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More "Musician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who will listen carefully to the robin's breeding song on a bright day in May, will agree, I think, that he is no mean musician; and that for force, variety and character of melody, he is surpassed only by black-cap, thrush, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... day was breaking and the dim lights at the guard-house and the hospital burned red and bleary across the sandy level of the parade. The company cooks were already at their ranges, and a musician of the guard had been sent to rouse his fellows in the barracks, for the old-style reveille still held good at many a post in Arizona, before the drum and fife were almost entirely abandoned in favor of the harsher bugle, by the infantry ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... at once to Lucia, mentioning that Cortese was staying with them, but, quite naturally, saying nothing about the usefulness of Peppino and her being able to engage the musician in his own tongue, for that she took for granted. An eager affirmative (such a great pleasure) came back to her, and for the rest of the day, Lucia and Peppino made up neat little sentences to let off to the dazzled Cortese, at the moment when they said "good-night," ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... strains of the bagpipe in general, and have no objection to drums in particular—doubts do occasionally come across me whether there be in reality any such thing as tune. My friend William Ross was, on the contrary, a born musician. When a little boy, he had constructed for himself a fife and clarionet of young shoots of elder, on which he succeeded in discoursing sweet music; and addressing himself at another and later period to both the principles and practice of the science, he became one of the best flute-players ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination. You get this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and unfortunately in love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes THIS, a tapestry of glorious music, setting out love to lovers, lovers who love in spite of all that is wise and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... afternoon, one of the King's musicians will awake from dreaming of his home and will pass his fingers, perhaps, over the strings of his harp and, with the music, some memory may arise of the wind in the glens of the mountains that stand in the Isles of Song. Then the musician will wrench great cries out of the soul of his harp for the sake of the old memory, and his fellows will awake and all make a song of home, woven of sayings told in the harbour when the ships came in, and ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... the assistance of a certain liveliness of manner, may read very flat on paper, because it is abstracted from all the circumstances that had set it off to advantage. A writer should recollect that he has only to trust to the immediate impression of words, like a musician who sings without the accompaniment of an instrument. There is nothing to help out, or slubber over, the defects of the voice in the one case, nor of the style in the other. The reader may, if he pleases, get a very good idea ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... The musician groaned. "What a pity!" After a moment he murmured, "I improvise a good deal." The instrument, perhaps for the first time in its life, began to vibrate and ring to something besides the claptrap music of the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Villeparisis, where the de Berny family were settled: "I may tell you," he says, "that Mademoiselle de B. has narrowly escaped being broken into three pieces in a fall; that Mademoiselle E. is not so stupid as we imagined; that she has a talent for serious painting and even for caricature; that she is a musician to the tips of her toes; that Monsieur C. continues to swear; that Madame de B(erny) has become a bran, wheat, and fodder merchant, perceiving after forty years' reflection ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... holds that far away in the centre of a Circle of pure Light, the true God exists,—a vast all glorious Being who with exceeding marvellous love controls and guides Creation toward some majestic end—even as a musician doth melodize his thought from small sweet notes to perfect chord-woven harmonies. Furthermore, that thousands of years hence, this God will embody a portion of his own Existence in human form and will send hither a wondrous creature, half-God, half-Man, to live our life, die our ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Burette, who doubtless could play a tune to, as well as prescribe one to, his patient. He conceives that music can relieve the pains of the sciatica; and that, independent of the greater or less skill of the musician, by flattering the ear, and diverting the attention, and occasioning certain vibrations of the nerves, it can remove those obstructions which occasion this disorder. M. Burette, and many modern physicians and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... factory; a third girl who had supported her little sisters since she was fourteen, eagerly used her fine voice for earning money at entertainments held late after her day's work, until exposure and fatigue ruined her health as well as a musician's future; a young man whose music-loving family gave him every possible opportunity, and who produced some charming and even joyous songs during the long struggle with tuberculosis which preceded his death, had made a brave beginning, not only as a teacher ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... whether there are not certain ideas of I know not what sort, in the mind of God which are so many marks or notes that direct Him how to produce sensations in our minds in a constant and regular method—much after the same manner as a musician is directed by the notes of music to produce that harmonious train and composition of sound which is called a tune, though they who hear the music do not perceive the notes, and may be entirely ignorant of them. But, this notion of Matter seems too extravagant to deserve a confutation. ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... as I have told you, Were the friends of Hiawatha, Chibiabos, the musician, And the very strong man, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... who, with an oblong music-book open before him on the table, was seated upon a stool, with a 'cello between his legs, gravely sawing away at the strings, and frowning severely whenever, through bad stopping with his fingers—and that was pretty often—he produced notes "out of tune and harsh." The musician was dressed, according to the fashion of the day, in dark velvet with a lace collar, and wore his hair long, so that it inconvenienced him; the oily curls, hanging down on either side of his fat face like the valance over an old-fashioned four-post bedstead, swaying to and fro with the motion of ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Captain Foster. As the field musician came running up he added: "Sound the recall. I think Prescott and the others will understand that. Blow your hardest, Bugler. Give the call three times. That will bring them back, but every man among them, Overton, will think it worth while ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... o'er my soul,"—and it was heard two or three times a day. The young girls passed hours in listening to it, the vocal mothers were upset by it, brains were busy, punishments descended in showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or less in love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she was Zetulbe. The sound of the flute proceeded from the direction of the Rue Droit-Mur; and they would have given anything, compromised everything, attempted anything for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... returned the Imbiber. "He tried to work them both with one foot. It was the only thing to mar an otherwise marvellous performance. The idea of a man trying to display Wagner with two hands and one foot is irritating to a musician ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... the nurse, and the priest have all died, (the shadow of God be upon their spirits) the soothsayer still lives. And yesterday I met him near the gates of the temple; and while we were talking together he said, "I have always known you would become a great musician. Even in your infancy I prophesied ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... early forms of various races are not more often studied by modern musicians. Writers and painters set an example in this way; painters and sculptors especially, for they study the art of all times and peoples, ancient Greek, Egyptian, Japanese, etc., but what does the ordinary musician know of these ancient Greek, Egyptian, or Celtic tunes that are fast being forgotten, or of Japanese, Indian, or Burmese intricacies? Sir Arthur Sullivan did study Burmese music, but was not that quite exceptional? ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... promenading along the wooden pier is very general at the leaving of the packets, and on their arrival a great number of persons pass over it. There are whispers of a band being engaged for the season; but, as there will not be room on the pier for more than one musician, it has been suggested to negotiate with the talented artist who plays the drum with his knee, the cymbals with his elbow, the triangle with his shoulder, the bells with this head, and the Pan's pipes with his mouth—thus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... disturbed, and took this indignity offered to her son exceeding ill, that while he was alive, any one else should be sent for to have the dignity of the high priesthood conferred upon him. Accordingly, she wrote to Cleopatra [a musician assisting her in taking care to have her letters carried] to desire her intercession with Antony, in order to gain the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... typically a woman of the world, the Princess spent six months of the year in Paris, where she was a well-known and much-liked figure in the most exclusive circles; she was clever and cultivated, a first-rate musician, and her reputation was spotless, although it was very seldom that she was accompanied by her husband, whose duties as Grand Chamberlain to the Tsar kept him almost continuously in Russia. When in Paris she occupied a suite of four ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... for a great blast, and put the trumpet to his lips—but in vain; Andy had bottled his music for him. O'Grady, seeing the inflated cheeks and protruding eyes of the musician, whose visage was crimson with exertion, and yet no sound produced, thought the fellow was practising one of his jokes upon him, and became excessively indignant; he thundered anathemas at him, but his voice was drowned in the din of the drum and cymbals, which were plied so vigorously, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... artists, they commit them (in two-thirds of the lyric theatres of Europe) to the superintendence of a single man, who has no more idea of the art of conducting than of that of singing, who is generally a poor musician, selected from among the worst pianists to be found, or who cannot play the pianoforte at all—some old superannuated individual, who, seated before a battered out-of-tune instrument, tries to decipher a dislocated score which he does not know, strikes false ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... stood behind the musician's chair muttering in an undertone: "Only one Bach, only one Bach." The King requested the improvisation of a fugue in six parts, which the master did to the astonishment of all present. But for the new instrument Bach had little use. He complimented Silberman ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... through to London without stop, and arrived there at one o'clock: wonderful the shortening of this journey; went with a party to Handel's Athalia at Exeter Hall; tired, fagged, and sleepy as I was, I yet felt deeply the power of the mighty master in this his mighty work. Yes, Handel is the greatest musician the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... with disconcerting effect comes the story of Ambrosio de Cotes, who was a gambler and a drunkard, who kept a mistress, and was rebuked publicly for howling indecent refrains to the tunes in church. Which of these is fairly typical as a musician? ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... fascinated, into the face of the other. He was a reader of men, was Donnegan; he was a reader of mind, too. In his life of battle he had learned to judge the prowess of others at a glance, just as a musician can tell the quality of a violin by the first note he hears played upon it. So Donnegan judged the quality of fighting men, and, looking into the face of Lord Nick, he knew that he had met his ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and by that he seeth, setteth down what order nature hath taken therein. So do the geometrician, and arithmetician, in their diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician, in times, tell you which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher thereon hath his name, and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, and passions of man; and follow nature ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... seems impossible. The sportsmen, the musicians, the physicists, the biologists will get their apparatus for the asking as easily as their bread, or, as at present, their paving, street lighting, and bridges; and the deaf man will not object to contribute to communal flutes when the musician has to contribute to communal ear trumpets. There are cases (for example, radium) in which the demand may be limited to the merest handful of laboratory workers, and in which nevertheless the whole community must pay because the price is beyond the means of any individual worker. ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... responded to this call were in varied disguises, one, perhaps, coming up to us as a petty chief with a mounted escort, another as a merchant with a bullock cart to draw his packages of goods and a servant in attendance, yet another as a juggler or a musician, we could instantly recognize them as belonging to our brotherhood of Bowani by the secret signals with ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... he had been drawn to the quiet lawyer who was much older than either. They spent delightful days together on the lake and among the hills; Singleton told them something about his studies and ambitions, and in the evenings they persuaded him to sing. Ethel was a musician and Singleton sang well. On leaving they had invited him to visit them; but, partly from diffidence, Singleton had not gone, though he knew these were not the people who took a man up when he could be of service and ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... professional ascetic, or retired from the world in order to devote himself to bodily mortifications and the exclusive pursuit of the contemplative life. Side by side with his interior life of adoration, its artistic expression in music and words—for he was a skilled musician as well as a poet—he lived the sane and diligent life of the Oriental craftsman. All the legends agree on this point: that Kabr was a weaver, a simple and unlettered man, who earned his living ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... his paints or the musician his instruments? No, you'll have to begin at the beginning, Charles Batty, and work very hard before you're ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... mining districts where there were scores of Cornish Miners. There was a widow there with whom my brother lived and worked all the time for about two years. He was quite a musician this widow bought him a high grade Stewart Banjo and then she fell in love first with his playing and then with his banjo and lastly of all with him. Love stole my partner. I have had many but none like Lone Lee The Mountain Musician. After ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... painter, or musician, if he be dissatisfied with his work, may alter and perfect it before giving it publicity, but an actor cannot rub out; he ought, therefore, in justice to his audience, to be sure of what he is going to place before it. Should a picture in an art gallery be carelessly ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... harmonies:—that some master colourist who has mechanical and inventive genius as well, may so arrange them that they can be played by rule; that colour may have its Mozart or Beethoven—its classic melodies, its familiar tunes. The musician, as I have said—has gathered his tones from every audible thing in nature—and fitted and assorted and built them into a science; and why should not some painter who is also a scientist take the many ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... asked the same question of the second, who made no reply, so downcast and melancholy was he; but the first answered for him, and said, "He, sir, goes as a canary, I mean as a musician and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... vehicle in which the tender expressions of the poet were conveyed to our ears; and I was reproached by my companions for having injudiciously praised the verses of the Swan of Bearn: certainly heard in mutilated fragments, and sung by such a musician—"La Hauet sus las Mountagnes" and "La Plus Charmante Anesquette," were not ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... middle-aged man with a face lined and tanned by many a summer's sun, and without a spare ounce of flesh on his sinewy frame, stood a bit apart with the accordion in his hands, his hat pushed back, and his head on one side as he looked round the assembly. Palmer Billy was the musician and vocalist of Boulder Creek, without a rival, equal, or superior, albeit his musical prowess was limited to the five chords which the key arrangement of the accordion automatically provided for, and his vocal repertoire to one song, sung to the American melody ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... must remember to make allowances. Not the best musician could sit down after a year ... however, I dare say it will come back to me quicker than to most people. You must make allowances for ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... lessons at the school. A few were popular, some were tolerated, and one or two were cordially disliked. Among those who had the ill fortune to encounter strong opposition was Fraeulein Hochmeyer, the singing mistress. She was a most conscientious teacher and a clever musician, but so intensely German in both accent and methods that she offended the British susceptibilities of her pupils, and inspired more ridicule than respect. Poor Fraeulein meant so well, it was really very hard that her efforts did not meet with better results. She treated her classes exactly as she ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... operas, or lyric tragedies, which, from the number of times they have been performed, appear to have obtained the greatest success, are those of GLUCK. The originality, the energy, the force and truth of declamation of this great musician were likely to render him successful, especially among the French, who applauded the two last-mentioned qualities on their ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... groundless, he earnestly refuted that of his want of skill in an art upon which he had bestowed so much pains, and in which he had arrived at such perfection; asking frequently those about him, "if they knew any one who was a more accomplished musician?" But being alarmed by messengers after messengers of ill news from Gaul, he returned in great consternation to Rome. On the road, his mind was somewhat relieved, by observing the frivolous omen of a Gaulish soldier defeated and dragged ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... A Prince from a distant country, an enchanter, a spy sent from Barodia, a travelling musician?—you see, I give you ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... thousand other partnerships of hymnist and musician, Dr. Rankin was fortunate in his composer. The tune is a symphony of hearts—subdued at first, but breaking into a chorus strong with the uplift of hope. It is a farewell with ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... things went right with him to-morrow that music,—or the musician who made it,—would be his own for the rest of his life. Was he justified in expecting that she would give him so much? Of her great regard for him as a friend he had no doubt. She had shown it in various ways, and after a fashion that had made it known to all the world. But so had Lady Laura ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... and Bugler Stufton were stationed on a knoll where they could see the signal when it was given by Captain Gordon, and the musician was ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... hint, O Musician, the piece that you played Is naught but a copy of Chopin or Spohr; That the ballad you sing is but merely "conveyed" From the stock of the Ames and the Purcells of yore; That there's nothing, in short, in the words or the score, That is not as out-worn as the "Wandering ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Forum alone, but the steps of the adjacent temples, the roofs of the basilicas, the arches of Janus, one that extended remotely to the black walls of the Curia Hostilia beyond. And there, on the rostrum, a musician behind him supplying the la from a flute, the air filled with gold motes, Caesar, his toga becomingly adjusted, a jewelled hand extended, opened for the defence. Presently, when through the exercise of that art of his which Cicero ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... his church," she said, "and he teaches me. He is a splendid musician—don't you think so? I owe a great deal to him. He has helped me so much—especially in my phrasing. He is a wonderful man. We are fortunate in having ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... curiously. "Oh, she couldn't help it," cried Mr. King, beginning to walk up and down the floor, and beaming as he recalled his successful strategy; "there wasn't the smallest use in thinking of anything else. I told her 'twould just stop Polly from ever being a musician if she broke off now—and so 'twould, you know yourself, Marian, for we should never get the child here again, if we let her go now; and I talked—well, I had to talk some; but, well—the upshot is I did get her, and I did bring her—and here she is!" And the old gentleman was so ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... of fours, to the tune of jingling accoutrements, the squadron swung. Prescott wheeled about and rode forward at a walk. In the same instant, the bugler, a musician belonging to the Regular Army, trotted forward, then slowed down to a walk close to the young squadron commander. From that time on, all the commands were to ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... Rubini or the opera," said the old man, sadly. "That is a pleasure that, rich as I am, I cannot give to my daughter. She was once a great musician, and the opera was ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... rioting! What blasphemy! If you can think that there is not more profaneness than piety in such sensual revelries—why, it is that you do not know how to think. You would have learnt to reason better had you known that sweet poet and musician, and true thinker, Mr. John Milton, with whom it was my privilege to converse frequently during my husband's lifetime, and afterwards when he condescended to accept my son for his pupil, and spent three days and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... magnificent voice, as if a prayer from her very heart for all who were in distress, in the grand supplication, "Lord, remember David." Mary held her breath, unwilling to lose a note, it was so clear, so perfect, so imploring. A far more correct musician than Mary might have paused with equal admiration of the really scientific knowledge with which the poor depressed-looking young needlewoman used her superb and flexile voice. Deborah Travis herself (once an Oldham factory girl, and afterwards the darling of fashionable ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... child, who is destined to become a doctor, solicitor, soldier, shopkeeper, labourer, or worker in any ordinary occupation; but the thought-germ that will find entrance to the brain-cells of a future painter, writer, actor, or musician, must represent some propensity of a more or ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... gifted musician; and for several years was the organist for one of the most prominent churches in her native city. On the morning of September 19, 1889, she was married to Bishop Charles Calvin Pettey, A. M., D. D. Immediately after her marriage ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... fire, on, weird musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair! Fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ's keys; blow, bugler, blow until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Glad to see you, Mr. Sherwood, oh, Shirley! It seems as though I had heard your name—aren't you an actor, or an artist? A musician, or something like that? My memory ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... is a general rule by means of which the musician can obtain the symphony from the score, and which makes it possible to derive the symphony from the groove on the gramophone record, and, using the first rule, to derive the score again. That is what constitutes the inner similarity between these things which seem to be constructed in such ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... great, the reeds of the swell, piled one upon another in a splendid harmony. He looked up and saw the lengthened windows that indicated the location of the chapel, which apparently extended the full height of the building. The musician within added a two-foot stop, the final needed element of brilliancy, crowning the edifice of sound his fingers had reared, so that now the music seemed to burst through the half-open windows and to shake the vines ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... enter public life. 'A lawyer indeed! Will you wrangle in public with notaries' sons, defend murderers and burglars, and take fees like the old men who write letters for the peasants under a, green umbrella in the street? It would be almost better to turn musician and give concerts.' 'The Church, perhaps?' I suggest. 'The Church? Are you not the heir, and will you not be the head of the family some day? You must be mad.' 'Then give me a sum of money and let me try my luck with my cousin San Giacinto.' 'Business? ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Lover, who recently arrived in this city, is said to be a good poet, a good painter, a good musician, full of wit, anecdotes and pleasantry—it is impossible to pass a dull evening ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... visits, I found out that the church warden was a good musician, and that he knew others in the parish who were able to play on various instruments; so in order to improve the services, and make them more attractive, I urged him to invite these musical people to his house to practise; and in due course we had a clarionet, two fiddles, ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... Sulloway, who happened to be in town, to promise he'd come and tell some funny anecdotes. He ain't a regular doctor—he just took it up; a guy with long black curls and a big moustache and a big hat and diamond pin, that goes round selling Indian Snake Oil off a wagon. Doc said he'd have his musician, Ed Bemis, come, too. He said Ed was known far and wide as the world's challenge cornetist. I says all right, if he'll play something neutral; and Doc says he'll play "Listen to the Mocking Bird," with variations, and play it so swell you'll think you're perched right up in the treetops listening ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... musician shows in wonderful music-pictures how Siegfried went out into the early morning, and how the light glittered on the trembling leaves and sifted through in little splashes. He stood still, listening to the stir of the ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... force me to abandon any pursuit by competing with me; for knowing that failure is inevitable, rather than fight against destiny I give up de bonne grace. Originally, I was said to have a talent for the piano, as well as Miriam. Sister and Miss Isabella said I would make a better musician than she, having more patience and perseverance. However, I took hardly six months' lessons to her ever so many years; heard how well she played, got disgusted with myself, and gave up the piano at fourteen, with spasmodic ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... a musician, And in a pipe delighteth; It descends in a close Through the organ of the nose. With a relish that inviteth. Song: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... are listening to something which belonged originally to Beale Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee. The original "Memphis Blues," so far as it can be credited to a composer, must be credited to Mr. W. C. Handy, a colored musician ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... before the eye the beauty of the universe; and to throw wide its portals of duty and of power to the human soul. It must honor the poet and painter, the writer and the teacher, the scientist and the inventor, the musician and the prophet of righteousness—the men of genius in all fields who make life nobler. It must call forth anew, and for finer uses, the pioneer's love of creative individualism and provide for it a spiritual atmosphere friendly to the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... had the reputation of possessing unwearying patience, I was selected to give him private lessons. That was how I obtained a footing in the Gilmore family. Later on, when they had found out that I was somewhat of a musician—you may remember, perhaps, that for an amateur I was a tolerable performer on the piano—I went every day to the house to teach Latin and Greek to Francis, and music ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... enterprise was occupying the breast of his friend and how much of an emotion a good bit stronger. Amory himself was not in love, but there existed between him and all who were a special kinship, like that between a lover of music and a musician. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... worked in the government tobacco factory at Seville until a clever writer and a musician rescued her. Went on the stage. Has appeared in most of the cities throughout the world, made love to several singers, and then been killed by a bull fighter after singing her way ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... and sometimes Daddy could guess the story almost. Tante used to shake her head and Daddy would say, 'Leave her alone—she knows more than we do.' I don't know what he meant, but some day I shall study hard and try to be a great musician. Daddy said-I should-only he said I must wait until my body grew as strong as ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... surplices, with a serious air and their eyes fixed on the psalter, sang at the top of their voices in the clear morning air. Each time they stopped to take breath, the "serpent" continued its bellowing alone, and as he puffed out his cheeks the musician's little gray eyes disappeared, and the skin of his forehead ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... were white. Better chorus work is not often heard. Tougaloo is fortunate not only in having had competent music teachers, but in having in Prof. Hill, Dean of the Normal Department, a most capable musician. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... the pianolist's repertory opens up a field for speculation into which, fortunately, it is quite possible for the layman to follow the musician and to appreciate the point I wish to make. As many purchasers of pianolas are people who never have received musical instruction, it might be supposed that the most popular selections for the instrument would be either bits of musical slang ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended; and, I think, The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season, seasoned are To their right praise and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... for the animal only; but the Professor watched John to the exclusion of everything else. When the first strains vibrated he glanced around, and saw the musician. From that moment until George dropped the violin his eyes never ceased the stare. As the music continued he appeared to be enraptured, if such a thing could be said ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... leaning toward her, in his hand a menu which the waiter had placed before the girl while she was still alone. She noticed that the hand was brown and nervous-looking, the hand of a man who might be a musician or an artist. He was pretending to read the menu, and to consult her about it. "You're a true woman, the right sort—brave. I swear I'm not here for any impertinence. Now, will you go on helping me? Can you keep your wits and not give me ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... what honor, what profit can accrue to you from such conduct as yours? One moment you tell me you are going to become the greatest musician in the world, and straight you fill my house with fiddlers. Tri. I am clear out of that scrape now, sir. Old F. Then from a fiddler you are metamorphosed into a philosopher; and for the noise of drums, trumpets, and hautboys, you substitute ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to the child," said the musician; "sure he did it no harm. But where at all did he learn to play that way? That's what I'm thinking. Have you been letting him learn all this time and never ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... This version is intended to be a vivid reminder of the drama to those who have seen it at Bayreuth, and also to give to those who have not seen it a fuller glimpse of the majestic story than has hitherto been possible to find in English. The genius of Wagner as a musician has so far overshadowed all else, that his genius as a poet and as an exquisite reteller of the old legends has ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... played upon by the unknown musician of the sleepless hours. Now a mad, ecstatic chorus dinned in her ears and set her blood coursing; and again despair seized her with a dirge. Periods of semiconsciousness only came to her, and from one of these ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... childhood. This criticism hardly applies to the new century, which has been called the century of the child. The fate of little Henry Lindner who is to be transformed by hook or by crook from a dreamy musician into a circumspect efficient man, and who suffers shipwreck on the reefs of mathematics, reminds us in many ways of the tragedy of the last Buddenbrook, Hanno, whose delicate sensibility is crushed out by the discipline of the school. A few years later there, appeared in Hermann Hesse's On the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... answered he was very much obliged to him. We were presently afterwards entertained with the most delicious voice I had ever heard, accompanied by a violin, equal to Signior Piantinida. I presently discovered the musician and songster ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... over indulgent, however, in the treatment of the German enemy alien within our gates. No American singer or musician could travel about Germany at will, unwatched by the police, collecting money from Americans to be used in propaganda, or things much worse, against America. Americans in Germany are compelled to report twice daily to ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... born in the romantic country of Switzerland. He was educated tolerably well; he was a good musician, and could draw excellently. He possessed a small, though independent fortune. However, notwithstanding his advantages and acquirements, he proved, when he became a lover, to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... you care to learn How many tinkling cups were served in turn,— Add all together, you will find them ten,— Our young MUSICIAN joined us now and then. Our bright DELILAH you must needs recall, The comely handmaid, youngest of us all; Need I remind you how the little maid Came at a pinch to our Professor's aid,— Trimmed his long locks with unrelenting shears And eased his looks of half ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bin al-Mahdi, a pretender to the Caliphate of well known wit and a famed musician surnamed from his corpulence "Al-Tannin"the Dragon or, according to others (Lane ii. 336), "Al-Tin" the fig. His adventurous history will be found in Ibn Khallikan D'Herbelot ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... young musician, later the well-known composer and Concert Director, Victor Bendix, I plunged into the mysteries of thorough-bass, and went so far as to write out the entire theory of harmonics. I learnt to express myself in the barbaric ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... liberty of asking the monarch what he thought of this extraordinary performance? 'I think,' replied he, coldly, 'that it would gain him great credit among a nation of monkeys.' Another time he was present at the exhibitions of a celebrated musician, who was reputed to possess unrivalled skill in playing soft and melting tunes upon the lyre. All the audience seemed to feel the influence of his art, by their inarticulate murmurs of admiration, and the languishing postures of their bodies. When the exhibition was ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... good a Socialist as you could find, and Socialists had nothing to do with bombs! But young Emil Forster—he had been making explosives in his spare hours, had he not? At which Jimmie became still more outraged. He knew young Emil well; the boy was a carpet-designer and musician, and if anybody had told such tales about him, they were lying, that was all. The questioner went on for an hour or so, tormenting poor Jimmie with such doubts and fears; until finally he dropped a little of his sternness of manner, and told Jimmie that he had ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... an exquisite prose poem—words strung on thought-threads of gold—in which a musician tells his love for one whom he has found to be his ideal. The idea is not new, but the opinion is ventured that nowhere has it been one-half so well carried out as in the 'Love Letters of a Musician.' The ecstacy of hope, the apathy of despair, alternate in these enchanting letters, ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... four days, and the Venetian ambassador invited all the ministers to the rehearsal in the grand hall of his palace. The music was pronounced exquisite; the two other acts were written, and in a fortnight the opera was put upon the stage. The musician was rewarded handsomely, but I was considered too grand to work for money and my reward was paid me in the Court money of compliments. However, I was glad to see that the ambassador was proud of me and that the minister's ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... succession by poets, by painters, and by novelists. A great musician had the privilege of measuring the portions of the cake for some time; an ambassador succeeded him. Sometimes a man less well known, but elegant and sought after, one of those who are called according to the different epochs, "true gentleman," or "perfect knight," ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... generous and sweet-tempered toward me when I was in her company. She was her husband's superior in birth, as in everything else; was a great reader of books in all languages; and possessed such admirable talents as a musician, that her wonderful playing on the organ is remembered and talked of to this day among the old people in our country houses about here. All her friends, as I have heard, were disappointed when she married Mr. Welwyn, rich as he was; and were afterward astonished ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... These he wove into a Sanscrit poem, which three hundred years later was translated into Chinese, from which version our present translation is made. There can be no doubt that the author of the Sanscrit poem was a famous preacher and musician. Originally living in central India, he seems to have wandered far and wide exercising his office, and reciting or singing his poem—a sacred epic, more thrilling to the ears of India than the wrath of ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... people knew that at the top of the tower was a chime of Christmas bells. They had hung there ever since the church had been built, and were the most beautiful bells in the world. Some thought it was because a great musician had cast them and arranged them in their place; others said it was because of the great height, which reached up where the air was clearest and purest; however that might be no one who had ever heard the chimes denied that they were the sweetest ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... singer, a song written by a would-be poet, and set by a would-be musician. Verve was there none in the whole ephemeral embodiment. When it died a natural death, if that be possible where never had been any life, Vavasor said, "Thank you, Raymount." But Hester, who had been standing with her teeth clenched under the fiery rain ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... fill the beaks of the callow fledglings? Yet this is precisely what France is doing. She does her utmost to produce artists by the artificial heat of competitive examination; but, the sculptor, painter, engraver, or musician once turned out by this mechanical process, she no more troubles herself about them and their fate than the dandy cares for yesterday's flower in his buttonhole. And so it happens that the really great man is a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... "coster poet", music-hall artist, and musician of French extraction was born in Hammersmith. He is a careful, competent actor of minor parts, and sings his own little ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... logical co-ordination of the social fabric. I will now explain my meaning by literal examples, leaving aside all purely abstract reasoning, which I call the mathematics of thought. Instead of being, as you are, a proprietor living upon your income, let us suppose that you are painter, a musician, an artist, or ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... mother. But he professed the tenets of the Catholic Church, and satisfied Pope Clement, in an interview when the young prince was only thirteen, that his Catholic education was sound and complete. For the rest, he was a graceful musician, spoke French, Spanish, and Italian as readily as English, and was skilled in the use of arms. As far as the cultivation of mind or body vent, he might fairly be considered to hold his own with any of the preceding sovereigns and princes ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... extent, at least, they are as dependent as the poorest; but they are quite sure that the great composers have no message for the poor. There is difficult music, of course, which only the scholarly musician can appreciate; but much of the very best music, if we once have a chance to become familiar with it, appeals to all of us. Then the artistic temperament is not a matter of either condition or race, as one of our young American musicians ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... have taken a heart of flint to withstand such pleading. Nancy left the musician and went boldly ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Europe, erudition, research, and collections of rules have not been wanting. Much has been accomplished, but an exhaustive work, based upon the simple laws of nature, has (so far as the writer can learn) never yet appeared. The profoundly learned and truly great Bohemian musician, W. J. Tomaschek, who died in 1849, taught a system of musical science founded upon a series of beautiful and easily comprehended natural laws. His logical training and wide general cultivation gave ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... content with it alone....The musical sense implies the intelligence....The theory...applies to a great number of sonorous sensations, and not at all to any musical perceptions." Mr. W.H. Hadow tells us that it is the duty of the musician not to flatter the sense with an empty compliment of sound, but to reach through sensation to the mental faculties within. And again we read "the art of the composer is in a sense the discovery and exposition of the INTELLIGIBLE relations in the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... ode (3:19) "to the chief musician"—the Hebrew word is the same that so often occurs in the titles of the Psalms—implies that this ode was to be used in the solemn worship of God. The added words, "on my stringed instruments," are most naturally understood of those under his charge as a leader in the service of song ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... everything goes to feed the brain; nor in a pugilist in training, where everything goes to feed the muscles. The result is disease. We all know the musical instrument called the harp. All the strings are tuned into perfect harmony. If there is a false note struck, that is a sign to the musician that there is something wrong, and that the instrument needs to be tuned. The discord is a symptom, that some cords are out of order. So, bad temper is a sign that some string in our moral constitution is out of harmony ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... author of the clever novel 'Le Rouge et le Noir' (that is the right title of the book, which has nothing to do with the name); the author's name is Stendhal, or so he calls himself. I think that he was either a musician or a musical critic, and that he is dead.... My visitor has not yet arrived (6 o'clock, p.m.), frightened no doubt by the abruptness of the two notes which I wrote in reply to hers yesterday morning; and indeed nobody could fancy the hurry in which one ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... this pleasant word spoke, But in comes the beggar in a silken cloak, A velvet cap and a feather had he, And now a musician, forsooth, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... tonality; consonance; consent; part. [Science of harmony] harmony, harmonics; thorough-bass, fundamental- bass; counterpoint; faburden[obs3]. piece of music &c. 415[Fr]; composer, harmonist[obs3], contrapuntist (musician) 416. V. be harmonious &c. adj.; harmonize, chime, symphonize[obs3], transpose; put in tune, tune, accord, string. Adj. harmonious, harmonical[obs3]; in concord &c. n., in tune, in concert; unisonant[obs3], concentual[obs3], symphonizing[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... academic drawing is all that can be really taught, and is as necessary to the painter as the practising of exercises is to the musician, that his powers of observation and execution may be trained. But the vital matter of art is not in all this necessary training. And this fact the student should always keep in mind, and be ever ready to give rein to those natural enthusiasms which, if he is an artist, he will find welling up within ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... consequently, they are no longer cognizable under that Act of Parliament; and, in addition to that, Mr. Charles Clapp, one of the prisoners, produced his indenture of having served seven years as an apprentice to the profession of a musician to Mr. Clay, who held the same appointment as Mr. Munroe does under the Court of Burgesses. The prisoners were discharged, after receiving an admonition from Mr. Halls, the sitting magistrate, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in another wheeze. This j-i-i-iiiiiiiiii is so deafening that when two or three natsuzemi come close to the window I am obliged to make them go away. Happily the natsuzemi is soon succeeded by the minminzemi, a much finer musician, whose name is derived from its wonderful note. It is said 'to chant like a Buddhist priest reciting the kyo'; and certainly, upon hearing it the first time, one can scarcely believe that one is ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Frog went on. "And thinking the weather might be cooler than you liked, I made you that fine coat so you could stay out here in your tree and listen to what I have to tell you.... I hear—" he said—"I hear that you're a musician." ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... well, but the dancing lacked animation, and but few took part in it. When the little girl began to dance with her grandmother, I seated myself on a small ledge not far from the musician. Immediately the shaman stopped playing and the dancing ceased. In an almost harsh voice, and greatly excited, he called to me, "Come and sit here, sir!" He was evidently very anxious to get me away from the ledge, and offered me a much better ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... distance of a mile. Some South American locusts are such wonderful performers that the Indians keep them in wicker cages, in order that they may enjoy the playing. There is a North American locust which is quite famous as a musician. It is known as the Katydid, on account of its peculiar notes, which resemble the words Katy-did-she-did. This note is kept up throughout the night. Our field-cricket plays by rubbing a row of teeth, about one hundred ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... said a great musician of a promising but passionless cantatrice, "but she wants something, and in that something, everything. If I were single, I would court her, I would marry her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart, and in six months she would be the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... biographer, that you would choose for a wrestler. He was a good speaker, had a fine musical voice, was a capital carver in wood, and an accomplished illuminator. Like most of the earlier monks of St. Gallen, he was a clever musician, equally skilful with the trumpet and the harp. And the charm about it all was that he was always cheerful and in excellent spirits, and in consequence a general favourite. Nor is this all. Besides being teacher of music in the upper school to the ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... yet there is more in her heart than visible red cheek and yellow curl; possession and bereavement are strangely mingled in the exquisite maternal mood, the one heightening the other. All great joys are serious; and emotion must be measured by its complexity and the deepness of its reach. A musician may draw pretty notes enough from a single key, but the richest music is that in which the whole force of the instrument is employed, in the production of which every key is vibrating; and, although full ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the same question of the second, who made no reply, so downcast and melancholy was he; but the first answered for him, and said, "He, sir, goes as a canary, I mean as a musician and a singer." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... there's only two or three jobs that a long-haired image like him could hold down," he says. "I'd call him a musician if he could play 'Bedelia' on a jews'-harp; but he can't, so's he's ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hell. The wife of Orpheus was a nymph named Eurydice. She having died from the bite of a serpent, the sweet musician followed her into the infernal regions. He begged of Pluto that his wife might return with him to the earth, but his prayer was granted only upon condition that he should not look back upon her until both had safely passed ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... The pretty musician at the piano was playing an old song, once much admired by the sentimental; the singer, reclining amid her cushions, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... for his lesson in politeness, and as the Baron was not there he played the beautiful hymn, singing it enthusiastically in spite of the danger to his weak lungs. A true musician evidently, for, as he sung his pale face glowed, his eyes shone, and his lost vigor seemed restored ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... has a pretty good education, lives with him most of the time; he is quite a musician and is teaching me to play the violin. 'Mike' they call the Irishman, and my friend is 'Jack'; the other miners nicknamed him 'Lone Jack,' but nobody, I suppose, knows what their ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... evidence, indubitable and overwhelming, exists, that the arboreal and human natures are in substance one. Know that once on a time, as Daphne, the lovely daughter of Peneus, was amusing herself with a bow and arrows in a forest of Thessaly, she was surprised by a rude musician named Phoebus. Timid and bashful, as most young ladies are, she turned and fled as fast as her [Greek: skelae] could carry her. After running, closely pursued by the eager Delphian, for several miles, and becoming very much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the mould of blank verse mainly used for "Men and Women" his personifications of the Medium Mr. Sludge, the embryo theologian Caliban, the ripened mystical saint of "A Death in the Desert"; while Abt Vogler, the creative musician, Rabbi ben Ezra, the intuitional philosopher, and the chastened adept in loving, James Lee's wife, although held within the embrace of their maker's dramatic conception of them, as persons of his stage, were made to pour out their speech in rhyme as Johannes Agricola ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... night marches in the desert—when one could dissociate one's self from the discomforts. The camel men had some sad, plaintive songs of their own—quite melodious and in good tune with the accompaniment of dingling bells hanging from the camels' necks. There was a musician in our party—Ali Murat's young brother—who carried a flute in his girdle during the day, but played upon the instrument the whole night—some doleful tunes of his own composition, which were not bad. True, when one had listened to the same tune, not only scores but hundreds ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... driving all of us at times irresistibly to deeds of civil and ecclesiastical wedlock. He was a soldier, a good soldier, in itself an unusual and suspicious characteristic in one of the Hapsburg blood. He was a musician and a man of culture—qualities that, in a prince, must be taken as dangerous indications of an unbalanced mind. He was an intimate friend of the Crown Prince Rudolph, that bewildering personality, whose own fate was so unhappy, so obscure. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... not a musician, so if I speak as a barbarian I must ask you and several gentlemen on the platform here to forgive me. From the lowest point of view a few drums and fifes in the battalion mean at least five extra miles in a route march, quite apart from the fact that they can swing a battalion ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with the greatest eclat into our social circles. With wealth and beauty, grace and a certain number of showy accomplishments, she had made conquests without the slightest effort on her part. She was a finished musician, and had a sweet, thrilling voice. She talked pleasant nonsense, danced beautifully, flirted very artfully, and altogether seemed the living embodiment of every attribute which is calculated to endear a human ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... were almost all occupied, for campers from all sides of the lake flocked there on the entertainment evenings. A band was dreaming over some tune, each musician evidently being his ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... herself about social tommy-rot and people's positions," and who was aware of the justice of the accusation, had been completely jerked out of the region of Grundy by Julius's splendid rendering of Tartini, and had felt disconcerted and ashamed; for Tishy was a thorough musician at heart. The consequence was an amende honorable to the young man, on whom—he having no idea whatever of its provoking cause—it produced the effect that might have been anticipated. Any young lady who wishes to enslave a young man will really do better ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... orderly succession of notes. 'Can't you keep time while I whistle?' I insisted, with intent to show that intelligence guided these sounds. The 'spirits' twanged three times in the affirmative, and when I began to whistle 'Yankee Doodle' the invisible musician kept perfect time, playing according to my request—now on the treble, now on the bass. Leaning far back in my chair, I placed my hand upon the lid of the closed piano, and called out to the others in the circle: 'The lid ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... greater part of the evening, the hand of a young lady, whose charms had made a deep (though, as subsequent events proved, not a durable) impression on my susceptible heart. Monsieur was our only musician, and, of course, with his violin went the dancing. The cause of his evasion or flight was variously accounted for, some ascribing it to a debt he had contracted for kid gloves and pumps, and others to ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... diversion was caused. A blind musician came in. At midnight one would have thought no new development in the life of the cafe was likely to take place, but the musician brought into the room such a crush of people that on all sides I felt packed and crammed. A tall, gaunt ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... would undertake to play any of them at the end of a month's practice."[56] But the children of the chapel were also employed in the theatrical exhibitions represented at Court, for which their musical education had peculiarly qualified them. Richard Edwards, an eminent poet and musician of the sixteenth century, had written two comedies; Damon and Pythias, and Palemon and Arcite, which, according to Wood, were often acted before the Queen, both at ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... under the circumstances—made the girl go indoors to the piano and play to her. She knew that Rosanne gave, and was given to, by music in a way that is only possible to deep, inarticulate natures such as possess the musician's gift. One had only to listen to her music, thought Kitty, to know that there were depths in her that no woman would ever fathom, though a man might, some day. Denis Harlenden ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... classics. "Stupid old things without any tune," Kate called them. But Marcia persevered in playing them until she could bring out the beautiful passages in a way that at least satisfied herself. Her one great desire had been to take lessons of a real musician and be able to play the wonderful things that the old masters had composed. It is true that very few of these had come in her way. One somewhat mutilated copy of Handel's "Creation," a copy of Haydn's "Messiah," and a few fragments ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the pages, and the principal Wakungu. As a wind-up to the day's amusement, the king led the band of drums, changed the men according to their powers, put them into concert pitch, and readily detected every slight irregularity, showing himself a thorough musician. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and emasculate. Life imposes by brute energy, like inarticulate thunder; art catches the ear, among the far louder noises of experience, like an air artificially made by a discreet musician. A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... novel which will 'sell,' is the highest imaginable form of art. For true art, in its last terms, is the adroit circumvention of an unsurmountable obstacle. I suppose that form and harmony and colour are very difficult to tame; and the sculptor, the musician and the painter quite probably earn their hire. But people don't go to concerts unless they want to hear music; whereas the people who buy the 'best-sellers' are the people who would prefer to do anything rather than be reduced to reading. I protest that ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... to those only who have an ear for the celestial concords, as the musician only appeals to those who have the special endowment which enables them to understand his compositions. It is not for organizations untuned to earthly music to criticise the great composers, or for those who are deaf to spiritual harmonies to criticise the higher natures ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... In Ireland warlike mortals have gone amongst them, and helped them in their battles, and they in turn have taught men great skill with herbs, and permitted some few to hear their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their tunes ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In Scotland you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they have been permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of their souls. Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls, that they will dry up like so much bright vapour ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... to which his very boyhood had abandoned itself, found a willing slave in the man. Even the talents themselves that he displayed came from the cultivation of the sensual. His eye, studying externals, made him a painter,—his ear, quick and practised, a musician. His wild, prodigal fancy rioted on every excitement, and brought him in a vast harvest of experience in knowledge of the frailties and the vices on which it indulged its vagrant experiments. Men who over-cultivate the art that connects itself with the senses, with little ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he or any other man would have the same fate if he attempted to write for an instrument the properties of which he did not fully understand. But with the human voice the case is different. Every musician believes himself to be competent to write for it, though he may possibly be wholly unacquainted with its many peculiarities. It is to be feared, therefore, that modern composers must be held largely responsible for the sad state of affairs concerning vocal art at the ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... name, which was that of an army surgeon whom he knew fairly well. The sounds of the flute ceased, and the musician appeared at the window, his instrument still in his hand, peering ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the Decan, to turn mussulman, and remain in that country, where he got an allowance of seven shillings and sixpence a-day from the king, and his diet from the king's table. But he died eight days after being circumcised. Robert Trully, the musician, fell out with Mr Kerridge at Agra, and went to the king of Decan, carrying a German with him as interpreter. They both offered to turn Mahometans, and Trully, getting a new name at his circumcision, received a great allowance from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... melody at each change of personages. The little drama comes to its end with the intervention of Christ, who condemns the foolish virgins. The words of the Savior have no music. Coussemaker wonders whether the musician was unable to find a melody worthy to be sung by the Savior or intentionally made Him speak instead of chant. The same author, in his "Histoire de l'Harmonie au Moyen Age," gives facsimiles of all the pages of the original manuscript ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Santa Chiara were sharpening their claws and wailing their battle-cries. Presently out of the noise came a kind of music—very slow, solemn, and melancholy. The notes ran up in great flights of ecstasy, and sunk anon to the tragic deeps. In spite of my sleepiness I was held spellbound and the musician had concluded with certain barbaric grunts before I had the curiosity to rise. It came from somewhere in the gallery of the inn, and as I stuck my head out of my door I had a glimpse of Oliphant, nightcap on head and a great bagpipe below his arm, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the voice, in what is often called a "sing-song" way, quite different from the way in which he would read prose. Most poets aim rather at giving the musical effect, and the atmosphere, the vocal atmosphere, of the poem, than at emphasising individual meanings. They give, in the musician's sense, a "reading" of the poem, an interpretation of the poem as a composition. Mr. Yeats thinks that this kind of reading can be stereotyped, so to speak, the pitch noted down in musical notes, and reproduced with the help of a simple stringed instrument. By way of proof, Miss Farr ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... is cast to its place of destination, and each piece will require sixteen horses to draw it. The great toes are each half a metre in length. In the head two persons could dance a polka very conveniently, while the nose might lodge the musician. The thickness of the robe, which forms a rich drapery descending to the ankles, is about six inches, and its circumference at the bottom about two hundred metres. The Crown of Victory which the figure holds in her hands weighs one hundred ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... proportions to different sorts of wine (which kings' cup-bearers understanding sometimes pour in more, sometimes less), and that man hath no such relation to them. This our director ought to know, and knowing, punctually observe; so that like a good musician, screwing up one and letting down another, he may make between these different natures a pleasing harmony and agreement; so that he shall not proportion his wine by measure, but give every one what was proper and agreeable, according to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... women of distinction in her nation, Vaninka was a good musician, and spoke French, Italian, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... heard and seen, but there is no artistic recognition of the same. Still it would be absurd to say to either the musician or the artist: your art is false and is only an ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... with them frequently in London. This gentleman betrayed his accomplishments one by one. He sketched, and was no artist; he planted, and was no gardener; he touched the piano neatly, and was no musician; he sang, and he had no voice. Apparently he tried his hand at anything, for the privilege of speaking decisively upon all things. He accompanied the colonel and his daughter on a day's expedition to Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames, and they agreed that he shone to great advantage ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the musician deliberately, 'one can't most generally always tell. I'll try it on, I guess. Music has charms to soothe the savage Tapena, boys. We might strike it rich; it might amount to iced ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the garb of the character which he was to assume, and, taking his harp upon his shoulder, wandered away in the direction of the Northmen's camp. Such a strolling countryman, half musician, half beggar would enter without suspicion or hinderance into the camp, even though he belonged to the nation of the enemy. Alfred was readily admitted, and he wandered at will about the lines, to play and ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Alfred was constantly planning how it would be possible to vanquish the Danes, and another story tells how he disguised himself as a musician and boldly entered the Danish lines, to learn for himself how great their numbers might be. Here he wandered from one camp-fire to another, harping and singing, all the while keeping his eyes and ears open and escaping at last with information that would ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... sort: it is the elements, the essence, the feeling which makes poetry if expressed. I have a passion for music, a perpetual desire to express myself in music, but as I can't sing and can't perform on any musical instrument, I can't call myself a musician. The poetic feeling that is in us and cannot be expressed remains a secret untold, a warmth in the heart, a rapture which cannot be communicated. But it cries to be told, and in some rare instances the desire overcomes the difficulty: in a happy moment the ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... am like the cricket who chirps in the fields. A storm bursts, rain falls in torrents, drowning The furrows and the chirping. But as soon as the flurry is over, The little musician, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... Foster. As the field musician came running up he added: "Sound the recall. I think Prescott and the others will understand that. Blow your hardest, Bugler. Give the call three times. That will bring them back, but every man among them, Overton, will think it worth ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... shorter poems is the ode called Alexander's Feast. It was written for a London musical society, which gave a concert each year on St. Cecilia's day, when an original ode was sung in her honor. Dryden in this ode, which was sung in 1697, pictures Timotheus, the famous Greek musician and poet, singing before Alexander, at a great feast which was held after the conquest ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the First Consul had sent for him; and the musician had waited to be entreated, acting as if he were much inconvenienced, and at last presented himself with all the importance of a man whose dignity had been offended. The very simple costume of the First Consul, his short stature, thin visage, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... thing applies in defining accuracy of thought or perception. A musician will respond differently to very minute differences in playing which would be quite imperceptible to the ordinary mortal. A negro can see the difference between one negro and another one is his friend, another his enemy. But to us such different responses are impossible: we ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... her journal, "I have had the great honour to show my talent, or rather my ignorance, on the piano before the Queen. In my youth I had been a tolerable musician, but, alas, that was long ago. For thirty years I had forgotten the instrument. Who would ever have thought that I should one day be summoned to perform before a queen and her court, and at the age of sixty, when I fumbled more atrociously than do children who have had a few months' ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... frightened by a chimera, and deceived by such words as "nature" and "cause." Laws and rules, by which we express Order, are restrictive only in a condition of intelligence short of completeness, only therefore in that province of thought which concerns itself with material facts. The musician is not fettered by the laws of harmony, but only by those of discord. The truly virtuous man, remarks Aristotle, never has occasion to practise self-denial. Hence, mathematically, "the theory of the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... interesting object and then to another,—to the tall windows, each of which was a most beautiful picture, and all made of wonderfully colored glass; to the frescoed walls garlanded with green and at last to the organ-loft itself, in which was the solitary figure of the musician, seated before that strange, many-keyed instrument of his, practising his ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... were critics, literary men, journalists of both sexes, idealists of both sexes, arrivists, careerists, everybody who had ever pleaded publicly for the theatre as a vehicle of art. Professor Laverock declared it to be Mann's mission to open the theatre to the musician, the poet, and the painter, and, if he might express his secret hope, to close it to the actor. There were many speeches, but Clara sat through them all staring straight in front of her, wondering ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... alliteration seems to come without effort, and often the rhymes within lines are seductive; while the refrain or burden dominates the whole work. Here also he had profited by Miss Barrett's study of ballads and romaunts in her own and other tongues. A "refrain" is the lure wherewith a poet or a musician holds the wandering ear,—the recurrent longing of Nature for the initial strain. I have always admired the beautiful refrains of the English songstress,—"The Nightingales, the Nightingales," "Margret, Margret," ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... fall on Rose's devoted head. But, during her talk with Mr. Hammond, some of her anger had cooled down. He had touched on great subjects, and Prissie's soul had responded like a musical instrument to the light and skilled finger of the musician. All her intellectual powers were aroused to their utmost, keenest life during this brief little talk. She found that Hammond could say better and more comprehensive things than even her dear old tutor, Mr. Hayes. Hammond was abreast of the present-day ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... took Lucien back to Staub. He was not dressed finely enough for her. Thence the lovers went to drive in the Bois de Boulogne, and came back to dine at Mme. du Val-Noble's. Rastignac, Bixiou, des Lupeaulx, Finot, Blondet, Vignon, the Baron de Nucingen, Beaudenord, Philippe Bridau, Conti, the great musician, all the artists and speculators, all the men who seek for violent sensations as a relief from immense labors, gave Lucien a welcome among them. And Lucien had gained confidence; he gave himself out in talk as though he had not to live by his wit, and was ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer, but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long thin fingers in time to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... brother. One of the greatest joys of my life was to have you come here, and it will be the greatest blessing to my life if you can make the life of little Ben a blessing to the world. I am not much of a musician, but I like to sound the fiddle, and if you have any poetic light, let it shine—but as a tallow dip, like my fiddling. You are right, brother, in teaching little Ben never to be laughed down. I don't blame any one for crying his goods if he has anything ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... he made a curious purchase of a tenement and yard, one or two hundred yards to the east of the Blackfriars Theatre. The lower part had long been in use as a haberdasher's shop. The vendor was Henry Walker, a musician, who had paid L100 for it in 1604, and who asked then the price of L140. Shakespeare, however, at this raised price secured it, leaving L60 of it on mortgage. The date of the conveyance deed is March 10, 1613,[168] probably signed on the 11th, on which day ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... likely to be false, and that which is true is likely to have some footprints on it. When a man comes to us with a scheme of life which he has made all by himself, we may safely say to him, as the old composer said to the young musician who brought him a symphony of the future, "It is both new and beautiful; but that which is new is not beautiful, and that which is beautiful is ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... features, his vivacious though often half-closed eyes, captivated and thrilled me; whilst even the bad limp with which he walked, and which I often noticed from our windows when the master was making his way home past our house from the fatiguing rehearsals, stamped the great musician in my imagination as an exceptional and almost superhuman being. When, as a boy of nine, my mother introduced me to him, and he asked me what I was going to be, whether I wanted perhaps to be a musician, my mother told him that, though I was indeed quite mad on Freischutz, yet she ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... false delicacy of the senses, in the Sybarite, consequent on their over indulgence, until the doubled rose-leaf is painful; and this inconsistent with muscular perfection. Again; there is a perfection of muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in that of the fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles are guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil: another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acuteness of sense, as in the effort of battle, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... things again are for the sons to decide, as questions of professional skill or policy—especially if the father's interests are not touched. If a painter's father says to him, 'Paint this, my boy, and do not paint that'; or a musician's, 'Strike this note, and not the other'; or a bronze-founder's, 'Cast so-and-so'; would it be tolerable that the son should be disinherited for not taking ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... he knows. A capable man can do a thing; an able one does it. The term able cannot, therefore, be properly applied to genius. It is not correct, according to my way of thinking, to say an "able poet," an "able painter," an "able musician," an "able orator," an "able sculptor," because it is talent or genius, or both, that gives one rank in these callings in life, or in these particular undertakings. The word "able," as I understand it, is applicable to those arts ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... dry. As I sat in the rain a little tree-frog, about half an inch long, leaped on to a grassy leaf, and began a tune as loud as that of many birds, and very sweet; it was surprising to hear so much music out of so small a musician. I drank some rain-water as I felt faint—in the paths it is now calf deep. I crossed a hundred yards of slush waist deep in mid channel, and full of holes made by elephants' feet, the path hedged in by reedy ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... you are a musician, and music is so difficult an art, that those who give themselves to it ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... is a musician. She plays the violin—quite tolerably. Yes, yes, I recall your views about violin-playing: it's either good or bad— nothing between. I'll say this, then: she played some simple and unpretentious things and did them very deftly. Simple, unpretentious: oddest thing in ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... to the works above mentioned he wrote Chapters on the Greek Poets (1841), the Queen's English (1863), and many well-known hymns, and he was the first editor of the Contemporary Review. He was also an accomplished artist and musician. His industry was incessant and induced a premature breakdown in health, which terminated in his death in 1871. He was the friend of most of his eminent contemporaries, and was much ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... after being granted a rest from his labours, is reported to have died "of overwork." Here for once we find ourselves in perfect agreement with the official German view. In a recent character sketch of the deceased Baron, the Cologne Gazette observed, "He is a fine musician, and his execution was good." ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on Adele's part to be supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I e'en took the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris, and transplanted ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... became a regular article of sale and purchase. Hence the origin of the slave-market. Luxury increasing slaves were purchased not merely for the purposes of labour, but of pleasure. The accomplished musician of the beautiful virgin was an article of taste or a victim of passion. Thus, what it was the tendency of barbarism to originate, it became the tendency ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... executed for their crime, all, with the exception of a single one, asseverated that Anne Boleyn was innocent, and that they had never been in her presence. The only one who accused the queen of illicit intercourse with him was James Smeaton, a musician. [Footnote: Tytler.] But he had been promised his life for this confession. However, it was not thought advisable to keep this promise, for fear that, when confronted with the queen, he might not have the strength ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... were talking, the musician, singer, and poet, who had sung the two stanzas given above came in, and making a profound obeisance to Don Quixote said, "Will your worship, sir knight, reckon and retain me in the number of your ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... confused you," replied Prescott. "It's the musician of the guard—the bugler—who plays the march. It's a strain that is played, the first note beginning just as the reveille gun is fired, at the minute of six in the morning. Then, just five minutes later ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... beneath one of the lanterns squatted a musician with a reed, blinking upon the company like a sly cat, and making his melody of ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... reigned, and the Dutch were forbidden more provisions. The latter continuing their course entered the Manila strait on October 24, anchoring near Capul. On landing near here, one of the crew, Jean Caleway [i.e., John Calleway], an Englishman, and a musician, was somehow left behind, and it was conjectured that the natives had seized him. November 1, the vessels left Capul for Manila, sailing among the various islands, and committing some depredations on Spanish, native, and Chinese vessels. From a Chinese pilot, van Noordt gained certain ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... them, which is notable in that group of great naturalists who were boys in Montpellier at that day. Rabelais seems to have liked Rondelet, and no wonder: he was a cheery, lovable, honest little fellow, very fond of jokes, a great musician and player on the violin, and who, when he grew rich, liked nothing so well as to bring into his house any buffoon or strolling player to make fun for him. Vivacious he was, hot-tempered, forgiving, and with a power of learning ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... now become to exterior impressions, that she started, as though expecting a salutation from the midnight rambler. Her anticipations were in some measure realised, the minstrel pausing beneath her lattice. A wooden balcony projected from it, concealing the musician. Isabella threw a light mantle around her, and rousing one of her maidens, she opened the window. The rich melody came upon her senses through the balmy odour of myrtle boughs and leaves of honeysuckle. The chords were touched with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... passed under our windows. Britain is not esteemed a melodious nation, yet the unclassical piano is ever with us, and even in the smallest provincial towns one is rarely out of hearing of the insistent note of some itinerant musician. And no matter how far one penetrates into the recesses of the country, he is always within reach of some bucolic rendering of the popular music-hall ditty of the year before last. But never during our stay in Versailles, ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... visible. The one was a poor blind man, who was drawing from his flute tones in which the melancholy beauty of the air compensated for any deficiency (the deficiency was but slight) in the execution. A woman much younger than the musician, and with something of beauty in her countenance, accompanied him, holding a tattered hat, and looking wistfully up at the windows of the silent street. We said two forms; we did the injustice of forgetfulness to another,—a rugged and simple friend, it is true, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out Beryl's story—of the simple home in the tenement from which her mother shut out all that was coarsening and degrading, stirring her child's mind and her tastes with dreams she persistently cherished against disheartening odds; of the Belgian musician who had first taught her small fingers and fired her ambitions for only the best in the art; of school and the lessons she devoured because she craved knowledge and the advantages ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... think we have in this conception as perfect an instance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with another which I was watching ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... are, are never demonstrably reliable, while some of them are plainly impossible. To begin with, doubt attaches to the meaning of the Hebrew preposition in the phrase, "Psalm of David." It is the same preposition as that rendered by for in the phrase, "For the chief musician," and as in this phrase authorship is out of the question, it may be seriously doubted whether it is implied in the phrase rendered "Psalm of David." This doubt is corroborated by the phrase, "Psalms of the sons of Korah." Plainly all the Korahites did ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... I forming runes upon a sheet of folio paper, he would nod across to me as one Tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl and encourage me with a heartfelt "mitai!—good!" So might a deaf painter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and master of some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. A silly trade he doubtless considered it; but a man must make an allowance for barbarians, chaque pays a ses coutumes—and he felt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to listen to the himene of the musicians thirty feet away, which consisted mostly of familiar American airs, interpolated with bizarre staves and dissonances. One caught a beloved strain, and then it wandered away queerly as if the musician had forgotten the score and had done his best otherwise. I never heard in Tahiti one air of Europe or America played through as composed, without variation or omission, except ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... key, I kept the effects of dead soldiers, labelled and ready for identification by their friends. I was assisted in this work, in keeping the linen-room in order, and in various other ways, by a young German who had been detailed for that purpose. He was a well-educated young man and a fine musician,—in fact, had been a professor of music before the war, had entered the service intelligently, desiring to remain in active service, but some disability caused his detail. His position was no sinecure: he was expected to keep ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... a closed piano, that stood mutely against the wall. She thought she would open it just to see who was the maker. That done, it would be no harm to try its tone. She did so, with one little foot on the soft pedal. But Miss Milly was too good a player, and too enthusiastic a musician, to stop at half-measures. She tried it again, this time so sincerely, that the whole house seemed to spring into voice. Then she stopped and listened. There was no response: the empty rooms seemed to have relapsed into their old stillness. She stepped ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... sooner these pleasant words spoke, But in comes the beggar clad in a silk cloak; A fair velvet cap, and a feather had he, And now a musician forsooth he would be. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... which her fingers seemed able to call forth on the shortest notice. Persons straying into the church, as they often did, attracted by the sound of music, would declare the performer to be an experienced masculine musician. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... whole sad story. The musician had been interviewed and investigated. He did not deny the serious charge to this superintendent of public proprieties. With a heart as hard as old Pharaoh's he proposed to go on and do more likewise. In short, the representative of the Constitution could do nothing with this intractable professor. ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... was at home making a glen-garry for him out of a piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded in from school, crying, "Come quick, mother, and you'll see him." Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician flying from Gavin and his friends. "Did you take stock of him, mother?" the boy asked when he reappeared with the mark of a muddy stick on his back. "He's a Papist!—a sore sight, mother, a sore sight. We stoned him ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... servant-maid who has been sent across the street to make a purchase, or to draw water. The fruit-woman throws it a cherry or a pear out of her basket, or a prosperous burgher perhaps even gives it a small coin with which it can buy itself a roll. The driver cracks his whip in passing; the musician as he goes by draws some tones from his instrument, and whoever does none of all these things at least asks its name and age, or smiles at it. To be sure, the child must be kept neat ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... today it is seven thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one. The inhabitants of the globe are enriched by the same stupendous unit; the solar system must adjust itself to new laws of equilibrium; the choir of angels is sweetened by the advent of another musician. During the night Georgiana bore a son—not during the night, but at dawn, and amid such singing of birds that every tree in the yard became a dew-hung belfry of chimes, ringing a welcome to the heir of this old house and of these old ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... Glastonbury early in the tenth century, where they devoted themselves to the instruction of youth. St. Dunstan, who was famous for his skill in music, was one of their most illustrious pupils: he was a scholar, an artist, and a musician. But English writers, who give him the credit of having brought "Englishmen to care once more for learning, after they had quite lost the taste for it, and had sunk back into ignorance and barbarism," forget to mention who were ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... ideas much like yours when I was a boy," he began his story. "In high school and college I had believed myself an artist. I was a good musician, and I dabbled with painting and literature. I wanted to come back for post-graduate work, though, and something attracted me to science. I had put off studying mathematics until my graduating year, only to find that it fascinated me. And I was ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... to attract the friendship of Guido Cavalcante, a young noble of a philosophical as well as poetical turn of mind, who has retained a reputation with posterity: and it was probably at the same time he became acquainted with Giotto, who drew his likeness, and with Casella, the musician, whom he greets with so much tenderness in ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... in succession by poets, by painters, and by novelists. A great musician had the privilege of measuring the portions of the cake for some time; an ambassador succeeded him. Sometimes a man less well known, but elegant and sought after, one of those who are called according ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Zeno into the shade, since, with the same object in view, he displayed greater flexibility in accommodating himself to the requisitions of the musician. The merits which have gained for him the reputation of a classic among the Italians of the present day, and which, in some degree, have made him with them what Racine is with the French, are generally the perfect purity, clearness, elegance, and sweetness of his language, and, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... daughter, Jim Lane loved his violin, and with good reason, for the instrument had once belonged to his great- grandfather, who, tradition says, was a musician ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... which at the end of a day's labor so shone in the light of a candle that his companions nicknamed him "the man with the golden beard." There are prints by him which shine more than his beard. Among his masterpieces is the portrait of his instructor, THEODORE COERNHERT, engraver, poet, musician, and vindicator of his country, and author of the national air, "William of Orange," whose passion for liberty did not prevent him from giving to the world translations of Cicero's Offices and Seneca's Treatise on Beneficence. But that of the ENGRAVER ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... also gave them "temporal" enjoyment in dances, pageants, and plays. We must not forget, however, that the Chapel Royal was originally, as its name implies, a religious body. Cornish was a capable dramatist, as well as a musician and a poet; and he, unlike the author of Everyman, wrote plays simply to amuse the court and its guests. He has even been called the founder of the secular ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... have something of the poet in him; the musician, the painter, the mechanic, are essentially necessary to the contribution of their respective arts, towards the harmony and perfection of composition, in a fine dramatic dance; even the dresses are no inconsiderable part of the entertainment. The costume, or in a more general term, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... even to the merging of the whole landscape, nay, the whole world, into a dream—which is felt rather than seen, but possesses a charm that almost defies the pencil of the painter, and can only be expressed by the deep and sweet notes of the poet and the musician. For love and reverence are necessary to appreciate ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... are paintings of the four evangelists done by the Reverend Mr. Oertel. He was also a wood-carver and a musician, and was from Nuremberg in Germany which, I suppose, explains why he was always called Master by his wife. They lived for a good while on Gay (N) Street. Mr. Corcoran bought several of his pictures for his gallery. His best known work ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... was soon full to overflowing. The young men present were of the smartest, and would not willingly have bowed the knee to a nobody, however pretty. But Lady Helen's devotion, the girl's reputation as a musician, and her little nonchalant disdainful ways, gave her a kind of prestige, which made her, for the time being at any rate, the equal of anybody. Petitioners came and went away empty. Royalty was introduced, and smiled both upon the beauty and the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... future which he most furiously proclaims in the language prophets use. He holds that far away in the centre of a Circle of pure Light, the true God exists,—a vast all glorious Being who with exceeding marvellous love controls and guides Creation toward some majestic end—even as a musician doth melodize his thought from small sweet notes to perfect chord-woven harmonies. Furthermore, that thousands of years hence, this God will embody a portion of his own Existence in human form and will send hither a wondrous creature, half-God, half-Man, to live our life, die our death, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... twenty-eight, developed quick consumption during the winter and died in the care of the Italian, Nonna Lisa they call her. This woman cared for the little girl, and began to take her out with her early in March on the avenues and streets of the upper west side. The old woman is an itinerant musician and plays the guitar with real feeling—I've heard her—and, by the way, makes a decent little living of her own. She found that Aileen had a good voice and could sing several Irish songs. She learned the accompaniments, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the keenest sensation possible to it will in consequence be less intense. An artist who is capable of discriminating more differences of tint than another man is not necessarily more capable of seeing clearly in twilight, or more or less intolerant of sunshine. A musician is not necessarily able to hear very faint sounds, nor to be more startled by loud sounds than others are. A mechanic who works hard with heavy tools and has rough and grimy thumbs, insensible to very slight pressures, may yet have ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... mentioned in the title he enunciates some curious theories on poetry. He divides music into music proper and poetry. Music proper he calls artificial on the ground that everyone could by dint of study become a musician; poetry he calls natural because he says it is not an art that can be acquired but a gift. He lays immense stress on the harmony of verse, because, as was the fashion of his day, he practically took it for granted that all poetry ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... not satisfied to be merely charming. You are clever and well educated, you know every book that comes out, you love poetry, you are a musician, and you talk delightfully. Women cannot ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... who married them. Of course it is no secret to you that my mother is an actress? I discovered it accidentally, for you know the papers were never left in my way, and in all her letters she alluded to her 'work being successful,' but never mentioned what it was; and I always imagined she was a musician giving concerts. But one day last June, at the Sabbath-school Festival, Mrs. Potter gave me a Boston paper, containing an article marked with ink, which she said she wished me to read, because it would edify a Sunday-school pupil. It was a letter from Italy, describing one of the theatres there, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... should keep the unvarying high level of Beethoven, and it is equally unreasonable to exact from Giorgione the uniform excellence which characterises Titian. I do not propose at this point to work out the comparison between the painter, the musician, and the poet; this must be reserved until the final summing-up of Giorgione as artist, when we have examined all his work. But this point I do insist on, that from the very nature of things Giorgione's art is, and must be, ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... swelling high with hope and ambition. Within a bower of orange trees, in the deep recesses of the royal gardens, to which she had hastened, sat the panting princess. She selected some flowers from those which were scattered round her, and despatched them to her favourite musician and attendant, Acota. Who was there in the whole kingdom of Souffra who could so sweetly touch the mandolin as Acota? Yet, who was there, not only in Souffra, but in all the adjacent countries, who struck such occasional discordant ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... indeed, less significance," sighed Joseph Ribas. "What was it but to help a humble musician to the blessedness and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... in the world than to be able to play on the fiddle. What? Perhaps it is not so? I don't know how it is with you. But I know that since I first reached the age of understanding, my heart longed for a fiddle. I loved as my life any musician whatever—no matter what instrument he played. If there was a wedding anywhere in the town, I was the first to run forward and welcome the musicians. I loved to steal over to the bass, and draw my fingers across one of the strings—Boom! And I flew away. Boom! And ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... a long time, listening to the echoes which this music had awakened in his soul. He retired, at length, content, but determined that upon the morrow he would watch—the day being Sunday—for the musician who had so moved and ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... tomb of Schubert, the great musician, is written, "He gave much, but promised more"; and it is this immeasurable wealth of promise that makes the lives of our boys and girls so full of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Whom lur'ft thou here? what prey dost scent? Rat-catching[81] offspring of perdition! To hell goes first the instrument! To hell then follows the musician! ...
— Faust • Goethe
... leading idea, that of a tradesman who neglects his shop for "foreign affairs," appears to be derived from Addison's excellent character-sketch in the Tatler of the "Political Upholsterer." This is the more likely, in that Arne the musician, whose father is generally supposed to have been Addison's original, was Fielding's contemporary at Eton. Justice Squeezum, another character contained in this play, is a kind of first draft of the later Justice Thrasher ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... genteel and fine. He was the son of the royal plate-washer. He was very fond of Peter, and would sometimes take him to his home; and he gave him a violin, and taught him to play it. It seemed as if the whole art lay in the boy's fingers; and he wanted to be more than a drummer—he wanted to become musician to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... on just as usual in the house. The kitchen door was left open and Mrs. Jarvis was welcome to smell any of the appetizing odours that wafted out into her room. Jessie resumed her study, and especially her practice, for she hoped some day to be a great musician. She waited on her mother and took charge of the housekeeping, so much as was necessary with the well-tried servant at the head of the kitchen. And though she had but sixteen years over her bright brown head, she proved herself to ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... with perpetual nervous movements; he inquired anxiously if the bell had yet rung for the choir, frightened by the threats of a fine in case he were late. Gabriel felt himself very much attracted by this poor priestly musician, who lived so despised in the furthest corner of the church, thinking far more of music than ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... most delightful girl. And when we returned late in the afternoon it was directly in the line of circumstances that I should remain for tea; and after tea Phyllis played and sang for me in the little parlor, for Phyllis was a musician of no small merit. When in reply to my inquiry she sang a simple Scotch ballad her mother had sung so touchingly many years before, a great lump rose in my throat, and I sat far over in the shadow that she and Mary might ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... minstrel, chanter, cantatrice, cantor, prima donna, precentor, bard, troubadour, jongleur, musician. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... seen once in the possession of Louis XI; and from there to Spain, for Philip the Handsome presented it to Joanna on her wedding day. Columbus took it to America, but fortunately brought it back again; Peter the Great threw it at an indifferent musician; on one of its later visits to England Pope wrote a couplet to it. And the most astonishing thing in its whole history was that now for more than a hundred years it had vanished completely. To turn up again in a little Devonshire ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... you're not still angry about that musician. I told you, at the time, that he was just helping me with ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... magically—delicious cambric tea and cinnamon toast. Kirk and the old gentleman talked of the farm, and of Asquam, and other every-day subjects, till the spring dusk gathered at the window, and the musician started up. "Your folk will be anxious," he said. "We must be off. But you will come to me again, will ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Piozzi, the Mrs. Thrale of Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Mr. Thrale was a brewer, the founder of the great firm now known as Barclay and Perkins. She was many years younger than he; and, after his death, she married Signor Piozzi, a professional musician of eminence. Johnson, who had been an habitual guest of her husband and her at their villa at Streatham, set the fashion of condemning this second marriage as a disgraceful mesalliance; but it is not very ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... reflection I ate it, and assimilated it in my own manner. Neither by him nor by any person far more considerable than himself has my imagination been moved in the direction of the mover of it. Let great poet, great musician, great painter stir me ever so deeply, I have never been able to follow him an inch. I was excited by pictures to see new pictures of my own, by poems to make poems—of my own, not of theirs. In these, no doubt, were ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
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