"Pianoforte" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... holiday, hearing that an auction was to take place at the neighbouring town, at which a pianoforte was for sale, set off to attend it. There was some competition, but he had 20 pounds in his pocket, saved from his earnings, and it was finally knocked down to him at that price. With proud satisfaction he at once hired a spring cart, and set off with it for his home, where he had it placed while ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... whole, must, as a rule, have been laboriously acquired, in respect of most of the movements that are necessary in order to effect it. How long does it not take each note to find its way from the eyes to the fingers of one who is beginning to learn the pianoforte; and, on the other hand, what an astonishing performance is the playing of the professional pianist. The sight of each note occasions the corresponding movement of the fingers with the speed of thought—a hurried glance at the page of music before him suffices to give rise to a whole ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... good wine to the excellence of a dinner. No hostess should tax her friends for this part of the entertainment. It is the most injudicious economy imaginable. Ladies who would prefer to dance are tied to the pianoforte; and as few amateurs have been trained in the art of playing dance music with that strict attention to time and accent which is absolutely necessary to the comfort of the dancers, a total and general discontent is sure to result. To play dance music thoroughly well is a branch of ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Mendelssohn; the Jugend Album, Op. 68, of Schumann; the pianoforte sonatas of Mozart (Peters edition); ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... Ground bass, or pedal point, and singing in parts, as well as bands of harpers and pipers, were in vogue in Ireland before the coming of the English. Dante, quoted by Galilei, testifies to the fact that Italy received the harp from Ireland; and, it may be added, the Irish harp suggested the pianoforte. In the Anglo-Norman ballad, "The Entrenchment of New Ross"—in 1265—allusion is made to pipes and flutes, and carols and dancing. Another poem, dating from about 1320, refers to Irish dances in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... young people to "come out," but the noble ambition of matrimony? What sends them trooping to watering-places? What keeps them dancing till five o'clock in the morning through a whole mortal season? What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas, and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson, and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may bring down ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pianoforte, and her music on the top—the songs he loved best; she had actually left Mendelssohn there to be seen—a very bait to awaken his passion. She thought she actually saw the fretful impatience with which he threw the music aside and walked to the window ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... walls with a trellis of roses; I had the ceiling colored with clouds and sky; the barred windows were screened with venetian blinds; and when my book cases were set up with their busts and flowers, and a pianoforte made its appearance, perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side of the water.... There was a little yard outside, railed off from another belonging to a neighboring ward. This yard I shut in with green palings, adorned it with a trellis, bordered ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... GREEN was an auctioneer, And made three hundred pounds a year; And HARRIET HALE, most strange to say, Gave pianoforte lessons at ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... shawl about her shoulders and looked at herself in the glass. The proprietor took it to the light, gathered it up in his hands, smoothed it out, showed the gloss on it, played on it as Liszt plays on the pianoforte keys. ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... her gifted father a great talent for music. She was a remarkably skilful performer upon the pianoforte. So retentive was her memory that she could play without notes a large portion of the works of Handel, Beethoven ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... summer night in Venice, about stars, dark waters and dark palaces, heat, and the sound of music, and of gondoliers calling over the lagoons to their comrades. It was an exquisite voice; not large, but flexible and very warm. The pianoforte accompaniment was rather uneasy and faltering. Now and then, when it became blurred and wavering, the voice was abruptly hard and decisive, once even piercing and almost shrewish. Then the pianist, as if attacked by fear, played louder and ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... selections" at the evening concerts. Amongst the performers who made their debut in Birmingham were Madame Malibran-Garcia, Mdlle. Blasis, Miss Fanny Ayton, Signor Costa, Signor Guibelei, Mrs. Anderson (who gave pianoforte lessons to Princess Victoria), and Mr. Charles Lucas (violoncello). Receipts, L9,771; ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... by so doing, takes it off our hands. How difficult it is to learn to drive a motor-car. How carefully, at first, we have to double de-clutch and obtain the right engine speed for a noiseless "change," yet, after a time, the whole action is performed sub-consciously. It is the same with pianoforte playing. Many players, some better than others, can play the most difficult classical music without consciously recalling it to mind. As soon as they try to remember the whole "piece" leaves them, but as ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... genius in a woman! Of his neighbours generally, Mrs. Baerens, the wife of a German merchant, an exquisite player on the pianoforte, was the most inclined to lead him to speak of Lady Camper. She was a kind prattling woman, and was known to have been a governess before her charms withdrew the gastronomic Gottfried Baerens from his devotion to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... two acrobats, each equally skilful, one will be individual and an artist, the other will remain consummately skilful and uninteresting; the one having begun where the other leaves off. Now Busoni can do, on the pianoforte, whatever he can conceive; the question is, what can he conceive? As he sat at the piano playing Chopin, I thought of Busoni, of the Bechstein piano, of what fingers can do, of many other extraneous things, never of Chopin. I saw the pianist with the Christ-like ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Messrs. Breitkopf and Hartel (to reward me for my abstemiousness, Weinlich induced them to publish this poor composition). From that moment he gave me a free hand. To begin with I was allowed to compose a Fantasia for the pianoforte (in F sharp minor) which I wrote in a quite informal style by treating the melody in recitative form; this gave me intense satisfaction because it won me praise ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... fairly well Mendelssohn's canzonet quartet and Schumann's pianoforte quintet Op. 44; but we recall no musical works heard by him for the first time in very late life making any particular impression on the Father, with one notable exception; Cherubini's First Requiem in C minor, done at the Festival, August 29, 1879. We were to have gone with him, but a Father ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... and Berton, used to receive so many invitations, that he was forced to keep a list of engagements, much as barristers note down the cases for which they are retained. And Pons behaved like an artist. He presented his amphitryons with copies of his songs, he "obliged" at the pianoforte, he brought them orders for boxes at the Feydeau, his own theatre, he organized concerts, he was not above taking the fiddle himself sometimes in a relation's house, and getting up a little impromptu dance. In those days, all the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Frothingham, not quite twenty-one, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, and, according to her friends, promised to excel alike on the piano and the violin, having at the same time a 'really remarkable' contralto voice. Of late the young lady had abandoned singing, rarely used the pianoforte, and seemed satisfied to achieve distinction as a violinist. She had founded an Amateur Quartet Society, whose performances were frequently to be heard at the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... which immediately attracted the attention of the two young ladies, who told us they had seen us at church, where they were in the choir. They were beginning to learn some pieces to sing at Christmas, and, producing a pianoforte copy, asked my brother to play the accompaniment while they tried them over. He made some excuses, but they said they knew he could play as soon as they heard him strike the chords; so, as his excuses were not ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... difficulty in inducing the pianists to come back. Indeed, there are many artists of great renown whom the managers would be glad to coax to our country but who have withheld tempting offers for years. One of these is Moritz Moszkowski, probably the most popular of modern pianoforte composers of high-class music. Grieg, when he finally consented to make the voyage to America, placed his price at two thousand five hundred dollars for every concert—a sum which any manager would regard prohibitive, except in the case ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... polkas; harmonic societies; choral societies; melodists' clubs; glee clubs; madrigal clubs. Here you have the quiet announcement of a quartett-party; next to it, the advertisement of one of the Philharmonic Societies—the giants of the musical world; pianoforte teachers announce one of their series of classic performances; great instrumental soloists have each a concert for the special behoof and glorification of the beneficiaire. Mr So-and-so's grand annual concert jostles Miss So-and-so's annual benefit ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... what had brought about the sudden change? Why had no inkling of it crept to his ears? Why was she, the passionate pleader for the decencies of life whom he had last watched so patiently and heroically imparting the mastery of the pianoforte to seven little English children in a squalid Paris pension, now lapsing back into the old and fiercely abjured avenue of irresponsibility? Why had she weakened and surrendered, when he himself, the oldtime weakling of the two, had ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... sort of cleanliness. Of such a man, it is said, in contradistinction to others, that he is an educated man. In a little higher circle, what they call education means the same thing as with the people; only to the conditions of education are added playing on the pianoforte, a knowledge of French, the writing of Russian without orthographical errors, and a still greater degree of external cleanliness. In a still more elevated sphere, education means all this with the addition of the English language, and a diploma from the highest educational institution. But ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... pianoforte studies, I beg you will keep him strictly to them; otherwise his music-master would be of no use. Yesterday Carl could not play the whole day, I have repeatedly wished to hear him play over his lessons, but have been obliged to ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... rumbling thumping sound overhead. I soon discovered the cause of this, when I entered the flat where the musician was at work. He was seen in violent action, beating or hammering on the keys of a gigantic pianoforte-like apparatus. The instruments he used were two great leather-faced mallets, one of which he held in each hand. Each key was connected by iron rods with the chime-bells above. The frantic and mad-like movements of the musician, as he energetically rushed from one key to another, often widely ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... disillusion, and he must be ingenuous indeed if he expects the Spaniards to have preserved their national costume for the most national of their pastimes. Yet the dances are still Spanish; and even if the pianoforte has ousted the guitar, the castanets give, notwithstanding, a characteristic note which the aggressive muslin and the pink, ill-fitting tights ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Captain, and I am not to blame.... Mine is an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain, and I always, always dislike any scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles again, and then he lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and that is not at all right in an honourable house, and he ganz broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said so. And he took up a bottle and began hitting everyone with it. And then I called the porter, and Karl came, and he took Karl and hit him ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... gentleman, with whom he had been staying, and who says that he is very pleasing and unaffected, and very easily amused, and quite pleased "with missing a few pheasants, and dancing quadrilles in the evening to a pianoforte." Poor fellow! his fate certainly is a melancholy one. He should renounce, buy some property in Germany, and marry, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... know, does not play any instrument himself; he only conducts. His rival (Johnny, as I think of him) does not conduct as yet; at least, not audibly. His line is the actual manipulation of the pianoforte—the Paderewski touch. Johnny lives in the flat below, and I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... left-handed player of the double-bass, whose attitude is life-like, though he does stand at an unusual distance from his instrument, and the drummer-boy, with his imposing music-stand. The dog at the back of the pianoforte is not howling: he is ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... and so lovely you looked, that admiration followed alike your fingers and your smiles : and the pianoforte and the world divided your first youth, which, had that exemplary guide been spared us, I am fully persuaded would have left some further testimony of its passage than barely my old journals, written to myself, which celebrate your wit and talents as highly as your beauty. And I judge I was not mistaken, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... a fine horse hitched to a buggy of modern fashion, just as much at home apparently as if they were driving through the streets of St. Paul, or St. Anthony, or Minneapolis, instead of upon that remote highway towards the North Pole; but this was not a whit more novel than to hear the pianoforte, and played, too, with both taste and skill. While another 'lion' of those parts that met our view was a topsail schooner lying in the river at the lower fort, which made occasional trips into Great Lake Winnepeg of the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... till he opened it, for this was part of the house which he had shut up, thinking three or four rooms enough for them now, and to save the dusting of it. Then it seemed she would have him play to her on the pianoforte: she led him to it, nay, what is more, she would herself pick out the music he was to play. First it was a fugue of Handel's, then one of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and then "The Diver," and then music from Gilbert ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... them but to starve, intrigue, and quarrel. You may judge how miserably poor they are, when you are told they can not afford even to cultivate the favorite art of modern Italy; the art best suited to the genius of a soft and effeminate people. There is, I was told, but one pianoforte in the whole town, and that is owned by a Florentine lady who has ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... sympathetically that the sweet though not robust notes of the voice are heard to the best advantage: he is a man with good hands. A heavy-fisted player, desiring to show his command over the instrument, will try to turn the accompaniment into a pianoforte solo, and the nice notes of the struggling singer will be entirely drowned by noise. He is like the heavy-handed, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... passages of dark music, in which the formless ugly reigned, occurred the poetic duel between Sordello and Eglamor at Palma's Court of Love. But why all this stress and fury? On the pianoforte the delicate episode sounded gratefully; with the thick riotous orchestration came a disillusioning transformation. There was noise without power, there was sensuality that strove to imitate the tenderness of passion; and she had fancied it a cloudy garden of love. Alixe raised an involuntary hand ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... directly she came in. After dinner Lemm drew out of his coat-tail pocket, into which he had continually been fumbling, a small roll of music-paper and compressing his lips he laid it without speaking on the pianoforte. It was a song composed by him the evening before, to some old-fashioned German words, in which mention was made of the stars. Lisa sat down at once to the piano and played at sight the song.... Alas! the music turned out to be complicated ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Quaker-collared blue coat, with a red vest, and a pair of blue trousers with a broad red stripe down the sides, to drive the Honourable old Miss Wrinkleton, of Harley Street, to Court in a 'one oss pianoforte-case,' as he called a Clarence, he could stand it no longer, and, chucking the nether garments into the fire, he rushed frantically up the area-steps, mounted his box, and quilted the old crocodile of a horse all the way home, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... causes the patient to start, and it has been observed that he is affected by a change of time or tune in the airs performed on the pianoforte; that his agitation is increased by a more lively movement, and that his convulsions then become more violent. Patients are seen to be absorbed in the search for one another, rushing together, smiling, talking affectionately, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... come down to us from mediaeval times, a heritage nobler than that of any other nation; But can it be said that our national life is in the smallest degree inspired by these songs? They have indeed latterly become a fashion; we collect them, arrange them with pianoforte accompaniments, listen to them at concerts. It is a mere fashionable craze, like that for "the simple life," and differs in no whit from that ridiculed by Wagner in the Italian opera, and in Meyerbeer, ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... aware, is derived from chauve. War is a solvent of equanimity; in the cant but expressive phrase it becomes harder to keep one's hair on. Again, inter arma silent Musae. Fewer people have been playing the pianoforte, an exercise which has always exerted a stimulating effect on the follicles. Our political correspondent at Paris writes that M. PADEREWSKI'S once luxuriant chevelure has suffered sadly since he has taken to politics, but that after playing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... and pulled the spectacles off his nose, 'why do this now? I can go into these wretched details later. Susanna Ivanovna, be so good as to put away that account-book, and come back to us and enchant our kind guest's ears with your musical accomplishments, to wit, playing on the pianoforte... Eh?' ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... taster" to the house of Novello, Ewer, & Co., he hopefully acquitted for many years, succeeding to that office on the retirement of my once, in a choral sense, esteemed conductor, Sir Joseph Barnby. The pianoforte accompaniment to many of the classical works of continental composers he transcribed and carefully arranged for his employers, whose confidence he completely enjoyed, whether in addressing them on ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... Grandes Ecuries. His real description is Louis Nathaniel Rossel, born at St. Brieuc (Cotes du Nord), September 9, 1844, of Louis and of Sarah Campbell. The Figaro states that the artist Courbet was captured at the house of one of his friends, a pianoforte maker in the Rue St. Gilles. He was concealed behind a bedstead, and, upon being threatened with a revolver, gave ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in, perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quantities of books, not covered with repellent glass. They were ranged in dark cases, which furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... was a brilliant show duett on themes from La Somnambula for piano and violin by Messrs. Benedict and Noll, and a solo on the pianoforte by that most promising young artist, Hoffman. For this he chose De Meyer's fantasy on Semiramide, decidedly of the modern monster school of pianoforte composition, though quite a vigorous, graceful and redeeming ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... part of his life a resident of France, among the German composers, may require an explanatory word. Chopin's whole early training was in the German school, and he may be looked on as one of the founders of the latest school of pianoforte composition, whose highest development is in contemporary Germany. He represents German music by his affinities and his influences in art, and bears too close a relation to important changes in musical form to be omitted from ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Jael Dence, and the nurse became the pupil. Mrs. Little taught her grammar, pronunciation, dancing, carriage, and deportment. Jael could already sing from notes; Mrs. Little taught her to accompany herself on the pianoforte. The teacher was so vigilant, and the pupil so apt and attentive, that surprising progress was made. To be sure, they were together night ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... together (two of them had in the meantime become fathers, and the wife of Keyl II., nee Moeller, was in an interesting condition), and chatted about their various uncles and aunts. As of yore, the singing, violin and horn-playing Manitius was at the piano, turning over the leaves of a pianoforte arrangement of the "Trompeter von Saekkingen." And again, as of old, the little red-haired Dr. von Froeben held forth learnedly to every one who would listen. There were only two new men who had entered the regiment during his illness, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Elizabeth Vitz, who had been in service as a cook in Vienna. Franz Peter Schubert was the thirteenth of a family of fourteen children, nine of whom died in infancy. His love of music was apparent when he was very young. A relative often took him to visit a pianoforte warehouse, and there, and on an old worn-out piano at home, the child studied his first exercises without a master. At the age of seven he had a teacher, Michael Holzer, who used to cry out, "When I wish to teach him ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... to me, my Emmeline; I can wish you no greater blessing," replied Mrs. Hamilton, in a tone of deep emotion, and twining Emmeline's arm in hers, they joined Mrs. Greville and Miss Harcourt, who were standing together near the pianoforte, where Edith Seymour, the latter's younger niece, a pleasing girl of seventeen, was good-naturedly playing the music of the various dances which Lord Lyle and Herbert Myrvin were calling in rapid succession. In ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... connected with words and ideas, have as much effect on me as on most people. But then I hate to hear a young person sing without feeling and expression suited to the song. I cannot bear a voice that has no more life in it than a pianoforte or a bugle-horn. There is something about all the fine arts, of soul and spirit, which, like the vital principle in man, defies the research of the most critical anatomist. You feel where it is not, yet you cannot describe what it is you want. Sir Joshua, or some other great painter, was looking ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... is a peculiar one, varying greatly with the occasion. As he flys southward, his cry is a kind of clinking note; but the love song addressed to his mate is voluble and fervent. It has been said that if you should strike the keys of a pianoforte haphazard, the higher and the lower singly very quickly, you might have some idea of the Bobolink's notes. In the month of June he gradually changes his pretty, attractive dress and puts on one very like the females, which is of a plain rusty brown, and is not reassumed until ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... them, once a year, a handsome dinner, at which he presided himself. He encouraged them to read, and helped them to obtain books. He had a singing master, and took care that every one who had a voice should be taught to sing. He bought a pianoforte for them, and had it put in a room in the factory, where any one, who had time, and wished to play, could go and play upon it; and he gave them ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... frequently at Paris, where I was then engaged in collecting materials for a complete edition of the Vedas and the commentary of Sya{n}crya. Many a morning did I pass in his rooms, smoking, accompanying him on the pianoforte, and discussing questions in which we took a common interest. Iremember one morning, after he had been singing some Italian, French, and German music, Iasked him to sing an Indian song. He declined at first, saying that he knew I should not like it; but at last he yielded, and sang, not ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... signs—for she could speak neither French nor English—invited us to follow her, and led us through cloister and passage to the room of the boarders; not nuns, only there for their education. A pretty Italian girl, with corkscrew ringlets of dark hair, rose from her pianoforte to receive us, and spoke with much grace and self-complacency Italian-French, and accompanied by way of interpreter our own conductress, who motioned us to the sitting-room, where nuns and pensioners were embroidering, with silk, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... would have looked upon them as unmanly and effeminate. When first these pursuits were taken up by our Scottish young men, they excited in the north much amazement, and, I fear, contempt, as was evinced by a laird of the old school, who, the first time he saw a young man at the pianoforte, asked, with evident disgust, "Can the creature sew ony?" evidently putting the accomplishment of playing the pianoforte and the accomplishment of the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... absence of any immediate design of a new dramatic composition, and delighted at the effect which his public performance on the pianoforte had created at Vienna, Mozart forgot all the fears he had expressed previously to his journey to Paris; thought no more that teaching would interfere with the higher vocation of his muse; and was content to become the fashionable performer, teacher, and pianoforte ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... to compose six symphonies and to "conduct" (at the pianoforte) six concerts. For this he was to receive a certain sum, and the proceeds of a benefit concert. A farewell was said to Prince Anton and many friends, and what proved to be a long, long farewell to Mozart, and on December 15, 1790, ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... dinner, when the coffeecups are brought, Ahasuerus waileth o'er the grand pianoforte; And, thanks to fair Cornelia, his fame hath waxen great, And Ahasuerus Jenkins is ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... shall never cease ein treuer Deutscher, Coburger, Gothaner zu sein." And now he must part from Coburg for ever! Sobered and sad, he sought relief in his brother Ernest's company; the two young men would shut themselves up together, and, sitting down at the pianoforte, would escape from the present and the future in the sweet familiar ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... notes, and bore it away through the trees. It was weird fairy-music, but quite delightful. The nearest approach to it that I know of above ground is to hear a wild dreamy air very well whistled to a pianoforte accompaniment. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... adequately appreciated, both by the artistes and the orchestra, as well as by the general public. This may have been due to two causes; first, the actors and actresses were not embarrassed by his directing from the pianoforte instead of with the violin as those in Bamberg were, and in the second place his criticisms and essays on musical subjects in Rochlitz's Musicalische Zeitung had gained him a certain reputation as an authority in musical matters. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... summer of 1767, when Mozart was eleven, they started on a new tour, for which the little prodigy composed four pianoforte concerti, which were interesting on account of certain harmonic effects produced in them, but that second tour, was not a fortunate one, for during it, both Nannerl and Wolfgang were stricken with ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of his own interference as the flight of Zo. But it was impossible to assume that the furious anger which his face betrayed, could have been excited by a child who had run away from a lesson. No: the vainest of men and musicians had heard that he was ugly, and that his pianoforte-playing resembled the performance of ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... the stranger, the English lady, Mary St. John, outlandish, almost heathenish as her lovely name sounded in its ears, had a power as altogether strange and new as her name. For she was not only an admirable performer on the pianoforte, but such a simple enthusiast in music, that the man must have had no music or little heart in him in whom her playing did not move all that ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Dido, in pianoforte score, is generally accessible; only a few of the spoken play sets are as yet published, and they are ridiculously expensive. Let us not repine and give up hope. Some day that unheard-of thing an intelligent music publisher ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... instrumentalists were also present. Sad to relate, the drummer was not quite sober, an unfortunate state of things, certainly, but not always confined to the drumming fraternity, since in the account of the Party at Minerva House (S.B.T.) we read that amongst the numerous arrivals were 'the pianoforte player and the violins: the harp in a state ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... been full of music all the time, but now the toot horns and fiddles stopped, and I heard the tones of a pianoforte from the further end of the room, then a voice struck in—loud, clear, ringing. We pressed forward, people made way for us, and we got ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... broad proposition are entirely different; and when the playwright is dealing with a long, finely-written, complex novel he can hardly expect his adaptation to bear a greater resemblance to the original than that of an easy pianoforte transcription to one of the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette" |
