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More "Soprano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, who called ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... its nerve always on hand, felt that there was a ray of hope. The good, old, strong and fierce school yell went up. The soprano voices of the girls sounded ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... began to spread throughout the assembly. At every moment the crowd increased. The aroma of new-sawn timber and sawdust began to be mingled with the feminine odour of sachet and flowers. There was a babel of talk in the air—male baritone and soprano chatter—varied by an occasional note of laughter and the swish of stiffly starched petticoats. On the row of chairs that went around three sides of the wall groups began to settle themselves. For a long time ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... melody on the Choir Clarinet; to play on the Choir and bring out the melody on the Swell Vox Humana or Cornopean; or to play a fugue with the full power of the Great organ (except the Trumpet) and bring out the subject of the fugue every time it enters, whether in the soprano voice, the alto, tenor, ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... Amy in some surprise. I knew she sang very prettily, but I had thought she was rendered too nervous by the storm to do aught but sit quiet in her chair. However, there she was at the piano, and in another moment her fresh, sweet mezzo-soprano rang softly through the room in Tosti's plaintive song, "Good-bye!" We listened, but none of us moved from the open window where we still inhaled what air there was, and watched the ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... (seven), and eleving verses with the Doxology." Then, pulling out his pitch-pipe from the dusty cushions of his seat, he would strut pompously down the church, ascend the stairs leading to the west gallery, blow his pipe, and give the basses, tenors, and soprano voices their notes, which they hung on to in a low tone until the clerk returned to his place in the lowest tier of the "three-decker" and started the choir-folk vigorously. Those Doxologies at the end! What ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsing inward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designed to be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... discovered that he was really a tenor. Some voices are so near the dividing line that it requires wide experience and a fine ear for quality on the part of a teacher to determine in what direction they should be developed to greatest advantage. A fine ear may determine that the seeming mezzo is a true soprano, that the notes of the pupil who comes as a baritone have the tenor quality and that his scale safely can be added to, while the would-be tenor has the baritone timbre which will prevent his notes ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... first introduction to German music," said he, "and that it was grand old Johann Sebastian Bach whom you heard. That is one of the soprano solos in the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... of a perfect knowledge of how to wait, and to wait—if necessary—long. When the first golden down had shown itself on his cheek and lip she had not noticed it too much and when his golden soprano voice began to change to a deeper note and annoyed him with its uncertainties she had spared him awkwardness by making him feel the transition a casual natural thing, instead of a personal and characteristic weakness. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... case to remember Mr. W.B. Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To the present writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, and that she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as it were, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in high soprano, and Mr. Yeats in ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... so capable of the noblest enthusiasm, and so dashed with the gloom of over-pampered luxury, can stoop to chairs and china, ever and anon, with the zeal of an auctioneer—revel in the design of a clock or a candlestick, and be as ecstatic about a fiddler or a soprano as the fools in Hogarth's concert. On such occasions he reminds us, and will, we think, remind everyone, of the Lord of Strawberry Hill. But even here all we have is on a grander scale. The oriental ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the first time by many that Pat had hummed an effective and harmonious background to his sister's songs. As for Pixie, she opened her mouth and began to sing as simply and naturally as a bird. She had a lovely voice, mezzo-soprano in range, and though she now kept it sweetly subdued, the hearer realised that it had also considerable power. She sang as all true singers do—as if the action gave to herself the purest joy, her head tilted slightly on one side, as if to listen ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... stan' up an' turn round an' join the choir. Sam Merritt has come up from Palmer to spend Thanksgivin' with the ol' folks, an' he is singin' tenor to-day in his ol' place in the choir. Some folks say he sings wonderful well, but I don't like Sam's voice. Laura sings soprano in the choir, and Sam stands next to her an' holds ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... musicians, were anxious to meet the famous dramatic soprano, Lilli Lehmann, who was living quietly in one of the suburbs of the city. Notes were exchanged, and on a certain day we were bidden to come, out of the regular hours for visitors, ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... humor of the action of Charles turns on his assumption that his sister was "a fallen woman," and must be saved from disgrace. This opinion was shared by various other shady respectables, who kept the matter secret by lifting a soprano wail of woe from the housetops, declaring that Mary had smirched their good names and those of their friends by her outrageous conduct. These people also busied themselves in spreading a report that Mary had gone into "French ways," it being strongly held, then as now, by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... soprano, and it is the first time she has sung on an English platform. She walks on slowly and stands statuesquely motionless while the preliminary bars are being played. One notes her elegant Parisian costume, clinging and very low-cut, every detail of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... as veil. I write songs, and all your countrymen and countryvomen sing dem. I haf a choral company, too, and it is for dat I vant you. I go to de first houses in de land, de lords, de ministers, de princes. You shall come vith me. Your voice is soprano—no, mezzo-soprano—and it vill grow. I vill pitch it, and vhen it is ready I vill bring you out. But now get away from dis place and naivare come back, or I vill be more ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was opened a flood of music floated out. A divinely sweet mezzo-soprano voice was singing to the accompaniment of a harp. As the master of the house flung wide the sitting-room door and announced the visitor, the sounds ceased, but the musician sat with her hands resting upon the gilded strings for a ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... among the rights of woman are fond of alluding to the fact that only here and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the work of singing bass. The large majority of women prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what has this fact to do with the matter of right in the premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without onions, but I never knew that fact to be brought forward as an argument against the right of a man to eat ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... of the Summer Night," sung exquisitely in three parts. Sahwah could hardly believe it was the Winnebagos, so perfect was the harmony. This was followed by "I Would That My Love," sung by Gladys and Nyoda. Sahwah drew a long, rapturous breath at the beautiful blending of alto and soprano. She was passionately fond of music. Then Gladys sang "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming," her clear high voice ringing over the water like a flute. The notes died lingeringly away, and the silence ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... were being doled out at long and impressive intervals, like the tolling of a heavy bell, more than half a hundred soprano voices were hastily getting in their requisite number of half ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... she said with the calm self-confidence of a connoisseur. "Tell me, have you composed anything for a woman's voice, for a mezzo-soprano?" ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... joy from a quarter of a million throats. She was radiant; smiling and dimpling she waved her handkerchief with the abandonment of a child. The storm of applause increased, rolling up the street to the very summit of Twin Peaks. Suddenly the soft liquid notes of a clear soprano fell upon the air, and instantly the great multitude was wrapped in silence. Out over the heads of the people the exquisite tones floated, mounting upward to the stars. It was the 'Last Rose of Summer,' and ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... bawling on his own account Neewa turned tail to the nest and ran. Miki was not a hair behind him. In every square inch of his tender hide he felt the red-hot thrust of a needle. It was Neewa that made the most noise. His voice was one continuous bawl, and to this bass Miki's soprano wailing added the touch which would have convinced any passing Indian that the loup-garou ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... music was represented in our family by these two sisters. It was chiefly owing to Clara's career that the musical conductor C. M. von Weber often came to our house. His visits were varied by those of the great male-soprano Sassaroli; and in addition to these two representatives of German and Italian music, we also had the company of Mieksch, her singing master. It was on these occasions that I as a child first heard German and Italian music discussed, and learnt that any ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to the number of vibrations which the ligaments are capable of producing, or in other words, according to their dimensions and their tension. This difference is easily seen by comparing the voicebox of a soprano with that of a bass, because there the proportions are so manifestly smaller in the one than in the other. There are similar distinctions between soprano and contralto on the one hand, and between tenor ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, with such a voice as that!" she cried; "you are out of your senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful to keep your gifts ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... fifteen Sebastian left his brother's roof and entered the Latin school connected with the Church of St. Michael at Lueneburg. It was found he had a beautiful soprano voice, which placed him with the scholars who were chosen to sing in the church service in return for a free education. There were two church schools in Lueneburg, and the rivalry between them was so keen, that when the scholars sang in the streets during the ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... bugle was chiefly used in B flat, a crook for B flat being frequently added to the bugle in C; the soprano bugle in E flat was also much used ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... lighted up the snowy road to a crowded restaurant, from the first floor windows of which came the shrieks of a woman's soprano, followed every now and then by a storm of applause. Farther on, a roundabout, crammed with people, was going round under an illuminated roof to the accompaniment of ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over the gold ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Maid Sings Light form one of the gramophone records made for "His Master's Voice" series by Alma Gluck. This lyric soprano has sung the two MacDowell songs with sympathy and perfect phrasing. The accompaniments were played by a Mr. Bourdon, who unfortunately disregarded the composer's ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... carolling of a bird which was perched upon the bough of a tree that shaded the house, and little Mamie was playing at her feet, when Allie, who was in the parlor practising on the piano, struck up with her full-toned soprano voice: ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... had this way of rushing subjects, eliding the obvious, and relying on her hearers. "He told me all about it. He'd been universally provided, he said; and I promised not to tell. Miss Erskine Peel—that's Orange, you know, the soprano—went to the manager and said her mother said they must get more men, though it wasn't dancing, or the rooms looked so bad; only they mustn't be fools, and must be able to say Wagner and Liszt and things. And he hoped I didn't ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... with the flowers, feathers, bright ribbons and shawls all gone—black coats only kneeling and standing—and with the deep-toned organ swelling up, the solemn bass voice heard only in awful solitude; not one soprano note to rise above the low, dull wail to fill the arched roof with triumphant melody! One such experiment from Maine to California would bring these ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Innisfield Presbyterian Church one Sunday morning a month later. And Miss Philura Rice—as was afterward remarked—sang the words with such enthusiasm and earnestness that her high soprano soared quite above all the other voices in the choir, and this despite the fact that Miss Electa Pratt was putting forth her nasal contralto with more ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... the wisdom hid In the storm-inspired melody of thy thrush's bosom solemn: I should not then have understood what thy free spirit did To make the lark-soprano mount like ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... with an increasing abandon, half laughter and half tears, the clear young soprano voice ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... looking out a strong, deep nature, not observed before. He joined his mother and brother in the last hymn. Everybody knew the Ridgeleys could sing. They carried the burden of the grand and simple old tune nearly alone. The fine mezzo-soprano of the mother, the splendid tenor of Morris, and the rich baritone of Bart, in their united effect, had never been equalled in the hearing of that assembly. The melody was a sweet and fitting finale of the day, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... bobbed her suspiciously yellow head and smiled provocatively. Martin fled to the cloak-rack near the door. Hurriedly he donned top-coat and hat. Until he finally closed the front door behind him, a tinny wail poured out of the little parlor and assailed his ears, a reedy soprano declaiming passionately that she had raised no son of hers to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... than I ever heard them, and to my great pleasure I understood it all except one verse. This gave me the more time to try and identify what the parts were doing, and further convict my dull ear. Beyond the fact that the soprano rose to the tonic above, on one occasion I could recognise nothing. This is sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better before I am done with ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... notes are in the human voice depends partly on the person who is speaking. You know that the fundamental of a bass voice is lower than that of a soprano. Besides the fundamental, however, there are a lot of higher notes always present. This is particularly true when the spoken sound is a consonant, like "s" or "f" or "v." The particular notes, which are present and are important, ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... their graves. When she played the cornet it was with a superhuman tone that shook his emotions almost insufferably. She had sung, too, in four voices—in an imitation of a bass, a tenor, a contralto, and finally as a lyric soprano, then skipping from one to the other. They called her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... fibrous mezzo-soprano; and the music she sang, half chant, half melody, was evidently an improvisation. The words were the exquisite song ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not have been born at the time when ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... gave a soprano scream of delight. "Well, say—did you ever have a brick house fall on you?—well, that's just the way it feels—just like when they're digging you out of the ruins. Jack's got a left that spells two matinees ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... had given up her career for him.—No. She hadn't done that. He had not asked her to do that. Had not, on the contrary, her marriage really furthered it? Was she not more of a person to-day than the discouraged young woman he had found singing for pittances the leading dramatic soprano roles in the minor municipal operas of Germany and Austria? Wasn't that what she had said this morning—that falling in love with him was the best thing that could possibly have happened to her? He had taken it wrong ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... it means that the stout matter-of-fact lighter has been christened as a shadowy ghost, or a royal symbol. The veriest urchin steers her, with a little fat hand on the heavy tiller twelve feet long, and a hunch of good rye-bread in his other fist. Now and then he sings out in a thin soprano, "Fayther, boat's a'ead," and his father, (hidden below), answers deep-toned, from the cabin, "Keep 'er away, lad." From him I asked, "How old is your boy?" and the parent's head popped up to see, but it was the child that smartly answered, "Eight years old." He looked five. Round the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... all went back, swinging their gold-headed canes, and they had another meeting in the City Hall. Then they decided to send the highest Soprano Singer in the church choir to the Wise Woman; she could sing up to G-sharp just as easy as not. So the high Soprano Singer set out for the Wise Woman's in the Mayor's coach, and the Aldermen marched behind, swinging their ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... an enormous excavation, and behind the summer-house I happened upon a bear asleep and retreated hurriedly. But on going towards the house I heard a well-known voice. "That is Augusta Holmes singing her opera," I said; "she sings all the different parts—soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass." At this time we were all talking about her, and I stood by the window listening until suddenly a well-known smell interrupted her. It was Ninon's cat that had misconducted herself. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... service was commenced with a choir piece, when the organ and other instruments accompanied seven singers, four women and three men. The women especially had voices of power and compass. Alto, tenor, and bass were fairly sustained, as well as soprano, and the whole effect was good. The piece, which was not easy, but suitable in liturgical character, was well rendered both in forte and piano passages. This time Ambrose, another native, presided at the organ, and Ludolf played the ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... For it called man the consonance and nature the dissonance. The octave and the fifth, the bases of the system, are of course, to be found only in the human voice. They are, roughly, the difference between the average male and the average female voice, and the difference between the average soprano and alto. It is upon those intervals that the C-major scale and its twenty-three dependents are based. But with the coming of a conception that no longer separated man from the rest of creation, and placed him in it as a small part of it, brother to the animals and plants, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Residenz-Theater sparkled and hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every eardrum; patting From muffled tympani made a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... failed to furnish you with a liturgy, by means of which you could have interred your dead in decency. Had such been the arrangement, no after writer could have remarked, as the Rev. Mr. Cumming does now, that no 'pealing organ' mingled 'its harmony of bass, tenor, treble, and soprano' when you sung, or have recorded the atrocious fact, that not only was John Brown of Priesthill shot by Claverhouse, but actually buried by his friends without the funeral service. And how striking and affecting an incident would it not form in the history of the persecution, could it ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... walls and ceiling were honey-combed with sensitive musical cells, answering to the deeper vibrations. These floating aerial sounds also answered to the higher notes of some of the female singers, resembling soprano voices, brightened and spiritualized in a wonderful degree; and then the wide room would be filled with a mist, as it were, of this floating, formless melody, which seemed to come from invisible harpers hovering ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic. They use more judgment about applause than the French. They never interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. Even their ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... Bye and Bye," sang Araminta, in a piping, girlish soprano, "we shall meet on that ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... home parlor entertainment, and no doubt most musical artists would have sneered at the programme, but Alice had a wonderfully sweet and sympathetic soprano voice, and as Frank sat watching the fitful flames play hide-and-seek in the open fire, and listened to those time-worn ballads, it seemed to him he had never heard singing quite so sweet. Much depends ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... My sister Hattie was able to play a few simple tunes on the melodeon and Cyrus and Eva or Mary Abbie and John occasionally came in to sing. In this my mother often took part. In church her clear soprano rose above all the others like the voice of some serene great bird. Of this gift my father often expressed ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... blameworthy. Once in a while, it is true, he takes a perch and sings; but for the most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction; but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything else perhaps, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... who was standing apart from the guests, and looking as if in anything but a pleasant mood. Her face brightened, however, when told that it would be a pleasure to hear her sing, and after a little urging, she consented. She possessed a light soprano voice which had been carefully trained, and when she chose, she could sing ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... carriage as drivers, canvassed the entire town, asking all we met to lay up treasures in heaven by "rescuing the perishing," and we soon secured money to buy a fine toned organ and to hire a wideawake pastor. Ada played the new organ; May formed a quartette with herself as soprano, Ida often accompanying with her violin; my wife teaching in the Sunday-school, myself serving as chairman of the Parish Committee, and soon our church was filled with attentive and much edified listeners and helpers. I organized the Channing Club, which soon included ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... do the Alps exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... With Philip Skale, Mrs. Mawle and Miriam, he, Robert Spinrobin, felt that he naturally belonged as "one of the family." They were like the four notes in the chord: Skale, the great bass; Mawle, the mellow alto; himself and Miriam, respectively, the echoing tenor and the singing soprano. The imagery by which, in the depths of his mind, he sought to interpret to himself the whole singular business ran, it seems, even then to music ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... when I began to ascend Notting Hill that I first heard the hooting. It reminded me at first of a Siren, and then of the top note of my maiden aunt, in her day a notorious soprano vocalist. She subsequently emigrated to France, and entered a nunnery under the religious name of Soeur Marie Jeanne. "Tul-ulla-lulla-liety," wailed the Voice in a sort of superhuman jodel, coming, as it seemed to me, from the region ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... Yes, I've got a case; Her voice is such a sweet soprano; Her people come from Northern Thrace; You ought to hear her play piano. If she would like my suicide— If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing, Me for a glass ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... "They think I'm too young for compliments! As for my voice, it's getting so strong that Mummy and the Blossom are always saying to me, 'Not so loud.' If I let it out in the house, they put their fingers in their ears. If I let it out in church, Jemmy says I'm drowning the soprano—and so I am. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... usually find, even in large cities and in musical institutions, I exempt from any special criticism, for they would not be able to understand my views. They permit soprano voices to sing scales in all the five vowels at once; begin with c instead of f; allow a long holding of the notes, "in order to bring out the voice," until the poor victim rolls her eyes and grows dizzy. They talk only ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... are full, are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turned up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... writer returns to a day in a railway-car en route to the great Columbian Fair in Chicago when the tired passengers were suddenly surprised and charmed by the music of this melody. A young Christian man and woman, husband and wife, had begun to sing "My Jesus, I love Thee." Their voices (a tenor and soprano) were clear and sweet, and every one of the company sat up to listen with a look of mingled admiration and relief. Here was something, after all, to make a long journey less tedious. They sang all the four verses and paused. There was no ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the Sistine Chapel. That's the Director, old Maestro Mustafa—used to be the greatest soprano of the century." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... because when we were here before, that fine theatre was closed. The singing is so-so, and the tenor especially is gifted with limbs rather than with voice or ear. But there is a baritone worth hearing and a soprano, whom the Neapolitans delight to honour ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Mrs. Trent at the piano and her rich soprano voice faultlessly led her straggling chorus, filled for the most part by the men grouped outside on the wide porch. He could see them through the long, French windows, sitting or standing as each felt inclined, but all with that earnest seriousness ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... missed. Johnny Byrd had an infectious way of making a party go and Maria Angelina's sweet soprano had become so much a part of every gathering that its absence ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... back, and I recognized the golden hair of Alathea, as she joined a group rather formally collected on one side of the grave. She looked round as if to see that all were ready, and then in such a soprano voice as one seldom hears, she "started" the funeral hymn. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... begin it, Raise their high-pitched voices in it, And the shrill soprano piping sets the pace; Then the others join the singing Till the echoes soon are ringing With the big green-coated leader's double-bass. All the lilies are a-quiver, And the grasses by the river Feel the mighty chorus shaking every blade, While the dewy rushes glisten As they bend ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... water under the counter, and the spirited motion of the boat combined, with the bland air and pleasant sunshine, to inspire the party with much vivacity. They had not been many minutes afloat before the guitar-case was opened, and the girls' voices—Laura's soprano and Hattie's contralto—rang melodiously over the waves, mingled with feeble attempt at bass accompaniment from ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... the mountain slope in a bell-like soprano. Why should a bell-like soprano call the name of the old Irish king in this remote wilderness? Was there witchery at work? Was the bear merely a part of the phantasmagoria of an ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... cela que ca doit etre chante. Votre voix est delicieuse, le timbre que j'aime—mezzo-soprano, avec ces notes ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... use soprano, alto and tenor, or alto, tenor and bass; and do not separate upper parts more than an octave. For a chord or two they may (for the sake of better voice-leading) ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... preacher harangued by the hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church and, on one occasion, she patched her young son's trousers into a hideous pucker, by ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Delmont is not always dropping her handkerchief like Lady Gusto, as if she expected a miserable cavalier servente to be constantly upon his knees; or giving those odious expressive looks, which quite destroy my nerves whenever I am under the same roof as that horrible Lady Soprano. There is a little too much talk, to be sure, about Roman churches, and newly-discovered mosaics, and Abbate Maii, but still we cannot expect perfection. There are reports going about that Ernest Clay is either ruined or going to be married. Perhaps both are true. Young Premium has ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... individual, in striking contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel—a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will ces dames desire a salon—there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... who all their lives lean upon somebody, and at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, Early Victorian type ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... clasped hands and raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang "counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the mountains—ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's time or earlier most quaintly ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... said of him that he is volatile; that he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a dreamer, looking for ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... rispose molto umano, Perche avea preso gia di lui pietate; Quanto sei, disse, piu franco e soprano, Piu di te mi rincresce in veritate, Che sarai morto, e non sei Cristiano, Ed anderai tra l'anime dannate; Ma se vuoi il corpo e l'anima salvare, Piglia ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Brewer's sparrow. Its favorite resort was in the low bushes growing on the border of the mesa and along the edge of the cliff. Its song was unique, the opening syllable running low on the alto clef, while the closing notes constituted a very respectable soprano. A few extremely shy sparrows flitted about in the thickets of a hollow as we began our descent, and I have no doubt ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... There are good singers among them, and these have positions, with a fitting salary attached, in all the churches, from the cathedral to the poorest ministry; and thus they are being trained, from the time when they sing soprano. They are fond of verses and representations. They are excellent translators, and can translate a Spanish comedy with elegance into verses of their own language. And thus, although all, both men and women, are fond of reading, they are indefatigable when verses are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... compelled to destroy sixteenth-century illusion, and employ, in a sneaking kind of way, the nineteenth-century match, which strikes only on its own box. Mlle. NUOVINA, not so good here as in the part of Marguerite, but there is very little for a soprano to do. JEAN reckless in the final ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... the stable boy, whose hair looked as sleek as the Deacon's horse. For the Deacon has some queer notions about the duties of employers to their servants, and, though the very kindest of men, is generally thought by the neighbors to be "a queer stick." The Deacon's wife, who has a very sweet soprano voice, which, however, she never could be persuaded to use in our choir, was presiding at the piano. The children all had their hymn and tune-books, and they were "singing round"—each member of the family selecting ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... then,—as far as one may judge of that kind of perfection—a perfect mistress of her voice; she can do what she likes with it, she can sustain a note in any part of the soprano compass—swell, diminish, and keep it exactly to the same pitch for an incredible space of time. She can burst forth a torrent of sound expressive of our strongest passions, without losing an atom of tone, and she can diminish it to a whisper, in sotto ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... main altar, tearing half a yard of crimson damask and nearly upsetting the priest officiating; and then, while Caper (red in the face, and totally unfit to hear the fine chorus of voices, among which Mustafa's, the soprano, came ringing out) was composing himself to listen, Pepe grabbed him with a 'Music's over; andiamo (let's go). Did you hear Mustafa? Bella voce, tra-la-leeeee! Mustafa's a contadino; I know his pa and ma; they changed him when only five years ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hardly allowed to finish the verse, ere she was greeted with the most enthusiastic plaudits, which continued for some time. The higher passages of the air were given with clearness and fulness, indicating a soprano voice of great power. The song was encored; and Miss Greenfield came back, took her seat at the piano, and began, to the astonishment of the audience, a different air in a deep and very clear bass or baritone ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the manor (Vicomte Vaufreland, basso) makes love to a humble village maiden (myself, soprano); the lady of the manor (Madame Conneau, contralto) becomes jealous and makes a scene with her husband; the friend and adviser (Count d'Espeuilles, tenor) steps in and takes his friend's part and kindly says that it was he who had loved the village ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... was beautifully sung. Quincy had a fine well-trained tenor voice, while Miss Putnam's mezzo-soprano was full and melodious and her rendition fully as artistic as that of her companion. One, two, three, four, five, six encores followed each other in quick succession, in spite of Professor Strout's endeavors to quell ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... voices calling," broke in Katherine. "And each is a different voice according to our natures. Now Margaret's voice is soprano, but Jessie hears a ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... the squire a chance of distinguishing himself, but as he failed to rise to the occasion it was decided to play a quickstep. This was followed by a rather awkward pause, as there were some high notes in the remaining quickstep which the soprano player said he was sure he could not reach as he was getting "ramp'd" already. At this moment, however, the situation was relieved by the appearance of a female servant at ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... scarcely audible voice, the lively bird-catcher song. The same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, he called his friends together, and asked for the score of his nearly completed "Requiem" to be laid on his bed. Benedict Schack sang the soprano; his brother-in-law, Hofer, the tenor; Gerl, the bass; and Mozart himself took the alto in a weak but delicately clear voice. They had got through the various parts till they came to the "Lacrymosa," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before—the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time had never ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that Patricia didn't like it. She owed her own position as a leading light-opera soprano to the cultivation to its highest possible perfection of a distinctly second-rate voice, to a precise knowledge of its limitations and to a most scrupulous economy in its effects. Inevitably, then, the raw splendors ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... am not Gallic if you give the word a base or ridiculous meaning. By Jove! Every Hen here knows whether my trumpet blast belongs to a soprano! But your perverse attempts to wring blushes from little baggages in convenient corners outrage my love of Love! It is true that I care more to retain love's dream than these Cochin-Chinese, who, courting a giggle, use refinement in coarseness, research in vulgarity; true that my ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... were descending the stairs. In the distance, the soprano dog had reached A in alt., and was holding it, while his fellow artiste executed runs in ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... Castiglione in his 'Cortegiano' gives preference to the one-voiced song ('recitar alla lira') and it was quite natural that we find in the Petrucci collection frottole originally composed for four voices now appearing as soprano solos with lute accompaniment, the latter being arranged from the ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... higher still, with an inarticulate mutter of mingled reproach, and warning, and anxiety. Rufe settled himself on the platform, his bare feet dangling about jocosely. Then, beating his hands on either thigh to mark the time he sang in a loud, shrill soprano, prone now and then to be flat, and yet, impartially, prone now and then to ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... only to fill an unexpected place, or make a decorous entry afterward, to play accompaniments. Fortunately Kitty Meryon sang, in a pinched little soprano, not nearly so pretty as her ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... the fundamental tones on the Violono. He apparently displays an amount of real relish for his task, which bespeaks a knowledge of the responsibility belonging to the post of Basso. The ecclesiastic seated next to Titian, wearing the chain with crucifix, is performing on a Soprano Viol. The instruments, in short, are Italian Viols, the Tenors of which were strung with six strings, and the Violono, or Bass, with six or seven. It is this order of Viols to which reference is made in the work of Ganassi del Fontego, and they ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Vienna. He became a chorister in St. Stephen's Church, but offended the choir-master by the revolt on the part of himself and parents from submitting to the usual means then taken to perpetuate a fine soprano in boys. So Haydn, who had surreptitiously picked up a good deal of musical knowledge apart from the art of singing, was at the age of sixteen turned out on the world. A compassionate barber, however, took him in, and Haydn dressed and powdered wigs down-stairs, while he worked away ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... played a wailing waltz that Medora had learned from the hand-organs. She followed the air with nodding head in a sweet soprano hum. Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered in what strange waters Binkley had caught her in his seine. She smiled at him, and they raised glasses and drank of the wine that boiled when ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... to reach the station, three blocks away. An instant later he saw a shapely figure in soft furs suddenly describe a forward movement and drop in a heap to the sidewalk, ten feet in front of him. A melodious light soprano scream arose from the heap. A divinely turned ankle in a quite human black stocking was momentarily visible. He was by the side of the mass of furs ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... new Spanish soprano, Mme. Bartolas, who was all black velvet and long black feathers, with a lace veil over her rich pallour and even a little black patch on her chin. I beckoned them. "Tell me, Cressida, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... that the voice of a boy is purer, more impersonal and sexless, somehow, than the clearest soprano of a woman, therefore exactly fulfilling our idea ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... so? I love to sing," and her face was a-light with pleasure. "But it seems to me that it isn't, well—neither alto nor soprano; I can't keep it to ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... honour of seeing at Pianura; and, in reply to the boy's surprised glance, added, with a swelling of the chest and an absurd gesture of self-introduction, "But perhaps the cavaliere is not too young to have heard of the illustrious Cantapresto, late primo soprano of the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the church, and it spoke well for Miss North's training that they were always dignified and attentive. They took an active part in the service and sang for the very joy of singing. Blue Bonnet's strong, sweet soprano often rang above her fellows, clear and true, and her face reflected the glow that ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Y.M.C.A. Here, comfortable seats, meals, and music could be obtained. Other places were picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers on the stage. The ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... been correct. Iris Wayne could sing well. Her voice, a clear mezzo-soprano, had been excellently trained, and in its purity and flexibility gave promise of something exceptional when it should have attained its full maturity. She accompanied herself perfectly, in nowise hampered by the lack of any music; and when ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... hums a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which may be either tenor, contralto, soprano or baritone. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... were greatly ornamented with pictures and gilding, but the most attractive part of the Russian service is the singing, particularly at the Vespers, when the boys taking the soprano parts, accompanied by some most extraordinary deep bass tones of the men, swelling and filling the entire cathedral; all this, with occasional recitations from their sacred books, without any knowledge of their contents, excited in ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... was evidently in a great state of excitement. Her voice had risen to a keen soprano key, and her eyes sparkled wildly. When she had finally succeeded in getting Mr. Cinch into the Current, she fell back ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... one of these latter, and she glides through a mazurka. That too ends, and as it grows rather warm, her partner leads her away to a cool music-room, whence proceed melodious sounds. It is Trixy at the piano, informing a select audience in shrill soprano, and in the character of the "Queen of the May," that "She had been wild and wayward, but she was not wayward now." Edith's partner finds her a seat and volunteers to go for an ice. As she sits fanning herself, she sees Charley approaching with a young man of about his own ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... She had been fond of music from her childhood, and had given promise of rare talents. She had taken lessons for two years in vocal and instrumental music in the best conservatories in Boston, George paying most of her expenses. For six years May had been the soprano singer in the highest paid quartette in Harrisville. Though she occasionally hoped for a musical education abroad, yet these hopes had all flown away. Her parents could not aid her, and she had resolved not to accept further assistance from her generous brother. At first she could not believe ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... stop, although it was Christmas Eve, and the only carol I heard in the trenches was the loud, deep chant of the guns on both sides, and the shrill soprano of whistling shells, and the rattle on the keyboards of machine-guns. The enemy was putting more shells into a bit of trench in revenge for a raid. To the left some shrapnel shells were bursting, and behind the lines our "heavies" were busily ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... of caps boys burst out of one door, while girls came out of the opposite one more demurely, but with the piping of gay soprano voices. For school was out, and young America free of restraint for eighteen hours at least. Resilient youth, like a coiled spring that has been loosed, was off with a bound. Horses were saddled or put to harness. The teacher ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... train were several others; a few on or with donkeys, but more on foot. In vain we told them that we would engage no donkeys at all, and no horses till we reached our destination; in vain we bade them allow us to "pursue the even tenor of our way" in peace, and hush their high soprano tones. It was one perpetual babble in praise of their horses, their donkeys, and their capabilities as guides, with the constant repetition of the names of the surrounding peaks, which we already knew perfectly well. When we reached the gorge which opens up on the right, as though the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Sunday evening in early June and the hour for Vesper service at Saint Zita's convent. Reverend Mother mounted the staircase leading to the chapel, then paused, with her hand upon the door, to listen as the wonderful soprano again took up ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... Sunday afternoon, a soprano,—clear, strong, sympathetic,—floating up from the pews, caught my ear. When the meeting was over, two ladies pushing their way through the crowd reached the platform. With tears of joy flooding her eyes—for ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... Banchieri, an Olivetan monk, published at Venice his L'Organo suonarino, a work "useful and necessary to organists,"—thus runs the title-page. At the end of the volume there are some pieces, vocal and instrumental (a Concerto for soprano or tenor, with organ, a Fantasia, Ricercata, etc.), among which are to be found two sonatas, the one entitled, "Prima Sonata, doppio soggietto," the other "Seconda Sonata, soggietto triplicato." They are written out in open score of four staves, with mezzo-soprano, alto, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... if it must be confessed, snoring audibly, not to say visibly. There was Professor Phyle, the celebrated phrenologist—a tall man, with a gaunt face and long gray hair. He had been a lion once, but was now out of date. There were also present Mrs. Blenkin, a comparatively new soprano, having seen only two seasons; Lieutenant Wray, a lion just caught, or rather polar bear, having only then returned from a trip to the arctic regions, in which his ship had covered itself with glory; a young ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... a man's not only in pitch but in timbre; its quality suggests the sex. There is great scope for variety, from the lowest contralto to the highest soprano, as there is in man's from the lowest bass to the highest tenor; a variety so great that voices differ as much as faces and can be instantly recognized; but unless it has the proper sexual quality a voice affects ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... four big male voices were shouting out the Boat Club song, Polly's soprano sweet and clear over the rest, while Frieda smiled encouragement over the edge of the robe in which she ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... have delayed the performance at Vienna of this really pretty, nicely worked out opera. The mise-en-scene does not require any special efforts; the piece only requires a somewhat piquant and not unskillful soprano singer. Altogether the opera appears to me to be written in a charming style, not too superficially conservative, and to be one of the best among the new operas mezzo-carattere. In case you still have time and are not indisposed to give the opera in Frankfort, I can send you ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... veritable Lake Erie. Your fragrance of a thousand flowers may be the pungent aroma of the skunk, borne by the evening breeze; and your evening serenade perhaps will be made by an immense number of "no see ems" whose shrill and infinitely fine soprano is paid for in so many installments of blood, to say nothing of the furious itching and nights of "watchful waiting." Even to enjoy Nature in her finer moods you must always pay a price, and people gain "beauty, as well as bread, by the sweat of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... full range of his eyes, he glanced at her without turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to be observed, but her face held him. A color slowly flamed out on his pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted. A soprano singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and tittered, but he did ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... her action might not have been prompted merely by a sense of Christian duty; had I been the Khan of Tartary she could not have been more polite and frigid. The music to the first hymn was an air I had never heard before, so I stumbled miserably through the tenor, although Miss Mayton rendered the soprano without a single false note. The sermon was longer than I was in the habit of listening to, and I was frequently conscious of not listening at all. As for my position and appearance, neither ever seemed so insignificant as they did throughout ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... said she. "A nice daughter to have to give such an answer about. Leave me alone now for I'm not well, I say, on the head of her. I never know where she does be. One night it's (she endeavoured to reproduce her daughter's soprano) 'I am going to a ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... he gave a remarkable proof of his detachment. Just as the Princess was preparing to serve one of her juiciest undercut strokes, the tones of a soprano practising her scales rang out from a neighbouring flat. "Rather sharp, I think," said Mr. BALFOUR, and the Princess, overcome by the ready wit of the ex-PREMIER, served four faults in quick succession. At the conclusion of the game Mr. BALFOUR wiped his face twice with his handkerchief and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... voices sounded from the drawing-room—Henry's, expostulating; next, the thin soprano of Peter; then a woman's, "Where is he, I say? I want to see him!" And she came bursting from ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... been happy, had it not been for Madame Dubeau,—Madame Dubeau, the flute-voiced leading soprano, who wore the single dainty curl on her forehead, and thrilled her audiences oftentimes more completely than the fisherman. Madame Dubeau was La Juive to his Eleazar, Leonore to his Manfred, Elsa to his Lohengrin, Aida to his Rhadames, ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... my story, Many a week of summer long Came I there, when beer-o'ertaken, With my lute and with my song; Sang in mellow-toned soprano All my love and all my woe, Till the river-maiden answered, Lilting in the stream below:— "Fair Undine! sweet Undine! Dost thou love as I love thee?" "Love is free as running water," Was the answer ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... of Rome in 1758. He boasted of having "made a soprano out of Zambinella" and disclosed the fact to Sarrasine that this creature was not a ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the compass of the voice upward. "Every student can for himself with perfect ease recognize the difference between these two separate registers. It will suffice therefore to commence by singing the scale, for example, if a soprano, from G to d;[10] let him take care that these five notes are sonorous, and say them with force and clearness, and without effort." For uniting the registers, "the most certain means is to hold back the tones of the chest and to sing the transition notes in the head register, increasing ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... rebec, from the infancy of the art, still imprisoned in the re-la-mi. But it was around the Pope of the Fools that all the musical riches of the epoch were displayed in a magnificent discord. It was nothing but soprano rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs, and tenor rebecs, not to reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers will remember that this was ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... to the piano and sang in a thin but trained soprano. The song was a ballad with a quaint air full of sadness and heartbreak. To Raphael, who had never heard the psalmic wails of "The Sons of the Covenant" or the Polish ditties of Fanny Belcovitch, it seemed ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... thought "I mustn't be seen!" Miss Van Tuyn stepped into Arabian's flat. She expected to hear the front door of it close immediately behind her. But instead she heard Mrs. Birchington's high soprano voice saying: ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... which needed so urgently every ounce of support that held it. And the junior warden, the one rich man of the parish, had come in before service in the afternoon to complain of the music. If that knife-edged soprano did not go, he said, he was afraid he should have to go himself; it was impossible to have his nerves scraped to the raw ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... harmony was a perfect fifth resulting from the attempt of men with different ranges to sing together. The difference between a bass and a tenor voice is just about a fifth. Between an alto and a soprano it is about a fourth. The difference in these voices made it impossible to sing melodies of wide range in unison, and so the basses and tenors sang in consecutive fifths. When women took up the chanting, they sang either in fifths ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... assured him that there really were some Yankees that did not have any musical accomplishments, and that I was one of that unfortunate number. I asked him to get the ladies to sing for me, and to this they acceded quite readily. One girl, with a fair soprano, who seemed to be the leader of the crowd, sang "The Homespun Dress," a song very popular in the South, and having the same tune as the "Bonnie Blue Flag." ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... nice all the Passover dishes were, and how sweet the wine. Fedoka listened attentively, and cast his eyes on Feitel's blouse. He was still thinking of "matzo." Suddenly there was a scream, and a cry in a high-pitched soprano: ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... written under inspiration by evangelists and prophets. It has stood the bombardment of ages, but with the result of more and more proof of its being a book divinely written and protected." "Science and Revelation are the bass and soprano of the same tune," he said. He defied the attempts of the loud-mouthed orators to destroy belief in the Bible. "I compare such men as Ingersoll, in their attacks on the Bible, to a grasshopper upon a railway-line with the express coming ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... this time lightly, joyously, and we re ponded to her mood like harp-strings all in accord. The room, awakened to melody after the long years of silence, seemed transformed by Una's splendid gift, a fine, clear soprano, not big nor yet thin or reedy, but rounded, full-bodied and deep with feeling. Jerry was smiling now, the shadow seemed ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... sleek as the Deacon's horse. For the Deacon has some queer notions about the duties of employers to their servants, and, though the very kindest of men, is generally thought by the neighbors to be "a queer stick." The Deacon's wife, who has a very sweet soprano voice, which, however, she never could be persuaded to use in our choir, was presiding at the piano. The children all had their hymn and tune-books, and they were "singing round"—each member of the family selecting a hymn in turn. As they were limited to ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... rare accomplishment of a perfect knowledge of how to wait, and to wait—if necessary—long. When the first golden down had shown itself on his cheek and lip she had not noticed it too much and when his golden soprano voice began to change to a deeper note and annoyed him with its uncertainties she had spared him awkwardness by making him feel the transition a casual natural thing, instead of a personal and characteristic ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and, in reply to the boy's surprised glance, added, with a swelling of the chest and an absurd gesture of self-introduction, "But perhaps the cavaliere is not too young to have heard of the illustrious Cantapresto, late primo soprano of the ducal theatre ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... hour grew on him as he leaned on the pasture bars, and suddenly his memories sped; and the voice that was singing Schubert's serenade across the way touched him with the urgent, personal appeal that a present beauty always had for him. It was a soprano; and without tremolo, yet came to his ear with a certain tremulous sweetness; it was soft and slender, but the listener knew it could be lifted with fullness and power if the singer would. It spoke only of the song, yet the listener thought ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... or Seventh Wife Motive seems to be written in a curiously low key if we conceive it to be the index to the character of a soprano heroine; but let us look further. What are the two principal personages in the music-drama to be ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... few on or with donkeys, but more on foot. In vain we told them that we would engage no donkeys at all, and no horses till we reached our destination; in vain we bade them allow us to "pursue the even tenor of our way" in peace, and hush their high soprano tones. It was one perpetual babble in praise of their horses, their donkeys, and their capabilities as guides, with the constant repetition of the names of the surrounding peaks, which we already knew perfectly well. When we reached the gorge which opens up on the right, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... whom we usually find, even in large cities and in musical institutions, I exempt from any special criticism, for they would not be able to understand my views. They permit soprano voices to sing scales in all the five vowels at once; begin with c instead of f; allow a long holding of the notes, "in order to bring out the voice," until the poor victim rolls her eyes and grows dizzy. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... abominable claqueurs, this first German audience seemed serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic. They use more judgment about applause than the French. They never interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. Even their ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... I began to ascend Notting Hill that I first heard the hooting. It reminded me at first of a Siren, and then of the top note of my maiden aunt, in her day a notorious soprano vocalist. She subsequently emigrated to France, and entered a nunnery under the religious name of Soeur Marie Jeanne. "Tul-ulla-lulla-liety," wailed the Voice in a sort of superhuman jodel, coming, as it seemed to me, from ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... 7 to 9. The oratorios of "Il Penseroso;" and "Alexander's Feast" were performed at the Theatre in King Street; Handel's "Te Deum" and "Jubilate" with the "Messiah," at St. Philip's Church. The principal singers were Mrs. Pinto, first soprano, and Mr. Charles Norris, tenor; the orchestra numbered about 70, the conductor being Mr. Capel Bond of Coventry, with Mr. Pinto as leader of the band. The tickets of admission were 5s. each, the receipts (with donations) ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... of a chant in thin clear soprano voices swept through the fog from the invisible shore, rose high above the ship, and then fell, dying away with immeasurable sweetness and melancholy. Even when it had passed, a lingering melody seemed to fill the deck. Two or three of the foreign sailors crossed themselves ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... priests read the Requiem Mass, the little organ pealed the De Profundis as if inspired; and when the imperious triumphant music of Handel followed, Teresa's fresh young soprano seemed, to her excited imagination, to soar to the gates of heaven itself. When she looked down again the lights were dim in the incense, her senses swam in the pungent odor of spices and gum. The Bishop was walking about the catafalque casting holy water with a brush against the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... collection will be taken up at the door to defray expenses.' Well, I though the people in church would sink through the floor. There was not a person in the church except the poor old deacon, but who understood that some wicked wretch had deceived him, and I know by the way the tenor tickled the soprano that he did it. I may be mean, but everything I do is innocent, and I wouldn't be as mean as a choir singer for two dollars. I felt real sorry for the old deacon, but he never knew what he had done, and I think it would be real ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... himself to London from a theatre in Constantinople; rumours arrive of a peerless prima donna, with a voice which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out, by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in fantasias rather than concertos, and who play such tricks with the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... assisted as a performer, my wife having frequently sung at charity concerts and entertainments for her in Worcester and the neighbourhood, among them a recital by Mr. Brandram of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, when she undertook the soprano solos occurring in the play, at the Worcester Guildhall. Lady Alwyne Compton was very musical, and rehearsals were held in the stone-vaulted crypt beneath the Deanery, a place of splendid acoustic properties, which intensified the sound without coarsening it, and brought ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... six evenings of duty and one of enjoyment, unless Angela happens to hear that there is a 'cellist from Spitzbergen or a Bolshevik soprano whom it is social death not to be able to discuss. In that case we get ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... The boy soprano, clad in white surplice, stood in the organ loft. The light shone full upon his crown of fair hair, and his pale face, with its serious blue eyes, looked paler than usual. Perhaps it was something in the tender thrill of the voice, ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... My dearest, you positively must and shall leave your solitudes and come and see the Kamtchatkans in Scriptural opera-ballet! Only second to Noe is La Femme de Lot, with dear Sarkavina, in clouds of white, doing a sensational whirling dance as she turns into the Pillar, while that amazing soprano, Scriemalona, sings the mysterious Salt Music. Bishops quite swarm at these performances. They say they consider it their duty to go, and that they never really understood the true character ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... rolled about in spasms of merriment. A moment later a white gliding figure, moving to the measure of the cake-walk, keyed up the laughter to hysteria. It was the Ghost appearing to frighten Ophelia. His sepulchral bass notes mingled with her terror-stricken soprano. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... tone are played successively, a number of melody lines are being described,—as many, in fact, as there are tones in each body. For example, in playing a hymn-tune we describe (on the keyboard) the four separate melodies known as the soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices. In a duet, unaccompanied, there are two melodic lines; if accompanied, other melodic lines are added to these. Thus we recognize the same system of associated lines in music as in architecture or drawing. Very rarely indeed does one single unbroken line portray ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... too, regarded it as medicine, and hoped especially for a favourable effect from the exquisite soprano voice in the motet "Tu ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... counted on so much—'At last, thank Heaven, that tiresome trouble is over, and I am free to return to music and poetry'—was rendered into nonsense, and the attention of the audience lost. Nor were matters set straight until a high soprano voice was ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... of all peoples was quite likely by men. Probably the most primitive harmony was a perfect fifth resulting from the attempt of men with different ranges to sing together. The difference between a bass and a tenor voice is just about a fifth. Between an alto and a soprano it is about a fourth. The difference in these voices made it impossible to sing melodies of wide range in unison, and so the basses and tenors sang in consecutive fifths. When women took up the chanting, they sang either in fifths or ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... the barytone, impelled always by my desire to accomplish something, I took lessons in music from the Maestro Terziani, and appeared at a benefit with the famous tenor Boucarde, and Signora Monti, the soprano, and sang in a duet from "Belisaria," the aria from "Maria di Rohan,"and "La Settimana d'Amore," by Niccolai; and I venture to say that I was not third best in that triad. But I recognised that singing and declamation were incompatible pursuits, since ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... last phrase ringing out forcefully. From the inveterate contralto of the interview, she rose to pure soprano in describing her own action. 'And I drank,' was given on a descent of the voice: the last note was in the minor key—it held the ear as if more must follow: like a wail after a triumph of resolve. It was a masterpiece of audacious dramatic musical genius addressed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unwinking eyes men saw calmly looking out a strong, deep nature, not observed before. He joined his mother and brother in the last hymn. Everybody knew the Ridgeleys could sing. They carried the burden of the grand and simple old tune nearly alone. The fine mezzo-soprano of the mother, the splendid tenor of Morris, and the rich baritone of Bart, in their united effect, had never been equalled in the hearing of that assembly. The melody was a sweet and fitting finale of the day, swelling out and dying away in the ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the vibrations of the atmosphere which a single musical chord produces—the rolling bass, the gliding alto, the sweeping soprano, and the soaring tenor, rolling onward in one broad channel of harmony, with its myriad tributary streams of thirds and fifths, and its curling, twinkling, shifting, blending, soaring mists of delicate-toned harmonics, how would our enjoyment of music be enhanced! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... followed was terrible: SLUKER fired at everybody. MIDDLERIB hit him with the music stool. The soprano was thrown over the railing, and somebody turned off ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... never be made to understand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am ignorant ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... being educated, and maintained, and paid a certain amount, is bound, legally bound, to devote her services to a master for a given time. The impresario of the 'Fenice' had often heard from travellers of that wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which was captivating all Rome, where the beauty and grace of the singer were extolled not less loudly. The great skill of these astute providers for the world's pleasure is evidenced in nothing more remarkably than the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... in character, wandering over the entire room, as if walls and ceiling were honey-combed with sensitive musical cells, answering to the deeper vibrations. These floating aerial sounds also answered to the higher notes of some of the female singers, resembling soprano voices, brightened and spiritualized in a wonderful degree; and then the wide room would be filled with a mist, as it were, of this floating, formless melody, which seemed to come from invisible harpers ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... listened to the first few night sounds of the foothills. The clear piping notes of migrating plover floated softly down to him, punctuated by the rasping cry of a nighthawk. A coyote raised his voice, a perfect tenor note that swept up to a wild soprano, then fell again in a whirl of howls which carried amazing shifts of inflection, tearing up and down the coyote scale. One after another added his voice to the chorus until it seemed that the swelling volume could be produced by ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... nature has been too strong for them, and the hedge will grow its own way in spite of pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?' The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... instruments could not hold the tones, so anthems were used instead—mostly Millard's—and they were very beautiful. Not one mistake has ever been made by anyone, but Sergeant Moore has vexed me much. He is our soprano, and has a clear, high-tenor voice and often sings solos in public, but for some unexplainable reason he would not sing a note in church unless I sang with him, so I had to hum along for the man's ear alone. Why he has been so frightened' I do not know, unless it was the unusual condition of things, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... unison or alone, the least expected doing what was most awaited, which was to surprise us and call forth gay peals of happy laughter, while the "La, la, la—la—la!" was kept up continuously, like an accompaniment. And still the voices, basso, soprano, tenor, baritone, contralto, rose and fell, the moment's inspiration telling how, till at last all blended in a locomotive-paced La, and in a final roar of laughter ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... and counted the flights of stairs up to the fourth floor. There was no elevator. The denizens of the place gave him a vague impression of being engaged in the fine arts. A glimpse of an interior hung with Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Dakota beadwork, and barbaric arms; the sound of a soprano practising Marchesi exercises; an easel seen through an open door and flanked by a Grand Rapids folding-bed with a plaster bust atop; and a pervasive scent of cigarettes, accounted for, and may or may not have justified, the impression. On the fourth ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... the tip-toe of expectation until the singers arrived. Fraulein Scheuerlein, the soprano, was fat, fair, and forty, all of them perhaps on the liberal side. As she burst into the room, the first words I heard from the romantic Elsa, whom I had last seen sobbing over her matrimonial difficulties, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... piano passage in canon beginning with the words Solvet saeclum. On September 1, 1882, he heard at the Festival the same composer's Mass in C, and characterized as "beautiful" the fugue at the end of the Gloria, the part in the Offertory where the chorus enters in support of the soprano solo, and the conclusion of the Dona. It came as a relief to him after Brahms, who was not understood at a first hearing, and this inability in general to grasp good music at once is exhibited in his Italian correspondence. "This last week," he writes from Rome in April, 1833, "we have heard ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... enjoyed the singing; particularly their own. Both sang from one book, with much reserve, yet with such sweetly persuasive voices that those about them first listened and then added their own very best. The second tune was "Geer," and, with John's tenor going up every time Barbara's soprano came down, and vice versa, it was as lovely see-sawing as ever thrilled the heart of youth with pure and undefiled religion. They sang the last hymn to "Dennis." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... sums not merely on the monuments and decoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral of Terra Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, the soprano for whom Gluck had written Che faru senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such a performance ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... low notes, soft notes and shrill notes, all travel at the same rate. If bass notes traveled faster or slower than soprano notes, or if the delicate tones of the violin traveled faster or slower than the tones of a drum, music would be practically impossible, because at a distance from the source of sound the various tones which should be in unison would be out of ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, with such a voice as that!" she cried; "you are out of your senses, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had perfunctorily ground out the overture to "Der Freischuetz," the baritone had stentorianly emitted "Dio Possente," the soprano was working her way through the closing measures of the mad scene from "Lucia," and Diotti was number four on the program. The conductor stood beside his platform, ready to ascend ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous,—acidulous enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing duets with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, for instance,—young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Templars, and later becoming a member of the Sons of Temperance and Good Templars. She is active in all Christian work, being a member of the First Congregational Church of Lockport, in whose church work she takes prominent part, and whose solo soprano she has been for thirteen years; she is also an active member of the Christian Endeavor ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... impressive and solemn calls on Miss Mary Anne Bull, who was a brunette and a celebrated beauty of the day. I well remember her long raven curls falling from the comb that held them up on the top of her head. She had a rich soprano voice, and was the leading singer in the Centre Church choir. The two brothers also had fine, manly voices, and the family circle was often enlivened by quartette singing and flute playing. Mr. Bull kept a very large wholesale drug store on Front Street, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Chapel. That's the Director, old Maestro Mustafa—used to be the greatest soprano of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Only think of talking to emptiness instead of fulness—to people instead of plush. How can the dear Rev. SPLURGE SPLUTTER have the heart or tongue to drop his pearls of eloquence to the swine of empty pews? And how dreadful for the gifted soprano, Miss SCREECH, to tune her melodious voice to earless aisles! And then it is so easy to "set" examples by sitting in soft pews, doing to church should be a matter of conscience. Every body not a dolt ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... I presume, about the age of 131/2 years. I place it at this period from the following circumstances, which are fixed very strongly in my memory: I had, as a child, a soprano voice that was praised considerably by older friends, and about which I was inordinately conceited, I enjoyed greatly taking part in operettas, cantatas, etc. The dramatic instinct, if so it may be called, has always been marked with me, and amateur dramatics are still my chief diversion. When ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... seated, when the choir, with Tremendous K. at their head, came hurrying down the aisle, and took their places in seats beside the pulpit. Joanna Falls was leading soprano, by virtue of a voice of peculiar strength and carrying power, Gavin Grant, who had the best baritone voice in the countryside, led the boys, and Minnie McKenzie, whose father was an elder, and Martha Henderson, Tremendous K.'s sister, played the organ on alternate ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Mr. W.B. Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To the present writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, and that she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as it were, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in high soprano, and Mr. Yeats in deep and ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... at his canal and Margarita practised her Jewel Song (it was a shade high for her: she was not a pure soprano, but had one of those flexible mezzos that tempt their trainers to all sorts of tours-de-force) and Dolledge tended Mary and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers on ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... gli rispose molto umano, Perche avea preso gia di lui pietate; Quanto sei, disse, piu franco e soprano, Piu di te mi rincresce in veritate, Che sarai morto, e non sei Cristiano, Ed anderai tra l'anime dannate; Ma se vuoi il corpo e l'anima salvare, Piglia battesmo, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... church? I answer that, having freed their minds from sectarian prejudices, they recognized beauty and genius wherever found, and did not care what church or creed they had served, so that they found the gift of beauty from the infinite Father to man in them. With one glorious soprano voice and boundless talent, how much of joy was added to the circle! How we revelled in the choice creations of the masters of harmony, and how, slowly but surely, the missing link that was wanting in my mind to realize that music could cover the void ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... most famous Italian coloratura soprano of the day, declares that she began to sing before she learned to talk. Her parents were not musical, but her elder sister, now the wife of the eminent conductor Cleofante Campanini, was a public singer of established reputation, and her success roused her young sister's ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... hear voices calling," broke in Katherine. "And each is a different voice according to our natures. Now Margaret's voice is soprano, but Jessie hears ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... indignant enquiry of the Ancient Mariner as to the cause of the delay. Much sailing in all weathers in the keen air of the northern lakes had ruined Captain McTavish's voice, which, at best, had never been intended for any part but a high soprano. And now it was almost inaudible with anger. It ill became the dignity of a sea captain to be thus publicly berated in the presence ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... however, overcome greater difficulties than this, and it was not the first time by many that Pat had hummed an effective and harmonious background to his sister's songs. As for Pixie, she opened her mouth and began to sing as simply and naturally as a bird. She had a lovely voice, mezzo-soprano in range, and though she now kept it sweetly subdued, the hearer realised that it had also considerable power. She sang as all true singers do—as if the action gave to herself the purest joy, her head tilted slightly on one side, as if to listen more intently ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... and for the first time since that terrible and memorable day, nearly eight years ago, broke into song. And finally they began to sing duets together, his clear, rich, mellow tenor blending well with Flora's sweet, sympathetic soprano. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a regular Soprano, but a Country-Town Soprano, of the kind often used for augmenting the Grief at a Funeral. Her voice came from a point about two inches ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... pity her for," Ann returned, in a voice high-pitched and sharply sweet; she was the soprano singer in the village choir. "I don't see why she isn't taken care of as ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... runs all the way up, following the four sides. Reaching the large chamber at the top, we paid our respects to the seven bells, whose intricate changes I had so many times tried to follow. Their ringing is a puzzle. In the middle hung the melancholy campanone, with a silvery soprano by its side—a very Dante and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... his ears. White dog cocked her head to one side, and the six puppies followed their parents' example. Duke uttered a low deep howl that chimed in with Beth's singing. White dog howled in a high soprano and the six little dogs did likewise, but in shriller tones. Beth was so surprised that she stopped singing, and the dogs immediately ceased howling, evidently waiting for ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... ('tis always a woman that leads) did better than I ever heard them, and to my great pleasure I understood it all except one verse. This gave me the more time to try and identify what the parts were doing, and further convict my dull ear. Beyond the fact that the soprano rose to the tonic above, on one occasion I could recognise nothing. This is sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better before I am done with it or this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... miniature symphony in the birches at the end of the garden; the song-thrush warbled with a sweet melancholy his long-drawn contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, who was herself the early bird of the pastor's family, had paid a visit to the little bath-house down at the brook, and was now hurrying ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the staccatoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano of ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... at the piano and her rich soprano voice faultlessly led her straggling chorus, filled for the most part by the men grouped outside on the wide porch. He could see them through the long, French windows, sitting or standing as each felt inclined, but all with that earnest seriousness ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... part of the performance was Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment," beautifully sung by members of the regular company. But somehow the spectacle of a fat soprano nearing forty in the role of the twelve-year-old vivandiere, although impressive, was not sublime. A third of the audience were soldiers. In the front row of the top balcony were a number of wounded. Their bandaged ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... has grown very pretty, indeed," said Adrien, taking up the conversation, "and is really a very nice girl, indeed. She sings beautifully. She is the leading soprano in ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... in striking contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel—a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will ces dames desire a salon—there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... splendid voice; one that might have given her fame had she chosen to cultivate it for a profession. It was a deep rich mezzo-soprano, and under Mrs. White's training she had acquired good enunciation, poise ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... the first to contribute to the entertainment. He played "Intermezzo" as a solo violin, and the beautiful melody only added to both Mulberry's and Gladys's happiness. Many others also played and sang, and at last by dint of great persuasion Gladys consented to sing. She had a magnificent clear soprano voice and as he listened Mulberry Beaufort fairly trembled ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... to be music, one of the guests being Endbury's favorite amateur soprano, another a pianist much thought of. The singer took her place by the piano, assuming carefully the correct position. Lydia watched her balance on the balls of her feet, lean forward a little, throw up her chest and draw in her abdomen. As the preliminary ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... significance, the pleasantest object in his prospect being the fair and curly head of his boy acolyte and chorister, Francisco, which appeared among the vines, and his sweetest pastoral music, the high soprano humming of a chant with which the boy accompanied ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... from a man's not only in pitch but in timbre; its quality suggests the sex. There is great scope for variety, from the lowest contralto to the highest soprano, as there is in man's from the lowest bass to the highest tenor; a variety so great that voices differ as much as faces and can be instantly recognized; but unless it has the proper sexual quality a voice affects us disagreeably. A coarse, harsh voice has marred ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, who called them ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... all the noise, they heard a cracked soprano voice singing with some unauthorized ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... into the gardens, and, placing her carefully in the corner of a bench, would retire to a short distance and pretend to be absorbed in a book, while her sharp eyes kept up the watch for a long-haired tenor, or a beautifully dressed soprano, who should suddenly rush out from the bushes and seize ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... the highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive. In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice. Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and acrobats, alas! command the ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard, genuinely astonished, lowered ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... which ought to be written "la sol," pitched at about upper D and C, above the soprano staff, and ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... drawing-room of London a few people were scattered about, listening to a soprano voice that was singing to the accompaniment of a piano. The sound of the voice came from an inner room, towards which most of these people were looking earnestly. Only one or two seemed indifferent to the fascination of ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the churches were greatly ornamented with pictures and gilding, but the most attractive part of the Russian service is the singing, particularly at the Vespers, when the boys taking the soprano parts, accompanied by some most extraordinary deep bass tones of the men, swelling and filling the entire cathedral; all this, with occasional recitations from their sacred books, without any knowledge of their contents, excited in us the most serious and delightful sensations. There were about ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... ground at Miss Jenny Ann's feet the girls sang the splendid song. They forgot the story that had suggested their music. Their voices rang true and sweet. Madge sang the soprano part and Phil the alto. The tune inspired the two girls and gave Miss Jenny Ann fresh courage for the unpleasant interview which she thought lay ahead ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... same Habits, and indulge in the same Diversions and Luxuries: When Husbands are ruin'd, Children robb'd, and Tradesmen starv'd, in order to give Estates to a French Harlequin, and Italian Eunuch, for a Shrug or a Song; [Footnote: Farinelli, an eminent Italian soprano, went to England in 1734, remained there three years, sang chiefly at the Theatre of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then under the direction of Porpora, his old Master, became a great favorite, and made about, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... bofilo. Sonata sonato. Song kanto. Songster kantisto. Sonnet soneto. Sonorous sonora. Soon baldaux. Soon (early) frue. Soot fulgo. Soothe kvietigi. Sop trempajxo. Sophism sofismo. Soprano soprano. Sorb sorpo. Sorcerer sorcxisto. Sorcery sorcxarto. Sordid malpurega. Sore ulcereto. Sorrel okzalo. Sorrow malgxojo. Sorry malgxoja—eta. Sort speco. Sort dece kunmeti, disspecigi. Sot drinkulo. Soul animo. Sound (try depth) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... wonderful Christmas! The first real Christmas Courtland had ever known. Sitting in the dim firelight between dusk and darkness, watching Bonnie at the piano, listening to the tender Christmas music she was playing, joining his sweet tenor in with her clear soprano now and then, Courtland suddenly thought of Tennelly, off at Palm Beach, doing the correct thing in wedding trips with Gila. Poor Tennelly! How little he would be getting of the real joy of Christmas! How little he would understand the ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... woman," and I was sauntering beside Leroy. At dinner Jessica gave me no chance to talk with our friend's wife, and I only caught the quiet contralto tones of her voice now and then contrasting with Jessica's vivacious soprano. A drizzling rain came up from the east with nightfall. Little groups of shivering men and women sat about in the parlors at the card-tables, and one blond woman sang love songs. The Brainards were tired with their journey, and left us early. When ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... coat of the dog—picked up handfuls of dog. There was a struggle. The dog made fierce motions as if swimming, and whined in a thin and desperate soprano. Its body heaved upwards, its forepaws clutched the edge of the brushwood ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Florrie is looking?" he asked in a low tone of Gabriella, while his wife's laugh, high, shrill, penetrating in its dry soprano quality, fluted loudly on the opposite side of the table. Beside Patty's patrician loveliness, as serene and flawless as that of a marble goddess, Florrie appeared cheap, common, and merely pretty to Gabriella. The hard brilliancy of her surface was like a shining polish which would ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... a waving of caps boys burst out of one door, while girls came out of the opposite one more demurely, but with the piping of gay soprano voices. For school was out, and young America free of restraint for eighteen hours at least. Resilient youth, like a coiled spring that has been loosed, was off with a bound. Horses were saddled or put to harness. The teacher came ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... her place, which was in full range of his eyes, he glanced at her without turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to be observed, but her face held him. A color slowly flamed out on his pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted. A soprano singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and tittered, but he ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... excitement of a public performance as the outcome of practices. Our human triangle formed part of the company. All three were musical, and two of them more than usually talented both in singing and acting—Violet and Bernard. The former especially—endowed with a beautiful soprano voice, which had been well cultivated, added to what is styled by the initiated "a good stage presence"—was much in request on all such occasions. She had filled more than one title-role in popular operas presented by their little company, and no one would dream of casting her for any other ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... full, and the coyotes made savage music around the lonely ranch house. First from the hill across the creek came a snappy wow-wow, yac-yac, and then a long drawn out ooo-oo; then another voice, a soprano, joined in, followed by a baritone, and then the star voice of them all—loud, clear, vicious, mournful. For an instant I saw him silhouetted against the rising moon on the hill ridge, head thrown back ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... pleasing discovery that they could both sing. There was hardly an opera in vogue that one or other did not know sufficiently well to be able to recall the chief musical numbers. Iris had a sweet and sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice, Jenks an excellent baritone, and, to the secret amazement of the girl, he rendered one or two well-known Anglo-Indian barrack-room ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... fell upon the ears of the waiting multitude the glorious soprano voice of Mrs. Jones. So far above, yet so thrillingly sweet and distinct, one could scarcely refrain from imagining that the Pearly Gates had opened, and we were listening to the voice of one of the Redeemed. But that illusion was soon dispelled, and we ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... out his pitch-pipe from the dusty cushions of his seat, he would strut pompously down the church, ascend the stairs leading to the west gallery, blow his pipe, and give the basses, tenors, and soprano voices their notes, which they hung on to in a low tone until the clerk returned to his place in the lowest tier of the "three-decker" and started the choir-folk vigorously. Those Doxologies at the end! What a trouble they were! ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... flitted here and there, their colours contrasting with the green foliage. Gauzy-winged insects buzzed to and fro. The notes of the nightingale, or some kindred songster, could be heard, singing an ecstatic soprano to the cooing bass of the dove and the rippling obbligato of babbling brooks—that filtered through golden-yellow sands into the lap of the mother of waters—amid the sympathetic harmony of gushing cascades, whose noisy cadence was toned down by distance ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... really a tenor. Some voices are so near the dividing line that it requires wide experience and a fine ear for quality on the part of a teacher to determine in what direction they should be developed to greatest advantage. A fine ear may determine that the seeming mezzo is a true soprano, that the notes of the pupil who comes as a baritone have the tenor quality and that his scale safely can be added to, while the would-be tenor has the baritone timbre which will prevent his notes from ever ringing out with the true tenor quality. Yes, this initial task of voice ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... 'Residenz-Theater' sparked and hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every ear-drum; patting From muffled ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... cinnamon-colored young gentleman named Valentine Veery, who was a distant cousin of Jolly Robin's, was the singing leader. He had been chosen on account of his being able to sing both alto and soprano at the same time. And as soon as everybody had found a comfortable seat ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... secret of Lil's attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... her mother's face. "I can be terrible, too, sometimes — " she said in her little, clear, high soprano voice; and she gazed musingly at the edge of a letter, which just appeared above the table, and then sank out of ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Metastasio the delight of his contemporaries. He has lines which, from their dignity and vigorous compression, are perfectly suited to Tragedy, and yet we perceive in them an indescribable something, which seems to show that they were designed for the flexible throat of a soprano singer. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... an independent, interesting episode from the life of Margaret Donne, the fascinating English girl who later became the most famous lyric soprano of her day. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... fond of music from her childhood, and had given promise of rare talents. She had taken lessons for two years in vocal and instrumental music in the best conservatories in Boston, George paying most of her expenses. For six years May had been the soprano singer in the highest paid quartette in Harrisville. Though she occasionally hoped for a musical education abroad, yet these hopes had all flown away. Her parents could not aid her, and she had resolved not to accept further assistance from her generous brother. At first she ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... the refrain. At first the congregation was timid, but the tune was simple and attractive. The third verse was sung by every one, and Maggie found herself, almost against her will, joining in. At the fourth verse there was again the hush of expectation, then a soprano, thin and clear, accompanied again by one violin, broke ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... pushes his way through the crowds, for poor Chancer has been doomed to disappointment in his wish to have this fair woman sing to him alone, for when the now full rich notes, now sweet to intoxication, of her mezzo-soprano voice fell on the air, the languid, sentimental or gay stayed their ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and screeched ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... vain hope of preferring innocence: nor could I shelter myself by saying how little I understood of the dialect it was written in, as the action was nothing less than equivocal; and in the burletta which was tacked to it by way of farce, I saw the soprano fingers who played the women's parts, and who see more of the world than these friars, blush for shame, two or three times, while the company, most of them grave ecclesiastics, applauded ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... host was somewhat difficult under this host's roof, with the guest impending at any moment. Then a diversion was created by some of the church choir practicing the harmonium with the singing of certain more or less lugubrious anthems. Mrs. Rivers presently joined in, and in a somewhat faded soprano, which, however, still retained considerable musical taste and expression, sang, "Come, ye disconsolate." The wind moaned over the deep-throated chimney in a weird harmony with the melancholy of that human appeal as Mrs. Rivers ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... knew the chaplains quite well. One Sunday I was late; as I went in, the choir were busy with something in the way of music. I have no idea what it was, but it went on and on, seemingly a race between the soprano and tenor, with occasional bursts of hurried sentences from the alto and bass, until my patience and ears were weary. The next day I met the chaplain, and, in the course of conversation, I spoke of the music the previous day. 'Was it an anthem or a ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... The very lack of concentrated passion lent it power. Its suffusion of emotion in a shimmering atmosphere toned with voluptuous melancholy, seemed to invite the lutes and viols, the mellow tenors, and the trained soprano voices of the dawning age of melody. We may here remember that Palestrina, seven years earlier in Rome, had already given his Mass of Pope ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... rousing nonsensical song of the moment. The chorus was caught up, and swelled in the shadows. Waving her scarf as she had done in the dance-room in Melbourne on the night when Done first saw her, she sang again, and her clear soprano rang in the gullies like the call of a bird, and brought the miners from their tents and their arguments. When the song ended half the diggers on Jim Crow were gathered about Burton's camp-fire, and the loudest roar of applause came from Mary Kyley! Presently somebody ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Besides, it encourages the minister. Only think of talking to emptiness instead of fulness—to people instead of plush. How can the dear Rev. SPLURGE SPLUTTER have the heart or tongue to drop his pearls of eloquence to the swine of empty pews? And how dreadful for the gifted soprano, Miss SCREECH, to tune her melodious voice to earless aisles! And then it is so easy to "set" examples by sitting in soft pews, doing to church should be a matter of conscience. Every body not a dolt admits conscience to be a good thing, though a thing every body cannot boast of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... rushing down the steps had a clear soprano voice, cultured and commanding. The gray Medical uniform seemed molded to her shapely figure and her red hair glistened in the lights of the street. Her snub nose and determined mouth weren't the current fashion, but nobody stopped to think of fashions when they saw her. ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... by many ladies, of whom one was a dowager countess, but there were also a bishop and a midshipman. The last had a bad cold and kept on blowing his nose during the performance of the soprano, a lady of strange appearance, said to be a ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... a hard, bad day. Two people had given up their pews in the little church which needed so urgently every ounce of support that held it. And the junior warden, the one rich man of the parish, had come in before service in the afternoon to complain of the music. If that knife-edged soprano did not go, he said, he was afraid he should have to go himself; it was impossible to have his nerves scraped to the raw ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... might refuse the service, if not allowed the same ridiculous prerogatives, and thus expose Their Royal Majesties to double mortification, the Queen seemed satisfied, and no more was said upon the subject, except to an Italian soprano, to whom the King signified his displeasure at his singing a 'salva regina' in the dress of a ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... difficulty and delicacy of the errand he had undertaken came home to him. Impulse had brought him thus far, but now he stood staring helplessly at a row of bells, speaking tubes, and cards. Which, for example, belonged to the lady whose soprano voice pervaded the neighbourhood? He looked up and down the street, in the vain hope of finding a messenger. The song continued: he had promised to stop it. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cloathed in the same Habits, and indulge in the same Diversions and Luxuries: When Husbands are ruin'd, Children robb'd, and Tradesmen starv'd, in order to give Estates to a French Harlequin, and Italian Eunuch, for a Shrug or a Song; [Footnote: Farinelli, an eminent Italian soprano, went to England in 1734, remained there three years, sang chiefly at the Theatre of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then under the direction of Porpora, his old Master, became a great favorite, and made about, 5,000 a year. As The Man of Taste was performed at a rival house, Drury Lane, the bitterness ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... been too strong for them, and the hedge will grow its own way in spite of pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?' The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and clear soprano voice had attained new power since Sir Oswald had heard it in the moonlit market-place; the execution of the singer improved day by day. The Italian singing-master spoke in raptures of his pupil—never ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... it was that Leonhard Marten, while passing, heard that recitative of a soprano voice which so amazed him. Dropping quickly into the shade of the trees opposite Loretz's house, he listened to the announcement, "There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night," and there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the piano and her rich soprano voice faultlessly led her straggling chorus, filled for the most part by the men grouped outside on the wide porch. He could see them through the long, French windows, sitting or standing as each felt inclined, but all with that earnest seriousness of demeanor ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... facts. Art implies proportion, and it was one of the ambitions of all the best actors in the golden age of histrionic art to have an "even voice"—i.e., one equally good through the whole range required. The tragic actor, elocutionist, and public speaker, and the singer, whether soprano or bass, should neglect no muscle, though they may be justified in developing some in excess of others, but ever with a watchful eye on the ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... brilliancy than she ever before recalled. He was very masterful, and that was a new note in his music. And when the songs came, he led out a pretty, slim girl, and with evident satisfaction accompanied her at the piano. The three songs were charming. She remembered them. But who was this soprano? Arthur was evidently interested in her; the orchestra watched the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... to a day in a railway-car en route to the great Columbian Fair in Chicago when the tired passengers were suddenly surprised and charmed by the music of this melody. A young Christian man and woman, husband and wife, had begun to sing "My Jesus, I love Thee." Their voices (a tenor and soprano) were clear and sweet, and every one of the company sat up to listen with a look of mingled admiration and relief. Here was something, after all, to make a long journey less tedious. They sang all the four verses and paused. There was no clapping of hands, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... his most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsing inward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designed to be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... the songs. The early chanting of all peoples was quite likely by men. Probably the most primitive harmony was a perfect fifth resulting from the attempt of men with different ranges to sing together. The difference between a bass and a tenor voice is just about a fifth. Between an alto and a soprano it is about a fourth. The difference in these voices made it impossible to sing melodies of wide range in unison, and so the basses and tenors sang in consecutive fifths. When women took up the chanting, they sang either in fifths or ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... more than once had the honour of seeing at Pianura; and, in reply to the boy's surprised glance, added, with a swelling of the chest and an absurd gesture of self-introduction, "But perhaps the cavaliere is not too young to have heard of the illustrious Cantapresto, late primo soprano of the ducal theatre ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... simple, old-fashioned home parlor entertainment, and no doubt most musical artists would have sneered at the programme, but Alice had a wonderfully sweet and sympathetic soprano voice, and as Frank sat watching the fitful flames play hide-and-seek in the open fire, and listened to those time-worn ballads, it seemed to him he had never heard singing quite so sweet. Much depends upon the time and place, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... sea in seductive cadences. Then two female voices sang sweetly to the accompaniment of the harp; and so exquisite was the effect that I fancied rejoicing angels whispering their songs to the winds that played so gently around us. One of the voices was a soprano of much sweetness and flexibility, for it ascended the scale with great ease, and its higher notes were flutelike. The other was a contralto of no mean order. And there joined in chorus with these, two male voices, evidently well trained, and of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the moon was full, and the coyotes made savage music around the lonely ranch house. First from the hill across the creek came a snappy wow-wow, yac-yac, and then a long drawn out ooo-oo; then another voice, a soprano, joined in, followed by a baritone, and then the star voice of them all—loud, clear, vicious, mournful. For an instant I saw him silhouetted against the rising moon on the hill ridge, head thrown back and muzzle raised, as he gave to ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... big male voices were shouting out the Boat Club song, Polly's soprano sweet and clear over the rest, while Frieda smiled encouragement over the edge of the robe in which she ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church and, on one ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... means of which you could have interred your dead in decency. Had such been the arrangement, no after writer could have remarked, as the Rev. Mr. Cumming does now, that no 'pealing organ' mingled 'its harmony of bass, tenor, treble, and soprano' when you sung, or have recorded the atrocious fact, that not only was John Brown of Priesthill shot by Claverhouse, but actually buried by his friends without the funeral service. And how striking and affecting ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... refreshing the arid atmosphere of our dreary Sunday evenings with Handel's holy music. "I know that my Redeemer liveth," and "He shall feed his Flock," which I heard for the first time from that gentle schoolmate of mine, recall her meek, tranquil face and, liquid thread of delicate soprano voice, even through the glorious associations of Jenny Lind's inspired utterance of those divine songs. These ladies were daughters of a high dignitary of the English Church, which made my sermon-writing for their succor rather comical. Besides ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a discord, and the sound is unpleasant. We cannot have harmony without a difference in pitch and quality, but we can have difference in pitch and quality without harmony. To produce perfect music, we must have soprano, alto, tenor and bass to carry all the parts. The tenor and soprano would furnish us a very poor concert, and the alto and bass alone would produce rather monotonous music. But we have studied harmony in music until we have evoked divine results, and our achievements ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... time, and his inspection of the apartment was perfunctory. Cassidy would be a buckler and shield to the dog, in his absence. Cassidy would love him. The dog, on his spread forefeet, touched his chest to the ground and with ears erect, eyes agleam, and inciting soprano gurgles invited the world ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... and the fifth, the bases of the system, are of course, to be found only in the human voice. They are, roughly, the difference between the average male and the average female voice, and the difference between the average soprano and alto. It is upon those intervals that the C-major scale and its twenty-three dependents are based. But with the coming of a conception that no longer separated man from the rest of creation, and placed him in it as a small part of it, brother to the animals and plants, to ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... might not have been prompted merely by a sense of Christian duty; had I been the Khan of Tartary she could not have been more polite and frigid. The music to the first hymn was an air I had never heard before, so I stumbled miserably through the tenor, although Miss Mayton rendered the soprano without a single false note. The sermon was longer than I was in the habit of listening to, and I was frequently conscious of not listening at all. As for my position and appearance, neither ever seemed so insignificant as they did ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel—a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will ces dames desire a salon—there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... an increasing abandon, half laughter and half tears, the clear young soprano voice took up ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Motive seems to be written in a curiously low key if we conceive it to be the index to the character of a soprano heroine; but let us look further. What are the two principal personages in the music-drama to be to ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... particular, she had been forced to bow her obstinate head to his decree. In consequence she profited by the enforced practice hours to the extent of becoming a really creditable performer on the piano for a girl of her years. At fourteen she had begun vocal training. Possessed of a strong, clear, soprano voice, three years under the direction of competent instructors had done much for her, and, although she was far too selfish to use her fine voice merely to give pleasure to others, she never allowed an opportunity to pass wherein she might win public approval ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... highly educated, handsome, attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She knew all the nice London people of her day: ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... were rapturously applauded, and the singers forced to give encore after encore. One youth who played the part of a little maid from school, and sang in a sweet soprano voice, caused the greatest enthusiasm of the evening; but then everything seemed ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... to 9. The oratorios of "Il Penseroso;" and "Alexander's Feast" were performed at the Theatre in King Street; Handel's "Te Deum" and "Jubilate" with the "Messiah," at St. Philip's Church. The principal singers were Mrs. Pinto, first soprano, and Mr. Charles Norris, tenor; the orchestra numbered about 70, the conductor being Mr. Capel Bond of Coventry, with Mr. Pinto as leader of the band. The tickets of admission were 5s. each, the receipts (with donations) amounting to ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... calls on Miss Mary Anne Bull, who was a brunette and a celebrated beauty of the day. I well remember her long raven curls falling from the comb that held them up on the top of her head. She had a rich soprano voice, and was the leading singer in the Centre Church choir. The two brothers also had fine, manly voices, and the family circle was often enlivened by quartette singing and flute playing. Mr. Bull kept a very large wholesale drug store on Front Street, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... A. Merriman, of the class of '91, Talladega. Mrs. Merriman took the full college course at Fisk University, graduating in 1891. Professor Spence was for four years her instructor in Greek and leader of the Mozart Society, in which she was soprano soloist. He writes: "Let us thank God it was light with her at the evening of life." This was indeed true. A few hours before the end, when seemingly at the very brink, strength was given to sing in her remarkably clear, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... spirally with strips of gilded paper. Clouds of blue fragrant incense rolled up toward the roof from swinging censers, and the deep intonation of the gorgeously attired priest contrasted strangely with the high soprano chanting of the choir. The service of the Greek Church is more impressive, if possible, than that of the Romish; but as it is conducted in the old Slavonic language, it is almost wholly unintelligible. The priest ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... again, this time lightly, joyously, and we re ponded to her mood like harp-strings all in accord. The room, awakened to melody after the long years of silence, seemed transformed by Una's splendid gift, a fine, clear soprano, not big nor yet thin or reedy, but rounded, full-bodied and deep with feeling. Jerry was smiling now, the shadow ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... but see the vibrations of the atmosphere which a single musical chord produces—the rolling bass, the gliding alto, the sweeping soprano, and the soaring tenor, rolling onward in one broad channel of harmony, with its myriad tributary streams of thirds and fifths, and its curling, twinkling, shifting, blending, soaring mists of delicate-toned harmonics, how would our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the beautiful melody only added to both Mulberry's and Gladys's happiness. Many others also played and sang, and at last by dint of great persuasion Gladys consented to sing. She had a magnificent clear soprano voice and as he listened Mulberry ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... time," said Pete Murphy. "Beautiful, all of them. Soprano, high and clear. They've got a language, all right, too. What did you ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... sweep towards the house, the sharp crisp click of hoofs on stone, the opening of heavy doors, the sudden sparkling invasion of frigid air, the uplifting of voices in greeting,—but all familiar! There were Gabriel Lane's cheery, hopeful tones, the soprano of Cousin Jane and Cousin Emma, the baritone of Mr. Gunn, and the grave measured oratorical utterance of Parson Dexter, who had joined the party at the station; but certainly the accents of no STRANGER. Had he ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... choir for them days; the only trouble was that everybody wanted to be leader. That's a common failin' with church choirs, I've noticed. Milly Amos sung soprano, and my Jane was the alto; John Petty sung bass, and young Sam Crawford tenor; and as for Uncle Jim Matthews, he sung everything, and a plenty of it, too. Milly Amos used to say he was worse'n a flea. He'd start out on the bass, and first thing you knew he'd be singin' tenor with ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... utterance of the romance in Otello—the tone with which she gave the words "Sul mio sasso," in the Capuletti—is ringing in my memory yet. Her lower tones were absolutely miraculous. Her voice embraced three complete octaves, extending from the contralto D to the D upper soprano, and, though sufficiently powerful to have filled the San Carlos, executed, with the minutest precision, every difficulty of vocal composition-ascending and descending scales, cadences, or fiorituri. In the final of the Somnambula, she brought ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... force, musical genius, business talent, education, and general brain power went to the making of a man who hobnobbed with dukes and kings, who ruled musical England with an iron rule, who threatened to throw distinguished soprano ladies from windows, and was threatened with never an action for battery in return, who went through the world with a regal gait, and was, in a word, the most astonishing lord of music ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... through his dark hair and made new symbols for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers. The Minnies and Pearls and jewels and jennies would gather round her like courtiers, bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... dishes were, and how sweet the wine. Fedoka listened attentively, and cast his eyes on Feitel's blouse. He was still thinking of "matzo." Suddenly there was a scream, and a cry in a high-pitched soprano: ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... own dear Pollyanna, the glad girl, adopted by an aunt in "Crime and Punishment." Even Dostoyevsky must have laid down his doleful pen to give her at last a happy wedding—flower-girls and angel-food, even a shrill soprano behind the hired palms and a table ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... Having discovered her breakfast and selected a piece of rag to act as napkin, tablecloth, and subsequently a face towel, the old lady restored the remainder of her effects to the 'valise' and fell to. Noticing Richard was awake she addressed him in a singularly soprano voice. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... his family, "They are one and all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can already form a concert, both vocal and instrumental, of my own family, particularly as my present wife sings a very clear soprano and my eldest daughter joins ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... of him that he is volatile; that he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a dreamer, looking for guidance ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... chapel to attend service on Sunday; I knew the chaplains quite well. One Sunday I was late; as I went in, the choir were busy with something in the way of music. I have no idea what it was, but it went on and on, seemingly a race between the soprano and tenor, with occasional bursts of hurried sentences from the alto and bass, until my patience and ears were weary. The next day I met the chaplain, and, in the course of conversation, I spoke of the music the previous day. 'Was ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... at once, as if hoping to lighten their labours—lovers of music as these people are—a shrill, musical, woman's voice arose, starting a familiar chorus, which was taken up directly by the young, to rise and fall and swell along the valley, the sweet soprano tones supported by the roaring waters' ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... asked, and sang a little song in English in graceful but unobtrusive compliment to the hostess. Then the Queen sang in German, he playing the accompaniment. And in his letter to his sister Fanny, telling her of all this, in his easy, gossipy, brotherly way, Felix adds that the Queen has a charming soprano voice, that only needs a little cultivation and practise to make her fit to take the leading ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... portraits of him at a later age and by the blindness of his last years). When he had finished, his brother discovered the copy and took it away from him. In 1700 Sebastian, now fifteen and thrown on his own resources by the death of his brother, went to Lueneburg, where his beautiful soprano voice obtained him an appointment at the school of St Michael as chorister. He seems, however, to have worked more at instrumental than at vocal music. Apart from the choristers' routine, his position provided only for his general education, and we know little about his definite musical instructors. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... "Boo-ee!" Well, anyhow, such a young man as I am telling you of would be ashamed to sing with a hog noise. He wants to sing bass. Now the regular hymn-tunes change the bass as often as they change the soprano, and if you go fumbling about for the note, by the time you get it right it is wrong, because the tune has gone on and left you. The Sabbath-school songs had the young man Absalom distinctly in view. They made ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... thoughts that were not stimulated by the puppet-show before her. The tenor shrieked out his tender passion, and the tubby soprano sank into his inadequate arms with languishing sighs. Carmen heeded not their stage amours. She saw in the glare before her the care-lined face of the priest of Simiti; she saw the grim features and set jaw of her beloved, black-faced Rosendo, as he led her through the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... ca doit etre chante. Votre voix est delicieuse, le timbre que j'aime—mezzo-soprano, avec ces notes hautes ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... buggy before him two whiskey jugs. Some one far ahead began to sing a revival hymn, and it ran along the line of carriages like a trail of ignited powder. A deep bass caught it behind Gordon Makimmon, then the piercing soprano ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that they could both sing. There was hardly an opera in vogue that one or other did not know sufficiently well to be able to recall the chief musical numbers. Iris had a sweet and sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice, Jenks an excellent baritone, and, to the secret amazement of the girl, he rendered one or two well-known Anglo-Indian barrack-room ditties with ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... silence again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these intervals in ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... voice like Mere Ursule's lovely soprano, and Mr. Pepys a pretty tenor; and you can imagine nothing more silvery sweet than the union of the two voices to the staccato notes of the viol, dropping in here and there like music whispered. The setting was Mr. Pepys' own, and he seemed overcome with ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... other voices, some bringing one verse or no verse, in unison or alone, the least expected doing what was most awaited, which was to surprise us and call forth gay peals of happy laughter, while the "La, la, la—la—la!" was kept up continuously, like an accompaniment. And still the voices, basso, soprano, tenor, baritone, contralto, rose and fell, the moment's inspiration telling how, till at last all blended in a locomotive-paced La, and in a final roar of laughter ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... greater the earlier in life the castration takes place. A number of secondary sexual characters remain undeveloped. The beard does not grow; in many instances a thick panniculus adiposus is formed; there are changes in the growth of the bones; the voice remains a soprano; and the other reproductive organs are imperfectly developed, the penis and the prostate remaining comparatively small An early castration does not, of course, result in the obliteration of all differences between the male and the female; we must rather say that a part only of the typical differential ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... society known as Cold Water Templars, and later becoming a member of the Sons of Temperance and Good Templars. She is active in all Christian work, being a member of the First Congregational Church of Lockport, in whose church work she takes prominent part, and whose solo soprano she has been for thirteen years; she is also an active member of the Christian Endeavor society and ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... that the stout matter-of-fact lighter has been christened as a shadowy ghost, or a royal symbol. The veriest urchin steers her, with a little fat hand on the heavy tiller twelve feet long, and a hunch of good rye-bread in his other fist. Now and then he sings out in a thin soprano, "Fayther, boat's a'ead," and his father, (hidden below), answers deep-toned, from the cabin, "Keep 'er away, lad." From him I asked, "How old is your boy?" and the parent's head popped up to see, but it was the child that smartly answered, "Eight years old." ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien. Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... saw my brother's pupils come and go, but that was about all. Sometimes I was called on to play accompaniments, or to fill out a vacancy at a rehearsal, or to order a carriage for an infuriated soprano who had thrown up her part. But they never spent any time on me, unless it was to notice ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... the attendant, and in helping her to put it on, touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver. The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's passionate soprano, Ich ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... them giving vent to their plaintive hinney. There are dogs, too, that howl and bark, with other sounds that come from farther off—from the wild denizens of the wilderness; cries of the cougar in contralto, wolf-barkings in mezzo-soprano, screaming of eagles in shrill treble, snorting of bears in basso, and hooting of scared owls in lugubrious tone, to be likened only to the wailing ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of Warblers, Thrushes, Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all, a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit. That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... notions about the duties of employers to their servants, and, though the very kindest of men, is generally thought by the neighbors to be "a queer stick." The Deacon's wife, who has a very sweet soprano voice, which, however, she never could be persuaded to use in our choir, was presiding at the piano. The children all had their hymn and tune-books, and they were "singing round"—each member of the family selecting a hymn in turn. As they ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... gave a remarkable proof of his detachment. Just as the Princess was preparing to serve one of her juiciest undercut strokes, the tones of a soprano practising her scales rang out from a neighbouring flat. "Rather sharp, I think," said Mr. BALFOUR, and the Princess, overcome by the ready wit of the ex-PREMIER, served four faults in quick succession. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... two or three times in the Sala Ducale, which is then turned into a chapel. During these masses motetts are sung by the famous Sixtine choir, under the direction of the old Maestro Mustafa, once the greatest soprano of the century, but at the same time so accomplished a musician as to have earned the common name of 'Palestrina redivivus.' It is to be regretted that he has never allowed any of his beautiful compositions to be published. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... lord of Rome in 1758. He boasted of having "made a soprano out of Zambinella" and disclosed the fact to Sarrasine that this creature was ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... with the young cavaliers of the party—but all came right in due time. For after supper, which was early, Barty played the fool with Mr. Gibson, and taught him how to do a mechanical wax figure, of which he himself was the showman; and the laughter, both baritone and soprano, might have been heard in Russell Square. Then they sang an extempore Italian duet together which was screamingly droll—and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... out the overture to "Der Freischuetz," the baritone had stentorianly emitted "Dio Possente," the soprano was working her way through the closing measures of the mad scene from "Lucia," and Diotti was number four on the program. The conductor stood beside his platform, ready to ascend ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... made Miss Mink refuse to do her part. Every ripple in the small flag that fluttered over her humble dwelling sent a corresponding ripple along her spinal column. When she essayed to sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," in her high, quavering soprano, she invariably broke down from sheer excess of emotion. But the American army fighting for right and freedom in France, and the Army individually tracking mud into her spotless cottage, were two very different things. ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... seemed serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic. They use more judgment about applause than the French. They never interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... it, and laughing and chattering with the men whose applause, of course, took the jocose form, there was no doubt but she admired it. "What I can't understand is how Mrs. Westangle got the notion of this. There's the soprano note in it, and some woman must have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... vociferous—so long as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... rooms in the rear came the words of a gospel hymn sung in a tremulous soprano and at ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... amidst all the gayeties which court you, you will find time to write to me? If so, you shall have in return the earliest intelligence of every new soprano, and the most elaborate criticisms on every ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Johnny Byrd had an infectious way of making a party go and Maria Angelina's sweet soprano had become so much a part of every gathering that its absence now made ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... over her mother's face. "I can be terrible, too, sometimes — " she said in her little, clear, high soprano voice; and she gazed musingly at the edge of a letter, which just appeared above the table, and then sank out of sight in ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which may be either tenor, contralto, soprano or baritone. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... to him from a music-room. He pushes his way through the crowds, for poor Chancer has been doomed to disappointment in his wish to have this fair woman sing to him alone, for when the now full rich notes, now sweet to intoxication, of her mezzo-soprano voice fell on the air, the languid, sentimental or gay stayed ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... had scarcely entered this ravine when a sharp, shrill whistle rang from one side of the mountain to the other. Immediately human voices were heard on all sides, repeating in every pitch of tone, from bass to soprano, the word "Rione." For several minutes the mountain echoed with the weird sound of the brigand war-cry; the troops were ordered to stand in readiness, and timid hearts like Henry's quailed at the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the choir sings the anthem, Cum appropinquaret etc. When the procession is in the portico, two soprano singers reenter the basilica, and shut the door: then turning towards the door, they sing the first verse of the hymn Gloria, laus et honor[38] and the other verses alternately with the choir, which remains ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... setting up a bawling on his own account Neewa turned tail to the nest and ran. Miki was not a hair behind him. In every square inch of his tender hide he felt the red-hot thrust of a needle. It was Neewa that made the most noise. His voice was one continuous bawl, and to this bass Miki's soprano wailing added the touch which would have convinced any passing Indian that the loup-garou ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... it had fairly reached the water, poor Iris, who had followed the conversation with a certain interest until it turned this sharp corner, (for she seems rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of which she had been cheated, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... singers sing those tiresome songs which so satisfy the musical taste of Bayswater—baritone songs about the Army and the Navy and their rollicking ways, and about old English country life; tenor songs about Grey Eyes and Roses and Waiting and Parting and Coming Back; soprano songs about Calling and Wondering and Last Night's Dance and Remembering and Forgetting—foolish words, foolish melodies, and clumsy orchestration. But they seem to please the well-dressed crowd that comes to listen to them, so I suppose it is justified. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... threatening annihilation. He brandished his pole in the face of Ortrud, stamping and roaring, then, bending his knees, waddled across the room and prodded Elsa, who winced perceptibly but continued to mingle her light soprano with the rolling bass of Mr. Church and the vociferations of the poet. Finally, at the staccato command of Mr. Todd's hoarsening voice, she toppled over into his arms and they both fell on Ortrud. The nonsense ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... admirably fitting doeskin gloves, bowed with great gravity and perfect self-possession. The hisses thereupon suddenly faded into piercing entreaties for a speech, in which a gallery lady with a powerful soprano voice became notorious as the leader. But the Jaeger author was not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu, and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where his manager was trembling like an aspen, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... accomplishment of a perfect knowledge of how to wait, and to wait—if necessary—long. When the first golden down had shown itself on his cheek and lip she had not noticed it too much and when his golden soprano voice began to change to a deeper note and annoyed him with its uncertainties she had spared him awkwardness by making him feel the transition a casual natural thing, instead of a personal and characteristic weakness. She had loved every stage of innocence and ignorance ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the explosive headgear and came forward in response to the light keeper's command. She looked at the chair by the ancient parlor organ and announced: "Yes, indeed, it'll do real well, thank you, Cap'n Jethro." Her voice was a sharp soprano with liquid gurgles in it—"like pourin' pain-killer out of a bottle," this last still another quotation from ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... now, at the age of sixty-five, has a superb voice and manner, and has had few superiors in his time on the German stage. There is Frau Dietz, at forty-five, the best of actresses, and with a still fresh and lovely voice. There is Herr Nachbar, a tenor, who has a future; Fraulein Stehle, a soprano, young and with an uncommon voice, who enjoys a large salary, and was the favorite until another soprano, the Malinger, came and turned the heads of king and opera habitues. The resources of the Academy are, however, tolerably large; and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cadence of Madame's laughter rang through the house and echoed along the corridor. As though in answer, the clock struck ten, the canary sang happily, and a rival melody came from the kitchen, in cracked soprano, mercifully muted by distance and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... sufficient to deter him, and he abandoned the idea, giving as an excuse the inferiority of the German singers. That this was only an excuse, is plain, since only a short time afterward Mlle. Sontag was intrusted with the exceedingly difficult soprano parts of the Mass in D and the Ninth Symphony. He was hard at work on this Symphony at the time, which will serve to explain and accentuate his reluctance to again attempt operatic composition, a style of work diametrically opposed to that which had engaged his attention for many ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... where the victim, in consideration of being educated, and maintained, and paid a certain amount, is bound, legally bound, to devote her services to a master for a given time. The impresario of the 'Fenice' had often heard from travellers of that wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which was captivating all Rome, where the beauty and grace of the singer were extolled not less loudly. The great skill of these astute providers for the world's pleasure is evidenced in nothing more remarkably than the instinctive quickness with which ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... identification she says: "This is the hith of him 5-6 light eyes dark hair unwave shave and a Suprano Voice his age 58 his name Steve...." Even though Mr. Washington did not agree to spend his spare time looking for a disloyal husband with a soprano voice, he sent the poor woman a kind reply and suggested some means of tracing ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... could only once more hear my 'Flauto Magico!'" humming, in scarcely audible voice, the lively bird-catcher song. The same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, he called his friends together, and asked for the score of his nearly completed "Requiem" to be laid on his bed. Benedict Schack sang the soprano; his brother-in-law, Hofer, the tenor; Gerl, the bass; and Mozart himself took the alto in a weak but delicately clear voice. They had got through the various parts till they came to the "Lacrymosa," when Mozart burst ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... 1848. It was then I was selected to join the choral class. There were fifty boys and girls picked from the different schools and we had a fine drilling each Saturday afternoon in the basement of the church. One of the boys had a high soprano voice and we all admired his singing to adoration. He was as courteous as his voice was beautiful—unspoiled by praise. We had one chorus we all loved, of which he was the soloist, and we were not satisfied with the rehearsal until we had sung, and the young master had so beautifully rendered ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... regarded it as medicine, and hoped especially for a favourable effect from the exquisite soprano voice in the motet "Tu ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I. Epstein, the soprano soloist from St. Louis, will sing a symphony known as the "Surprise Symphony" at the concert by the University Orchestra in the auditorium to-morrow night. The piece was written by Haydn. The symphony was so named by the composer on account of the startling effects produced. The solo ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... before it broke. We lighted a fire, but the blaze could not be seen far in such inky darkness. We hallooed, but received no answer, and finally ceased our efforts. Then one of the young ladies who possessed a very high and clear soprano voice, began singing at the very top of her power. It reached the wanderer in the darkness, and he rowed straight toward it. From that time on he became infatuated with the singer, declaring that her voice had come ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... them pushed hers back, and I recognized the golden hair of Alathea, as she joined a group rather formally collected on one side of the grave. She looked round as if to see that all were ready, and then in such a soprano voice as one seldom hears, she "started" the funeral hymn. It was ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... In writing, use soprano, alto and tenor, or alto, tenor and bass; and do not separate upper parts more than an octave. For a chord or two they may (for the sake of better ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... and Faustina Bordoni Hasse, whose famous rivalry in 1726 and 1727 is here referred to, were singers of remarkable powers. Cuzzoni's voice was a soprano, her rival's a mezzo-soprana, and while the latter excelled in brilliant execution, the former was supreme in pathetic expression. Dr. Burney("History of Music," iv. 319) quotes from M. Quanta the statement that so keen was their ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the stacattoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano of the dear ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... this highest among the rights of woman are fond of alluding to the fact that only here and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the work of singing bass. The large majority of women prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what has this fact to do with the matter of right in the premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without onions, but I never knew that fact ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... and induced in her mind temporary doubts as to the correctness of her own definitions and conceptions of music. But her singing he did not question. It was too wholly her, and he sat always amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice. And he could not help but contrast it with the weak pipings and shrill quaverings of factory girls, ill-nourished and untrained, and with the raucous shriekings from gin-cracked throats of the women of the seaport towns. She ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... evening, listening to the carolling of a bird which was perched upon the bough of a tree that shaded the house, and little Mamie was playing at her feet, when Allie, who was in the parlor practising on the piano, struck up with her full-toned soprano voice: ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... heard as they do to mortal ears. But there were other sounds which enchained my attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mingled reproach, and warning, and anxiety. Rufe settled himself on the platform, his bare feet dangling about jocosely. Then, beating his hands on either thigh to mark the time he sang in a loud, shrill soprano, prone now and then to be flat, and yet, impartially, prone now and then to be ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... and ceiling were honey-combed with sensitive musical cells, answering to the deeper vibrations. These floating aerial sounds also answered to the higher notes of some of the female singers, resembling soprano voices, brightened and spiritualized in a wonderful degree; and then the wide room would be filled with a mist, as it were, of this floating, formless melody, which seemed to come from invisible harpers hovering ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... those not learned in Sixteenth-Century Music, it may be interesting to hint that the melody is written here for the Second Soprano, and to add, for their encouragement, that the experiment of performing this Madrigal, unaccompanied, with two ladies, and two male voices in the Alto parts, proved perfectly successful, thanks to the science of Mr Fuller-Maitland and the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... must have three voices—a tenor, a soprano, and a bass, who will be accompanied by a bass-viol, a theorbo, and a clavecin for the chords, with two violins to play ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... singers in the kingdom. The learned individual who blows the organ may say that the comparative perfection attained in the orchestra is through the very consummate manner in which he "raises the wind"; the gentleman who manipulates upon its keys may think he is the primum mobile in the matter; the soprano may fancy she is the life of the whole concern; the heavy bass or the chief tenor may respectively lay claim to the honour; but the fact is, its amongst the lot, so that there may be a general rubbing on the question of service, and a reciprocal scratching ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... that may have been, such intrusion was never resented; my Swedish prima donna, or my qualifications as a basso profondo, or a brass-bandsman, were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that I ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... of the main altar, tearing half a yard of crimson damask and nearly upsetting the priest officiating; and then, while Caper (red in the face, and totally unfit to hear the fine chorus of voices, among which Mustafa's, the soprano, came ringing out) was composing himself to listen, Pepe grabbed him with a 'Music's over; andiamo (let's go). Did you hear Mustafa? Bella voce, tra-la-leeeee! Mustafa's a contadino; I know his pa and ma; they changed him when only five years ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... deeply indented sides to permit a free use of the bow, was mostly supplied with frets like a guitar, and had usually from five to seven strings. Its different sizes corresponded with the soprano, contralto, tenor and bass of the human voice. An extremely interesting treble viol much in vogue in the eighteenth century was the viola d'amore, with fourteen strings, the seven of gut and silver being supplemented by seven ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... officers corralled them and clamored for them to sing. Without any coaxing they stood up together and sang, and their voices were sweet as birds as they piped out the words of a popular song, one singing alto, the little one taking the high soprano. Ruth put down her book and listened, wondering at the lovely expressions on the two small faces. They made her think of the baby-seraphs in Michael Angelo's pictures. Presently they burst into a religious ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... "Der lustige Rath." Various local circumstances have delayed the performance at Vienna of this really pretty, nicely worked out opera. The mise-en-scene does not require any special efforts; the piece only requires a somewhat piquant and not unskillful soprano singer. Altogether the opera appears to me to be written in a charming style, not too superficially conservative, and to be one of the best among the new operas mezzo-carattere. In case you still have time and are not indisposed to give the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... thing. She jes likes to hear me sing. You're crazy!" The tramp-boy's young voice had its fashion of breaking and shrilling into a high soprano, like a girl's, for emphasis; he was as red as a beet, and he put his foot back in the stirrup, thrust out his under jaw and looked at the stirrup as though he had to determine how much wood had gone into its making. Again Bruce was conscious ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... more than simply well, with taste, feeling, and correctness. You can see that she loves the really fine and impassioned in music, that show and dash have had no place in her training. She sings very sweetly with a mezzo-soprano voice that is ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... ceiling like the flanges of a fan; now and then a couple of men passing just under her window roused her with their deep voices, or a tired child's voice rose up above the patter of footsteps like a bird's pipe in the night. Cats squalled and snarled, and fled up the street; a soprano voice floated out ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... was new to me, evidently Brewer's sparrow. Its favorite resort was in the low bushes growing on the border of the mesa and along the edge of the cliff. Its song was unique, the opening syllable running low on the alto clef, while the closing notes constituted a very respectable soprano. A few extremely shy sparrows flitted about in the thickets of a hollow as we began our descent, and I have no doubt they were ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... songs until nearly midnight, the daughter Cleo playing on the harp with dextrous fingers, and throwing a soft soprano voice upon the air, like the tones of an angel, echoing over a bank ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... present on the concert stage. The poignant sadness cross-shot with humor of another of Schubert's songs, The Hurdy Gurdy, vanishes in the concert room, melts hopelessly into the dulcet tones of the young lady soprano, whose friends titter when she is done, "What a pretty song." But my one-fingered rendering—aided in this song by occasional jabs with three fingers of the left hand—brings to my inward ear the pathos of the barrel-organ, heard over the distant hum of a careless city, laden with the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Gospel which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... perfect as it may be in tone, is yet always very deficient in compass, as is obvious from the fact that the bass voice, the barytone, the contralto, and the soprano have all different registers, and are all required to produce a complete vocal harmony. If we could make organ-pipes with movable, self-regulating lips, with self-shortening and self-lengthening tubes, so that each tube should command the two or three octaves of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... as to the accents of her German, in a high breathy effortless soprano, a little song about a child and a bouquet ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... of the parson, and the soprano's voice from behind the flowers, singing "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me"—Marthy's favorite hymn—brought the tears trickling, but he could not believe that what had happened had happened. He got through the melancholy honor of riding in the first hack in the shabby pageant, though ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... pitches are the left-hand strings of a piano; the larger ones of stringed instruments generally; bass voices; and large bells. Familiar high pitches are right-hand piano strings; smaller ones of other stringed instruments; soprano voices; small bells; and the voices of ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... and the hour of your release from these explanations is at hand. The rest of what you are going to see is opera, and nothing but opera. Before many bars have been played, Siegfried and the wakened Brynhild, newly become tenor and soprano, will sing a concerted cadenza; plunge on from that to a magnificent love duet; and end with a precipitous allegro a capella, driven headlong to its end by the impetuous semiquaver triplets of the famous finales to the first act of Don Giovanni or the coda to the Leonore overture, with ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... securing such musical instruction as she could. In 1834, she made her first appearance in opera and scored a tremendous success. A splendid career seemed opening before her, when suddenly, a few months later, her voice, strained by the soprano parts which had been, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... North's school march in to the church, and it spoke well for Miss North's training that they were always dignified and attentive. They took an active part in the service and sang for the very joy of singing. Blue Bonnet's strong, sweet soprano often rang above her fellows, clear and true, and her face reflected the glow that stirred ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... reserve, yet with such sweetly persuasive voices that those about them first listened and then added their own very best. The second tune was "Geer," and, with John's tenor going up every time Barbara's soprano came down, and vice versa, it was as lovely see-sawing as ever thrilled the heart of youth with pure and undefiled religion. They sang the last hymn ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... full, are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turned up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... many people there, and all the windows were open, and there was something poetical and sweet about the atmosphere. Besides, the singing was unusually good for such a place. Above all the other voices arose Ida Slome's sweet soprano. She sang like a bird; her voice, although not powerful, was thrillingly sweet. Harry looked at her as she sang, and thought how pretty she was, but there was no disloyalty to his wife in the look. He was, in fact, not that sort of man. While he did not love his Abby with ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... triangle formed part of the company. All three were musical, and two of them more than usually talented both in singing and acting—Violet and Bernard. The former especially—endowed with a beautiful soprano voice, which had been well cultivated, added to what is styled by the initiated "a good stage presence"—was much in request on all such occasions. She had filled more than one title-role in popular ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
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