"Precentor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of learning to dance, is not universal. We have known many youths bred up at Christ's, who never learned to dance, yet the world imputes to them no very graceful motions. I remember there was little Hudson, the immortal precentor of St. Paul's, to teach us our quavers: but, to the best of my recollection, there was no master of motions when we ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Through the open window came the low hum of the voices of the brethren as they walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below. From across the cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of a Gregorian chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir, while down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of Brother Peter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that He appeared on earth, [296] and taking the guise of a precentor of a congregation, He said to Moses: "Whenever Israel hath sinned, and calleth Me by the following thirteen attributes, I will forgive them their sins. I am the Almighty God who provides for all creatures. I am the Merciful One ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... none, and because it was reasonably supposed to be the smallest in Scotland. When the minister, who touched five feet eleven, and the beadle, who was three inches taller, assembled for the procession, with the precentor, a man of fair proportions, there was no waste ground in that room, and any messenger from the church door had to be selected with judgment. "Step up, Airchie man, tae the vestry," Burnbrae would say to the one under-sized man in Drumtochty, "and tell the minister no ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... great building thronged from the platform to the vestibule an aroused Christian audience will applaud the news, just received by telegraph, of a nation born in a day, and sing with more power than when Thomas Hastings used to act as precentor: ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... "Do you know that ..." column demanding one's critical attention. One's annoyed because to-morrow some tiresome fellow's coming to luncheon, because one wishes to buy some china that one can't afford, because the wife of the Precentor said to the Dean's sister that young Trenchard would be an old man in a year or two.... One sips one's tea, the organ leads the chants, the sun sinks below the wall.... That! This! ... there's the Forest road hot like red-hot iron under the sun; ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... say something of the kind, Jack; but you see, you, speaking of yourself, almost necessarily leave out much that I should have put in. For instance: I should have put in the foreground your being so much respected as Lay Precentor, or Lay Clerk, or whatever you call it, of this Cathedral; your enjoying the reputation of having done such wonders with the choir; your choosing your society, and holding such an independent position in this queer old place; your gift of teaching (why, even Pussy, who don't like being taught, says ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... his native town, to enjoy ease and respectability on a pension of 'eighteenpence a day'; and well did his fellow-townsmen act, when, to increase that ease and respectability, and with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service, they made him clerk and precentor—the man of the tall form and of the audible voice, which sounded loud and clear as his own Bunker fife. Well, peace to thee, thou fine old chap, despiser of dissenters, and hater of papists, as became a dignified and High-Church ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of Psalms which is occasionally found in New England is known as "Patrick's Version." The title is "The Psalms of David in Metre Fitted to the Tunes used in Parish Churches by John Patrick, D.D. Precentor to the Charter House London." A curious feature of this octavo edition of 1701, which I have, is, "An Explication of Some Words of less Common Use For the Benefit of the Common People." Here are a few ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the cardinal's hat shall be the precentor!" cried one of the youths from the provinces, pointing toward ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... (in effigy) after he had fled. It is dangerous to have spoken kindly to the Crown-Prince, or almost to have been spoken to by him. Doris Ritter, a comely enough good girl, nothing of a beauty, but given to music, Potsdam CANTOR'S (Precentor's) daughter, has chanced to be standing in the door, perhaps to be singing within doors, once or twice, when the Prince passed that way: Prince inquired about her music, gave her music, spoke a civility, as young men will,—nothing ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... property the town had turned the passage through this close into a narrow street, called the Rue de la Psalette, by which pedestrians passed from the Cloister to the Grand'Rue. The name of this street, proves clearly enough that the precentor and his pupils and those connected with the choir formerly lived there. The other side, the left side, of the street is occupied by a single house, the walls of which are overshadowed by the buttresses of Saint-Gatien, which have their base in the narrow little garden of ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... and disorderly temperament of his own, so constantly brought him into contact. Le Maitre could not work without the inspiration of the wine cup, and thus his passion for his art landed him a sot. He took offence at a slight put upon him by the precentor of the cathedral of which he was choir-master, and left Annecy in a furtive manner along with Rousseau, whom the too comprehensive solicitude of Madame de Warens despatched to bear him company. They went together as far as Lyons; here the unfortunate musician happened to fall into an epileptic ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Vazquez de Mercado. He immediately occupied himself in learning the language and in ministering to the natives, to their great approbation and with benefit to their souls. He has also served this cathedral more than nine years in the prebends of canon and precentor, the latter of which he holds at present. He is also at present exercising the office of vicar-general of this archbishopric, and has been its visitor-general. In both offices he has acted and given the account that could be expected from a good priest, learned and experienced, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... thought at first. There was a psalm read, and a remark was made on a verse here and there, and then they sang. He had a certain enjoyment in the singing, because he had never heard anything like it before. The sleet or something else had kept the usual precentor at home, and Saunners Crombie filled the office for the time. He had the singing mostly to himself for the first verse, because no one knew what tune he meant to sing, and some of those who joined, trying to do their best, "went out of it a'thegither," as Saunners ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... purposes was the Jew Yehuda ben Astruc, and under Alfonso (X.) the Wise, Jews again attained to prominence in the king's favorite science of astronomy. The Alfonsine Tables were chiefly the work of Isaac ibn Sid, a Toledo chazan (precentor). In general, the results reached by Jewish scholarship at Alfonso's court were of the utmost importance, having been largely instrumental in establishing in the age of Tycho de Brahe and Kepler the fundamental principles ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the young girls, plump little creatures, whose freckles and good nature well matched their curly red hair, were daughters of Precentor Jahnke, who swore by the Hanseatic League, Scandinavia, and Fritz Reuter, and following the example of his favorite writer and fellow countryman, had named his twin daughters Bertha and Hertha, in imitation of Mining and Lining. The third young lady was Hulda Niemeyer, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... seventh year of his pontificate, namely, in that of 1578, at the petition of our Phelipe II, king of the Espanas. He assigned it twenty-seven prebendaries of whom the king appoints those who are necessary. They consist of five dignitaries—dean, archdeacon, precentor, schoolmaster, and treasurer; three canons (the fourth having been suppressed by the Inquisition, as has been done throughout the Indias); and two whole and two half racioneros, by virtue of a royal decree given in Valladolid, June 2, 1604, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the field. Very soberly, almost in sad solemnity, they set to work there, and the result solved all doubts. Half Dunedin rushed to Tuapeka. At one of the country kirks the congregation was reduced to the minister and precentor. The news went across the seas. Diggers from Australia and elsewhere poured in by the thousand. Before many months the province's population had doubled, and the prayerful and painful era of caution, the day ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... sic a parish, a parish, a parish; Hech! sic a parish as little Dunkeld! They hae stickit the minister, hanged the precentor, Dung down the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a bar, Half a bar onward! Into an awful ditch Choir and precentor hitch, Into a mess of pitch, They led the Old Hundred. Trebles to right of them, Tenors to left of them, Basses in front of them, Bellowed and thundered. Oh, that precentor's look, When the sopranos took Their own time and hook ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... deaths of persons in whom the brethren were interested. The tabula, or notice-board, recording the names of those who were responsible for certain duties, was read; and a sermon followed. After the precentor had given minute instructions with regard to the reading and singing of the services for the day, the abbot said: "Speak of your own order." This was the call to confession; and any brother who was conscious that he had transgressed any rule, or neglected his duty, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... the stairs, he heard the practice of the choir beginning in the chapel. Precentor Renouf, the father of Blaise, had summoned the youths from the cloisters with a long mellow whistle upon his Italian pitch-pipe, running up and down the scale and ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... subsidiary meeting of the Moody campaign. They were natural athletes, and I felt that I could listen to them. I could not have listened to a sensuous-looking man, a man who was not a master of his own body, any more than I could to a precentor, who coming to sing the prayers at college chapel dedication, I saw get drunk on sherry which he abstracted from the banquet table just before the service. Never shall I forget, at the meeting of the Studd brothers, the audience being ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... by help from a somewhat wider circle of those interested in the efficiency of the Collegiate Church, this service, which has been increasingly appreciated, will not have to be discontinued. The Treasurers are the Bishop of Southwark and the Precentor. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... Precentor, and harmoniously followed the other voices. After this, a young Copenhagener exhibited his dramatic talent by mimicking most illusively the professors of the Academy, and giving their peculiarities, yet in such a good-natured manner that it must have amused even the offended parties themselves. ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... better and better. I hope Saint Patrick sung better than Blattergowl's precentor, or it would be hangchoice between the poet and psalmist. But what I admire is the courtesy of these two eminent persons towards each other. It is a pity there should not be a word of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Precentor of St. Paul's, had pipe-stem legs, and a face like an old parchment put in a box to keep. His sandy hair was thin and straggling, and his fine cloth hose wrinkled around his shrunken shanks; but his eye was sharp, and he wore about his neck a broad gold chain that ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... hinged doors. But the gallery that ran round three sides was fitted with simple benches. Immediately in front of the pulpit was a square pew which was set apart for the use of the elders, and close up to the pulpit, and indeed as part of this structure, was a precentor's desk. The pulpit was, to Maimie's eyes, a wonder. It was an octagonal box placed high on one side of the church on a level with the gallery, and reached by a spiral staircase. Above it hung the highly ornate and altogether extraordinary sounding-board and canopy. There ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... William Robert Smith, a blue-coat boy from London, who came out in the Company's service in 1813, served for a number of years as a clerk, and settled down in Lower Fort Garry District in 1824. Farming, teaching, catechising for the church, acting precentor, a local encyclopaedia and collector of customs, he passed his versatile life, till in the year before the Sayer affair, 1848, he became clerk of Court, which place, with slight interruption, he held for twenty years. One who knew him says: "From his ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce |
