instrumentally ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Her programme as usual reflects her catholic and cosmopolitan taste, for she will sing not only Welsh and Cornish folk-songs, but works by PALESTRINA, Gasolini, Larranaga, Sparafucile, and the young American composer, Ploffskin Jee, so that both classical and modern masters ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... chemical law. The orchestra in the gallery leaped suddenly into the rag-time without whose accompaniment it was impossible, anywhere in the civilized world, to dine correctly. That rag-time, committed, I suppose, originally by some well-intentioned if banal composer in the privacy of his study one night, had spread over the whole universe of restaurants like a pest, to the exasperation of the sensitive, but evidently to the joy of correct diners. Joy shone in the elated eyes of the four hundred persons correctly dining together ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... in and around Mandvi. For his name appears as chief owner in many of them; and it seems clear that the spoils which he gathered from the sea formed the basis of a goodly heritage upon dry land. He was an intimate friend of a certain Parsi millionaire, whom the composer of the ballad has supposed to be Sir Jamserji Jeejeebhoy, but who was more probably a member of the great family of Wadia,—the original ship-builders and dock-masters of ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... Doche and after that the two translations in Laten and Frenche whiche in blaminge the disordred lyfe of men of our tyme agreeth in sentence: threfolde in langage wherfore wylling to redres the errours and vyces of this oure Royalme of Englonde: as the foresayde composer and translatours hath done in theyr Contrees I haue taken vpon me: howbeit vnworthy to drawe into our Englysshe tunge the sayd boke named ye shyp of folys as nere to ye sayd thre Langages as the parcyte ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... I remember to have heard, two or three years ago, of an action for damages brought against an eminent composer, on account of plagiarism in a musical composition; and that the defendant's argument was founded on the fact, that there exist very few really "original compositions," if originality excludes every form of plagiarism. And he adduced as examples ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... of this spring that she made the acquaintance of M. de Lamennais, introduced to her by their common friend, the composer, Franz Liszt. The famous author of the Paroles d'un Croyant had virtually severed himself from the Church of Rome by his recent publication of this little volume, pronounced by the Pope, "small in size, immense in perversity!" The eloquence of the poet-priest, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Bazin, Duvernoy, Bizet, and others. He enjoyed many honors, and died March 17, 1862. A De Profundis was sung on the occasion of his funeral, written by four of his pupils, MM. Gounod, Masse, Bazin, and Cohen. As a composer he was influenced largely by Meyerbeer, and is remarkable rather for his large dramatic ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... learn the great lesson of Creation. When one arises among us, who, like Pygmalion, makes no useless appeal to the Goddess of Beauty for the gift of life for his Ideal, and who creates as he was created, we cherish him as a great interpreter of human love. We call him poet, composer, artist, and speak of him reverently as Master. We say that his lips have been wet with dews of Hybla,—that, like the sage of Crotona, he has heard the music of the spheres,—that he comes to us, another Numa, radiant and inspired from the kisses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... But I do not think he was ever sufficiently preoccupied with poetry to be a good poet. He had even ceased to read poetry by the time he began in earnest to write it. "I reckon it," he wrote in 1781, "among my principal advantages, as a composer of verses, that I have not read an English poet these thirteen years, and but one these thirteen years." So mild was his interest in his contemporaries that he had never heard Collins's name till he read about him in Johnson's ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... mentioned having a letter from a friend in Boston who had lately heard a great chorus rendered. He could not be quite sure of the name of the composer because he had read the letter hurriedly and his friend was a blind-writer, but that made no difference to Harry. He could fill in facts enough about the grandeur of the music from his own imagination to make up for the lack of a little matter like the name of a composer. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Lady Mary Duncan. By them I was placed for education in the Irish Convent, Rue du Bacq, Faubourg St. Germain, at Paris, where the immortal Sacchini, the instructor of the Queen, gave me lessons in music. Pleased with my progress, the celebrated composer, when one day teaching Marie Antoinette, so highly overrated to that illustrious lady my infant natural talents and acquired science in his art, in the presence of her very shadow, the Princesse de Lamballe, as to excite in Her Majesty an eager desire for ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Indo-European Telegraphs. A burly, jolly Dutchman stood drinks all round to members of the Russian and English Banks alike, and a French sage-femme just arrived discussed her prospects with the hotel proprietress. The Shah's A.D.C. and favourite music-composer and pianist came frequently to enliven the evenings with some really magnificent playing, and by way of diversion some wild Belgian employees of the derelict sugar-factory used almost nightly to cover with insults a notable "Chevalier ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to transfer to his palate real pieces of music, following the composer step by step, rendering his thought, his effects, his nuances, by combinations or contrasts of liquors, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... last of Alexandre Dumas' more famous stories, and ranks deservedly high among the short novels of its prolific author. Dumas visited Holland in May, 1849, in order to be present at the coronation of William III. at Amsterdam, and according to Flotow, the composer, it was the king himself who told Dumas the story of "The Black Tulip," and mentioned that none of the author's romances were concerned with the Dutch. Dumas, however, never gave any credit to this anecdote, and others have alleged ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... handsome, but she who did Cenerentola surpassed them all; she was a perfect beauty and a grace. I think the music of this opera would please the public taste in England. Rossini seems to have banished every other musical composer from the stage. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... so fine a critic as Coleridge, as when he dwarfs the sublime struggle of Hamlet into the image of his own unhappy weakness. Hazlitt by no means escaped its influence. Only the third of that great trio, Lamb, appears almost always to have rendered the conception of the composer. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... commenced jerking and snatching from the strings a remarkable series of notes, which followed one another in a jigging kind of fairly rapid sequence, running up and down the gamut and in and out, as if the notes of the composer had suddenly become animated, and, like some kind of tiny, big-headed, long-tailed goblins, were chasing one another in and out of the five lines of the stave, leaping from bar to bar, never stopping for a rest, making fun of the flats and sharps, and finally pausing, ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... was some holiday; so there was grand mass in the cathedral, and such music!—the immense building was filled with the sound. The full organ was played, and some of the priest singers took part. Never did music so overcome me. The sublime piece,—as I thought of Beethoven's, surely of some great composer,—performed in this glorious old cathedral, was beyond all that I had ever dreamt of. It seems to me that I might think of it again in my dying hour with delight. I felt as if it created a new soul in me. Such gushes of sweet sound, such joyful fulness of melody, such tender breathings ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... and composer (or it might be more correct to say composer and author, for in this case music preceded words), Rouget de Lisle—a young aristocrat and an artillery officer—had as a friend a citizen of Strasbourg, to whose house, ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... to that lively song. Gunnar Wennerberg, Gluntarra's poet and composer, sings his songs with Boronees,[P] and they acquire ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... et chaste fonction De composer la-haut l'unique nation, A la fois derniere et premiere, De promener l'essor dans le rayonnement, Et de faire planer, ivre de firmament, La liberte dans ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... Portland has reason to congratulate itself, first, on being the birthplace of such a composer as Mr. Paine; secondly, on having been the place where the first great work of America in the domain of music was brought out; and thirdly, on possessing what is probably the most thoroughly disciplined choral society in this country. Our New York friends, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... world, and it is not a great truth, is that the big guy gets played on the radio more frequently than the little guy, who has to do much more until he becomes a big guy. That is true of every author, every composer, everyone, and, unfortunately, ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... occupies itself with the same sweet history of the inglenook which is the basis of the Bluebeard libretto. Strauss's symphony is worked out along more tranquil lines, to be sure, but it is only the history of a single day of married life and a day arbitrarily chosen by the composer. It is conceivable that there may have ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... interest in the scene greatly impaired its theatrical effect, the approbation with which it was notwithstanding received by all judges of music on its first representation in Vienna (10th Oct. 1823) sufficiently attested the triumph of the composer over his difficulties. He was repeatedly called for and received with the loudest acclamations. From Vienna, where he was conducting his Euryanthe, he was summoned to Prague, to superintend the fiftieth representation of his "Freyschuetz." His tour resembled a triumphal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... programme was changed. The frog is a diligent songster, having a good voice but no ear. The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective—"brekekex-koax"; the music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner. Horses have a frog in each hoof—a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling them to shine in ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... not always of the same cast. It varied as greatly as were the moods of the composer. The sublimity of Ossian had its opposite in the biting sarcasm and trenchant ridicule of some of ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Jews seems entirely wanting. The statements made in some P.B. manuals that it was so used appear to have arisen from a misunderstanding of an ambiguous sentence of Wheatley's (see 'Liturgical Use,' p. 83). Still, there may have been an arrière pensée in the composer's mind of providing models of prayer and of praise for others, in crisis of trial or deliverance, to offer unto God. It is pleasing to note in this respect, that the thanksgiving is not stinted, but is even longer than the prayer. Nowhere is the ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... patriotism, fed in the scholar by memories of past glory, in the peasant by intense local attachment, and kindled from time to time in all by the reaction of gross wrongs and moral privations. Sometimes in conversation, oftener in secret musing, now in the eloquent outburst of the composer, and now in the adjuration of the poet or the vow of the revolutionist, this latent spirit has found expression. Again and again, spasmodic and abortive emeutes, the calm protest of a D'Azeglio and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Were I a composer of books I would keep a register of divers deaths, which, in teaching me to die, should ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the sacred emblem. The cardinals follow his example, and meanwhile the choir sings Palestrina's famous composition, the "Mass of Pope Marcellinus," a wonderful piece that must have been first sung to the composer by the angels themselves. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... told, engaged to Mr. Herbert, the artist, before she met Mr. Hoskyn. We shall meet Mr. Herbert there to-morrow, and a number of celebrated persons besides—his wife, Madame Szczymplica the pianiste, Owen Jack the composer, Hawkshaw the poet, Conolly the inventor, and others. The occasion will be a special one, as Herr Abendgasse, a remarkable German socialist and art critic, is to deliver a lecture on 'The True in Art.' Be careful, in speaking of him in society, to refer to him ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... make me as good a musician as you are yourself, so that I can render a not too difficult piece without feeling all the while that I am committing sacrilege in mutilating the fine thoughts of some great composer." ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... in this festival, which was to render homage to the veteran German composer, the great Joseph Haydn, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of the maestro's great work, "The Creation." Ten years had elapsed since the first performance of "The Creation" at Vienna, and already the sublime composition had made ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... quartered at Eisleben. It often played a certain piece which had just come out, and which was making a great sensation, I mean the 'Huntsmen's Chorus' out of the Freischutz, that had been recently performed at the Opera in Berlin. My uncle and brother asked me eagerly about its composer, Weber, whom I must have seen at my parents' house in Dresden, when he was conductor of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... fellow's face brightened gaily. He stepped back a little way, leaned against a linden, and sang, in the drawling tone peculiar to the west of France, the following Breton ditty, published by Bruguiere, a composer to whom we are indebted for many charming melodies. In Brittany, the young villagers sing this song to all newly-married couples ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... judgment, we find him including the name of Glinka with that of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, as the chief germinators of modern music; whilst one of the last acts of his generous public career was a concert given in aid of a national monument to the composer of La Vie pour le Tsar. With one or two minor exceptions, successive Russian masters have followed faithfully in Glinka's footsteps. To Borodine, Dargomijsky, Seroff, Balakireff, and Rimsky-Korsakoff a full meed of nationality has been granted. To Rubinstein and ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... for its composer was the aurora of enduring fame, was 'the genuine effusion of the soul of the ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... nicety of the Greeks, in the ordering and disposing their dances, I refer to what I have before said, for its being to be observed, how much at present this art is fallen short of their perfection in it, and how difficult it must be for a composer of dances to produce them in that masterly manner they were used to be performed among the antients. Let his talent for invention or composition be never so rich or fertile, it will be impossible for him to do it justice in the display, unless he is seconded by performers ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... a word like "you." It rhymes with "sue," "eyes of blue," "woo," and all sorts of succulent things, easily fitted into the fabric of a lyric. And it has the enormous advantage that it can be repeated thrice at the end of a refrain when the composer has given you those three long notes, which is about all a composer ever thinks of. When a composer hands a lyricist a "dummy" for a ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... resumed, "because she used to sing his songs. Ah, how did it go?" and Mrs. Hilbery, who had a very sweet voice, trolled out a famous lyric of her father's which had been set to an absurdly and charmingly sentimental air by some early Victorian composer. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... for she had always been told a little bleeding of that sort was good for hot-headed young people. Then the singer took complete hold of her. The composer, to balance the delightful part of Marguerite, has given Siebel a melody with which wonders can be done; and the Klosking had made a considerable reserve of her powers for this crowning effort. After a recitative that ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... in order, if possible, that nothing might be left remaining but the actual words of the original epic itself. The second school of thought of course held fast by the conception of an epoch-making genius as the composer of the great works. The first school, on the other hand, wavered between the supposition of one genius plus a number of minor poets, and another hypothesis which assumed only a number of superior and even mediocre individual bards, but also postulated a mysterious discharging, a deep, national, ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... amusing, and provocative of innocent laughter, which, after all, seems to be a sufficient recommendation for words spoken within the walls of a play-house. The music is full of melody—"quite killing," as a young lady wittily observed, on noticing that the name of the Composer was SLAUGHTER. So Marjorie may be fairly said not only to have deserved success, but (it is satisfactory to be able to add) also to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... specialization in the earlier courses. A graduate school which admits music will naturally do so on a vocational basis, and the question is not of the aim to be sought, but the much easier one of the means of its attainment, since there is no more of a puzzle in teaching an embryo composer or music teacher than there is in teaching ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... intimate friend of Scriabin, telegraphed the news of the composer's death to a friend in England. He stated that Scriabin died of the disease of the lip from which he was suffering when in England last year, and that he had just finished the "wonderful poetical text" of the prologue to his "Mystery." When ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... composer and organist, was born in Somersetshire about 1562. After being organist in Hereford cathedral, he joined the Chapel Royal in 1585, and in the next year became a Mus. Bac. of Oxford. In 1591 he was appointed organist in Queen Elizabeth's chapel in succession to Blitheman, from whom he had received ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... almost to the last. I have heard him say, "Did you never observe how an Italian organ-grinder will sometimes put in a few notes of his own in such perfect keeping with the air which he was grinding?" He was not a great, but he was a good composer. Some of his songs have been printed, and many still remain in manuscript. Then what pleasant talk I have had with him about the singers of our early years; never forgetting to speak of Mrs. Frere of Downing, as the most perfect private singer we had ever heard. And so indeed she was. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... copy of the opening address, I transcribe it. Of course, it loses much from the effect given by its composer ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... hear "Faust" last night. It is a splendid work, in which that noble and sad story is most nobly and sadly rendered, and perfectly delighted me. But I think it requires too much of the audience to do for a London opera house. The composer must be a very remarkable man indeed. Some management of light throughout the story is also very poetical and fine. We had Carvalho's box. I could hardly bear the thing, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... of Allessandro Scarlatti was then current and universally popular in Italy. This composer was particularly famous for the excellence of his recitative; and his general merit may be judged of by the fact, that he is placed by Arteaga, in his work on the revolutions of the musical drama in Italy, among the early authors belonging to the period which he terms ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Indian Becky Sharps, very much in the spirit of an Indian Thackeray. The immorality of these damsels, the sponging of Marten, the deviltry of Lox, the servile follies and ferocious vindictiveness of the Loon, all seem to impress the composer of the tale as so many bubbles rising and falling on the sea of life, only remarkable for the sun-gleam of humor which they reflect. Outside these tales I know of nothing which so resembles the inner spirit ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sudden clangour among the bass-notes—the music seemed to be jumbled into confusion, and the ear was stunned by a painful and intolerable dissonance. On looking more intently, he perceived that the composer had let one hand fall abstractedly upon the key-board, while the other executed, by itself, a passage of extraordinary difficulty and involution. Then, for the first time, the thought struck him that the musician was deaf.[17] Alas! the supposition was too true: Beethoven was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... began to reflect upon the price of a box at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; but there I was not the hero of the opera. This minstrel combined the whole affair in a most simple manner. He was Verdi, Costa, and orchestra all in one. He was a thorough Macaulay as historian, therefore I had to pay the composer as well as the fiddler. I compromised the matter, and gave him a few dollars, as I understood that he was Mek Nimmur's private minstrel; but I never parted with my dear Maria Theresa (* The Austrian dollar, that is the only large current coin in that country.) with ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... this series of somewhat peremptory questions. He replied very placidly, "I am afraid I have but a superficial outside acquaintance with the secrets, the unfathomable mysteries, of music. I can no more conceive of the working conditions of the great composer, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... BIRD thought that all musicians should be at liberty to assume names provided they were appropriate. But for a composer to call himself Johann Sebastian Wagner was to court disaster. He ventured to submit the following list for the benefit of persons who contemplated making the change. For a soprano: Miss Hyam Seton. For a contralto: ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... of the American composer MacDowell! What a musician! He is sincere and personal—what a ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... myself when I am out of spirits, and it does me good. Don't you like the old-fashioned ones best? I fancy, in those days, people felt more what they wrote, and did not consider only how the words would suit the composer." ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... regular times are no doubt the most important fundamental entities of it, and may even lie undiscoverably at the root of all varieties of rhythm whatsoever, and further they may be the only possible or permissible rhythms for a modern composer to use, but yet the absolute dominion which they now enjoy over all music lies rather in their practical necessity and convenience (since it is only by attending to them that the elaboration of modern harmonic music is possible), than in the ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... possible?" exclaimed La Luciola, clapping her hands with joy. "Who is the composer of the new opera? Gioberto, Palmerelli, or perhaps you, Ticellini? But stay! before we go any further, I make one condition: the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... scholars, 'stately scenes, and richness of the Persian habits,' had as much to do with the success of the play as its 'stately style,' and 'the excellency of the songs, which were set by that admirable composer, Mr. Henry James.' True it is, that the songs are excellent, as are all Cartwright's; for grace, simplicity, and sweetness, equal to any (save Shakspeare's) which the seventeenth century produced: but curiously enough, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... thought of the composer grew in power and beauty he forgot himself and his dilemma in his enjoyment. Two senses were finding abundant gratification at the same time, for it was a delight to listen, and it was even a greater pleasure ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... song-writer; he cultivated his gift to relieve the monotony of an unintellectual occupation, and the usual auditor of his lays was his younger brother Matthew, who for some years was his companion in the workshop. The acquaintance of Robert Archibald Smith, the celebrated musical composer, which he was now fortunate in forming, was the means of stimulating his Muse to higher efforts and of awakening his ambition. Smith was at this period resident in Paisley; and along with one Ross, a teacher of music from Aberdeen, he set several of Tannahill's best songs to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... I picked up the most unique art treasure I found anywhere on my travels—a picture of the composer Verdi that looked exactly like Uncle Joe Cannon, without the cigar; whereas Uncle Joe Cannon does not look a thing in the world like Verdi, and probably ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... "The Spanish composer? Oh, rather! He's coming over about his new opera. He's all right. At least, I bear him rather, but girls ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... manufactures, particularly those of luxury, are peculiar to the metropolis, and one of the most prominent of this class is public amusement. Every season has its novelty, whether the opera of a great foreign composer, or the lectures of a literary lion; besides endless panoramas, dioramas, cosmoramas, and cycloramas, which bring home to John Bull the wonders of the habitable globe, and annihilate time and space for his delectation. We see the Paris of the Huguenots to the sound of Meyerbeer's blood-stirring ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... Brahms' Second Symphony is peculiarly satisfying to the listener. The first few measures disclose that the composer is in complete control of his ideas and his expression of them. He has something to say, and he says it without uncertainty or redundancy. Only a man who has something to say may dare to say ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... was written Lamartine already knew that she was hopelessly ill. This experience of his colors many poems of his first two volumes. Le Lac has often been set to music; most successfully by the Swiss composer Niedermeyer (1802-1861). For interesting variants in the text see Reyssie, la Jeunesse ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... professors, bankers, politicians, etc. Honor, if tardy, surely comes at last to the prophet in her own country. A song written for the occasion and inscribed to Miss Anthony, by Annie E. McDowell, one of the first editors of a woman's paper, was splendidly sung by Mr. Ford, the composer, who ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... seem to hear me, but went on dreamily, "And the sounds it makes! My God, A W, a composer'd give half the years of his life to reproduce those sounds. High and piercing; soft and muted; creating tonepoems and etudes there in ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... from Aliscans with regard to Rainouart, the humorous gigantic helper of William of Orange. One would not have been surprised if it had been otherwise, if Rainouart had been first introduced by the later composer, with a view to "comic relief" or some such additional variety for his tale. But it is not so; Rainouart, it appears, has a good right to his place by the side of William. The grotesque element in French epic is found very early, e.g. in the Pilgrimage ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Jonson's bad Pieces we don't discover one single Trace of the Author of the Fox and Alchemist: but in the wild extravagant Notes of Shakespeare, you every now and then encounter Strains that recognize the divine Composer. This Difference may be thus accounted for. Jonson, as we said before, owing all his Excellence to his Art, by which he sometimes strain'd himself to an uncommon Pitch, when at other times he unbent and play'd ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... Let us be sure that what we do not yet understand is good and loving too. The web is of one texture throughout. The least educated ear can catch the music of the simpler melodies which run through the Great Composer's work. We shall one day be able to appreciate the yet fuller music of the more recondite parts, which to us at present seem only jangling and discord. It is not His melody but our ears that are at fault. But ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... use of incidents from the Nibelungenlied. Of all these works which have been produced with this old poem as a basis, the Ring of the Nibelungen, a group of four operas by Richard Wagner, is most famous. These operas, which are among the finest works of this great composer, are not based absolutely on the Nibelungenlied; many happenings in the life of the hero, Siegfried, are different. But it is clear that Wagner drew his inspiration from this thirteenth century epic, and his use of it has opened other ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... busts, or brasses, are in honour of Lord Mayo, the Canadian statesman Macdonald, the Australian statesman Dally, the Press correspondents who fell in the Soudan, the soldiers who fell in the Transvaal, Goss, the organist and composer, and Bishop Piers Claughton, a residentiary. At the east end, where service is held on a weekday morning at eight, are a few fragments of the old monuments—Nicholas Bacon (in armour and legs missing), Christopher Hatton, John Wolley, and others. Some slight carvings of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... from the hearts of ordinary folk, should yet have the power to make a great lady suffer. For a great lady I knew Ysolinde to be even then, when her father seemed to be no more in the city of Thorn than Master Gerard, the fount and treasure-house of law and composer-general of quarrels. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... them: "Children, remember that to-day you have danced to the playing of Monsieur Auber, the most celebrated composer in France. Such a thing is an event, and you must remember it and tell it ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... mind, an eye for proportion, and an ear for harmony. He was even pious at times, and like all debauchees had periods of asceticism. He was much given to gallantry, and his pension-list of beautiful women was not small. He was a poet and wrote some very good sonnets; he was a composer who sang, from his own compositions, after the wine had gone round; he was an orator who committed to memory and made his own the speeches that his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... learning a song by a new composer, of whom she had never heard till now, and the manuscript lay open on a cushioned stool beside her. For a time she had followed the notes and words carefully with her voice, picking out the accompaniment on her lute from the figured bass, as musicians did in those days. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... one another, is the measure of his power. The violinist who plays best is the one who sings the most things together in his playing. He listens to his own bow, to the heart of his audience, and to the soul of the composer all at once. His instrument sings a singing that blends them together. The effect of their being together is called art. The effect of their being together is produced by the fact that they are together, that they are born and living and dying together in the man himself while ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... sonorous tones, greater extremes of pitch, and wider intervals, were gradually introduced; but also how there arose a greater variety and complexity of musical expression. For this same passionate, enthusiastic temperament, which naturally leads the musical composer to express the feelings possessed by others as well as himself, in extremer intervals and more marked cadences than they would use, also leads him to give musical utterance to feelings which they either ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the signal-lamp her quick Foul breath near quenches in hot eagerness To mix with breath as foul! no loosener O' the lattice, practised in the stealthy tread, The low voice and the noiseless come-and-go! Not one composer of the bacchant's mien Into—what you thought Mildred's, in a ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... but he hears the shout of the cuckoo, the song of the lark, "the hum of bees, and rustle of the bladed corn." And if, as usually happens, he has music in his soul, he has a realm of gold for his inheritance that makes life a perpetual holiday. Have you heard Mr. William Wolstenholme, the composer, improvising on the piano? If not, you have no idea what a jolly world the world of sounds can be to the blind. Of course, the case of the musician is hardly a fair test. With him, hearing is life and deafness death. There is no more pathetic story than that of Beethoven breaking the strings of ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... own—no man has begot it before him—and he can take no interest in anything else, until it is completed. Is this not true of the Painter, as he stands with his charcoal in hand thinking out his picture for next year's Academy?—of the Composer, seated before his piano and running his fingers with apparent want of design over the keys?—of the Author, as he walks to and fro and plans the details of his new plot?—of the Poet, as he gazes up into the skies and hears the rhythm ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... old Signore gave me some lessons. He told me an infallible rule for people with souls. I was to sing as if the composer was listening. I might sing scales and exercises if I liked. They had a use. They prevented one's spoiling the great composers by hacking them over and over before one ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the musical composer, in his recently published volume on The Philosophy of Modernism in its connection with Music, states that the criterion of lofty music, the method of gauging the spiritual value of art, "is only possible to him who has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... red, sensuous mouth, the lips of which were rapaciously drooping at the corners; the baroness Tefting, little, exquisite, pale—she was everywhere seen with the artiste; the famous lawyer Ryazanov; and Volodya Chaplinsky, a rich young man of the world, a composer-dilettante, the author of several darling little ballads and many witticisms upon the topics of the day, which ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Gretry, the composer, more than once consulted Diderot in moments of perplexity. It was not always safe, he says, to listen to the glowing man when he allowed his imagination to run away with him, but the first burst was of inspiration divine.[48] Painters found his suggestions as potent and as hopeful ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... power of the composer was not merely obvious, it was overwhelming. It was like "a sudden storm among mountains," "the wind-swept heavens at midnight," "the lonely sea": he struggled for the exactly-fitting simile. There was none, because of its many-sidedness. Loneliness remained as an ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... sophistication in society, and that mothers do not teach their daughters to fit themselves for wives and mothers? For they all seem to be setting traps to get husbands. Why, the young ladies of the present day are quite ashamed should they be ignorant of the name of the last new opera and its composer, but would feel quite indignant if they were asked whether they knew how to make good soup, or broil a beefsteak, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Presently I see an opening in the bushes on my left; the path leads me to a clump of evergreens. I follow it, and come suddenly on the great composer's grave. All about the green square mound the trees are thick—laurel, fir, and yew. The shades fall funereally across the immense gray granite slab; but over the dark foliage the sky is bright blue, and straight in front of me, above the low bushes, I ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... publishing a series of musical compositions, solicited the aid of Sir Arthur Sullivan. But it so happened that Sir Arthur's most famous composition, "The Lost Chord," had been taken without leave by American music publishers, and sold by the hundreds of thousands with the composer left out on pay-day. Sir Arthur held forth on this injustice, and said further that no accurate copy of "The Lost Chord" had, so far as he knew, ever been printed in the United States. Bok saw his chance, and also an ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... accumulations with which he bought land and house and tithes at Stratford, must have been his share in the takings of the theatre—a share which would doubtless increase as the earlier partners disappeared. He must have speedily become the principal man in the firm, combining as he did the work of composer, reviser, and adaptor of plays with that of actor and working partner. We are thus dealing with a temperament or mentality not at all obviously original or masterly, not at all conspicuous at the outset for intellectual depth or seriousness, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Perception; or when we recall, by the imitative Arts, both of them thro' the intermediate Power of the Imagination. Nor is this delightful and immediate Sensation to be excited in an undistempered Soul, but by a Chain of Truths, dependent upon one another till they terminate in the hand of the Divine COMPOSER of the whole. Let us cast our Eyes first upon the Objects of the Material World. A rural Prospect upon the very first Glance yields a grateful Emotion in the Breast, when in a Variety of Scenes there arises from the whole ONE Order, whose different Parts ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... themes had all been completed. After they had each copied out their respective verses, they handed them to Ying Ch'un, who took a separate sheet of snow-white fancy paper, and transcribed them together, affixing distinctly under each stanza the style of the composer. Li Wan and her assistants then began to read, starting from the first on the list, the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... negro work. They wove in a great deal of their peculiar, wild, mournful music, whenever the character of the labor permitted. They seemed to sing the music for the music's sake alone, and were as heedless of the fitness of the accompanying words, as the composer of a modern opera is of his libretto. One middle aged man, with a powerful, mellow baritone, like the round, full notes of a French horn, played by a virtuoso, was the musical leader of the party. He never seemed to bother himself about air, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... playwright, who is a sub-novelist) has been taking the bread out of the mouths of other artists. In the matter of poaching, the painter has done a lot, and the composer has done more, but what the painter and the composer have done is as naught compared to the grasping deeds of the novelist. And whereas the painter and the composer have got into difficulties with ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... offered; once a week, at least, she had a concert at her house, and the music-master from the cathedral, who directed this little band, came frequently to see her. This was a Parisian, named M. le Maitre, a good composer, very lively, gay, young, well made, of little understanding, but, upon the whole, a good sort of man. Madam de Warrens made us acquainted; I attached myself to him, and he seemed not displeased with me. A pension was talked of, and agreed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... my nature is to music, and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for God gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical talent, and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any composer." ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... supply the words of this old ballad, and state the name of the composer of the music to it? Also whether it was published, and, if so, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... born at Macon, Ga., on the third of February, 1842. His earliest known ancestor of the name was Jerome Lanier, a Huguenot refugee, who was attached to the court of Queen Elizabeth, very likely as a musical composer; and whose son, Nicholas, was in high favor with James I. and Charles I., as director of music, painter, and political envoy; and whose grandson, Nicholas, held a similar position in the court of Charles II. A portrait of the elder Nicholas ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the papal organist and choir-master, Palestrina (1524- 1594), appeared the first master-composer. He is justly esteemed as the father of modern religious music and for four hundred years the Catholic Church has repeated his inspired accents. A pope of the twentieth century declared his music to be still unrivaled ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Prometheus. This drama is a sublime enigma. Aeschylus was conservative and deeply religious. How could he write a play the hero of which is a benefactor of man struggling against the tyranny of the king of the gods, and the sequel of which found a fit and congenial composer in Shelley, whose sentiment and manner the "Prometheus Bound" wonderfully anticipates and perhaps helped to form? Again, how could the Athenians, in an age when their piety had not yet given way to scepticism, have endured such dramatic treatment of the ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... absolutely covered with ancient fragments of architecture and sculpture. The row of houses opposite to the museum is doomed to demolition, a process which has begun already at the north end. The house third from the south end, a small grocer's shop, is the one in which the great composer and musician Purcell lived. He was born in Great St. Ann's Lane near the Almonry, and his mother, as a widow, lived in Tothill Street. The boy at the very early age of six was admitted to the choir of ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... up. The audience began to move up the aisles to stretch its legs and discuss the piece during the intermission. There was a general babble of conversation. Here, a composer who had not got an interpolated number in the show was explaining to another composer who had not got an interpolated number in the show the exact source from which a third composer who had got an interpolated number in ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... a certain amount of humour in Arbuthnot's "History of John Bull," and in his "Harmony in an Uproar." A letter to Frederick Handel, Esquire, Master of the Opera House in the Haymarket, from Hurlothrumbo Johnson, Esquire, Composer Extraordinary to all the theatres in Great Britain, excepting ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... journals, the editors of which he first pesters, afterwards serves, and always despises. He may perhaps have dabbled in music, and caused a penniless friend who is musical to write for small pay songs which he honours by attaching his own name to them as their composer. Woe betide the unhappy aspirant to the honours of public singing who ignores the demand of this quasi-musical Turpin that she should sing his songs. For, having become in the meantime a musical critic, he will devote all his talents to the congenial task ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... instinctively our faces pucker up and our throat muscles become tense, in sympathetic but entirely unconscious imitation. In very much the same way in conducting, the leader sets the tempo,—and is imitated by the musicians under him; he feels a certain emotional thrill in response to the composer's message,—and arouses a similar thrill in the performers; lifts his shoulders as though taking breath,—and causes the singers to phrase properly, often without either the conductor or the singers being aware of how the direction ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... awakens these reflections in the poet is by a Venetian composer, Baldassare Galuppi, who was born in 1706, and died in 1785. He lived and worked in London from 1741 to 1744. "He abounded" (says Vernon Lee, in her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy) "in melody, tender, pathetic, and brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... possess intuitively more than, at the most, certain traits of his physiognomy, which enable us to distinguish him from others. The illusion is less easy as regards musical expression; because it would seem strange to everyone to say that the composer had added or attached notes to the motive, which is already in the mind of him who is not the composer. As if Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were not his own intuition and his own intuition the Ninth Symphony. Thus, just as he who is deceived as to his material ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... this time was aware of the publisher's wily ways; he could almost have constructed an Ollendorffian dialogue, entitled "Between a Music Publisher and a Composer." So he opened his portfolio again and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... short," we say, so soon as we can be heard above the applause. Is Miss Screecher quite sure that was the whole of it? Or has she been playing tricks upon us, the naughty lady, defrauding us of a verse? Miss Screecher assures us that the fault is the composer's. But she knows another. At this hint, our faces lighten again with ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... admiration of the vulgar: to you they would have brought no delight." This ostentatious stage-display finds its counterpart to some extent at the present day, and may remind us also of the huge orchestras of blaring sound which are the delight of the modern composer and the modern musical audience. And the plays were by no means the only part of the show. There were displays of athletes; but these never seem to have greatly interested a Roman audience, and Cicero says that Pompey confessed that they were ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... finds oneself when trying to realise this, falling back (perhaps because one gets so little help from current language) upon Plato's favourite metaphor of the arts. In music the noble and the base composer are not divided by the fact that the one appeals to the intellect and the other to the feelings of his hearers. Both must make their appeal to feeling, and both must therefore realise intensely the feelings of their audience, and ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... meaning plainer I will use an illustration. Take an author at his writing, a painter at his canvas, a composer listening to the melodies that dawn upon his glad imagination; let any one of these workers pass his daily hours by a wide window looking on a busy street. The power of the animating life blinds sight and hearing alike, and the great ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... us!" song was singularly suited to the great, bull voice of its composer, born to the red and become Captain Stransky in the red business of war. It was he who led the thunder of its verses not far from where Peterkin led the song of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... few names more associated with the brilliant days of Bath, the days of its social and artistic prominence, than those of Thomas Linley, the composer, and of his daughter, Eliza Anne, known abroad as "the Fair Maid of Bath." Linley was born there, in 1735; and after his studies in music on the Continent, under Paradies, he returned to the then fashionable city on the Avon. He conducted oratorios and concerts there, ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... an heir to the crowns of Aragon, Navarre, and Naples. "Plusieurs dames," says Mignot,[140] "attachées à la Reine, lui indiquèrent un breuvage qu'il fallait, disoit on donner à Ferdinand pour ranimer ses forces. Cette princese fit composer ce reméde, sous ses yeux, et le présenta au roi qui désirait, plus qu'elle, d'avoir un fils. Depuis ce jour, la santé de Ferdinand s'affaiblit, au point qu'il ne ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... congratulating me again today upon being the only composer of our days—of these days of deafening orchestral effects and poetical quackery—who has despised the new-fangled nonsense of Wagner, and returned boldly to the traditions of Handel and Gluck and the divine Mozart, to ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the provinces. All who felt qualified for the post were invited to present themselves at the office of Le Figaro, which in those days was appropriately located in the Rue Rossini, named, of course, after the illustrious composer who wrote such sprightly music round the theme of Beaumarchais' comedy. As a result of Villemessant's announcement, the street was blocked during the next forty-eight hours by men of all classes, who were all the more eager to earn the aforesaid ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... 'Translation of Fontenelle's Panegyrick on Dr. Morin.'[dagger] Two notes upon this appear to me undoubtedly his. He this year, and the two following, wrote the Parliamentary Debates. He told me himself, that he was the sole composer of them for those three years only. He was not, however, precisely exact in his statement, which he mentioned from hasty recollection; for it is sufficiently evident, that his composition of them began November 19, 1740, and ended February ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... many a musician of less fame had come to try his fortune. But we had had neither of the acknowledged masters of the piano, the founders of the modern school of playing—Liszt and Thalberg. Liszt, spoiled and capricious, played very seldom. Chopin, more a composer than a performer, we in America had never supposed would cross the sea: so sensitive, so delicate, so shadowy, his life seemed to exhale, a passionate sigh of music. In the stormy, blood-soaked, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... great advancement; but his reveng was so sweet that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and that in allusion to his name bore three lowses rampant for his arms. From an actor of playes he became a composer. He dyed Apr. 23, 1616, aetat 53, probably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a monument (Dugd. p. 520), on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one who shall remove his bones. He dyed a papist." The ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... of "Parisina" was announced for representation, and the principal actors were Coselli, Moriani, and La Specchia. The young men, therefore, had reason to consider themselves fortunate in having the opportunity of hearing one of the best works by the composer of "Lucia di Lammermoor," supported by three of the most renowned vocalists of Italy. Albert had never been able to endure the Italian theatres, with their orchestras from which it is impossible to see, and the absence of balconies, or open boxes; all these defects ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the aisle dedicated to the memory of that great English composer, Henry Purcell, and thus often called the "Musicians' Aisle," although the memorials to musicians are comparatively few. Purcell's modest tablet with the well-known epitaph, "Here lyes Henry Purcell, Esq., who left this life, and is gone to that blessed ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... the composer's commands, and played with might and main during the first thirty or forty bars, till the obligato part came, in which Miss was to exhibit her powers. She then, with all the dignity of a maestro di capella ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other the queen had the composer hanged, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... si on voulait rapporter tout ce que les Russes firent de memorable dans cette journee; pour conter les hauts faits d'armes, pour particulariser toutes les actions d'eclat, il faudrait composer des volumes."—Ibid., ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... first few passages had been played the leader lost his self-consciousness and forgot his surroundings. He began to feel the music, to compose it again, and the mechanism of the conductor was lost in the inspiration of the composer. It was a beautiful movement marked andante sostenuto—pathos itself, and Von Barwig drew from his men their very souls, forcing them in turn to draw out of their strings all the suffering he had been going through for the past few days. Then a curious psychic ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... an opera like Tann-häuser or Faust, in which the inconsiderate composer has placed a musical gem at the end, this lady is worth watching. After getting into her wraps and overshoes she stands, hand on the door, at the back of her box, listening to the singers; at a certain moment she hurries to the window, makes her signal, scurries ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... music were invaded by the dispute between the adherents of the King and the adherents of the prince. The King and Queen were supporters {51} of Handel, the prince was against the great composer. The prince in the first instance declared against Handel because his sister Anne, the Princess of Orange, was one of Handel's worshippers, therefore a great number of the nobility who sided with the prince ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Mendelssohn Bartholdy for instance, though not a composer, was evidently a man of genius, a philosopher of considerable intellectual capacity and moral strength. The father of the composer was a rich banker at Berlin, and he used to say: "When I was young I was ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Barere,[3250] to the composer of an opera, the performance of which had just been suspended: "as times go, you must not attract public attention. Do we not all stand at the foot of the guillotine, all, beginning with myself?" ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a very distinguished composer, who had published a number of successful pieces of all kinds and who liked nearly every form of music and every sort of musician. Clearly, therefore, it was the duty of every sort of musician to like M. Firmin Richard. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... you are pleasingly surprised by the sudden appearance of the statues of the most renowned English poets and philosophers, such as Milton, Thomson, and others. But, what gave me most pleasure was the statue of the German composer Handel, which, on entering the garden, is not far distant from ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... to England he was made a Knight of the Bath by Lord Palmerston, and a little later became the British Minister at St. Petersburg. In the autumn of 1856, while in Russia, he married Victoire Balfe, second daughter of Michael William Balfe, the distinguished musical composer, from whom he was divorced ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... was from the old cottage organ—the latter with its "Casket of Household Melodies" and the former with its perforated paper repertoire of "The World's Best Music," ranging without prejudice from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to "I Never Did Like a Nigger Nohow," by a composer who shall be unnamed on ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of surpassing interest to the musician. Whatever may be thought the true purpose of music, there can be no question as to one demand made on each individual instrument,—it must produce tones of sensuous beauty. A composer may delight in dissonances; but no instrument of the orchestra may produce harsh or discordant tones. Of beauty of tone the ear is the sole judge; naturally so, for the only appeal of the individual tone is to the ear. Melody, rhythm, and harmony ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... composer of an office in honour of the Archangel Raphael, left a saintly reputation, and pilgrimages were, for long, made to his tomb. According to Canon Freeman he raised the chapter house and glazed the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... to England I said to people, 'You have a brilliant young composer named Pair. Can you put me in the way of procuring his address?' The fortune he had come to seek he would surely have found; he would be a known man. But people looked blank, and declared they had never heard of him. I applied to music-publishers—with the same result. I wrote to ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland |
