"Composer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... becoming known as a song-writer; he cultivated his gift to relieve the monotony of an unintellectual occupation, and the usual auditor of his lays was his younger brother Matthew, who for some years was his companion in the workshop. The acquaintance of Robert Archibald Smith, the celebrated musical composer, which he was now fortunate in forming, was the means of stimulating his Muse to higher efforts and of awakening his ambition. Smith was at this period resident in Paisley; and along with one Ross, a teacher of music from Aberdeen, he set ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... contours; but these it would not be difficult to match in any morning's walk. It is when she smiles that her face, it seems to me, is one of the most wonderful in the world. Till she smiles, it is like the score of some great composer's song before the musician releases it warbling for joy along the trembling keys; it is like the statue of Memnon before the dawn steals to kiss it across the desert. White Soul's face when she smiles is made, you would say, of larks and dew, of ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... meaningless enough to have been written by a Russian." This latter is to be preferred, for it leads your companion to say, "But don't you like TschaiKOWsky?", pronouncing the second syllable as if the composer were a female bull. You can then reply, "Why, yes, TschaiKOFFsky DID write some rather good music—although it's all neurotic and obviously Teutonic." Don't fail to ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the first time," Louis d'Arandel said, with the look of a man who was dreaming and trying to recollect something, "I thought of some slow and yet passionate music that I once heard, though I do not remember who was the composer, where there was a fair-haired woman, whose hair was so silky, so golden, and so vibrating, that her lover had it cut off after her death, and had the strings of the magic bow of a violin made out of it, which afterwards emitted such superhuman ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... are more subtle, weighted with thought, tinged with autumnal melancholy. He was a most fertile composer, and, like all the men of his time and group, produced too much. Yet his patriotic verse was so admirable in feeling and is still so inspiring to his readers that one cannot wish it less in quantity; ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... a simply sumptuous storyette for you! Even in your remote fastnesses you must have heard of young Ivan Rowdidowsky, the very very latest thing in Russian composer-pianists. Playing the piano with his elbows, dressed in scarlet velvet, and fuller of "inner meanings" than anyone (even from Russia) ever was before, he captured London at the beginning of the Little Season, and his vogue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... of music were invaded by the dispute between the adherents of the King and the adherents of the prince. The King and Queen were supporters {51} of Handel, the prince was against the great composer. The prince in the first instance declared against Handel because his sister Anne, the Princess of Orange, was one of Handel's worshippers, therefore a great number of the nobility who sided with the prince set up, or at least supported, a rival opera-house to that in which Handel's ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the Kaiser said to the King of Prussia: 'There is Noverre, the famous Composer of Ballets; he has been in Berlin, I believe.' Noverre made thereupon a beautiful dancing-master bow. 'Ah, I know him,' said the King: 'we saw him at Berlin; he was very droll; mimicked all the world, especially our chief Dancing Women, to make you split with laughing.' Noverre, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... victims the most eminent was Tschaikovsky, the composer, a man of genius and a most charming character, to whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie had introduced me at New York. One evening at a dinner-party he poured out a goblet of water from a decanter on the table, drank it down, and next day was dead from ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of dressing the hair and deforming the body. It has determined what animals, or what special race of an animal species, should be petted. It controls music and literature, so that a composer, poet, or novelist is the rage or is forgotten. In mediaeval literature the modes of allegory were highly esteemed and very commonly used. The writers described war and battles over and over again, and paid little attention to nature. In fact, natural background, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... substitute. I have pictured to myself an illustration: A bright young man is present at a grand concert. It is between the parts. He bends suavely over the back of a lady's chair and talks sweet music to her ear. He says: "Could you not follow every thought of the composer in that symphony?" (which they have just heard). "And was not the effect sublime when the storm reached the heights of the mountains, and all the elements of Nature struggled so stubbornly?" And the young woman demurely gives ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... were all handsome, but she who did Cenerentola surpassed them all; she was a perfect beauty and a grace. I think the music of this opera would please the public taste in England. Rossini seems to have banished every other musical composer ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... will naturally do so on a vocational basis, and the question is not of the aim to be sought, but the much easier one of the means of its attainment, since there is no more of a puzzle in teaching an embryo composer or music teacher than there is in teaching ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... (like himself) give it no Relish at all: It may be too sharp, if it exceed a grateful Acid; too Insulse and flat, if the Profusion be extream. From all which it appears, that a Wise-Man is the proper Composer of an excellent Sallet, and how many Transcendences belong to an accomplish'd Sallet-Dresser, so as to emerge an exact Critic indeed, He should be skill'd in the Degrees, Terms, and various Species of Tastes, according to the Scheme set ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... Chopin though not an anchorite resembled Flaubert, being both proud and timid; he led a detached life, hence his art was bold and violent. Unlike Liszt he seldom sought the glamor of the theatre, and was never in such public view as his maternal admirer, Sand. He was Frederic Francois Chopin, composer, teacher of piano and a lyric genius of ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the original says: "The name of the composer of the above song was not given because he was of obscure rank," a reason which will sound strange to ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... some importance to her. Besides, by craning her neck a little to avoid the hat of the rather strikingly dressed young woman in front of her, she could, at least, see the stage. The programme which she held in one hand announced that Miss Agatha Ismay would sing a certain aria from a great composer's oratorio, and she leaned further forward in her chair when a girl of about her own age, which was twenty-four, slowly advanced to the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of Padua, the celebrated composer of the Devil's Sonata: in which he attempted to reproduce an air which he dreamt that Satan had played to him while he was asleep; but, in his own opinion, he failed so entirely, that he declared that if he had any other means ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... was startled by a sudden clangour among the bass-notes—the music seemed to be jumbled into confusion, and the ear was stunned by a painful and intolerable dissonance. On looking more intently, he perceived that the composer had let one hand fall abstractedly upon the key-board, while the other executed, by itself, a passage of extraordinary difficulty and involution. Then, for the first time, the thought struck him that the musician was deaf.[17] Alas! the supposition was too true: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... could; so the programme was changed. The frog is a diligent songster, having a good voice but no ear. The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective—"brekekex-koax"; the music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner. Horses have a frog in each hoof—a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling them to shine in a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the officers' roll are well-known Britishers who have given their lives for their country. There was Rupert Brooke, the poet; Denis Browne, formerly musical critic of The Times; F. S. Kelly, holder of the Diamond Sculls record, who also was an exceptionally clever composer and pianist; and Arthur Waldene St. Clair Tisdall, a great scholar and poet of Cambridge. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his valour on the 25th of April, at Gallipoli, for going to the rescue of ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... praiseworthy efforts. An almost too vivacious rendering of the Venusberg music brought the scheme to a strepitous conclusion. It may, however, be submitted that so realistic an interpretation of the Pagan revelries depicted by the composer is hardly in accordance with the best traditions of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... composer of "Clericus Deperrucatus; sive, in fictitiis Clericorum Comis moderni seculi ostensa et explosa Vanitas: Cum Figuris: Autore ANNOEO RHISENNO VECCHIO, Doctore Romano-Catholico," printed at Amsterdam, and inscribed to Pope Benedict ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... were safely landed at the Fondamenti nuovi, and went immediately to the Mendicanti, where they were performing the oratorio of Sisera. The composer, a young man, had displayed great fire and originality in this performance; and a knowledge of character seldom found in the most celebrated masters. The supplication of the thirsty chieftain, and Jael's insinuating arts and pious treachery, are admirably expressed; but the agitation and bodily ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Nathaniel Hawthorne was devoid of that useful ability. Nor had he been able to spend less than he earned; so, suddenly, there he was on his beam-ends. Leisure to write, certainly, was now abundant enough; but he never was a rapid composer, and even had he been so, the market for the kind of things he wrote was, in the middle of the past century, in New England, neither large nor eager. The emoluments were meagre to match; twenty dollars for four pages of the Democratic Review was about the figure; and to produce a short tale ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... his slightest sketches are astonishingly and commandingly expressive. Other of his drawings were worked out and pondered over almost as lovingly as his completest pictures. But so instinctively and inevitably was he a composer that everything he touched is a complete whole—his merest sketch or his most elaborated design is a unit. He has left no fragments. His paintings, his countless drawings, his few etchings and woodcuts are all of a piece. About everything there is that air of finality which marks the work destined ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... all musicians should be at liberty to assume names provided they were appropriate. But for a composer to call himself Johann Sebastian Wagner was to court disaster. He ventured to submit the following list for the benefit of persons who contemplated making the change. For a soprano: Miss Hyam Seton. For a contralto: Miss Ritchie ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... Pieces we don't discover one single Trace of the Author of the Fox and Alchemist: but in the wild extravagant Notes of Shakespeare, you every now and then encounter Strains that recognize the divine Composer. This Difference may be thus accounted for. Jonson, as we said before, owing all his Excellence to his Art, by which he sometimes strain'd himself to an uncommon Pitch, when at other times he unbent and play'd with his Subject, having ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... piano fingered a chord tentatively, then struck into a popular song, an appealing little melody, the words a lyric set to music by a composer with a spark ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... the celebrated composer) had lost nearly all his teeth at rather an early period of his life. This, to one who was decidedly a bon vivant, was a great annoyance. A dentist of eminence undertook to supply the defect: he drew the few teeth which, remained, and fitted the patient with an entire new ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... soul, is profound and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best. He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted to them through the life of the conductor, or the performance will ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the great composer, once asked him how it happened that his church music was so full of gladness, and Haydn replied, 'I cannot make it otherwise. I write according to the thoughts I feel; when I think upon my God, my heart is so full of joy that the ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... him to be director of her lessons in singing, and also permitted him to write German letters for her; and what assistance worthy of all gratitude he had enjoyed through the director of the imperial musicians, Gombert, the composer and leader of the royal orchestra, and his colleague Appenzelder, who directed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... opportunity offered; once a week, at least, she had a concert at her house, and the music-master from the cathedral, who directed this little band, came frequently to see her. This was a Parisian, named M. le Maitre, a good composer, very lively, gay, young, well made, of little understanding, but, upon the whole, a good sort of man. Madam de Warrens made us acquainted; I attached myself to him, and he seemed not displeased with me. A pension was talked of, and agreed on; ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... As he caught sight of it the young fellow's face brightened gaily. He stepped back a little way, leaned against a linden, and sang, in the drawling tone peculiar to the west of France, the following Breton ditty, published by Bruguiere, a composer to whom we are indebted for many charming melodies. In Brittany, the young villagers sing this song to all newly-married ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... shall I begin?" asked a youth of twelve who had played with great skill on the piano. "Pooh, pooh," replied Mozart, "you must wait." "But you began when you were younger than I am," said the boy. "Yes, so I did," said the great composer, "but I never asked anything about it. When one has the spirit of a composer, he writes because ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... wished to participate in this festival, which was to render homage to the veteran German composer, the great Joseph Haydn, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth performance of the maestro's great work, "The Creation." Ten years had elapsed since the first performance of "The Creation" at Vienna, and already the sublime composition had made the tour of Europe, and had been performed ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... would ever be able to take part in these artistic discussions; she was afraid not. Even when she succeeded in picking up the thread of an idea, it soon got tangled with another, and she began to fear she would never know why Herve was a better composer than Offenbach, and why a certain quintette was written on classical lines and such-like. She asked Montgomery to explain things to her, but he was more anxious to speak of his own music, and when the names of the ladies of the company were ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Meistersingers. He raved about Ternina in Tristan. He had worshipped the Joachim quartet. He was acquainted with all the popular symphonies of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Glazounov, and Tschaikovsky. He even frequented the Philharmonic Concerts, which were then conducted by a composer of sentimental drawing-room ballads, and though he would not class this conductor with Richter or Henry J. Wood, he yet believed that somehow, by the magic of the sacred name of the Philharmonic Society, the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... those passages of Philo which most closely resemble others in the Wisdom of Solomon, and contain the same or nearly the same thoughts, and write them in opposite columns, and no doubt will remain that Philo was not the composer of the Book of Wisdom. Philo subtle, and with long involved periods knit together by logical connectives: the Book of Wisdom sententious, full of parallelisms, assertory and Hebraistic throughout. It was either composed by a man who ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... mineralogy, precious stones, antiquities, and curiosities; but I had at my command every possible resource for acquiring these studies, as one of my dearest and best friends, Aristide le Carpentier, a learned antiquary, and uncle of the talented composer of the same name, had, and still has, a cabinet of antique curiosities, which makes the keepers of the imperial museums fierce with envy. My son and I spent many long days in learning here names and dates of which we afterwards made a learned ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... and when his career was finished, he reverently said, "It is enough; now take away my life!" The music we had heard before; we had been rapt many a time while hearing the magnificent choruses; but we never had known the dramatic power of the composer as shown in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... born at Macon, Ga., on the third of February, 1842. His earliest known ancestor of the name was Jerome Lanier, a Huguenot refugee, who was attached to the court of Queen Elizabeth, very likely as a musical composer; and whose son, Nicholas, was in high favor with James I. and Charles I., as director of music, painter, and political envoy; and whose grandson, Nicholas, held a similar position in the court of Charles II. A portrait ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... one instrument which they know and understand, and it has been in use among the Norwegians for hundreds of years. Their most famous violin-player, Ole Bull, who died some few years ago, was looked on as a great composer and musician. But all over the country there are to be found men who can play after a fashion; and a century or so ago, when the people were still very superstitious, they fully believed that anyone who could play at all well had had intercourse with the fairies, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... composer of Latin hymns and a penman of no mean order, as the Book of Kells, if written by him, sufficiently proves. In all the monasteries which he founded, provision was made for the pursuit of sacred learning ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... unbearably tedious passage on the piano about a hundred times in succession, while Woloda, who was dozing on a settee in the drawing-room, kept addressing no one in particular as he muttered, "Lord! how she murders it! WHAT a musician! WHAT a Beethoven!" (he always pronounced the composer's name with especial irony). "Wrong again! Now—a second time! That's it!" and so on. Meanwhile Katenka and I were sitting by the tea-table, and somehow she began to talk about her favourite subject—love. I ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... hundred years ago. They heard it from the wild Tartars and Mongols—heard it and rejected it, because it was primitive, untamed, and not to be compared with their own carefully controlled melodies. Mr. Emerson Whithorne, the famous British composer, who is an authority on oriental music, made this statement to the London ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... further. A landscape painter would not make a primary study of Angelo's anatomical drawings; a composer of lyric forms of music would not study Sousa's marches; nor would a person writing a story look for much assistance in the arguments of Burke. The most direct benefit is derived from studying the very thing one wishes to know about, not from studying something ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... A part of Tommy's equipment in which he is supposed to pack up his troubles and smile, according to the words of a popular song (the composer was never ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... artists, for friends and well-wishers were admitted, and had here an opportunity of entertaining their ideas in a sociable and agreeable manner. Besides those on the regular Staff of Punch, there were members of the club Mr. Grieve the scene-painter, Mr. Henry Baylis, Mr. Tully the composer,[9] Mr. Joseph Allen the artist, and I have seen in addition Mr. Charles Dickens, Mr. Stanfield, Mr. Frank Stone, Mr. Landseer, and other celebrities, in that little snug and comfortable room. Here the inimitable Douglas Jerrold was in his glory, showing off ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Lans, a most superb mountain. The whole scene equal to anything in Switzerland, as far as the mountains go. The Mont de Lans is opposite the windows, seeming little more than a stone's throw off, and causing my companion (whose name I will, with his permission, Italianise into that of the famous composer Giuseppe Verdi) to think it a mere nothing to mount to the top of those sugared pinnacles which he will not believe are many miles distant in reality. After dinner we trudge on, the scenery constantly improving, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... a beautiful child, whom she rescued from the tender mercies of Wat's moss-troopers, on their return from a foray into Cumberland. The youth grew up under her protection, and is believed to have been the composer both of the words and the music of many of the best old songs of the Border. As ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to appear in different keys. Many fugues of Bach are written throughout in multiple counterpoint; but the possibility of this, even to composers such as Bach and Mozart, to whom difficulties seem unknown, depends upon the freedom of the musical design which allows the composer to select the most effective permutations and combinations of his counterpoint, and also to put them into whatever key he chooses. An unaccompanied round for unequal voices would bring about the permutations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... of whom mention has been made, was one of two sisters, both sufficiently noted for their artistic gifts to have found a place in the new Dictionary of National Biography. The elder, Eliza or Lizzie, was a musical composer; the younger, best known as Sarah Flower Adams, a writer of sacred verse. Her songs and hymns, including the well-known 'Nearer, my God, to Thee', were often set to music by her sister.* They sang, I am told, delightfully together, and ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Edmund Lacy (1420-1455), composer of an office in honour of the Archangel Raphael, left a saintly reputation, and pilgrimages were, for long, made to his tomb. According to Canon Freeman he raised the chapter house and glazed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... ago a young composer was sitting in a garden. All around bloomed beautiful roses, and through the gentle evening air the swallows flitted, twittering cheerily. The young composer neither saw the roses nor heard the evening music of the swallows; his heart was full of sadness and his eyes were ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... week's study, knew better and better that it is resource, and bravery, and being able to think for one's self, that make a physician worth anything. There must be an instinct that recognizes a disease and suggests its remedy, as much as an instinct that finds the right notes and harmonies for a composer of music, or the colors for a true artist's picture, or the results of figures for a mathematician. Men and women may learn these callings from others; may practice all the combinations until they can carry them through with a greater or less degree of unconsciousness of brain and fingers; but ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... "a mathematician, a chemist, a physicist, a mechanician, an inventor, a musician and a composer of music, a man of literary knowledge and practice, a writer of airy and dainty songs, a clever artist with pencil and brush, and a humorist ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... London; but there I was not the hero of the opera. This minstrel combined the whole affair in a most simple manner. He was Verdi, Costa, and orchestra all in one. He was a thorough Macaulay as historian, therefore I had to pay the composer as well as the fiddler. I compromised the matter, and gave him a few dollars, as I understood that he was Mek Nimmur's private minstrel; but I never parted with my dear Maria Theresa (* The Austrian ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... sound man's youth, the golden, gladsome, romantic age of forty," he looked delightfully fresh, and wide-awake, and cheerful, and perfectly in the scheme of the blue day and the bird-notes and the smiling country. Permit me to introduce Mr. Adrian Willes, by vocation a composer and singer of songs, and—"contrapuntally," as he would explain—Anthony Craford's housemate, monitor, land-agent, and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... who has little time for golf nowadays, finds his most refreshing recreation in reading the speeches of Lord NORTHCLIFFE, co-ordinating them with those of BURKE and PERICLES, and setting them to music in the style of HANDEL, his favourite composer. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... 22nd of January, George Herbert Rodwell, the celebrated composer and writer, was removed from among the living. His musical compositions and stage productions were numerous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... introduced by Cantapresto had obtained leave to display at court. This lively puppet performed with surprising skill on the harpsichord, giving the company, among other novelties, selections from the maestro Piccini's latest opera and a concerto of the German composer Gluck. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... not yet been produced, one reason being (perhaps) that it has never been offered to anybody. It is difficult enough to find a manager, but when one has also to get hold of a composer, the business of production becomes terrifying. I suppose there is a way of negotiating these difficulties, but I suspect that most of the fun to be got out of this operetta we have ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... represented the only substantial and valuable things in the wide universe; and they sang the songs of Conrad Beissels with as much fervor as they could have sung the songs of heaven itself. Beissels—the Friedsam of the brotherhood—was not only the poet but the composer of the choral songs, and a composer of rare merit. The music he wrote is preserved as it was copied out with great painstaking by the brethren and sisters. In looking over the wonderful old manuscript notebook, the first impression is one of delight with the quaint symbolic illuminations ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... which bore the royal arms, flares were burning up to the topmost cornice of the round walls. A temporary altar decorated in white and gold was ablaze with candles, and the choir, conducted by a fashionable composer of opera, were in a golden cage. The King and Queen and royal princes sat in chairs under a velvet canopy, and there were tribunes for cabinet ministers, senators, deputies, and foreign ambassadors. Religion was necessary to all state ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... harpsichord or clavichord by Haydn or his contemporaries, we are apt to echo the saying ... But let us look the thing straight in the face: Mozart's sonatas are compositions entirely unworthy of the author of 'The Magic Flute' and 'Don Giovanni,' or of any composer with pretensions to more than mediocre talent. They are written in a style of flashy harpsichord virtuosity such as Liszt in his most despised moments never descended to. Yet I am well aware that this statement would be dismissed as either absurd or heretical, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... handmaid of Poetry; and in our modern languages, even, which are so artificial and removed from primitive enthusiasm and naturalness, no composer of opera would consent to adapt his inspirations to a prose libretto. It was far more so in primitive times; and it maybe said that in those days poetry was never composed unless to be sung or played on instruments. But what has never been ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... probably a characteristic defect of a good deal of current criticism of remote writers to attribute to them too much of our modern conceptions and aims. Similarly, we often import our own special feelings into the utterances of the poet and of the musical composer. That much of this intuition is illusory, may be seen by a little attention to the "intuitions" of different critics. Two readers of unlike emotional organization will find incompatible modes of feeling in the same poet. And everybody knows how common it is for musical ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... humour, the performance proved highly successful, although Mrs. Coleman was as good as her word in introducing some original and decidedly "funny" chords into the accompaniment, which would have greatly discomposed the composer, if he had by any ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Gretry, the musical composer, thought so highly of the importance of woman as an educator of character, that he described a good mother as "Nature's CHEF-D'OEUVRE." And he was right: for good mothers, far more than fathers, tend to the perpetual ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... is a subject of surpassing interest to the musician. Whatever may be thought the true purpose of music, there can be no question as to one demand made on each individual instrument,—it must produce tones of sensuous beauty. A composer may delight in dissonances; but no instrument of the orchestra may produce harsh or discordant tones. Of beauty of tone the ear is the sole judge; naturally so, for the only appeal of the individual tone is to the ear. Melody, rhythm, and harmony ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... piece for other people, and I doubt if he finds that promise any easier to break than I do, for he would not care to let others see his emotion. I have often wondered what was in the heart of the composer, for it touches my heart like no other piece of music has power to do. I fear I have not made it very plain to you, dear, but I wish you understood it as ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... sheepishly taken his station beside Miss Tag-rag, the performances commenced with Before Jehovah's awful throne! But mercy upon us! at what a rate she rattled over that "pious air!" If its respectable composer (whoever he may be) had been present, he must have gone into a fit; but there was no help for it—the heart of the lovely performer was in The Battle of Prague, to which she presently did most ample justice. So much were her feelings engaged in that sublime ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... giving birth to a great idea: filled with the divine afflatus, even to the bursting of their buttonholes and the snapping of their braces. His Handel is in a state of exceeding perturbation: his clothes in staring disorder, his hair floating in the breeze. The intention was to represent the composer in the act of raptured meditation upon music; but, as Allan Cunningham remarks, he looks much more like a man alarmed at an apparition. But then this exaggeration of demeanour was very much the artist's own manner in actual life. The Frenchman has always a sort of innate histrionic ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of the composer grew in power and beauty he forgot himself and his dilemma in his enjoyment. Two senses were finding abundant gratification at the same time, for it was a delight to listen, and it was even a greater pleasure to look ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... this race of vagabonds and outcasts had ever risen much above their traditional occupation of tinkering, far less that any portion of it had displayed original artistic genius. We have, however, from Robert Franz the composer a most interesting account of the wonderful music of the Hungarian gypsies or Tziganys, which he had several opportunities of hearing during a visit to a friend in Hungary. He had been much impressed in his youth by the wandering apparitions of these people in the streets ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... commendation of Paesiello was changed to the most stinging censure. It was on the occasion of the first representation of Paesiello's Zingari in Fiera. The first consul and his wife were in their loge, and to show to the public how much he honored and esteemed the composer, he had invited Paesiello to attend ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... what Euphra was incapable of! No doubt she sang it quite correctly; but there was no religion in it. Not a single tone worshipped or rejoiced. The quality of sound necessary to express the feeling and thought of the composer was lacking: the palace of sound was all right constructed, but of wrong material. Euphra, however, was quite unconscious of failure. She did not care for the music; but she attributed her lack of interest in it to the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... friend of Scriabin, telegraphed the news of the composer's death to a friend in England. He stated that Scriabin died of the disease of the lip from which he was suffering when in England last year, and that he had just finished the "wonderful poetical text" of the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Tombs. Yet how different, how feverish, how tragic! Like all great men working in the grip of a unifying idea, Rodin modified the old technique of sculpture so that it would serve him as plastically as does sound a musical composer. A deep lover of music, his inner ear may dictate the vibrating rhythms of his forms—his marbles are ever musical; not "frozen music" as Goethe said of Gothic architecture, but silent swooning music. This gate is a Frieze of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the honours of the enchanted island to his wife. Dressed as a sailor, he conducted her, disguised as Flora, in an ornamented barge, all festooned with garlands, and illuminated with coloured lamps. It was a truly fairy scene, and the Dame Lebrun did not at that time look on the composer of the spectacle as a malignant cobold, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... early life to His Grace the late Duke of Norfolk and Lady Mary Duncan. By them I was placed for education in the Irish Convent, Rue du Bacq, Faubourg St. Germain, at Paris, where the immortal Sacchini, the instructor of the Queen, gave me lessons in music. Pleased with my progress, the celebrated composer, when one day teaching Marie Antoinette, so highly overrated to that illustrious lady my infant natural talents and acquired science in his art, in the presence of her very shadow, the Princesse de Lamballe, as to excite in Her Majesty ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... quiet. From afar comes the sound of heavy guns, as if huge dogs were baying underground. Some young wounded officers are enjoying the peace of the evening. Three of them are talking gaily with two ladies. The fourth, a Landsturm lieutenant, in civil life a well-known composer, sits gloomily apart. He has had a severe nervous shock, and is utterly prostrated, so that not even the arrival of his fair young wife enables him to pull himself together. When she speaks to him, he is unmoved. When she tries to touch him, he draws irritably away. She suffers, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... The composer of an American ragtime song is to have a statue erected to him in New York. It is hoped that this warning will have the desired effect on any composers in this country who may be tempted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... permission I may venture to play you a few extracts from my repertoire. I can play to suit all tastes from a simple country ballad to a concerto by Brahms or the great Russian composer Tschaikouski. ...
— The Turn of the Road - A Play in Two Scenes and an Epilogue • Rutherford Mayne
... intolerable tyranny; and when Clement the Ninth exempted them from it, he did not abolish the races of Christian boys and old men. The people detested the Jews, hooted them, hissed them, and maltreated them with and without provocation. Moses Mendelssohn, the father of the composer, wrote to a friend from Berlin late in the eighteenth century, complaining bitterly that in that self-styled city of toleration, the cry of 'Jew' was raised against him when he ventured into the streets with his little children by daylight, and that the boys threw stones at them, as they passed, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... which I purchased at Bland's music-shop in Holborn in the year 1794, intitled, 'Think not, my love' and professing to be set to music by Thomas Wright. (I conjecture, Organist of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and composer of the pretty Opera called Rusticity.) ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... calm and power of anything but the little, almost girlish woman he glimpsed through half-closed lids across the ebony board of the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. Her touch was definite, authoritative, was his judgment, as the Prelude faded away in dying chords hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed still to linger ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... accuracy of his memory, and 'tis only when he states his facts that you admire the flights of his imagination." But the thought was too good to be thus wasted on the desert air of a common-place book. So, forth it came, at the expense of Kelly, who, having been a composer of music, became a wine-merchant. "You will," said the ready wit, "import your music and compose your wine." Nor was this service exacted from the old idea thought sufficient; so, in the House of Commons, an easy and, apparently, off-hand ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... handbook cannot be doubted. Its pages are packed full of these fascinating renderings. The accounts of each composer are succinct and yet sufficient. The author has done a genuine service to the world of music lovers. The comprehension of orchestral work of the highest character is aided efficiently by this volume. The mechanical execution of the volume is in harmony with its subject. No worthier volume ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... mentioned having a letter from a friend in Boston who had lately heard a great chorus rendered. He could not be quite sure of the name of the composer because he had read the letter hurriedly and his friend was a blind-writer, but that made no difference to Harry. He could fill in facts enough about the grandeur of the music from his own imagination to make ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and "From Puritan Days" can be played between the episodes and the Dance Interlude. An orchestra or piano can add to the music of Faunch's fiddle in the Merrymount scene. The music for the procession should be very stately, and by a seventeenth-century composer, if possible. ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... been his share in the takings of the theatre—a share which would doubtless increase as the earlier partners disappeared. He must have speedily become the principal man in the firm, combining as he did the work of composer, reviser, and adaptor of plays with that of actor and working partner. We are thus dealing with a temperament or mentality not at all obviously original or masterly, not at all conspicuous at the outset for intellectual depth or seriousness, not at all obtrusive of its "mission;" but exhibiting ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... benefice to marry a woman dowered with the name Madalena Guabaelaraoen. But most of them kept their benefices and their sweethearts both, though we find it noted as worthy of mention in the epitaph of the composer and canon, Pierre de la Rue, in the 16th century, that as an "adorateur diligent du Tres-Haut, ministre du Christ, il sut garder la chastete et se preserver du contact de l'amour sensuel." But because you see it in an epitaph, it is not always ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... too, when the maker of ballets was locked in his domain and his servant had strict orders to admit no one—neither Monsieur le Cure nor the mayor, nor so intimate a comrade as myself—during such hours as these the little boy was generally beside the composer, his chubby toes scarcely reaching to the rungs of the chair beside Tanrade's ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... a public teacher, and at thirty began the study of music, making such remarkable progress in this art that from the study of one piece he was able to describe the person of the composer, even to his features and the expression of his eyes. His teacher now gave him up. The pupil had passed infinitely beyond his reach. At the next important epoch in the life of Confucius (499 B.C.) he had become one of the chief ministers ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sunshine; that pretty violin—one can easily understand that he was fond of it himself—ought to have been taken away from him, and a kite-string placed in his hand instead. If God had set the germ of a great musician or a great composer in that slight body, surely it would have been wise to let the precious gift ripen and flower in its ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... far and wide throughout the musical centres of Germany as a learned and recondite composer, as a brilliant improviser, and as an organist beyond rivalry. Yet it was in these last two capacities that his reputation among his contemporaries was the most marked. It was left to a succeeding generation to fully enlighten ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... wording we gather that the general and uncontrollable desire to hear the Second and Third Acts of DE LA-RA-Boom's Opera did not extend to its Prologue, First Act, Fourth Act (if any), and Epilogue. But is it complimentary to a Composer to express a general wish to hear only certain portions of his work, implying thereby that the generally un-expressed desire is rather against than for re-hearing the other portions? All the same Sir COVENT ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... essence of every drama. This continuity is an absolute necessity to every spoken play; imagine the effect if Shakespeare or Ibsen had written little pieces of rhyming verse joined up by any jumble of nonsensical prose! Neglect of this fact led every opera composer before Wagner astray. We can imagine a pre-Wagner composer telling his librettist, "Now, mind you arrange that in certain parts the words will allow me to put in arias or choruses." In short, the situation was summed up in Wagner's famous phrase, "The means of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones |
