"Crescendo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day Betty's small feet had carried her on numberless errands for young and old, and as the season advanced she would be busier still. This Betty well knew, for she was old enough to remember other summers, several of them, each bringing an advancing crescendo of work. But oh, the happy days! For Betty lived in a world all her own, wherein her play was as real as her work, and labor was turned by her imaginative little mind into new forms of play, and although night often found her weary—too tired to lie quietly in her bed sometimes—the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... moment's forgetfulness. At one moment it was night and at another it was morning. We were awakened by the voice of the pavement, that sound which Whitman calls "the loud, proud, restive bass of the streets," and again I leaned forth to listen to the widespread crescendo roar of the deepening traffic. The air being cool and clear, the pedestrians stepped out with brisker, braver movement, and we, too, rose eager to meet the day at the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... went on, now answering questions, now telling bits of the story in her own way, Mr. Butt, the great advocate, taking care that it should all be consecutive and clear with a due crescendo of interest. In October, 1862, it appeared Lady Wilde was not in the house at Merrion Square, but was away at Bray, as one of the children had not been well, and she thought the sea air would benefit him. Dr. Wilde was alone in the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... voice dropped its softness, and took on a shrill crescendo of excitement as he flashed out ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... not go to the devil?" rejoined Lottchen, with a comic crescendo; to which the other replied ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... passed away of the hearty unison with which prayer-meeting and camp-meeting assemblies used to "crescendo" ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of the wreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushing through the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rain was coming, and against that tropical ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... dock an insistent siren blared a crescendo and diminuendo blast of sound, and two minutes remained. In every stateroom and in every lounge and saloon ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... of the purple reached its apogee. Rome had been watching a crescendo that had mounted with the years. Its culmination was in that hermaphrodite. But the tension had been too great—something snapped; there was nothing left—a procession of colorless bandits merely, Thracians, Gauls, Pannonians, Dalmatians, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Musical Association ("Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik-Verein"), over which I have the honor of presiding, the orchestral works of Rimsky-Korsakoff and Borodine have figured on the programmes. Their success is making a crescendo, in spite of the sort of contumacy that is established against Russian music. It is not in the least any desire of being peculiar that leads me to spread it, but a simple feeling of justice, based on my conviction of the real worth of these works of high ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... During this crescendo of excited and scarcely intelligible utterances the girl had first backed away from Curtis, and then turned, running to open, without knocking, a door on the right of the extreme end of a corridor which divided the suite into ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... he began; then broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the passion of the music mounted up and up. And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... voice rose in a sharp crescendo of amazement. "Surely"—bending forward to peer into Diana's face—"surely you are not going to keep Max ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... though the girl's horror was somehow communicated to him. The scream reverberated through his brain, rising in an intolerable crescendo, blotting out other sensory perception. He fought to regain control of his fading senses, but the castle court blurred and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. He started sliding down an endless, dark chute, ending ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... yipp, yipp, yipp arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and sat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did not ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... will give, is the pianola's; but the interpretation is yours! The instrument provides the devices for accelerating or retarding the time and for making the tone loud or soft, but when to whip up the time or to slow down, when to use the sustaining or the soft lever or when to swell through a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo—all that is left to your own taste, judgment and discretion. There is, indeed, among the improvements introduced in the pianola a contrivance, of which more hereafter, by which complete directions are given for the interpretation ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going, however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady's-slippers. She unpinned the rakish beaver ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... the passionate pleading of the Thracian bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna, Orfeo's song receives adequate expression. It is closely imitated from the corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano's own. Addressing Pluto, Orfeo discovers ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... young voice should be taught to begin in the middle and work both ways—that is, up and down. A tone should never be forced. Begin piano, make a long crescendo and return to piano. Another exercise employs two connecting half tones, using one or two vowels. During practice stand before a mirror, that one may see what one is doing. Practice about one hour daily. Better that amount each day than ten ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... something even in their first crescendo wails that bespoke the good heritage of a father's ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... side were madly plunging horses, eyes staring, mouths agape exposing long white teeth that flashed wickedly in the moonlight, manes tossing wildly, and air whistling through wide-flaring nostrils. On and on they swept down the valley. The roar of hoofs rose to a mighty crescendo of thunder, above which, now and then, the terrified girl caught fierce yells from the flank of the herd. So close were the terrorized horses running that it was impossible for the girl to see the ground before ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... over to where they were standing, firing its gun in every direction. The boy fired back. The ant took one look at the lad's gun and let out a long cackling sound which built to a crescendo and then stopped as though it had been turned off. The ant rejoined the group and they ...
— Martian V.F.W. • G.L. Vandenburg
... the white hair paused to pour himself out another glass of wine; and his voice, losing the dreamy note of reminiscence, sharpened to a more rapid utterance—a crescendo for ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... Augier, Halevy and Becque—with a crescendo that in the last of the four is somewhat harsh—diverged from the traditional path, and in their plays put men and women whose motives and conduct were nearer to the humanity of their audience. The departure from old lines ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... with long hair piled up on their heads in feminine fashion. Gradually, as we advanced farther up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous chirp of the cicalas swelled out like an orchestral crescendo. Above us, against the luminous sky, sharply delineated between the mountains, a kind of hawk hovered, screaming out, with a deep, human voice, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" its melancholy call prolonged by ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the novelist seems to come to a climax in this book; justifying Taine's satiric remark that "these phrases should be accompanied by a mandolin." The moral tag is infallibly supplied, as in all Richardson's tales—though perhaps here with an effect of crescendo. We are still long years from that conception of art which holds that a beautiful thing may be allowed to speak for itself and need not be moraled down our throats like a physician's prescription. Yet Fielding had already, as we shall see, struck a wholesome note of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... a relief, said Jack, to find the scenery less beautiful, so as to have a diminuendo and a crescendo—the crescendo to be our goal of that day, the Water Gap. But it would keep on being so lovely, we could scarcely say when it was just good, when better, or when best. We had a gray road, glossy as a beaver's back, to ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... never! No, I never!... I never!" Mrs. Budge's gasp, rising in a crescendo, almost betrayed her presence. She gave a pillow a mighty jab. As though it were not bad enough to bring the girl to the house in the first place without paying a man a fancy price to teach her to have her own way! "Flowers! Humph! Old fools—" Unable to endure another word ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... it hits them all at once, and all together, in response, they surge against their yokes. The heavily laden wagon creaks, groans, moves forward. The hurricane of Dutch and the volleys of whip crackings rise to a crescendo. We ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the Huguenots ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... all the cries this world can boast— A loud, unconscionable host— There's one that I detest the most— It haunts me o'er my morning toast, It scares my luncheon's calm and dinner's. It dogs my steps throughout the week, That cursed crescendo of a shriek; I cannot read, or write, or speak, Undeafened by its howl unique, That demon-yell of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... truly wonderful how differently the same words can be trimmed up and handed out, and I like the crescendoes and diminuendoes and shades of feeling which give emphasis and expression, as my music teacher says I must be careful of when playing. There is never going to be any crescendo or diminuendo business about Billy's love-making, and I might as well make up my mind to that in the beginning. It's going to be pure staccato with him—short and quick and soon over. But it will last forever, Billy's will. He isn't going to stand for foolishness about ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... wailing Stirred by fitful gales from sea: Shrieking up in mad crescendo— Dying down in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... my clothes and buckled my gold belt around my waist. The fire was humming away in a steady crescendo, punctuated by confused shouts of many men. Light flickered redly through the cracks of the loosely constructed hotel building. I found Johnny ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... I say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio: Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to 'feel the truth and Stir of Day'; till Beethoven's pompous March should begin, and the Chorus, with 'Arthur is come, etc.'; the chief Voices raising the words aloft (as they do in Fidelio), and the Chorus thundering in upon them. It is very ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... dewy morning, was pleasant music. But I find the sound of the mowing- machine and the patent reaper is even more in tune with the voices of Nature at this season. The characteristic sounds of midsummer are the sharp, whirring crescendo of the cicada or harvest fly, and the rasping, stridulous notes of the nocturnal insects. The mowing- machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is like the hum of a locust or the shuffling of a mighty grasshopper. More than that, the grass ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... and diminish the volume of tone was so highly esteemed—indeed, so essential—that singers spent much time in acquiring the messa di voce, that is, the steadily graduated emission of tone from the softest degree to the loudest and again to the softest: p [crescendo symbol] f [decrescendo symbol] p. This exercise invariably formed a part of each day's study, and was practised on several vowels throughout the scale, except the extreme tones, save in rare instances. It was, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... ran up the scale till it reached a crescendo shout and then died out in a soft sound like a woman's wail. Heard anywhere the sound would have been alarming enough, but coming as it did in the midst of these unknown, mysterious Mountains of the Moon it ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... himself one with them in hardship, danger and wounds for the sake of their immortal souls, now impels him to the writing of this Book. "The Greater Love" is a religious message which teaches that as man needed God in war—with a crescendo of need reaching full tide in the front trench—even so he needs him in Peace. The message is clothed in the narrative of adventure—personal experiences of the Author—and every page an epic of absorbing interest. ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... the great crescendo of the man's storm of grief had passed that Nan bethought herself of the need in which he stood. Nor was that need apparent until his whole note had changed to a moody bitterness with which he regarded ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... largely on account of the esteem and regard he felt for my father. He often made me repeat an exercise ten times. The lessons frequently lasted two hours. He was not generally so particular about lapses in execution, but if I was lacking in expression, in crescendo and diminuendo, he would make me repeat the passage until he was satisfied." Ries made good use of his opportunities, and became a distinguished performer on the piano, ranking in this respect as high as ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... in the true spirit of lanx satura, allows Carey to attack by indirection a complete spectrum of traditional eighteenth-century targets. Like the musician and the satirist that he is, he builds up to a magnificent crescendo (pp. 19-24 of his "Dumpleid") which results in one of the finest displays of sustained virtuosity in early eighteenth-century ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... crescendo. The whole dim, gigantic forest was roaring with sound. The tones came from all sides, from above, from the ground under their feet. It was so grandly passionate that Maskull felt his soul loosening ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... more note would do it. One more note—no more, no less—at the end of the crescendo could tie the symphony together and end it. But which one? I've tried them all, and ...
— I Like Martian Music • Charles E. Fritch
... treatise on expression in the playing of music. "The efforts which feeling makes to hold to...the shape of the first rhythm, the force which it is necessary to use to make it lose its desires and its habits, and to impose others on it, are naturally expressed by an agitation, that is, by a crescendo or greater intensity of sound, by an acceleration in movement." If a purely technical expression may be pardoned here, it could be said that the motor image, that is, the coordinated muscular tensions which make the group ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... once: I button my clothes tightly, so as to afford the Bees the least possible opportunity, and I enter the heart of the swarm. A few blows of the mattock, which arouse a far from reassuring crescendo in the humming of the Anthophorae, soon place me in possession of a lump of earth; and I beat a hasty retreat, greatly astonished to find myself still safe and sound and unpursued. But the lump of earth which I have removed ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... irresolutely within an inch of her bosom. She wondered that the victim made no attempt to escape, uttered no cry for help. Suddenly she felt something whirling and buzzing in her brain, while a wild fluttering filled both her ears; then the swirling, fluttering torment rose in a swift and awful crescendo which seemed to involve all creation in its vortex; then a pang like a lightning-thrust and a crash like the thunder that goes with it, and she saw a tall man striding rapidly from the window. She was still sure it was no personal concern of hers, yet an idle curiosity ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... had brought out the air; she had made it sing above the confusion of the bass and treble that evidently had had no clear understanding when they started; as for the bad bits, the tremendous crescendo chords that your hands must take at a flying leap or miss altogether, Rowcliffe had already assured her that they were ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... how fair to stay and sway upon the breast of eternity! But the net is inexorable, and gently, slowly pulls me down. Now we sink straight, now we whirl in slow, eddying circles, spiral-like; while at each turn those bells ring out clanging now in wild crescendo, then whispering dread secrets of the ocean's depths. Oh, ye mighty bells, tell me from your learned lore of the hopes of mankind! Tell me what fruit he beareth from his strivings and yearnings; know not ye? Why ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... Miss Ross?' she cried in a subdued crescendo. 'Whatever will father say when he knows it is you? There's a deal happened, Miss Ross, and I am in a shake still when I think of the turn he gave me only the other night. I heard the knock, and ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my prayers with a crescendo intensity. A forcible tug by the other player resulted in the abrupt loss of his kite. It headed toward me, dancing in the wind. My helpful assistant, the cactus plant, again secured the kite string in the necessary loop by which I could grasp it. I presented ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... and down from the roof spurted scores of quivering ribbons of blinding green flame. Swiftly the radiant tendrils rushed in upon the shrinking three from every side, while the infra-bass thundered in mighty crescendo. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... rockets begin to roar, and it seemed as though the very blood in his veins pulsated with the surging of those mighty jets. Going? They couldn't be going. Not yet. Not without him! And he heard the roaring rise to a mighty crescendo, and he felt the trembling of the ground beneath the room in which he lay, and then the great sound grew less, and grew dim, and finally dissipated in a thin hum that dwindled finally into silence. ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... the sustained sevenths—a theme which Captain Morton said always reminded him of a meadow lark's evening song, but which repeats itself over and over plaintively and sadly as the stately music swells to its crescendo and dies with that unanswered cry of heartbreak echoing in the last faint ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... The dispute might in the ordinary course of events have come to shooting; but only after hours of excited wrangling, and as a climax worked up to in a crescendo of emotion. This expeditious nipping in the bud was a ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... to pedal; great to pedal; choir to pedal. Mechanical accessories: swell tremulant, choir tremulant, bellows signal; wind indicator. Pedal movements: three affecting great and pedal stops, three affecting swell and pedal stops; great to pedal reversing pedal; crescendo and full organ pedal; balanced great and choir pedal; ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... on me when she gave Leicester conge and fiery quittance. She hath me in favour, and all shall be well with Michel and Angele. O fool, fool, fantastic and flavoured fool, sing me a song of good content, for if this business ends not with crescendo and bell-ringing, I am no butler to the Queen nor ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... up his voice in a steady crescendo until the last cry became a hoarse, cracked yell that was as unlike his own full, rich, mellow tone as any sound could well be. Yet the dog heard it, ay, and recognised it, for he immediately replied vigorously. Leslie continued to shout, dashing recklessly forward in the direction ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a toy structure of cards. Still the roar of it swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to have nothing to do with the collapse, which went on piecemeal, steadily, like a game. The crescendo was drowned in a sharper roar and a crash close behind her—a crash that seemed the end of all things. . . . The house! She had not thought of the house. Turning, she faced a cloud of dust, and above it saw, before the dust stung her eyes, half-blinding her, that the whole front of the villa ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... closely as possible. The human voice, the primitive musical instrument, in moments of excitement, ascends to a higher pitch, increasing in intensity of tone as it sweeps upward. Consequently every progression from lower to higher tones, whether played or sung, demands a crescendo unless some plainly denoted characteristic of the music calls for different treatment. A descending passage, as a return ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... moonlight they have in Germany," she laughed when she found it. After hammering out a few discords of her own she started recklessly into the incomprehensible "presto," thundering away at every crescendo as if to break her fingers. "Isn't it fine, Daddy?" she cried, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... produced instruments with the most pliant touch possible—and therefore regarded the use of the thumb in the ascending scale on two white keys in succession—the semitones EF and BC—as practicable. On the grand piano of the present day we regard it as irreconcilable with conditions of crescendo legato." This Chopin fingering in reality derives directly from Hummel. See his ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... usual fusillade and tolling of bells announced the departure of the procession from the church. It passed slowly along by the highroad and presently we heard a chorus of young voices singing hymns—the girls and boys of the village: the music was soft and illusive in the distance, developing a sweet crescendo as they turned into the pasture, fairly plowing their way through a sea of daisies. Behind them came two little acolytes, fair as angels, swinging their golden incense lamps; then followed six choir boys, chanting the Mass, like veritable della Robbias, in their ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... boy!" said Mrs. Dinks, with a crescendo affection and triumph. While she was yet embracing him, his father, the unemployed statesman, the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... for her. In the last sixty or seventy years tens of thousands of women have been students in American universities, colleges, and technical schools, taking there the same training as men. In the last twenty years the annual crescendo of numbers has been amazing; over ten thousand at the beginning of the period, over fifty-two thousand at the end. Over eight thousand degrees were given to women in 1910, nearly half as many as were given to men. Fully four fifths of these women students and graduates have worked side by side ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... with a small escort towards the river and hospitals. An officer was despatched with the news to the Sirdar, and on the instant both cannonade and fusillade broke out again behind the ridge, and grew in a crashing crescendo until the whole landscape seemed to vibrate with the sound of explosions. The second phase of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... still for a moment; they would drive me mad,' returned Phoebe, in the hollow tones that seemed natural to her. 'Flowers are better; but what have I to do with flowers? Doctor,' her voice rising into a shrill crescendo, 'you must give me something to send me to sleep, or I shall go mad. I think, think, think, until my head is in a craze with pain ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... noise was wafted to his ears through the forest behind. It began like the gentle, mellow lowing of a cow at evening, swelled into a quavering, appealing crescendo cadence, and gradually died away. Almost as the last note ceased another commenced at the same low pitch, with only the rest of a heart-beat between the two, and surged forth into a plaintive yet tempestuous call, which sank as before. It was followed ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... seen it on the reservation card. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon! Pretty high-soundin' patronymic, what? Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon!" He repeated the name over and over, crescendo, with growing fervor. "What's a woman with a title doin' d'you suppose? The title's no fake. She's got the blood all right, all right! You ought to ha' heard her shoo me out! Lummy! A nestin' hen giving the office to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... instance the 12th (complete) bar in the overture to "Tannhduser," the 20th and 22nd bar in Chopin's Funeral March, the change from the minor to major in Schubert's Romance from "Rosamunde," and the 24th bar in his Serenade (Staendchen), the 13th and following bars of the Crescendo in the Largo Appassionato of Beethoven's Op. 2. Or if you wish to have an example where all is exception, like one of the south nave windows in York Minster, the opening of the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Sturk, with a loud hysterical cry, that quivered with her agony, answered from without, and wildly rattled at the door-handle, and pushed with all her feeble force to get in, in a kind of crescendo ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hung about, and walked briskly up and down beside the track until a speck of blinking light rose out of the white wilderness. It grew rapidly larger, until they could make out a trail of smoke behind it, and the roar of wheels rose in a long crescendo. Then a bell commenced to toll, and the blaze of a big lamp beat into their faces as the great locomotive came ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of this part of the work. It can only be made tolerable by careful observance of the "sotto voce" at beginning and gradually increasing in power up to the fortissimo in the fortieth measure. Again it subsides into pianissimo, and again the crescendo. Finally the original melody in D-flat is resumed—and with what grateful sweetness!—and the piece is carried through to ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... there was always a breeze when one had passed the Giuseppone going towards Ischia, and beyond the island there was sometimes quite a lively sea. What would it be to-night? Her heart cried out for a crescendo. Within her, at that moment, was a desire like the motorist's for speed. More! more! More wind! More sea! More ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... to free himself from the clutch of the white, bloodless hand, but she clung to him desperately, despairingly, while her voice rose in an agonized crescendo. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... terror passes from the hands of Mrs. Radcliffe to those of "Monk" Lewis, Maturin and their imitators, there is a crashing crescendo of emotion. The villain's sardonic smile is replaced by wild outbursts of diabolical laughter, his scowl grows darker and darker, and as his designs become more bloody and more dangerous, his victims no longer ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble—as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... heard Aunt Victoria say it!" cried Sylvia with conviction. Father came out on the veranda, saying to Mother, "Isn't that crescendo superb?" To Sylvia he said, as though sure of her comprehension, "Didn't you like the ending, dear—where it sounded like the Argonauts all striking the oars into the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, my young friend; but it's practical patriotism now for you and me, and with no lies to help it. You talked as if everything always went right with us all over the world, in a triumphant crescendo culminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjure with, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad enough that a gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's no earthly English interest to serve, ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... also, of the absence of bird voices,—so silent the fields and groves and orchards were, compared with what she had been used to at home. The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere was the shrill, brassy crescendo of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... profound stillness had passed, and I could just make out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the mountains, ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! a long wailing crescendo beginning softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into indescribable frenzied wailings, as ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... after a last hoarse and dingy crescendo. The excitement was not of the sort that makes one forget one is tired out. The waiting for the end of the count has left a long blank mark on my memory, and then everyone was shaking my hand and repeating: "Nine ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... a novel with 'body,' with a large and timely idea back of it, with sound principles under it, and with a good crescendo ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... was his career—he was not quite thirty-two—his life was cut short in a crescendo of all its nobler elements. Exquisite as was already his susceptibility to beauty and his mastership of the rarest poetic material, we cannot doubt that Chenier was preparing for still higher flights of lyric passion and poetic intensity. Nothing that he had yet done could be said to compare ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... beating heart,—the violins in octaves. This is the favorite aria of all who have heard it,—of myself, as well,—and is written right into the voice of Adamberger. One can see the reeling and trembling, one can see the heaving breast which is illustrated by a crescendo; one hears the lispings and sighs expressed by the muted violins with flute in unison. The Janizary chorus is, as such, all that could be asked, short and jolly, written to ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that crescendo of horrors is over—if you'll allow a kind of musical term; but I've got music ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... chill voice say and knew it was his own. "Liar on both counts! My father sent you up because you were a thief. I beat your head off because you are a bully. Listen!" Roy shot the last word out in crescendo to forestall the result of a convulsive movement of the hand beneath his enemy's coat. "Listen, if you want to live the day out, ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... of Florence gathered round him,[2] met and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in him. He then no longer restrained the impulse of his oratory, but became the mouthpiece of God, the interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery crescendo, never flagging, never losing firmness of grasp or lucidity of vision, he ascended the altar steps of prophecy, and, standing like Moses on the mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of the plain, fulminated period ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose here and there, like ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... where the lyrist has to be displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that recalls the passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the boughs alone. To this true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of pleading. That the violin melody of his incomparable song is lost, must be reckoned a great ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Sway slowly, Mark the beat, Then stop. The wind hums, Delicate, lacelike tops Quiver and ripple With the quick response Of the violins. With the shriek of the wind They writhe and toss, Measuring the crescendo Of the brasses. ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... of course. It was the worst beating that Peter had ever had, and that was something, but its occurrence marked more than a mere crescendo of pain, and that evening stood for some new resolution that he did not rightly understand yet—something that was in its beginning the mere planting of a seed. But he had certainly met the affair in a new way and, although in the week that followed ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... he; "monseigneur—sire—how ought I to address you?" he said at length, having reached the culminating point of his crescendo, and knowing neither how to mount higher, nor ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... are also upon Mount Washington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains generally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular affair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was perhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. This species, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... muffled, distant, he thought in the voice of Alden. It was stifled, cut off ere it had come to full crescendo, in a very significant manner. Silence, then, fell about him, the chill ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... sooth'd me to sleep. I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the other evening, and heard the katydids by myriads—very curious for once; but I like better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more about the song of the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching a point of great energy and significance, and then quickly and gracefully dropping down and out. Not ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... trampled to pieces in the Charles-Twelfth Wars, Stralsund Sieges: money seemed necessary to the Duke, and the Ritters were very scarce of it. Add, on both sides, pride and want of sense, with mutual anger going on CRESCENDO; and we have the sad phenomenon now visible: A Duke fled to Dantzig, anarchic Ritters none the better for his going; Duke perhaps threatening to return, and much flurrying his poor interim Brother, and stirring up the Anarchies:—in brief, Mecklenburg become a house on fire, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... downfall of Gladstone. The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... rose from the court. Presently the light began to fade, and the buzz faded with it; then some lights were turned on, and there was a crescendo of voices. It was possible to see more clearly the multitude of faces, all of them hot, nearly all of them excited and expressive. A great many people were standing, packed closely together and looking obstinate in their determined curiosity. Most of them were either staring at, or were trying ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... flash of her bright hazel eyes and great temerity of speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... all in. Fuck me well, Percy, my love! don't forget it's your own mother who gives all to her dear boy. Make it last as long as possible. Frig my cunt, Mary—put in two fingers. Now go on, but not too fast at first—gentle strokes bring the greatest pleasure, till at length we go crescendo. Oh, you do it so nicely, my love, my own boy! Isn't he a darling, Mary? He shall fuck you, my love, as often as he likes; only I must have my boy ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... you want that you should be keeping my stenographer from working?" Zalnitch's voice rose in a shrill crescendo. "Get out of here! You have no business here. ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... wind rushing through the ruins was like the moaning of the spirits of the dead inhabitants crying aloud for vengeance. The sounds increased in volume as we neared this scene of awful desolation, and the groans became a crescendo of shrieks which, combined with the crash of shell-fire, made one's blood ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... mamma, in a crescendo sweep, "that all but undid my lifework for the family's position, and that may yet cost your father his ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... rugs for the spring cleaning. There is a sour rhythm in the fellow and he will beat a pretty syncopation on them if the hurdy-gurdy will but stick to marching time. It is said that he once broke the fabric of a Kermanshah in his zeal at some crescendo of the Robert E. Lee. But he was lost upon the valse and struck ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... no smoke, but there came a long crescendo hoot, rising into a shrill wail. The shell hummed over the soldiers like a great bee, and sloshed into soft earth behind them. Then another—and yet another—and yet another. But there was no time to heed them, for there was the hillside and there the enemy. So ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... much in the thought of men, typifies the spirit of the age. The one motiv is loud at the beginning of the Reformation but almost dies away before the end of the century; the other, beginning at the same time, rises slowly into a crescendo culminating far beyond the boundaries of the age. The first theme was the Prodigal Son, treated by no less than twenty-seven German dramatists, not counting several in other languages. To the Protestant, the Younger Son represented ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... he gave them hell at Belmont and at Graspan, and they say they are fighting again to-day at Modder River. Major Erasmus is very down-hearted about it. But the ordinary burghers hear nothing but lies; all lies, I tell you. (Crescendo) Look at the lies that have been told about us! Barbarians! savages! every name your papers have called us, but you know better than that now; you know how well we have treated you since you have been a prisoner; and look ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... spoke, Gwynplaine, in a crescendo of stupor, remembered the past. Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths. Gwynplaine knew all the words pronounced by Barkilphedro. They were written in the last lines of the two scrolls which lined the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... throb, the great black belts sagged and fell inert, the wheels whirred listlessly, clocks all over the great city began to toll for one more long day ended and gone, while the voices of the girl toilers rose superbly and filled the gathering stillness with the soft crescendo refrain: ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... voice that not even the vault-like atmosphere of that shadowless chamber could altogether rob of its vitality. He spoke simply and good-humouredly, without any attempt at rhetoric, relying chiefly upon a crescendo of telling facts that gradually, as he proceeded, roused the House to that tense stillness that comes to it when ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... crescendo of a hyena's howl some place off in the night. It was answered by another, miles away; then another, far off in a still different direction. The scent of the bait was spreading to the far horizon and the keen-scented carrion-eaters had caught it and ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... nests over there in the woodland, and break into that wild jargoning chorus with which they herald the advent of a new day. In the apple orchards and among the plum-trees of the few gardens in Stillwater the wrens and the robins and the blue-jays catch up the crystal crescendo, and what a melodious racket they make of it with their fifes and flutes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... other clumsily about the heads of milk-weed blossoms. Cicada droned in long, loud crescendo and diminuendo under the hot sun of mid forenoon. A sensitive plant, or as Judith herself would have said, a "shame briar," caught at her skirts as she hastened. Dipping deeper into the hollow, the man ahead, riding with his gaze upon the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... You are nice—" Rosemary's voice rose in a crescendo of pure pleasure. "But I'm not a good example—you won't say that when you know me. I get ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... someone in the dark, and there was movement in the group. Buddy ground his growing "second" teeth together, clenched his fist and said "Damn it!" three times in a silent crescendo of rage because he could neither see nor hear what took place; and immediately he repented his profanity, remembering that God could hear him. In Buddy's opinion, you never could be sure about God; He bestowed ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... way to better things, it might have been a smash without a recovery. It is part of my business to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before Holsten was just a hundred years' crescendo of waste. Only the extreme individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up material—insanely. They had got through three-quarters of all the coal in ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... not mention it, but in all those ten days a sort of crescendo of emotion was going on in her. At first she began to think of it as soon as bed-time approached; then she felt it intruding on her thoughts at the dinner table; then she was unable to sleep for an hour or two after the fifteen minutes had passed, and, finally, one night, she ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... voice rising into a perfect crescendo of ecstasy at the sight of his dear dark face. Could anything be more deliciously unexpected? And there was Miss Ruth laughing very softly ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Galen Albret, in a crescendo outburst. "Silence! I will not be gainsaid! You have made your choice! You are no ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... declaimed over her onion bed such portions of the slang dictionary as are permitted by the Nonconformist conscience to be said or sung, the Vasco da Gama fowl was waking the echoes of Toad-Water with crescendo bursts of throat music which compelled attention to her griefs. Mrs. Crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a short temper, and when some of her ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... was lost in the yelling dissonance descending crescendo from floor to floor. Then an avalanche of children and dogs poured down the hall-stairs in pursuit of a rumpled and bored cat, tumbling with yelps and cheers and thuds among the thick rugs ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... to a crescendo climax. Then there came another sound, a single resonant note like that given when a string of a bass viol is violently plucked—and the tinkling melody abruptly died. Immediately following the resonant twang some object was ejected from the midst of the ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... never sing those words as you should," he cried, "until you know and feel the glory of that wondrous cross. Never, never, never." His voice rose in a passionate crescendo. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... exchange were something he had been expecting, made no demur, and a moment later, with Woodbury at the wheel, the motor began to hum again in a gradually increasing crescendo. Two or three motor-police glanced after the car as it snapped about corners with an ominous skid and straightened out, whining, on the new street; but in each case, having made a comfortable number of arrests that day, they had little heart for the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... possible to hope that the dam would hold against the rising crescendo of that battering from beyond and the insidious tongues that licked at ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... began a low moan off toward a ridge which loomed faintly in the heavy mist. When the swift crescendo had reached its climax, the missiles zipped just overhead, as if piercing an invisible curtain. A battery on the hill was crashing with such tumult that it was as if the guns had quarrelled and had fallen pell-mell and snarling upon each other. ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... minutes left before the companies must rise and quit the hall, Harris was coming—the new-made first captain, adjutant and quartermaster escorting—the commandants of table all over the hall springing to their feet, and the wild rumble of hollow iron beginning the crescendo of swift-coming, stupendous thunder, and Willett stood and swung his hat, and classmates half-way down the slope turned back to see, and understood without seeing, that there was something back of it ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... interludes, it is as far removed from the nature and form of Poetry as it is from Drama. It is a succession of pictures of life, given with the utmost detail, having no connection with each other, and absolutely no crescendo, no movement, no approach to a climax. The only thread that holds the work together is the person of the travelling promoter, Chichikov, whose visits to various communities give the author the opportunity he desired. After one has grasped the plan of the book, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... uncanny about these silent entrances and exits; he could hardly suppress a shudder. He had been accustomed to hear the clatter of people's heels upon the bare floors, as they approached, and the audible crescendo of their footsteps gave one warning, and prevented one from being taken by surprise. While absorbed in these reflections, his senses must have been dormant; for just then Miss Edith Van Kirk entered, unheralded by anything but a hovering perfume, the effect of which was to lull him still deeper ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... scheme, in the hands of a Schiller, leads inevitably to a crescendo of rhetorical contrasts, which in the end sound somewhat flighty and forced. The poem was an object of ridicule to the Romanticists, and the elder Schlegel wrote a saucy parody of the first ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of the wood pewee brings to mind deep, moist places in the Pennsylvania backwoods; the crescendo of the oven bird awakens memories of the oaks of the Orange mountains; when a loon or an olive-sided flycatcher or a white-throat calls, the lakes and forests of Nova Scotia come vividly to mind; the cry ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... risen in a perfectly straight line; it jarred against the rim of the hole, and wavered uncertainly. Every second the roar of its rockets, swollen by echoes, rose in a savage crescendo; the faces of the three who watched were painted ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the struggle. A sputter of rifles would break out now and then, followed perhaps by a spiritless hurrah. Occasionally a shell from a far-away battery would come pitching down somewhere near, with a whir crescendo, or flit above our heads with a whisper like that made by the wings of a night bird, to smother itself in the river. But there was no more fighting. The gunboats, however, blazed away at set intervals all night long, just to make the enemy ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something else exploded dully. But he should be far enough ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... more. They have touched the very bottom of suicidal gloom. Three months hence their state of mind will no doubt appear in all its absurdity, but at the moment it is too piteous for words. When you think what they were yesterday and the day before, there is no language to express the crescendo of their despair. I came upon Mr. Riley this morning, standing by the window of the mess-room, and contemplating the facade of the railway station. (It is making a pattern on our brains.) I tried to soothe him. I said it was hard lines—beastly hard lines—and told him to cheer up—there'd ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair |
