"Contralto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It's all right to talk now." She gave a little laugh of satisfaction and he noted that her voice was contralto and well modulated. "This has been the best night's work yet. Did you think I ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... greatly promoted by one of those unreasonable objections people of Ann Veronica's temperament take at times—to the girl in the next cell to her own. She was a large, resilient girl, with a foolish smile, a still more foolish expression of earnestness, and a throaty contralto voice. She was noisy and hilarious and enthusiastic, and her hair was always abominably done. In the chapel she sang with an open-lunged gusto that silenced Ann Veronica altogether, and in the exercising-yard slouched round with carelessly ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... a rich contralto voice which had been carefully cultivated. Every evening in the twilight, with only the flickering of the wood fire in the room, she would sit at the piano and sing. Lane would close his eyes and let the mellow voice charm his every sense. It called up his highest feelings; it lingered ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... deep majestic contralto, accompanied by my own thin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent air the holy notes which to me are ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Esmeralda and I took contralto; there was practically no treble, for Honor's squeak was drowned fathoms deep; Geoffrey and Mr Carr droned bass, and Stanor Vaughan took tenor, rather out of tune it's true, but no man with that profile could be expected to condescend to bass! We sang 'Come ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... his real name also," said the elder woman in her deep, smooth contralto voice, and with the display of an admirable set of teeth. "The bills advertising the reward, and stating the fact of the murder, bore my ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... The Offertory was handled by Brother N.C.O.'s while super-imposed 3-D slides told the brethren at home exactly how to get their bux to Sowles. Meanwhile a battery of organs swept through the "Marseillaise", "Land Of Hope And Glory", and other U. S. of E. songs. Finally, a Guard contralto came forward and got the whole crowd on its feet to join her in singing "The ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... told where the sea lay. The stream at his feet sang its queer, crooning moor-song as it rambled onward, chuckling to meet a bed of pebbles somewhere out of sight, whispering mysteriously to the rushes that fringed its banks of peat, deepening to a sudden contralto as it poured over granite boulders into a scum-flecked ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... birches under which he stood, the flies, like a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the children's voices were floated across to him. All at once he heard, not far from the edge of the wood, the sound of Varenka's contralto voice, calling Grisha, and a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch's face. Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long while he could not get a match to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... In the contralto aria "He shall feed His flock," in Handel's Messiah, the unaccented word "shall" falls on the most strongly accented note of the bar. If performed thus, it would give a most aggressive character to the passage, implying that some one had previously denied the assertion. This would ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... establishment of the Demoiselles Denis, the chevalier was not thinking of uniting the three thousand livres which this generous mother gave to her daughters to the thousand crowns a year which the Abbe Brigaud had bestowed on him. The shrill treble of Mademoiselle Emilie, the contralto of Mademoiselle Athenais, the accompaniment of both, had recalled to his recollection the pure and flexible voice and the distinguished execution of his neighbor. Thanks to that singular power which a great preoccupation gives us over ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... my age and size,' she explained. 'Contralto, you know, but it ought to be stronger,' and she began, her face all dark against the last of ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... still raced at high tide. What an incomparable mate she would be for any man! The rich contralto of her voice, the slow, graceful turn of the exquisite head, the vividness she brought to all her activities! How easy it was to light in her fine eyes laughter, indignation, the rare smile of understanding! ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... broken-winded 'cello, nervous giggling and moaning of an excoriated violin—the three wringing from the score of O You Beautiful Doll an entirely adequate accompaniment to the perfunctory performance of a husky contralto. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a youthful nasal contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl instantly appeared, holding the ring in her fingers. "I reckoned it was you," she said, with an affected briskness, to conceal her evident dislike at parting with ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... such cases—but whatever may happen, I shall still be loyal; I shall always have your interests at heart.' Her words faltered and she turned her head away. 'You did love me once, Arthur, I can't forget that.' The contralto voice trembled ever so little, and the gloved hand smoothed gently ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... howl when Bud was extemporizing, Bud would rebuke him solemnly, explaining that it was not considered polite in the best circles to interrupt a soloist. And an evening was never complete without "Annie Laurie," and "Dixie," with Bondsman's mournful contralto gaming ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... scoured and put away in the baskets, the picnickers gathered about the dying bonfires for a "sing-song." This always included all the songs they loved best, the songs Mr. and Mrs. Lee had known in their youth and the songs of the present day. And Aunt Josephine's rich contralto rang above ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... a warm, full contralto of exquisite culture. It suggested depths of rich sound behind, from which the singer, if she chose, might draw, until the room and the deck and the sea ached with sweetness. I scarcely dared to look in to see who it was, lest I should find it a dream. I stood with my head turned away ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... old inquisitive, you will get nothing more out of me; so you must wait and not be too curious. I'm going off to see what papa is doing." She sprang to her feet, threw her arms round her sister's neck, gave her a final squeeze, and was gone. A chorus from Olivette, sung in her clear contralto, grew fainter and fainter until it ended in the slam of ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... music, of which he was passionately fond; though, like most American gentlemen, of his age, he had no knowledge of the art, and no other guide than a good ear, and good natural taste. Elinor's voice was a full, sweet contralto, which had been cultivated under the best masters in Philadelphia; and, as she never attempted what she could not perform with ease and grace, her music always gave pleasure. One or two of the other ladies followed her, at the piano—Mary Van Horne, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and her mother's contralto, and his baritone—a true baritone, not so well trained as their accurate notes—should be rising in spirited union with the curtain of that secret: there was matter for song and concert, triumph and gratulation in it. And during the whole passage of the bridge, he had not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... comes here with Molly," his wife returned, "Yes, I expected that sooner than now." The colonel gave the subject up. The ways of women were past his finding out. But Mrs. Culpepper had heard Jane Mason sing a duet in church with John Barclay, and the elder woman had heard in the big contralto voice of the girl something not meant for the preacher. And Mrs. Culpepper heard John answer it, so she knew what he did not know, what Jane Mason did not know, and what only Molly Culpepper suspected, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... and gayety, made Elizabeth feel how necessary it was to be composed; her husband was watching her still. Some one asked her to play; she took her seat at the piano and played one of her most brilliant pieces—to sing, and her rich contralto voice rang out with new passion and power. I tell you even women can only marvel at the power many of the sex preserve over themselves when playing for a great stake, and the least betrayal of look or movement ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... two children," Aline Goring murmured, in her soft contralto. "You remember Eugene? At the Springs that summer?" The husband, a tall, smooth-shaven, young man with glasses and the delicate air of the steam-heated American scholar ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... door opposite swung unlatched. With a mighty effort, the wrestler whirled his opponent clean through it, heard his frame crash into the berth at the back, and slammed the door to after him, only to be apprised, by a lamentable yell in a deep contralto voice, that he had made ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... she said she would; but, for all that, a fortnight later she was walking down the wharf with the "mountain woman," and I was sauntering beside Leroy. At dinner Jessica gave me no chance to talk with our friend's wife, and I only caught the quiet contralto tones of her voice now and then contrasting with Jessica's vivacious soprano. A drizzling rain came up from the east with nightfall. Little groups of shivering men and women sat about in the parlors at the card-tables, and one blond ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... carried her to the little rocker by the window and with a look that was the very essence of motherhood began to rock the two year old to sleep. Presently there floated down to Amos, smoking his pipe on the front step, Lydia's childish, throaty contralto: ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... have no idea how brutally violent you are when you want some little thing you ought not to have. It aches like anything," retorted the other voice, its very complaints uttered in such melodious tones of contralto music that the listener found himself wishing with all his might to know if the face of its owner could by any possibility match the loveliness of her voice. Dark, he fancied she must be, and young, and strong—of education, of a gay wit, yet of a temper—all this the listener ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the refrain without further hesitation. Marian sang with him. Mrs. Fairfax and the clergyman looked furtively at one another, but forbore to swell the chorus. Miss McQuinch sang a few words in a piercing contralto voice, and then stopped with a gesture of impatience, feeling that she was out of tune. Marian, with only Conolly to keep her in countenance, felt relieved when Marmaduke, thrice encored, entered the room in triumph. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Woman - Marble of Paros A Study of Hands I Imperia II Lacenaire Variations on the Carnival of Venice: I On the Street II On the Lagoons III Carnival IV Moonlight Symphony in White Major Coquetry in Death Heart's Diamond Spring's First Smile Contralto Eyes of Blue The Toreador's Serenade Nostalgia of the Obelisks: I The Obelisk in Paris II The Obelisk in Luxor Veterans of the Old Guard, December 15 Sea-Gloom To a Rose-Coloured Gown The World's Malicious Ines de las Sierras — To Petra Camara Odelet, After Anacreon Smoke Apollonia ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, "Les Emaux et Camees," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the adjective blanc and blanche is repeated with miraculous felicity in each stanza. And then Contralto,— ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the Julius Caesar were Miss Topsy Cooney, the famous coloured pianist, who plays only on the black keys and entirely by ear; Little Dinky, the marvellous calculating boy, who does not know the names of the numbers; and Elaine Runnymede, the child contralto, who can only sing the whole ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... at you, Phemie," said Clementina in a deep contralto voice, which seemed even deeper from its restraint. "You don't seem to have any sense. Anybody'd think you never had seen a ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... they disappeared into an enormous excavation, and behind the summer-house I happened upon a bear asleep and retreated hurriedly. But on going towards the house I heard a well-known voice. "That is Augusta Holmes singing her opera," I said; "she sings all the different parts—soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass." At this time we were all talking about her, and I stood by the window listening until suddenly a well-known smell interrupted her. It was Ninon's cat that had misconducted herself. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the bow across the instrument, once, twice, and then she began to play, forgetful of the world. She had a contralto voice, and she sang with a depth of feeling and a delicate form worthy of a professional; on the piano she was effective and charming, but into the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on the coat, carefully adjusting the collar. Then fingering an imaginary watch-chain, she began. Her face grew grave—her neck seemed to thicken. Her voice was a throaty contralto. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... articulated firmly, and in a contralto voice of singular volume and sweetness, sent Karl skipping; but their effect on Mr. Ashmead was more remarkable. He started up from his chair with an exclamation, and bent his eyes eagerly on the melodious speaker. He could only see her back hair and her figure; ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the whitewashed wall and stared at me in bold, though not unfriendly curiosity, which, undoubtedly, I reciprocated. She was evidently sizing me up. I smiled, and she screwed her full, sensitive mouth into a judicial expression, puckering her forehead; then, in a deep, contralto voice, she spoke. What she said I didn't hear, or rather didn't grasp, in my wonder at the quality and timbre of that great voice, which, issuing from the folds of the checked apron, seemed fairly to fill the big hall below and the stair-well above with a deep, beautiful sound. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... It was a rich contralto voice, that of a boy rather than a man, the slight blur of the South distinguishable ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... to make him speak, and did not know how to break through his moody silence. Suddenly she leaned back in the boat and began to sing in a rich contralto voice that moved him. He had never heard her sing before, had never heard any good singing for many years indeed, and he was fond of singing. The song she sang was a Portuguese love-song, very tender and passionate, addressed by a bereaved lover to his dead mistress, and she put much expression ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... mild-eyed individual for the part of accompanyist in the comedy we call life; a role he sometimes varied as now, with the office of claqueur, when an uncommonly clever proof of madame's talent for business drew from him this noiseless tribute of applause. His weak, fat contralto called after us, as we followed madame's quick steps up the waxed stairway; he would be in readiness, he said, to show us the garden, "once the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... tintinabulation &c v.; reflexion [Brit.], reflection, reverberation; echo, reecho; zap, zot [Coll.]; buzz (hiss) 409. low note, base note, bass note, flat note, grave note, deep note; bass; basso, basso profondo [It]; baritone, barytone^; contralto. [device to cause resonance] echo chamber, resonator. [ringing in the ears] tinnitus [Med.]. [devices which make a resonating sound] bell, doorbell, buzzer; gong, cymbals (musical instruments) 417. [physical resonance] sympathetic vibrations; natural ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... enthusiastic interest in the matter of our discourse and, in the moments of silence, by the sympathetic current of our thoughts. And this rapidly growing familiarity (truly, she had a terrible gift for it) had all the varieties of earnestness: serious, excited, ardent, and even gay. She laughed in contralto; but her laugh was never very long; and when it had ceased, the silence of the room with the light dying in all its many windows seemed to lie about me warmed by ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... dealt more bountifully with Mrs. Abel than with Lady Lottie Passingham. Though Mrs. Abel had no desire to reform the universe, and was conscious of no mission to that end, she possessed a voice which might have produced a revolution. It was a soft contralto, vibrant and rich, and tremulous with tones which the gods would have come from Olympus to hear. She never sang, but her speech was music, rich and rare. In early life, as I have said, she had been on the stage, and Art had completed the gifts of Nature. Here ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... notes of the well-known aria, and hardly had Roger heard the magnificent contralto of the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... matter-of-course, making apparently no claim whatever upon the smallest share of my attention. When the long and tedious meal was at an end, upon her uncle's suggestion, she seated herself at the piano, and sang in a deep, powerful contralto, Schubert's magnificent arrangement of ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... now sing for you," announced a contralto to a woman's club meeting in the Copley-Plaza, "a composition by one of Boston's noted composers, Mr. Chadwick. 'He loves me.'" And of course everybody thought ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... approaching quickly. How youthful and self-reliant her voice sounded! The sweet, girlish contralto jarred painfully upon at least two of our tense, waiting group. And Belle continued ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... there was something almost pathetic—as in meeting an old nurse in much reduced circumstances—about this trickle among the peat and moss. Lower down, however, it widened, and the water poured over granite boulders, with a bell-like contralto note, into a succession of ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... I sing, darling?" she mused: she was unused to singing babies to sleep. Suddenly a little kindergarten melody she had heard came to her, and she sang softly in her rich, tender contralto the swinging cradle-song:— ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... friend, Miss Vincent. Every word they spoke betrayed the difference between them: the sharp tones of Lurida's head-voice, penetrative, aggressive, sometimes irritating, revealed the corresponding traits of mental and moral character; the quiet, conversational contralto of Euthymia was the index of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... heads of the two young people close together, for the shutters were now wide open; an instant later the light went out and the music began again. It was a madrigal this time, airy and changing, and sung by four men, one of whom had a beautiful male contralto, which is a rarity even in Italy. Stradella recognised it instantly, for he had often sung at the Lateran and knew ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... on the now deserted pavement, exhorting and cheering him, a loud contralto voice vulgarised by an Italian accent ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... papers. I watchfully waited, Yearning a coup that would place him on the Musical map. A coup, such as kissing a Marshal Joffre, Aeroplaning over the bay, Diving with Annette Kellerman. Then for three days I quit the city To get a simple contralto into the western papers. Returning I entered my office; the phone jangled. The burly tenor was tearfully sobbing and moaning over the wire; Tremor and emotion choked his throat. This was his ominous message: A taxicab accident almost had killed ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... sentimental by nature, was much pleased with Susan's contralto. "You do not know how to sing," said he. "You sing in your throat and you've got all the faults of parlor singers. But the voice is there—and much expressiveness—much temperament. Also, you have intelligence—and that will make a very little ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... has a low, contralto voice which ought to have some machine oil on it. The voice of this animal is not unpleasant if he would pull some of the pathos out of it and make ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... poetic, a man without the finer discriminations, enjoying everything with the unreasoning enthusiasm of a boy. He was the poet of the dung hill as well as of the mountains, which is admirable in theory but excruciating in verse. In the same paragraph he informs you that, "The pure contralto sings in the organ loft," and that "The malformed limbs are tied to the table, what is removed drop horribly into a pail." No branch of surgery is poetic, and that hopelessly prosaic word "pail" would kill a whole volume of sonnets. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... sweet contralto bells call the community, who get up gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never grows easy or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is something to have found but one act aloof from habit. It is not merely that the friars overcome the habit of sleep. The subtler ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... the table, Eloise went to the piano without being asked, and sang to them for more than an hour. She chose folk-songs and tender melodies—little songs made of tears and laughter, and the simple ballads that never grow old. She had a deep, vibrant contralto voice of splendid range and volume; she sang with rare sympathy, and every word ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... engaged in deadly and bitter feud with the rest. When the moon-eyed soprano arose, with a gentle flutter, and opened her charming mouth in solo, her friends settled themselves in their pews with a general rustle of satisfaction, while the friends of the contralto exchanged civilly significant glances; and on the way home the solo in question was disposed of in a manner at once thorough and final. The same thing occurred when the contralto was prominent, or the tenor, or the baritone, or the basso, each of whom ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... quite aghast. I had never met such an athletic singer. When I asked her to let me hear her voice, however, a tiny stream of contralto sound ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... that a woman should show so much intelligence, and so, raising my dorsal spine, I began to rub up against her legs and to purr lovingly with the deepest chords of my contralto voice. ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... be deafened,' said Rose, laughing, as she escaped from him a moment, to arrange for a song from a tall formidable maiden, built after the fashion of Mr. Gilbert's contralto heroines, with a voice which bore out the ample promise of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for the children to go home, with a tray on which there was a pitcher of something nice and cold that tasted of orange, and some small doughnuts. Miss Rand sat down on an apple branch, which seat she preferred to a chair, and she sang for them, at Peggy's request, some Scotch songs, in a sweet contralto voice. ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... noticed, was in no way intimidated by a title in our midst, but wagered that Lady Allie's voice would be a contralto and suggested that we all try On the Road to Mandalay together. But Lady Allie acknowledged that she had neither a voice nor an ear, and would prefer listening. We couldn't remember the words, however, and the song wasn't much of a success. I think ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... up and stood beside her, looking down in his very gentle and individual way. He smoothed the front of his djelabieh, lifted his rose, smelt it, and said in his low contralto voice: ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... policeman on the pavement. The passing motor cars were like shadows. Their stertorous pantings sounded to Mrs. Greyne's ears like the asthma of dying monsters. She sighed again, and murmured in a deep contralto voice: "It must be so." Then she got up, crossed the heavy Persian carpet which had been bought with the proceeds of a short story in her earlier days, and placed her forefinger ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... the high prices paid to fortunate artists in these times may be found in the fact that Alboni, the famous contralto singer, has been engaged to sing at Madrid, at the enormous rate of $400 dollars per day, while Roger, the tenor, who used to sing at the Comic Opera at Paris, and who was transplanted to the Grand Opera ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... into some cadence which was not exactly right. To the modes of raising the voice, which are usually divided into three—the high or treble, the low or bass, and that which is between the two, the contralto and tenor—many others are added. There are the eager and the soft, the higher and the lower notes, the quicker and the slower. It seems little to us, who know that we can speak or whisper, hammer our words together, or drawl them out. But then every listener was critically alive to the fact ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... we were mother and daughter. Edith!" she called. Then, in the next moment, Rosemary found herself in the living-room, offering a rough, red hand to an exquisite creature who seemed a blurred mass of pale green and burnished gold, redolent of violets, and who murmured, in a beautifully modulated contralto: "How do you do, Miss Starr! I am very glad to ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... contentedly back at her from, his place beside the chauffeur, of a particularly demure kitten in the presence of two well-bred but definitely intentioned hunting dogs. She was very quiet, and only now and then he caught a word or two from her or the low sound of her attractive contralto laugh. ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... those odd words were the first that Mr. Caryll heard from her lips. They made an excellent impression upon him, bearing witness to her good sense and judgment—although belatedly aroused—and informing him, although the pitch was strained just now; that the rich contralto of her voice was full of music. He was a judge of voices, as of much ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to hear him. It was not the same Pen, yawning in a shooting jacket, in the Fairoaks parlour, who appeared alert and brisk, and smiling and well dressed, in Lady Clavering's drawing-room. Sometimes they had music. Laura had a sweet contralto voice, and sang with Blanche, who had had the best continental instruction, and was charmed to be her friend's mistress. Sometimes Mr. Pen joined in these concerts, or oftener looked sweet upon Miss Blanche as she sang. Sometimes they had glees, when Captain Strong's chest was of vast service, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sang 'Darby and Joan,' in a sweet contralto, but with a doleful slowness which hung heavily upon the spirits of the company, and a duly dismal effect having been produced, the young ladies were ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... was not pure: it had the rich depth and pathos of contralto, and the vibrant clearness of soprano. Now it threaded a tremulous pathway among the pathetic minor notes, while the fingers seemed to drop a faint ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which may be either tenor, contralto, soprano ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... original character of the page, transplanted from French comedy to Italian opera, Mozart's conception of that character, Mozart's specific quality of emotion and specific style of musical utterance, together with the contralto's interpretation of the character and rendering of the music, according to her intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice, have collaborated with the individuality of the hearer. Some of the constituents of the ever-varying product—a product which is new ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and her past; but Hugh had an inkling that there had been some deep disappointment in the background, which had turned a passionately affectionate nature into a fastidious and critical temperament. She had a wonderful contralto voice, and a real genius for music; she could rarely be persuaded to touch an instrument; but occasionally, with a small and familiar party, she would sing a few old songs with a passion and a depth of melancholy feeling that produced an almost physical ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mrs. Gordon said, "Won't you sing something?" and Mary sat down to the piano and sang to them. Such singing no one there had ever heard before. Her deep contralto voice was powerful, flexible, and obviously well-trained; besides which she had the great natural gift of putting "feeling" into her singing. The children sat spellbound. The station-hands and house-servants, who had been playing the concertina and yarning on the wood-heap at the back of ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... determination to have her own way in the matter of her heart, in spite of all that her tyrannical guardian or anybody else can do. This cavatina has been the show piece of hundreds of singers ever since it was written. Signora Giorgi-Righetti, the first Rosina, was a contralto, and sang the music in the key of E, in which it was written. When it became one of Jenny Lind's display airs, it was transposed to F and tricked out with a great abundance of fiorituri. Adelina Patti in her youth used so to overburden ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in the "Darby and Joan" of the song. They belong to song-land. To accept them I need a piano, a sympathetic contralto voice, a firelight effect, and that sentimental mood in myself, the foundation of which is a good dinner well digested. But there are Darbys and Joans of real flesh and blood to be met with—God bless them, and ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... head at the sound of a girl's voice. Somewhere rearward to the hedge the girl idly sang—an old song of Thomas Heywood's,—in a serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... she would sit close to the bed, so that Marion would lose nothing of the large face, with its beak nose and its bagging chin and its insulting expression of outraged common sense, or of the strangulated contralto in which she would urge that there was no reason why any sensible gel should not be proud to marry the butler at Torque House. By sheer noisiness she would make Marion cry. The child would doubt again.... ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... in for us, Lolita—Rudolf and me." She laughed outright now. Pearl's laughter was ever a disagreeable surprise; low, harsh, unpleasantly vibrant, and in strange dissonance to her soft, contralto voice. "Lay you any odds you say, Lolita, that it's poor old Bob that's got ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... up her mind to stay in the kitchen and then loses her mind. A product of modern society who has for her motto "Dimuendo contralto dumdum," which means, "She who cooks and runs away will ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... the thrasher for his liking and he slips down into the brush. And then, by rare good fortune, a blue-bird begins his song. He has been chided by some because he has a magnificent contralto voice and scarcely ever uses it. Have we not been taught to chide the man who hides his talent in a napkin, or his light under a bushel? But how he can sing when he does sing! This is one of the ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... lady, in a sweet contralto. "I think I am not mistaken; this is the young lady who arrived last evening, and is registered,"—she looked full in the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Lucretia was highly accomplished. In the evening, having refused several distinguished guests, but instantly yielding to the request of Lord Monmouth, she sang. It was impossible to conceive a contralto of more thrilling power, or an execution more worthy of the voice. Coningsby, who was not experienced in fine singing, listened as if to a supernatural lay, but all agreed it was of the highest class of nature and of art; and the Grand-duke was in raptures. Lucretia received even ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... first and playing the lead in theatricals, and Rena Drew was more prominent, president of the class and the debating society, and the proud owner of the strongest voice in the school quartette, a fine big contralto which wrapped itself round Judith's small, clear soprano at public appearances and nearly extinguished it. Willard, the most eligible of the boys, was Judith's unquestioned property, otherwise nothing distinguished her. She was one of the crowd, and accepted the fact demurely, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... exceedingly sweet and rich; an uncommon contralto; and when she sang one of these hymns, it came with its fall power. Mrs. Armadale heard her, and murmured a "Praise the Lord!" And Charity, getting the breakfast, heard her; ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... and singer, Cavalier Nicolino Grimaldi, commonly called Nicolini, had made his first appearance in an opera called 'Pyrrhus and Demetrius,' which was the last attempt to combine English with Italian. His voice was a soprano, but afterwards descended into a fine contralto, and he seems to have been the finest actor of his day. Prices of seats at the opera were raised on his coming from 7s. 6d. to 10s. for pit and boxes, and from 10s. 6d. to 15s. for boxes on the stage. When this paper was written he had appeared also in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had prepared him for a rather magnificent person, young, probably, because the dead man might be of his own age within a year, but decidedly impressive. He had gone so far as to imagine her an actress, of the sinuous, well-rounded type, who would address him in a deep contralto, and, if and when she fainted, would sink gracefully on to a couch ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... "Joscelyn Burnett, the famous contralto, is spending a few days in Kensington on her return from her Maritime concert tour. She is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Bromley, ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... restrain herself and began to chime in with him, and their singing proved to be very harmonious. Little by little, when she had by degrees completely ceased to be embarrassed before the prince, they sang together more and more frequently. Liubka proved to have a very soft and low contralto, even though thin, on which her past life with its colds, drinking, and professional excesses had left absolutely no traces. And mainly—which was already a curious gift of God—she possessed an instinctive, inherent ability very exactly, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... heard it well but in a dream, and it was the same—a very rich and modulated voice—low—contralto, with many varied and delightful inflexions; and she used more action in speaking than the generality of Englishwomen, thereby reminding me of Madame Seraskier. I noticed that her hands were long and very narrow, and also ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... rain wetting her face. Under the tin roof, the air was filled with the rattling reverberation of the rain. The woman lifted her head and, with the rain beating down upon her, began singing, her fine contralto voice rising above the rattle of the rain on the roof and going on uninterrupted by the crash of the thunder. She sang of a lover riding through the storm to his mistress. One refrain persisted ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... girl I told you about, who is going to marry my cousin Giovanni, Prince Della Robbia's younger brother," said Idina Bland to her companion; "the Miss Grant who has been so much talked about here." Idina had a contralto voice, with tones in it almost as deep as those of a very young man. It was musical, and gave an effect of careful training, as if she had studied voice-production and had become self-conscious ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of a quiet, haunting strangeness, and from the end of the words "Thou who hast heart so gay," the maiden perfected it by interweaving an exquisite contralto ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... there floated out a voice of the kind that in his childhood he used to call "creamy" a full, true contralto; and this is the song that he heard, every ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... who dug the ice-house and piled the coast wall and blasted out trenches for draining would stop and lean on their picks, when her resonant, golden humming, like a drowsy contralto bee, floated out from the verandah vines to them: I have seen their faces clear and their dull eyes focus suddenly on some distant, darling memory, while they dropped back for a precious minute into the past that you think is all bread and cheese and beer, because, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... tell," said Freda, and there was a shade of sadness in her tone. Her voice was deeper than most women's voices—a rich contralto with something striking and individual about it. I could hear her quite plainly; but Derrick spoke less distinctly—he always had a ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... a brilliant musical career. It was she who had encouraged me to develop my voice; but I never could have been the great artist that Laura might have been. A famous impresario had judged her voice to be so fine—it was a glorious contralto—that he had offered to advance money for her musical studies abroad. He assured Laura that in three years she would be a blazing star ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... was the same rich contralto whose promise had routed the Howland millions years ago. "Our poor gallant men! When will this ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... lady in a yellow wig livened things up with a rendering of Tosti's "Good-bye" in a cracked contralto. While the audience was applauding, Joan noticed that Jack Leclerc got up. He was making his way gently to the door, evidently anxious to escape observation. Her heart was in her mouth, but she sat on stonily, determined that he should not know she ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... of champagne. In the room he found also a boy with a little hand organ, a healthy-looking red-cheeked girl of eighteen, wearing a tucked-up striped skirt, and a Tyrolese hat with ribbons. In spite of the chorus in the other room, she was singing some servants' hall song in a rather husky contralto, to the accompaniment of ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... open to the music of Nature, must have observed how different are the songs sung by different brooks. Some are a mere tinkling, others are sweet as silver bells, with a tone besides which no bell ever had. Some sing in a careless, defiant tone. This one sung in a veiled voice, a contralto muffled in the hollows of overhanging banks, with a low, deep, musical gurgle in some of the stony eddies, in which a straw would float for days and nights till a flood came, borne round and round in a funnel-hearted ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... a mistress's quiet authority in her boyish contralto voice, "put Glory in the covered wagon, and drive down the road as far as the valley turning. There's a man lying near the right bank, drunk, or sick, may be, or perhaps crippled by a fall. Bring him up here, unless somebody has found him already, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... three prime donne. These were the Signore Steffanone, Bosio, and Tedesco. Its only contralto was the Signora Vietti. There were three tenors—Salvi, Bettini, and Lorini. Badiali and Corradi Setti were the two barytones, while the two bassi were Marini and Coletti. At the head of this extraordinary company was the great ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sell. I tried to scratch, but Parks said they were hard up for a good contralto; so I had to go in the team. I'm to be third man up in the anthem to-morrow—got half a line ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... was a naked laughing boy, with a fine contralto that rang out so merrily through all the din as to create something of a sensation in the hotel. A young woman, one of the guests, came out upon the balcony to look, and exclaimed: 'That boy's voice is RED'—whereat everybody ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... not as absurd as it may seem, for it is a fact that the voice which is called a contralto, if it is a good and clear and fairly resonant voice, sounds at a distance very much indeed like a 'cello or the lower register of a violin. And that is especially true when the voice is hushed to a half-articulate murmur. Indeed, this is but one of the many strange peculiarities of that most ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room, for he had recognized Penny Crain's sweet, husky contralto. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... he assented, "he was very, very old—too old for such a beautiful young wife." She started. "Not too old, M. Chardon," she said, slightly raising her contralto voice: "What if he was thirty years my senior! He married me to spare me the peril and fatigue of a singer's life; few women can stand them—I least of all. He loved me with a pure, narrow affection. I was his daughter, his staff. You, he often ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... India, or what was the difference, if any, between the Golden Gate and the Golden Horn. Mrs. Trent was large, sultry, well-informed and supercilious; had the lustrous eyes of a Spaniard, and spoke in a warm contralto voice. Her figure was magnificent, and she prided herself on having a masculine intellect. Her enemies said that she had ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Cecilia Morland, a young woman rather tall and fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely reddish-brown tint on her face, indicative of healthy, warm, rich pulsations. She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality like that of a blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing. She was dressed in a fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was usual in the gatherings at Mr Palmer's house, and Frank, as he stood beside her at the piano, could not restrain his eyes ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford |
