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More "Counterpoint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their expressive values, poetry, fiction, drama and painting, the appeal of form, as in the plot of a drama, or the structure of an ode or it sonnet is still very high. Certain dispositions of line and color in painting; of harmony and counterpoint in music; rhythm, refrain, and recurrence in poetry; symmetry and balance in sculpture; all have their specific appeal, apart from the materials used or the emotions or ideas expressed. Certain harmonic relations are interesting in music apart from the particular range ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the cluster of those wonderful musickers, who, at the end of the Middle Age, went from Flanders and thereabouts, into Italy and all around Europe, weaving their Flemish counterpoint like a net all over the world of music. They seem all to have been marrying men, some of them super-romantical, others as stodgily domestic and workaday as any village blacksmith. There is Marc Houtermann, called the Prince of Musicians. He lived at Brussels, and died there aged forty, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... thoughts come streaming in and at their best. Whence and how I know not, I cannot make out. The things which occur to me I keep in my head, and hum them also to myself—at least others have told me so. If I stick to it, there soon come, one after another, useful crumbs for the pie, according to counterpoint, harmony of the different instruments, &c. This now inflames my soul, that is if I am not disturbed. Then it keeps on growing, and I keep on expanding it more distinctly, and the thing, however long it be, becomes indeed almost finished in my head, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... for a minute or two as the south-west wind went past his ears, and played a strange tune on the innumerable stems of the bents and the hard-stalked blossoms, to which the bees sang counterpoint. Then the heart arose within him, and he drew the sword from the scabbard, and waved it about his head, and shook it toward the south, and cried out, "Now, welcome world, and be thou blessed from one end to the other, from the ocean ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... diploma. She now wishes to teach. What are the chief problems which she will have to face? She must first of all make up her mind whether she wishes to confine her work to the teaching of a solo instrument, together with some work in harmony or counterpoint, along orthodox lines, or whether she wishes to be in touch with modern methods of guiding the general musical education of children, as taken in some schools in the morning curriculum. If the latter, she must enter on a course ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... leading in measures 34 and 35 to a last appearance of the subject, with a beautiful change in one of the intervals (E-flat-G-flat). The closing measures establish the main tonality of E-flat major, rendered still more expressive by the counterpoint associated with the last chord. As to the general structure of this fugue, it is evidently tripartite, the first part A presenting the material, the second part B affording variety by modulating into different ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... and multiformity of the active type. The attractions of fame never cheated Rousseau into forgetfulness of the commanding principle that a man's life ought to be steadily composed to oneness with itself in all its parts, as by mastery of an art of moral counterpoint, and not crowded with a wild mixture of aim and emotion like distracted masks in high carnival. He complains of the philosophers with whom he came into contact, that their philosophy was something foreign to ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... civic authorities abandon in despair. A gash of children and refuse cut straight from river to Park, it got its chief movement from push-carts of fruit and other foods, while the "wash" of five hundred families blew its banners overhead. Vendors of all kinds uttered their nasal or raucous cries, in counterpoint to the treble screams of ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... to call Pallas, as being more poetical. Probably she had dealings with Diana too, for this kind of woman does not in any age affect the "sea-born," save in a hazy sentimental way that bears no fruits; a neatly-turned sonnet or a clever bit of counterpoint being to her worth all the manly love or fireside home delights that the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... from Samson Agonistes of interwoven tunes, a sort of counterpoint of two melodies ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... agreement. Should the musical courses be exclusively cultural, or should they be so shaped as to provide training for professional work in composition or performance? Should they be "practical" (that is, playing and singing), or simply theoretical (harmony, counterpoint, etc.), or entirely confined to musical history and appreciation? Should credits leading to the A.B. degree be given for musical work, and if so, ought they to include performance, or only theory and composition? Should musical degrees be granted, and if so, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... delusion of a golden age, and perfection to be sought backwards, in arts less complex. The teacher of writing, past master in the juggling craft of language, explains that he is only carrying into letters the principles of counterpoint, or that it is all a matter of colour and perspective, or that structure and ornament are the beginning and end of his intent. Professor of eloquence and of thieving, his winged shoes remark him as he skips from metaphor to metaphor, not daring to trust himself to the partial and frail support ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... the nimbleness of my heels, yet now will I, at safety at home, tell in what dangers they are in abroad. I'll speak nothing but guns and glaves,[203] and staves and phalanges,[204] and squadrons and barricadoes, ambuscadoes, palmedoes, blank-point, demi-point,[205] counterpoint, counterscarp, sallies and lies, saladoes, tarantantaras, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Dresden, instructing him in my name to give it to the copyist Wolfel, so that he may finish the copy which he has begun. Your cheering words about the "Rhinegold" were splendid, and it has really turned out well. I hope there will be enough counterpoint in it to please Raff. My anxiety as to this troubles ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... very undirecting direction of the composer. I cannot, unfortunately, return him the compliment he paid you at Wilhelmsthal—"Young man, you have satisfied me"; for, after having heard it at three rehearsals, I found no satisfaction in it either for my ears or my mind: it is the old frippery of counterpoint—the old unsalted, unpeppered ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... development. Metastasio is musical throughout; but, to follow up the simile, we may observe, that of poetical music, melody is the only part that he possesses, being deficient in harmonious compass, and in the mysterious effects of counterpoint. Or, to express myself in different terms, he is musical, but in no respect picturesque. His melodies are light and pleasant, but they are constantly repeated with little or no variation: when we have read a few of his pieces, we know them all; and the composition as a whole is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to lend me the score of the Overture in E flat, which I will return as soon as the performance is over. I also beg he will be so good as to send me Kirnberger's work to supply the place of mine, as I am at this moment giving lessons in counterpoint, and have been unable to find my own manuscript amid my confused mass ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... is passion.—We must try and be clear concerning this question of passion. Nothing is cheaper than passion! All the virtues of counterpoint may be dispensed with, there is no need to have learnt anything,—but passion is always within our reach! Beauty is difficult: let us beware of beauty!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} And also of melody! However much in earnest we may otherwise be about the ideal, let us slander, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... the grammar and technique of the thing, but they cannot understand its full eloquence. In the presence of a genius like Pablo de Sarasate they are more or less perplexed,—it is as though you ask them to describe in set, cold terms the counterpoint and thoroughbass of the wind's symphony to the trees,—the great ocean's sonata to the shore, or the delicate madrigals sung almost inaudibly by little bell-blossoms to the tinkling fall of April rain. The man is too great for them—he is a blazing star ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... have entered into Michael's head this morning to tell to his mother about Sylvia than to have discussed counterpoint with her. But then this morning he had not been really aware that he had a mother. But to tell her now ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... celebrities, etc., have scarcely affected me, and I have remained intact and unashamed; but on my wife and Liza, who have not been through the same hardening process and are weak, all this has fallen like an avalanche of snow, overwhelming them. Gnekker and the young ladies talk of fugues, of counterpoint, of singers and pianists, of Bach and Brahms, while my wife, afraid of their suspecting her of ignorance of music, smiles to them sympathetically and mutters: "That's exquisite... really! You don't say so!..." Gnekker eats with solid dignity, jests with solid dignity, and condescendingly ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come—of course, not so as to disturb the others—; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fraulein Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is "echt Deutsch"; or like Fraulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fraulein Mosebach: in ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... stand to music very much as spelling and grammar stand to language. They are the fundamentals of good writing and of good—that is, of correct—thinking in music. Harmony is the art of putting tones together so as correctly to make chords. Counterpoint has to do with composing and joining together simple melodies. A modern writer[45] on counterpoint has said: "The essence of true counterpoint lies in the equal interest which should belong to ever part." By examining a few pieces of good counterpoint you will readily see just what this ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... and majestic chorus, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The second subject, introduced by the word "repent" descending through the interval of a diminished seventh and contrasted with the florid counterpoint of the phrase, "and believe the glad tidings of God," is a masterpiece of contrapuntal writing, and, if performed by a choir of three or four hundred voices, would produce an overpowering effect. The divine call of Simon Peter and ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... errors technical his Symphonies deface: He calculates in counterpoint, he thinks in thoroughbass: Composers of celebrity—musicians of renown— Confess that they're inferior ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... complete development is practically an instrumental composition, retaining, however, its bond with the past on the one hand through the words, on the other through the canto fermo in the tenor, the familiar ancient tune round which the counterpoint was woven in a kind of canonical imitation, first (fifteenth century) in three parts then (sixteenth) in four, but always with the canto fermo in rhythmic contrast to the rest of the composition. It has been ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... greatest mental endowment of all the Irish writers of his time. He had an amazingly powerful mind. At Trinity College he took prizes in Hebrew and in Irish, and at the same time gained a scholarship in harmony and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. As a boy, "he knew the note and plumage of every bird, and when and where they were to be found." As a man, he could easily have mastered the note of every human being, as ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... that if Keats had spent fifteen or twenty minutes more on his Grecian Urn, all of the stanzas would be as good as three of them. And so we think that if A. B. had put in, say, a half hour more on her sonnet she would not have rhymed "worldliness" and "moodiness." Of the harmony, counterpoint, thoroughbass, etc., of verse we know next to nothing—we play on our tin whistle entirely by ear—but there are things which we avoid, perhaps needlessly. One of these is the rhyming of words like utterly, monody, lethargy, etc.; these endings seem weak when they are bunched. Our ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... at divers times he gave vigorous utterance to his opinions of such pedantry. He was not the most tractable of pupils, especially in Vienna, where, although he was highly praised as a player, he took lessons in counterpoint from Albrechtsberger. He did not endure long with Papa Haydn. He detested the study of fugue in particular; the fugue was to him a symbol of narrow coercion which choked all emotion. Mere formal beauty, moreover, was ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... music, binding the gallery gods with delicious meshes of sound, so in prose-writing there must be scales run, fingerings worked out, and harmonies mastered. For in a page of lo bello stile you will find trills and arpeggios, turns, grace notes, a main theme, a sub theme, thorough-bass, counterpoint, and form. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... 1828, the American public was told by Philip Trajetta,[A] that 'if counterpoint be not a science, neither is astronomy.' For want of proper expounders, this truth has made but little impression, and, while the Art of Music has advanced considerably among us, the Science has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... as soon as they were settled down again in their home, Leopold Mozart began to instruct Wolfgang seriously in counterpoint, that he might be thoroughly fitted for his life-work, and then as his precocious childhood begins to merge into young boyhood, we find him working indefatigably, working with fingers and with brain, every faculty alert, to conquer technique and ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... logical texture of the style with all the dexterity and strength of prose; they not only fill up the pattern of the verse with infinite variety and sober wit; but they give us, besides, a rare and special pleasure, by the art, comparable to that of counterpoint, with which they follow at the same time, and now contrast, and now combine, the double pattern of the texture and the verse. Here the sounding line concludes; a little further on, the well-knit sentence; and yet a little further, and both will reach their solution ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he scores like an amateur who has not made a very profound study of harmony, and sings his pretty song to his simple accompaniment with so sweet and true a natural voice that we are charmed. It is the magic of nature, whereas Keene is a very Sebastian Bach in his counterpoint. There is nothing of the amateur about him; his knowledge of harmony in black and white is complete and thorough; mere consummate scoring has become to him a second nature; each separate note of his voice reveals the long training of the professional singer; and ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... with Albrechtsberger in composition, also having violin, and even vocal lessons from other masters. Beethoven realized, on coming to Vienna, more fully than before, the necessity for close application to his studies. Though a finished performer, he knew but little of counterpoint, and the more purely scientific side of his art had been neglected. That he applied himself with all the ardor of his nature to his studies we know. They were given precedence over everything else. He even delayed for a long while writing a ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Those ideas that please me I retain in memory, and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it; that is to say, agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of the various ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... while we make an exception in favour of genius; for as a general rule (which will of course apply to those chorales which we do not use in Bach's version), all the music of this Reformation period must be harmonized strictly in the vocal counterpoint which prevailed at the end of the sixteenth century; since that is not only its proper musical interpretation, but it is also the ecclesiastical style par excellence, the field of which may reasonably ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... originality of thought. The verses entitled "Morning" ought to have rhymes, as it is not blank verse. You ought to study the rules of metrical composition before putting your thoughts into metre. This is as essential to the construction of verse, as to be acquainted with those of harmony or counterpoint, before attempting to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... can scarcely think that, sir. They seem to have had only the minor key, and to have known no more of counterpoint than they ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Germany no lady speaks aught save French, and you, my child, must be a great lady some day. Believe me, there is no more magnificent being than a true grande dame, and for this destiny the good God fashioned you.' He trained Wilhelmine in music, till thorough-bass, counterpoint, and the rest became to her an easy exercise. He read her of the history of France; taught her to know and love the Roman de la Rose, and the poems of the singers of La Pleiade. Often he would quote ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... who asked the Star-Chamber what it had to do with the immorality of stage-plays to exclaim that church-music is not the noise of men, but rather "a bleating of brute beasts—choristers bellow the tenor as it were oxen, bark a counterpoint as a kennel of dogs, roar out a treble like a set of bulls, grunt out a bass as it were a number of hogs." But Mr Attorney took surely a more nice distinction when he made a charge against the author in these terms: "All stage-players he terms them rogues: in this ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... overcome by the surging counterpoint, ceased playing, and with the adroitness of a Raleigh turned to the Prince and said, "Pardon me, your Royal Highness, I fear we have been carried away by the vortex of the melody." The execution of chamber compositions belonging to the higher walks ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... it were, of daily practice, is but common decency in the palace of high philosophy, wherein dwells evolution. If we leave evolution alone, we may stick to common practice and the law courts; touch evolution and we are in another world; not higher, not lower, but different as harmony from counterpoint. As, however, in the most absolute counterpoint there is still harmony, and in the most absolute harmony still counterpoint, so high philosophy should be still in touch with common sense, and common ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... music is especially intricate. He is the one composer, indeed, who can never be played with one finger! But poor unimportant forgotten Max Reger also wrote in the most complicated forms; the great Gluck in the simplest. Gluck, indeed, has even been considered weak in counterpoint and fugue. Meyerbeer, it is said, was also weak in counterpoint and fugue. Is he therefor to be regarded as the peer of Gluck? Is Mozart's G minor Symphony more important (because it is more complicated) than ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... came to Leipsic he came full of experience and power. As a youth he had devoted himself to the perfecting of church music. Untiringly, unceasingly, with steadfast love, he had brought the laws of counterpoint and fugue to mingle with the grace of melody and the genius of a noble imagination. At Koethen his poetic and artistic temperament roamed through the realms of nature, and brought us near to the understanding of their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... sent him to any "institution of learning," and allowed him to do exactly as he chose, simply providing competent private instruction in whatever subject the youth expressed any interest. Thus he learned Greek, Latin, the modern languages, music (harmony and counterpoint, as well as piano and organ), chemistry (a private laboratory was fitted up in the house), history and art. Now every one knows that; so far as definite acquisition of knowledge is concerned, our schools ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... affected me, and I have remained intact and unashamed; but on my wife and Liza, who have not been through the same hardening process and are weak, all this has fallen like an avalanche of snow, overwhelming them. Gnekker and the young ladies talk of fugues, of counterpoint, of singers and pianists, of Bach and Brahms, while my wife, afraid of their suspecting her of ignorance of music, smiles to them sympathetically and mutters: "That's exquisite... really! You don't say so!..." Gnekker eats with solid dignity, jests with solid dignity, and condescendingly listens ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... April 14, 1857, in Wisconsin. His father was a revenue officer; his mother a skilled musician, who taught him the piano from his eighth year to his seventeenth, when he went to Chicago and studied harmony and counterpoint under Clarence Eddy, and the piano under Ledochowski. It is interesting to note that Kelley was diverted into music from painting by hearing "Blind Tom" play Liszt's transcription of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" music. I imagine that ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... stages perfectly intelligible in themselves, mounting steadily from a starting-point of simplicity; then the same complexity and mass resolving itself as it were miraculously back into simplicity, this is an intellectual joy. It does not differ materially, whether found in the study of counterpoint, at thirty, or in the story of the old woman and her pig, at five. It is perfectly natural and wholesome, and it may perhaps be a more powerful developing force for the budding ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... and it mayhap so move thee; but I am foreign from the rudiments of counterpoint and technique ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... by it. Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come—of course, not so as to disturb the others—; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fraulein Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is "echt Deutsch"; or like Fraulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fraulein ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... you, for the harder it is to win a thing the higher its value becomes. You made yourself too cheap at court here people will surely know how to put a higher value upon a man who is equally skilful in Netherland, Italian, and German music. In counterpoint you are little inferior to Maestro Gombert, and, besides, you play as many instruments as you have fingers on your hands. We all like to have you lead us, because you do it with such delicate taste and comprehension, and, moreover, with a vigour which one would scarcely expect ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... musicianship. Zachow cannot indeed be classed as a great composer, but he was considerably more than merely a sound average teacher. For one thing, he possessed a large library of music. Handel was not only made to master the arts of counterpoint and fugue, but he was also set to study the works of other composers, and to train his sense of style by writing music in direct imitation of them. In those days there was no possibility of buying all sorts of music ready printed. Printing was expensive, ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... longing of hers to compose some musical masterpiece. For that purpose she had faithfully studied harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and musical form, had steeped herself in the works of the masters from Palestrina to Stravinsky. Yet her own creative efforts had ended in platitudes. Was it true that women, supposed to be more emotional than men, were incapable of employing ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... so intelligent, he often talked to me about his music and his studies; he had an Italian translation of Cherubini's Treatise, and had nearly finished all the exercises down to the end of florid counterpoint in four parts. His professor was much pleased with him, and had congratulated him upon possessing a mind full of resource and originality—just the sort of mind that is required for composing music of ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... to say, 'that even in Germany no lady speaks aught save French, and you, my child, must be a great lady some day. Believe me, there is no more magnificent being than a true grande dame, and for this destiny the good God fashioned you.' He trained Wilhelmine in music, till thorough-bass, counterpoint, and the rest became to her an easy exercise. He read her of the history of France; taught her to know and love the Roman de la Rose, and the poems of the singers of La Pleiade. Often he would quote Malherbes, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Sebastian Bach's sons grew to manhood and became musicians. The eldest of them, WILHELM FRIEDERMANN BACH (1710-1784) was by common repute the most gifted; a famous organist, a famous improvisor and a complete master of counterpoint. But, unlike the rest of the family, he was a man of idle and dissolute habits, whose career was little more than a series of wasted opportunities. Educated at Leipzig, he was appointed in 1733 organist of the Sophienkirche at Dresden, and in 1747 became musical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... how inexpressibly touching are its effects! In studying music as a mere matter of intellectual science, all is simple; it is only an easy chapter in acoustics. But in studying it on the side of the emotions, in studying the laws of counterpoint and of musical form, which are governed by the effect upon the ear and the heart, we find intricacy and difficulties, increased beyond our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... refinements, does not give one the power to create things equally beautiful. The masterpieces of music correctly rendered do not of necessity make a composer. The musician, besides the study of masterpieces, absorbs the science of counterpoint, and records by an unmistakable notation the exact character of any new combination of ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... the 13th century, in the solitude of his convent, made the grand discovery of counterpoint, or the science of harmony, as distinguished from melody; he also invented the present system of notation, and gave those names to the sounds of the diatonic scale still in use:—ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si; these being the first ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
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