"Pianist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and shuffled to the doorway, stopping abruptly as he saw Bondsman. Could it be possible that Bondsman had not recognized his own tune? Bud shook his head. There was something wrong somewhere. Bondsman had not offered to come in and accompany the pianist. He must have been asleep. But Bondsman had not been asleep. He rose and padded to Shoop's horse, where he stood, a statue of rugged patience, waiting for Shoop to ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... enlightened as to the consequent unspeakable importance of personal character as the source of influence? In a word, have any means, direct or indirect, prepared her for her duties? No! but she is a linguist, a pianist, graceful, admired. What is that to the purpose? The grand evil of such an education is the mistaking means for ends; a common error, and the source of half the moral confusion existing in the world. It is the substitution of the part for a whole. The time when young ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... guests, they received thirty kopecks for an easy dance, and a half rouble for a quadrille. But one-half of this price was taken out by the proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other, however, the musicians divided evenly. In this manner the pianist received only a quarter of the general earnings, which, of course, was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich played as one self-taught and was distinguished for having no more ear for music than a piece of wood. The pianist was constantly compelled to drag him on to new tunes, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... detached from the battery, and Cpl. Thomas J. Brennan, of Pottsville, Penna., were candidates for the divisional foot ball team that played at Souilly with a number of other divisional elevens. Philip J. Cusick, of Parsons, Penna., the battery's favorite pianist, was selected to make a tour with the regimental minstrel show that was put on to tour the circuit of A. E. F. playhouses. Cusick was recalled to the battery the latter part of February when he received notice of ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... Royal persons! I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman's abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom. But then the common little American woman invited his Majesty's 'cheres amies' to her house; and the amateur pianist was content to lose money to him at cards! Wheels within wheels, my friend! In a lesser degree ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... my dear aunt. His father pays for his music lessons, and his mother gives him an allowance. He's a pianist." ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... embarrassed. "My name's Herricote, Joe Herricote. I'm president of our Christian Endeavor Society, and this is Roy Bryan; he's the secretary. This is Mame Beecher. I guess you remember her singing. She's chairman of our social committee, and Lila Cary's our pianist and chairman of the music committee. We've come to see if you ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... A celebrated pianist tells me that, in a city where he was giving concerts, he became acquainted with a charming young girl. He was twenty years old, and had all the poetic and generous illusions of that romantic age. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... knows that the chord in the orchestra must be played "after the voice," as the technical phrase has it. But not every pianist or organist is familiar with this usage, and the effect would be very disagreeable if given as written. It ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... morning the girls went on another shopping expedition, and in the afternoon attended a recital given by a celebrated pianist. After the recital, instead of going home, Miss Southard surprised her guests by taking them over to the theatre where her brother was playing. Mr. Southard had arranged that they should be admitted to his dressing room. It was the same theatre in which Anne had played the previous winter and ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... any respectable boy of good parentage and education who is a good moonist." When it gradually dawned upon the British intellect that these and similar devices of the lecturer—such as the soft music which he had the pianist play at pathetic passages—nay, that the panorama and even the lecture itself were of a humorous intention, the joke began to take, and Artemus's success in England became assured. He was employed as one of the editors of Punch, but died at Southampton ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... musicians came out and unpacked a violin, a trombone, a flute and a drum. They sat down in the Medieval street painted on the scenery back of them, crossed their legs and asked for sol la from an esthetic young lady pianist, with whom they seemed on very familiar terms. The old man with the chin beard made an official entree from the wing, picked up the drum and became a part of the orchestra. The subscribers had begun to arrive, and when the first two-step struck up there were eight or ten couples on the floor. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... The pianist struck up some national tune or other; uncle swung his arms and shuffled a little with his feet, amorously ogling old Mrs. Knoph over ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... first. In the "Connoisseurs" by Fortuny we have the second form, and in the "Huntsman and Hounds" the third. A most original and commendable arrangement of three figures by W. L. Hollinger appears in "The Pose in Portraiture," the members of a trio, violin, cello and piano. The pianist is designated by the suggestion of her action which is completed out of the picture. In her position however she accomplishes the balancing of two ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... time, if we may believe the turnkey at the Marshalsea prison, William Dorrit had been a pianist, a fact which raised him greatly in the ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... Forty-second Street, was a romantic discovery. Though it had "popular prices"—plain omelet, fifteen cents—it had red and green bracket lights, mission-style tables, and music played by a sparrowlike pianist and a violinist. Mr. Wrenn never really heard the music, but while it was quavering he had a happier appreciation of the Silk-Hat-Harry humorous pictures in the Journal, which he always propped up against an oil-cruet. [That never ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... good." But when he tossed it only a foot high and let go the chop-stick, making it change ends, and catching the bowl, they were ready for a general applause. In striking the bowl and thus manipulating his chop-sticks, his hands moved almost as rapidly as those of an expert pianist. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... society of one who had seen so much of the world and was reputed to own some of the biggest hotels in France. Such a person (as his father agreed) was well worth knowing, even if he had not been the charming companion he was. Villona was entertaining also—a brilliant pianist—but, unfortunately, very poor. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... in addition to his ability as a checker player, was a good pianist, and he obligingly played for them to dance. The piano belonged to the Tucker twins. Norma and Alice were "rushed" with partners, and they quite forgot their clothes in the enjoyment of dancing to ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... respect, but which irritated her extremely. Max Elliot was charming, of course, when she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, who really was, as Paul Lane had ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the adopted son of Mrs. Scott Siddons, the English actress and dramatic reader—a famous beauty. He had been an infant prodigy as a pianist, but was overdriven by his father and Mrs. Siddons intervened and bought his freedom. She sent him to Woolwich Academy, the great Royal Artillery and Engineering School of Great Britain, where, curiously enough for a musician, he graduated at the head of his class ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... his character that he should have the friendship of such people. He had done nothing as yet to lead people to believe that he would ever become a great composer. As has been stated, however, he was a pianist of great originality, with a remarkable talent for improvising, which, no doubt, had much to do in making him a ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... alone, fantastic, wandered much by moonlight communing with stars and moon, was attached to an older man. Beecher was intoxicated with nature, which he declared afterward to have been the inspiration of his life. George Eliot at thirteen had a passion for music and became a clever pianist. At sixteen she was religious, founded societies for the poor and for animals, and had fitting spells of misanthropy. Edison undertook to read the Detroit Free Library through, read fifteen solid feet as the books stand on the shelves, was stopped, and says he has read comparatively little since. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... my mother had been a concert pianist; now she had such large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she had long since given up the piano. Her knees also had large arthritic knobs; ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... arrival, he found that Dolly's wish had been gratified. Dancing was the main attraction, and in the principal room were the usual iron-fisted pianist and red-faced cornet-player, who should be such profound moralists with all their nightly experiences; and dainty little girls were whirling round with the fortunate boys who had elder sisters at home ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and old, with possibly half a dozen women. At the piano, engaged in marking a sheet of manuscript music, was a short, heavy-set person, with a leonine mane and deep, brilliant eyes: a man known all over Europe, and to be known throughout America: one Anton Rubinstein, pianist, a maker of music. At his elbow, but talking to a frail-looking woman, was his brother, Nicholas, destined always to be overshadowed by Anton, but to whom the cause of Russian music was to owe far more, in the end, than to the more showy virtuoso. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... time, the indispensable corner-stones of the literature of these three instruments. The violinist gets a large part of his mastery through the sonatas of Bach for violin solo, the organist learns his art from Bach, and the pianist finds "The Well-tempered Clavier," and many other works of Bach written for the clavecin of indispensable importance for ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... colored pictures representing the dances of various nations, judiciously selected. The rows of chairs along the two sides of the room were left unoccupied by the time the music was well under way, for the pianist, a tall colored woman with long fingers and a muscular wrist, played with a verve and a swing that set the feet of the listeners ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... resembles an armadillo, a caterpillar, a diplodocus, a motor car, and a traveling circus. It has more feet than a caterpillar, and they have steel toenails which take it over the ground; its hide is more resistant than an armadillo's, and its beauty of form would make the diplodocus jealous. No pianist was ever more temperamental; no tortoise ever ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the other, the artistic person to whom the artist appeals. Between the two, in some arts, stands the artistic interpreter—the actor who embodies the aery conceptions of the poet, the violinist or pianist who makes audible the inspirations of the musician. But in so far as this artistic interpreter rises to greatness in his field, in so far he will be found soaring above the middle ground, away from the artistic person, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... forgotten in the Musical world), it would still more astonish readers. I count them to the number of twenty or nineteen; and mention only that "the two Brothers Graun" and "the two Brothers Benda" were of the lot; suppressing four other Fiddlers of eminence, and "a Pianist who is known to everybody." [Hennert, p. 21.] The Prince has a fine sensibility to Music: does himself, with thrilling adagios on the flute, join in these harmonious acts; and, no doubt, if rightly vigilant against the Nonsenses, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... new and the indescribable smartness of their cut, a genre which had never been obtruded on her notice before, astonished Mrs Fyne, who came out into the hall with her hat on; for she was about to go out to hear a new pianist (a girl) in a friend's house. The youth addressing Mrs Fyne easily begged her not to let "that silly thing go back to us any more." There had been, he said, nothing but "ructions" at home about her for ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... oft-repeated statement, Browning was not a really fine pianist. As a very young man, he used to play several instruments, and once he had been able to play all of Beethoven's sonatas on the piano. In later life he became ambitious to improve his skill with this instrument, and had much trouble, for his fingers were clumsy and stiff. He therefore used ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... remarkable pianist staying at this same pension," she wrote; "and she plays for us very often. Something in the charm and delicacy of her touch makes me think of Blue Bonnet's, when she plays her little 'Ave Maria.' I ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... Mr. Moiseiwitsch is to establish himself with the public he must play old stuff, even such dreadful things as the Mozart-Liszt "Don Giovanni." It is with Chopin valses and Liszt rhapsodies that a pianist plays an audience into a hall, but he should put on some stuff to play the audience out with. Under this arrangement those of us who have heard Chopin's Fantasie as often as we can endure may come late, while those who do not "understand" Debussy, Albeniz, and other moderns may leave ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... in the House of Congress at Washington developed a unanimous sentiment, that a good cook is more cultured than a pianist, and that girls should not be allowed piano lessons until they learn how to cook good biscuits. We have read of girls "whose heads were stuffed with useless knowledge, but not one in twenty knew the things that would be serviceable to her through life. They could ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... reclining form, that the pianist thinks her father must be sleeping. Turning on the music-stool to get a view of his countenance, and to satisfy herself as to his state, she makes a false note, when, quick as the blunder, the brown ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Daughter of the artist, J. T. Kaerling, who was her principal teacher. She practised her art as a painter of portraits, genre subjects, and still-life in Budapest during some years before her marriage to the pianist Pacher, with whom she went to Vienna. She there copied some of the works of the great painters in the Gallery, besides doing original work of acknowledged excellence. In addition to her excellent portraits, she painted in 1851 "The Grandmother"; in 1852, "A Garland with Religious ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... higher. Look at how this law works in regard to powers of body. That is a threadbare old illustration. The blacksmith's arm we have all heard about; the sailor's eye, the pianist's wrist, the juggler's fingers, the surgeon's deft hand—all these come by use. 'To him that hath shall be given.' And the same man who has cultivated one set of organs to an almost miraculous fineness or delicacy or strength will, by the operation of the other half of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Brevity is the soul of good dancing as well as of wit, and you will be wise to heed this from the very start of your professional stage career. Never show a dance to any prospective employer unless your dance has been thoroughly set and properly rehearsed with whoever is to play the music, pianist or orchestra. Never offer any excuses at such a time. Be sure of yourself, and only do one dance, your ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... ability was as widely recognized in Germany as in England,—indeed his profound musical scholarship and mastery of problems in composition were more appreciated there. Mr. Statham, in an admirable sketch, pronounces him a born pianist, and says that his wonderful knowledge of the capabilities of the piano, and his love for it, developed into favoritism in some of his concerted music. A friend of the composer, recalling some reminiscences of him in "Fraser," says that his music is full of beauty and expression, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive airs—for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand, operas, like Fidelio. Have you never heard this ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... (number X) given over to a list of words, and a brief concluding chapter, the subject matter of the volume falls into three main divisions. Chapters II and III are based on the fact that we must all use words in combination—must fling the words out by the handfuls, even as the accomplished pianist must strike his notes. Chapters IV and V are based on the fact that we must become thoroughly acquainted with individual words—that no one who scorns to study the separate elements of speech can command powerful and discriminating utterance. Chapters VI, VII, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... sat Schemetzkin, the Russian pianist, a short, corpulent man, with an apoplectic face and purplish skin, his thick, iron-gray hair tossed back from his forehead. Next to the German giantess sat the Italian tenor—the tiniest of men—pale, with soft, light hair, much in disorder, very red lips, and fingers yellowed by cigarettes. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... a sinking of hearts as Eustace Hignett moved down the room and took his place at the piano. A pianist! This argued more singing. The more pessimistic began to fear that the imitation was going to be one of those imitations of well-known opera artistes which, though rare, do occasionally add to the horrors of ships' concerts. They stared at Hignett apprehensively. There seemed ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... humming under his breath. A chorus quickly gathered round. A battered Naval Song Book was propped up on the music-rest—more from habit than necessity, since the Indiarubber Man could not read a note of music and everybody knew the words of the time-honoured chanties. The pianist's repertoire was limited: half a dozen ding-dong chords did duty as accompaniment to "Bantry Bay," "John Peel," and "The Chinese Bumboatman" alike; but a dozen lusty voices supplied melody enough, the singers packed like herrings ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... at the bar. With the advent of Burning Daylight the whole place became suddenly brighter and cheerier. The barkeepers were active. Voices were raised. Somebody laughed. And when the fiddler, peering into the front room, remarked to the pianist, "It's Burning Daylight," the waltz-time perceptibly quickened, and the dancers, catching the contagion, began to whirl about as if they really enjoyed it. It was known to them of old time that nothing languished when Burning Daylight ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... everywhere should be tied together.[3] This was a great misfortune of which Kalkbrenner gives a manifest proof in the arrangement he has made of Beethoven's symphonies. Besides, this "legato" tyranny continues. Notwithstanding the example of Liszt, the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, and notwithstanding his numerous pupils, the fatal school of the "legato" has prevailed,—not that it is unfortunate in itself, but because it has perverted the intentions of musical authors. Our French professors have ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... head of the hospital, and curator of the museum, was to have come to the Palazzo Castelmare that morning to show the Marchese an interesting experiment connected with the action of a new anodyne; and Signor Folchi, the pianist, was to have been with him at one, to try over a little piece of the Marchese's own composition. And both these appointments, either of which was far more interesting to the Marchese Lamberto than driving out in the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... rose, shook himself like a retriever, yawned, and sauntered to the piano that occupied a dim corner of the saloon, and began to play with that delicate, subtle touch, which, though it does not always mark the brilliant pianist, distinguishes the true lover of music, to whose ears a rough thump on the instrument, or a false note would be most exquisite agony. Lorimer had no pretense to musical talent; asked, he confessed he could "strum a little," ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... voice. In public speaking it will become his ordinary voice; for not only does the established habit assist him, but the organs daily develop and fit themselves to his purpose, and he learns to transfer the stress from his throat to his lungs as easily and quickly and instinctively as the pianist passes his fingers from the treble to the ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... obtain one for only two years. One year they must serve, parade, drill, march, and mount guard, though they are not required to live in the barracks. Occasional cases of hardship or injustice occur. We know of a poor, but promising pianist whose studies were cut short and his fingers stiffened by the three-years' service. Leaving out of view exceptional facts, the system works well. All the youth of the country acquire health, strength, an upright carriage, and habits of punctuality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... and piano pieces, completed his achievements before the production of Pelleas et Melisande brought him fame and a measure of relief from lean and pinching days. He has from time to time made public appearances in Paris as a pianist in concerts of chamber music; and he has even resorted—one wonders how desperately?—to the writing of music criticism for various journals and reviews. "Artists," he has somewhat cynically observed, "struggle long enough to win their place in the market; once the ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters. She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently listened to all the parties and was tolerated even when the piano was closed; he was taciturn, always blandly smiling and bent in a servile bow. Nevertheless, this was the principal of the conspirators and even the viscount-baron treated him ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... great neglected wilderness of a garden, as untidy and unkempt as a fashionable pianist's hair, but growing the most wonderful collection of fruit. Here pears, peaches, lemons, guavas, and strawberries flourished equally well in the accommodating Argentine climate, and the pears of South America, the famous ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... with mirth—he was delightful! Juliette shrugged her shoulders; it was impossible to engage him in a serious talk. Then she rose to meet a lady whose first visit this was to her house, and who was a superb pianist. Helene, seated near the fire, her lovely face unruffled by any emotion, looked on and listened. Malignon, especially, seemed to interest her. She saw him execute a strategical movement which brought him to Madame Deberle's side, and she could hear the conversation that ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... knew what. Some one was singing Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet. Her shoulder touched his arm and lingered there. "Oh, my dear!" she was saying to herself. The pianist banged; the vocalist bawled, while Mr. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the entertainment begins with the announcement that the Opera-Singer and the Polish Pianist are unable to appear, owing to indisposition—which really means an ingrowing disposition not to do so. They have, however, sent "liberal donations" to the Fund. We then find that "we are nevertheless so fortunate as to have with us to-night" a young actor. The Actor ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... Barwig what you know. If he can teach such a finished pianist as Helene, I am determined that you shall have the advantage ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... curiosity, all of her youth, to a widowed mother of small pleasantries, a small income, and a shabby security. Thirty comes, and thirty-five. The daughter ages steadily. At forty she is as old as her unwithering mother. Sweet she is, and pathetically hopeful of being a pianist or a nurse; never quite reconciled to spinsterhood, though she often laughs about it; often, by her insistence that she is an "old maid," she makes the thought of her barren age embarrassing to others. The mother is sweet, too, and "wants to keep in ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... she began under her breath; then suddenly she understood. It was Friday. A world-famous pianist was to play with the Symphony Orchestra that afternoon. This must be the line of patient waiters for the twenty-five-cent balcony seats that Mr. Arkwright had told about. With sympathetic, interested eyes, then, Billy stepped one side to watch ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... visiting. What do they come bothering for?" came the sound of a woman's voice from behind the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and stopped, and the sound of a chair pushed back was heard. It was plain the irritated pianist meant to rebuke the tiresome visitor, who had come at an untimely hour. "Papa is not in," a pale girl with crimped hair said, crossly, coming out into the ante-room, but, seeing a young man in a good coat, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... and looks very nice and pretty. Then we had a little rosebud of a Chelsea girl who sang, and a pianist. I read 'Minister's Housekeeper' and Topsy, and the audience was very jolly and appreciative. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... duration, for domestic troubles soon caused the separation of Wieck and his wife, the latter marrying the father of Woldemar Bargiel, while the former also entered into a second union, with Clementine Fechner at Leipsic. A daughter of this second marriage, Marie Wieck, won some fame as a pianist, but was far surpassed ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... one hundred and thirty pounds, with long, fine fingers of such tracery and separate action that every finger seemed to have a mind and function of its own. Looking at his hands only, one would have said: "There is here a pianist, a penman, a woman of definite skill, or a man of peculiar delicacy." All the fingers were well produced, as if the hand instead of the face was meant to be the mind's exponent and reveal ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... attending divine service, in spite of the severity of the season, he took cold on leaving the church, which in a short time led to a fatal result. He expired in the arms of his wife, the sister of M. Erard, the celebrated pianist. He was in the seventy-second year of his age. The life of this unfortunate Maestro, says the Athenaeum, would be a curious rather than a pleasing story, were it thoroughly written. He was educated at the Conservatorio ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... this rare sombre mood, and awoke to the full consciousness that Friedland was fled. Well, better so. The stupid fool would come back soon enough, and to-day, with Prince Puckler-Muskau, Baron Korff, General de Pfuel, and von Buelow the pianist, coming to lunch, and perhaps Wagner, if he could finish his rehearsal of "Lohengrin" in time, he was not sorry to see his table relieved of the dull pomposity and brilliant watch-chain of the pillar of Prague society. How mean to hide one's Judaism! What a burden to belong to such a race, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... at first accomplished relatively slowly and with difficulty. They soon weary us. A child learns to walk with the greatest difficulty, and only after numberless failures or errors. The first tones of the would-be pianist or violinist are produced but slowly and with great difficulty, in spite of the most determined effort. If the attempts to vocalize are any more successful, it is because one has already learned to talk—a process that in the first instance (in infancy) was even more ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... the pianist of the program. "It took me a long time to acquire the taste. But I've got it now," she added, as she helped herself ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... artificially antiquated, so that it looked much grayer than it naturally ought. Within it was equipped for electric lighting; and there was a low-browed aesthetic parlor, where, when Gaites arrived and passed to a belated dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the closing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted a self-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pillars, and a college-student head ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... ladies who have exchanged the woman's work for the man's. One was deserted by her husband, and left with two young children. She hired a capable woman to look after the house, and joined a ladies' orchestra as pianist at two pounds a week. She now earns four, and works twelve hours a day. The husband of the second fell ill. She set him to write letters and run errands, which was light work that he could do, and started a dressmaker's business. The third was left a widow without means. She sent her three ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... stimulants to compel a jaded appetite: on the contrary, artistic efficiency demands super-cleanliness and a tolerably rigid self-denial. Girth is no measure of artistic ability. But the body, sound or otherwise, is the instrument through which we play life's little tune, just as the pianist plays through his pianoforte. But when we have closed the pianoforte nobody supposes that we have extinguished the artist, or annihilated the music: we have merely put an end to its expression for the time. So when our instrument of the body grows ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... the same department is in some ways an accomplished fellow. He has read widely and remembers what he has read; he plays the violin; he is an excellent pianist, and he is a member of the college male quartet, which is to spend the summer in the North, endeavoring to raise money for new buildings greatly needed at Talladega. After this summer campaign he also hopes to begin the study ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... 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 of one world-famous pianist. Grieg's ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Bravo! bravo! bravo! and the battle ceases, and the babble commences. Place for the foreign train, the performers par metier! Full of confidence are they; amidst all their smiles and obsequiousness, there is a business air about the thing. As soon as the pianist has asked the piano how it finds itself, and the piano has intimated that it is pretty well, but somewhat out of tune, a collateral fiddler and a violoncello brace up their respective nerves, compare notes, and when their drawlings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... of the day and year of Frederick Francis Chopin's birth, which have been discovered since the publication of the second edition of this work. According to the baptismal entry in the register of the Brochow parish church, he who became the great pianist and immortal composer was born on February 22, 1810. This date has been generally accepted in Poland, and is to be found on the medal struck on the occasion of the semi-centenary celebration of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... essentially interesting to me long before I met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings, paintings and furniture, things in which X—— was just then most intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island and but newly blossoming into the world of art ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... piece composed expressly for the piano by a pianist of the day. David sat on her left hand and watched ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... have inherited the Welsh musical gift, for they were all accomplished musicians. While a mere child, David could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this talent attracted the notice of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in America, who procured for him the professorship of music in the College of Bardstown, Kentucky. Mr. Hughes entered upon his academical career at Bardstown in 1850, when he was nineteen years of age. Although very fond of music and endowered ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... early in August of '56 when George and I came to an old town on the Ohio, half city, half village, to play an engagement. We were under contract with South then, who provided the rest of the troupe, three or four posture-girls, Stradi the pianist, and a Madame Somebody, who gave readings and sang. "Concert" was the heading in large caps on the bills, "Balacchi Brothers will give their aesthetic tableaux vivants in the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... 'practice makes perfect' is a matter, as I have previously said, of daily observation. Whether we regard a juggler, a pianist, or a billiard-player, a child learning his lesson or an actor his part by frequently repeating it, or a thousand other illustrations of the same process, we see at once that there is truth in the cynical definition of a man ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... clear, the community sat in carved wooden stalls round the altar, the pupils assisted from the galleries above, and hidden under the gallery was the small but very perfect choir of nuns and children. The hymns of Pere Hermann, a famous pianist and composer, a pupil of Liszt, a convert from Judaism, and afterward a Carmelite friar, are very popular in France, and of these the music chiefly consisted. At the communion the superioress stepped forward, wearing the white woolen mantle (which with a purple tunic is the complete dress of this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... 'Musical Cornucopia,' late of the sunny South, and now a resident of this metropolis, will delight this company by singing one of those soul-moving plantation melodies which have made his name famous over two hemispheres. Mr. 'Pussy Me-ow' Simmons, the distinguished fiddling pianist, late of the Bowery, very late, I may remark, and now on the waiting list at Wallack's Theatre—every other month, I ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Purcell's design to have a cheerful ending. Unfortunately, there is no good edition of the sonatas. They are chamber music, and never were intended to be played in a large room. They should be played in a small room, and the pianist—for harpsichords are woefully scarce to-day—should fill in his part from the figured bars simply with moving figurations, neither plumping down thunderous chords nor (as one editor lately proposed) indulging in dazzling show passages modelled on Moscheles and ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... pianist and can play any accompaniment at sight," said Rilla desperately. "She will play for you and you could run over your songs easily tomorrow evening at Ingleside ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "his high tenor heart must be broken to bits." "He is going," put in Mlle. Cadet. "What a shame!" Sileno vanished and the pianist ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... LISZT, the eminent pianist, has published in French a book on Richard Wagner's two operas, Lohengrin and Tannhaeuser. He praises them most enthusiastically; possibly he may succeed in having Wagner's pieces produced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... obtained the appointment of organist to the Octagon Chapel at Bath. This was a more lucrative post than that of Halifax, but new obligations also devolved on the able pianist. He had to play incessantly either at the Oratorios, or in the rooms at the baths, at the theatre, and in the public concerts. Then, being immersed in the most fashionable circle in England, Herschel ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... of a sacred trust. Far be it from me to say a word against the Reverend Raymond Percy, the colleague in question. He was brilliant, I suppose, and to some apparently fascinating; but a clergyman who talks like a Socialist, wears his hair like a pianist, and behaves like an intoxicated person, will never rise in his profession, or even obtain the admiration of the good and wise. Nor is it for me to utter my personal judgements of the appearance of the people in the hall. Yet a glance round the room, revealing ranks ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... a pianist," responded the man, rather enviously. "His looks would crowd St. James's Hall even if he couldn't play a note. I never can understand how Cresswell manages to have such a complexion in London. He must take ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a small black silk handkerchief pinned about his lively face, stumped heavily into the room, fell in a heap on the floor against the opposite wall, and in a magnificent bass growled out the resentment of Ortrud, while a rising but not yet prosilient pianist, with a long blonde wig from Miss Dwight's property chest, threw his head back, shook his hands, adjusted a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and banged out the prelude to Lohengrin with amazing ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "is the hero of that paragraph"—Langholm kicked him under the table—"that—that paragraph about his last book, you know. Severino, Langholm, is the best pianist we have had in the club since I have been a member, and you will say the same yourself in another minute. He always plays to us when he drops in to dine, and you may think yourself lucky that he ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... not err on the side of reticence. Presently, having described a kind of amorous circle, he came again to: "O Love!" But this time his voice cracked: which made him angry, with a stern and controlled anger. Still singing, he turned slowly to the pianist, and fiercely glared at the pianist's unconscious back. The obvious inference was that if his voice had cracked the fault was the pianist's. The pianist, poor thing, utterly unaware of the castigation ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... shiver, as he stopped a moment to listen, while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture and its arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to be hung—the pianist, too! Don't they know what horrid discord they are making? It brings that heat back. I believe, upon my soul, I shall have to bathe my ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... everyone knew very well that he had a passionate love of music. The endless discussions about music and the bold criticisms of people who knew nothing about it kept him always on the strain; he was frightened, timid, and silent. He played the piano magnificently, like a professional pianist, and if he had not been in the army he would certainly ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... like this!" cried Bixiou, ruffling his locks till they stood on end. Gifted with the same talent for mimicking absurdities which Chopin the pianist possesses to so high a degree, he proceeded forthwith to represent the ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... quartets, a clavier trio, airs, a cantata, and other works were all produced at these concerts, and with almost invariable applause. Nor were Haydn's services entirely confined to the Salomon concerts. He conducted for various artists, including Barthelemon, the violinist; Haesler, the pianist; and Madam Mara, of whom he tells that she was hissed at Oxford for not ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... shock the average young Englishman, all are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without a false note. At the end, the chairman calls "Prosit!" Everyone answers "Prosit!" and the next moment every glass is empty. The pianist rises and bows, and is bowed to in return; and then the Fraulein enters to refill ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... hon. Member called out, "A New Cromwell!" He did not seem to like the comparison and later on took most un-Cromwellian exception to the Government's methods of "coercion." Mr. BONAR LAW'S speech could in the circumstances be little more than an elaboration of "Do not shoot the pianist; he is doing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... the famous pianist, now inhabits a castle in the Tyrol (Schloss Itter), where she has just received the Abbe Liszt, who passed several days there, getting up at 4 o'clock A. M., to work, attending mass at 7.30, and then continuing work until midday. The Abbe, who was received with guns and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... her mother, and perhaps in character and tastes, as she lives a life of quiet retirement, is a devoted wife and-mother, yet often giving her time and energies to a good work, or an artistic enterprise. She also is exceedingly fond of music and is an accomplished pianist. A passion for music belongs to this family by a double inheritance. Even poor, old, blind George the Third consoled himself at his organ, for the loss of an empire and the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... versification is a mechanical thing to be learned like any mechanical thing. The poet learns it—in sundry different ways, to be sure—and when he has mastered it he is no more conscious of its complex details while he is composing than the pianist is conscious of his ten fingers while he is interpreting a Chopin concerto. There is a feeling, an idea, a poetic conception, which demands expression in words. The compound of direct intellectual ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... forties began the stream of violin and piano virtuosi which has continued in ever-increasing volume to the present day. Ole Bull, violinist, in 1843, Vieuxtemps and Artot, violinists, and Leopold von Meyer, pianist, in 1844, ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... that my difficulty lay: I had prepared too big a canvas for him. Intellectually his scope was considerable, but it was like the digital reach of a mediocre pianist—it didn't make him a great musician. And morally he wasn't bad enough; his corruption wasn't sufficiently imaginative to be interesting. It was not so much a means to an end as a kind of virtuosity practised for its own ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Belgium commanded the sympathy of the civilized world in the winter of 1914-15, the conditions in Poland were even worse. At the end of March the great Polish pianist, Ignace Paderewski, paid a visit to London on behalf of the suffering Poles and his efforts resulted in the formation of an influential relief committee. Among the members were such men as Premier Asquith, ex-Premier Balfour, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd-George, Cardinal ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... recently come to live at the schist-works, where the husband was managing engineer. The lady had a charming voice, and used to sing in the church with Mary, who played the harmonium. This led to an intimacy, and with an additional singer and pianist in the person of my niece we often organized private concerts, in which my husband took great pleasure. There was nothing he enjoyed more than such private recreation, except perhaps the satisfaction of taking trouble ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... sat on the piazza of his hardware store, his shoes on the planking beside him, and his pudgy toes wriggling like the trained fingers of an eminent pianist. It was a knotty problem. An ordinary problem Scattergood could solve with shoes on feet, but let the matter take on eminent difficulty and his toes must be given freedom and elbow room, as one might say. Later in life his wife, Mandy, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... looking out for freaks"—I wished he would not give Fred such chances to grin at me—"and Thornton's hair sticks up on end, and he never seems to know what he is going to do next. Murray told me that he is like a very good pianist he met once, except that he can't play the piano. At any rate he's odd, and that was the reason why Dennison asked him to lunch. And Lambert, do you ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... hoped, hoped with all her heart that Portia had not made a tragic mistake in this matter of her marriage. She couldn't herself quite see how a sensible girl like Portia could have done anything so reckless as to marry a romantic young Italian pianist, ten years at least her junior. It couldn't be denied that the experiment seemed to have worked well so far. Portia certainly seemed happy enough last night; contented. There was a sort of glow about her there never was before. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... occasionally be more pronounced. Thus, a medical correspondent has communicated to me the case of a married lady with one child, a refined, very beautiful, but highly neurotic, woman, married to a man with whom she has nothing in common. Her tastes lie in the direction of music; she is a splendid pianist, and her highly trained voice would have made a fortune. She confesses to strong sexual feelings and does not understand why intercourse never affords what she knows she wants. But the hearing of beautiful music, or at times ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... She was fifteen; her talent as a pianist had already won her a first prize at the Conservatory. She was just the companion, wise and devoted, to counterbalance the flights of imagination and the momentary transports inherent in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... both these occasions I had been in the company of people who spent at least as much in a week as I did in a year. Why was I, a penniless and unknown young man, admitted there? Simply because, though I was an execrable pianist, and never improved until the happy invention of the pianola made a Paderewski of me, I could play a simple accompaniment at sight more congenially to a singer than most amateurs. It is true that the ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... profound perception of color, and an exact, unconscious memory. This last is not imagination nor imaginative memory, but an automatic power, if I may so say, of the retina—as unconscious as is the pianist's memory of his notes, and as unerring. It is not the power to fix in the mind by conscious effort the objects before one, and to recall them deliberately, inch by inch, at any time, but the power, when the brush pauses trembling for the signal, to put down unerringly facts learned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... young Mozart, who was acclaimed everywhere as a marvelous prodigy, had naturally reached the father's ears. He decided to train the little Ludwig as a pianist, so that he should also be hailed as a prodigy and win fame and best of all money for the poverty-stricken family. So the tiny child was made to practice scales and finger exercises for hours together. He was a musically gifted child, but how he hated those everlasting tasks of ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... was by way of being musical—that is to say, a famous pianist had been engaged to let off a lot of rockets from his finger-tips, and a buffo singer from the opera roared out his "Figaro la, Figaro qua," with all the strength of his brazen lungs; while one or two gifted amateurs sang glees in washed-out, apologetical accents, which were nearly lost ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... countless lamps'—a scrubby-looking, yellow-faced foreigner, with cleaned gloves, is warbling inaudibly in a corner, to the accompaniment of another. 'The Great Cacafogo,' Mrs. Botibol whispers, as she passes you by. 'A great creature, Thumpenstrumpff, is at the instrument—the Hetman Platoff's pianist, you know.' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some penumbra, mist, or subtle vapour which, as he gazed, seemed to struggle to take human form. He ceased playing for a moment and rubbed his eyes, but as he did so all dimness vanished and he saw the chair perfectly empty. The pianist stopped also at the cessation of the violin, and asked what ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... Penzance," but it was drowned in the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic actor was an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner of the police. The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet; the pianist playing "Where did you get that hat?" he faced about in admirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit him again (the pianist suggesting a few bars of "Then we had another one"). Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... always the way; he was ever too reluctant to dispossess a girl of a nearly won prize to be a success at the game. But he took up a position beside the pianist and watched with amused interest. It was really just as good fun as being ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... fixed her eyes upon the dominant figure in the corn-straw dress. The sweet voice was still rising and the interested listener hoped that the accompanist would force the tone to cover it a little, and put on the loud pedal. The pianist, however, was gazing at his music, and played on until, with ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... one straightened her shoulders and leaned eagerly forward, fairly holding her breath in anticipation, for Azzie's fame as a pianist was far-reaching. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... to the drawing-room, and Miss Merry turned out to be quite a good pianist, playing some soft old music at the end of the gently lighted room. Mrs. Graves went off early. "You had better stop and smoke here," she said to Howard. "There's a library where you can work and smoke to-morrow; and now good night, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was only surprising that there should be so few inaccuracies either in dress or deportment. There were some very pretty women, and almost all were dressed with simplicity and good taste. The island does not afford a band, but a pianist and violinist played most perseveringly, and the amusements were kept up with untiring spirit ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... of 1817, to Marie Pachler-Koschak, a pianist whom Beethoven regarded very highly. "You will play the sonatas in F major and C minor, for ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... manifesto had not been written by Mrs. Gallilee herself. The person who had succeeded him, in the capacity of that lady's amanuensis, had been evidently capable of giving sound advice. Little did he suspect that this mysterious secretary was identical with an enterprising pianist, who had once prevailed on him to take a seat at a concert; ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... you amaze me," she cried, when the pianist stopped and whirled about. "I had no idea ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... reference to the greatness of his ideas; and in his capacity as artist his technical skill derives its value from the measure in which it is adequate to their expression. In the case of an accomplished pianist or violinist we take his proficiency of technique for granted, and we ask, What, with all this power of expression at his command, has he to say? In his rendering of the composer's work what has he of his own to contribute by way of interpretation? Conceding ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... Heubner; personal friends of Wagner—were captured and imprisoned; he himself was so lucky as to escape to Weimar, where Franz Liszt took care of him. It so happened that Liszt, who had given up his career as concert pianist (though all the world was clamoring to hear him), and was conducting the Weimar Opera, had been preparing a performance of "Tannhaeuser," to which Wagner would, under normal conditions, have been invited ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the pianist was moved, he played snatches of the same music as that which we had heard at the Futurist, and between us and Harris and Ike the Dropper several couples were one-stepping, each in their own sweet way. As the music became more lively their dancing came ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 series of harmonies; nay, when a melody has been long practised, it can be ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... Cuban members of the audience and by those who understand the beautiful language in which this favourite poem is written. But nothing pleases the mixed audience of Cubans and Americans half so well as when a renowned pianist favours them with a performance on the piano of a 'Danza Criolla.' At the first strains of their patriotic melody, the Creoles present become wild with enthusiasm. The Cuban ladies wave their handkerchiefs with delight, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... day of October, 1811, Franz Liszt, the greatest pianist of the last half century, was born at Raiding, in Hungary, and the entire musical world was united in celebrating his seventieth birthday, which took place ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... the brilliant pianist of the concert hall; the cornet-player of the "Army" ring; the blind fiddler at the corner; the mother, singing her angel-donation to sleep; Clancy, thundering forth something concerning his broken heart, whilst tailing up the stringing cattle; the canary in its ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... of slow movements was full of the greatest expression,—an experience to be remembered. He used the pedal largely, and was most particular in the placing of the hands and the drift of the fingers upon the keys. As a pianist, he was surnamed 'Giant among players,' and men like Vogler, Hummel, and Woelffl were of a truth great players; but as Sir George Grove aptly says, in speaking of Beethoven's tours de force in performance, his transposing ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... which was indeed a good one though untrained. But he only sang Tubal Cain, Simon the Cellarer, and one or two others of that sort, of which the music was not forthcoming. At last, however, Julia Gould, who was the pianist, found John Peel, which he knew, and he found himself standing by that young lady, confused and shamefaced, trying to make his voice master a great lump there seemed to be in his throat. To make ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... person for a while), who "wreaks" it, to borrow Byron's word, on conversation as the natural outlet of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely to talk better than the poet, who plays on the instrument of verse. A great pianist or violinist is rarely a great singer. To write a poem is to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour or two, and to expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than the Great Organ ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thing apart from merely loving melodious sounds. Once, at the place where she was living, the home of a married cousin, Hollister heard her play the piano for the first time. He listened in astonishment, forgetting that a pianist does not need to see the keyboard and that the most intricate movements may be memorized. But he did not visit that house often. The people there looked at him a little askance. They were courteous, but painfully self-conscious ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that quadrille sound in my ears; long did that phenomenon-pianist haunt me; how long I ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... himself), was he sorriest to part from? Lady Adela, who was always so bright and talkative and cheerful, so charming a hostess, so considerate and gentle a friend? Or the mystic-eyed Lady Sybil, who many an evening had led him away into the wonder-land of Chopin, for she was an accomplished pianist, if her own compositions were but feeble echoes of the masters? Or the more quick-spirited Lady Rosamund, the imperious and petulant beauty, who, in a way most unwonted with her, had bestowed upon him exceptional favor? Or ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... know I'd be grateful if you could play it and give me a rest, my hands are so stiff," said Mrs. Colville, who had volunteered to act as pianist for the evening. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... small—but I am sure it is very good—so far as it goes. I give my pianist ten pounds a night—and his washing. (That a good pianist could be hired for a small sum in England was a matter of amusement to Artemus. More especially when he found a gentleman obliging enough to play anything he ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... swift glances, silent gestures. They were both full to the brim of a delicate laughter, of over-brimming wonder, of tranquil desire. And we all took part in their gracious happiness. In the evening they sang and played to us, the wife being an accomplished pianist, the husband a fine singer. But though the glory of their art fell in rainbow showers on the audience, it was for each other that they sang and played. We sat in the dim light of a little panelled room, the lamps making a circle of light about the happy pair; seldom have ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the instrument. Thereupon he graciously condescended to play for his hostess, and the sensitiveness of his ear was no longer shocked. She never dared to undeceive him, but mentioned the fact to another musician, a violinist, who exclaimed, greatly amused, "The idea of a pianist pretending to be fastidious about concord in music! Why, the instrument at its best is a bundle of discords." Both of these musicians were guilty of affectation; for, although the piano's chords are slightly dissonant, the intervals of the chromatic scale are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... once, a great while ago, I was asked by a friend to go with him in the evening to the house of an acquaintance, where they were going to have a kind of musicale, at which there was to be some noted pianist, who had kindly consented to play a few strains, I did not get the name of the professional, but I went, and when the first piece was announced I saw that the light was very uncertain, so I kindly volunteered to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... sent away, or retained for such a time as his criticism might be of use. But to-day she was expecting Ulick; he had promised to go through the music with her; so when Merat came to tell her that the pianist had arrived, she hesitated, uncertain whether she should send him away. But after a moment's reflection she decided not to forego her serious study of the part. She only wished to talk to Ulick about the music, to sing ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... was a brilliant pianist at six, and gave concerts at nine. Verdi was appointed musical director at Milan in youth. Rossini composed an opera at the age of sixteen, and ceased to compose ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... give pleasure, and to enjoy it together. But there is something beyond this which is not harmless but detestable, and that is the deliberate playing on sexual attraction in order to extract homage and to demonstrate power. A girl will sometimes play on a man as a pianist on his instrument, put a strain on him that is intolerable, fray his nerves and destroy his self-control, while she herself, protected not by virtue but frigidity, complacently affirms that she "can take care of herself." The blatant dishonesty of the business never strikes her for ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... strongly tinged with secession doctrines. Sumner, of course, could not let this pass without making some protest against it, and for this he was hissed. The incident was everywhere talked of, and came under discussion at the next meeting of the Saturday Club. Otto Dresel, a German pianist, who had small reason for being there, said, "It was not Mr. Sumner's politics but his bad manners that were hissed." Longfellow set his glass down with emphasis, and replied: "If good manners could not say it, thank heaven bad manners did;" and Lowell supported this with some pretty severe criticism ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... followed. Wilfrid was not disposed to take his usual part in conversation, and his casual remarks were scarcely ever addressed to Beatrice. Presently Mrs. Rossall wished to refer to the 'Spectator,' which contained a criticism of a new pianist of whom there was ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... the people giggled, and some groaned a little. The showman couldn't say a word; he looked at the pianist sharp, but he was all lovely and serene—he didn't know there was anything out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... love of classical quartet and trio music by the great masters,—in the piano poems of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven, there will be abundant opportunities. The Mendelssohn Quintette Club, the German Trio, Mr. Satter, the pianist, and would we might add Otto Dresel, will give series of concerts in the pleasant Chickering Saloon, that holds two hundred. Alas! we may be disappointed there. The Masonic Temple has been sold to the government for a United States Court-house. Think ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... in the first paper I happen to take up, that the violinist and the pianist are "a perfectly matched pair"; the applause, at the concert, was even more enthusiastic for Busoni than for Ysaye. I hear both spoken of as artists, as great artists; and yet, if words have any meaning, it seems to me that ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... that," replied the genial gentleman. "I've seen a great many concerts, and I've heard a great many good games of pool, but the concert last night was simply a ravishing spectacle. We had a Cuban pianist there who played the orchestration of the first act of Parsifal with surprising agility. As far as I could see, he didn't miss a note, though it was a little annoying to observe how ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... of ludicrous effects. For example, keep a plain background behind your piano. Make sure that, when listening to music you are not distracted by seeing a bewildering section of a picture above the pianist's head, or a silly little vase dodging, as he moves, in front of, above, ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... equally great and insuperable in embryology and in phylogeny. If we suppose with the majority of men that the soul is an independent entity, which has nothing to do with the body originally, but merely inhabits it for a time, and gives expression to its experiences through the brain just as the pianist does through his instrument, we must assign a point in human embryology at which the soul enters into the brain; and at death again we must assign a moment at which it abandons the body. As, further, each ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... a deep mind is to respect forms and at the same time recognize how little comparatively they are worth. The technical skill of the pianist requires years of laborious effort, and yet it has no value unless he can also appreciate the intention and spirit of the composer whose music he plays. So it is in art, politics, religion,—and all human affairs. When the national government was captured ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Peck (1854-1886) is a native of the South. He was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and spent most of his early years in that city. He was gifted in music and became an excellent amateur pianist. His published works include Cap and Bells, Rhymes and Roses, and Rings and Love-Knots, from which "The Grapevine Swing," one of his ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... you're rather big, anyhow. Then I went on to Park Lane to hear a new pianist and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... time under Liszt's direction at Weimar in 1850. Eight years later Cornelius's 'Barbier von Bagdad' was performed at the same theatre under the same conductor. This was Liszt's last production at Weimar, for the ill-feeling stirred up by Cornelius's work was so pronounced that the great pianist threw up his position as Kapellmeister in disgust, and took refuge in the more congenial society of Rome. Peter Cornelius (1824-1874) was one of the most prominent of the band of young men who gathered round ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... dug up poor old Fritz Von Hammer, the former Eos pianist—whose breath was still as fetid as ever ... who still insisted on seizing you by the coat lapel and talking right into your nose—dug him up from the moving picture house, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... said he, "you don't reckon you could be a star pianist, do you? Fifteen hundred dollars a concert, and so on?" And, as she was sitting next to him, he affectionately pinched her ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... developed in him a speculative tendency and taught him the power of forcible expression. Herbart learned to play on several musical instruments, and at the age of eleven displayed considerable talent as a pianist. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley |
