"Harmonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first conceived by the great Tesla during his last fruity years. Research discovered it in his biog—we just made the dream come true. A tiny resonance device you could carry in your belt-bag attunes itself to the natural harmonic of a structure and then increases amplitude by tiny pushes exactly in time. Just like soldiers marching in step can break down a bridge, only this is as if it were being done by one marching ant." He pointed at the naked framework appearing out of its own blur and said, "We'll be able to ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... peeping-place through the curtain of the organ-gallery, was struck motionless by the double operation of curiosity and fear; while the organist, intent only on his performance, and spreading all his fingers to strike a swell of magnificent chords, felt his harmonic spirit ready to desert his body on being answered by the ghastly rattle of empty keys, and in the consequent agitato furioso of the internal movements of his feelings, was preparing to restore harmony by the segue subito of an appoggiatura con foco with the corner of a book of anthems on the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... the harmonic material for much of what remains of the composition. At each repetition of the theme, the chord in the fourth measure is augmented by the addition of another interval, until in the end it includes every tone of the chromatic ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... very weary, C. persuaded me to accept an invitation to hear the Creation, at Exeter Hall, performed by the London Sacred Harmonic Society. They had kindly reserved a gallery for us, and when we went in Mr. Surman, the founder and for twenty years conductor of the society, presented me with a beautifully bound copy of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... art corresponded to ancient life—that captivated me, that led me away, and not a substantial knowledge of the work done by the naturalists. I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new—the washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the development of side ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the prism decomposes into the solar spectrum, and in the ghostly watches of the night, we might recognize the 'music of the spheres' as the planets rushed around their airy orbits, with a noise like the 'noise of many waters,' no longer a poetic illusion, but a harmonic fact. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the strength and beauty of materials. All of the arts, and particularly music and architecture, portray in different manners and degrees the truths of number. Architecture does this in two ways: esoterically as it were in the form of harmonic proportions; and exoterically in the form of symbols which represent numbers and groups of numbers. The fact that a series of threes and a series of fours mutually conjoin in 12, finds an architectural expression in the Tuscan, the Doric, and the ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... be issued and posted in all the steamers and hotels, so that there might be no misunderstanding in the matter. After the concert and the conclusion of a most agreeable evening X. was introduced to the Harmonic Club, where he ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... feeling for the melodious and vocal had in this way been awakened. In order to keep me strictly under his calming and friendly influence, he had at the same time given me a sonata to write which, as a proof of my friendship for him, I had to build up on strictly harmonic and thematic lines, for which he recommended me a very early and childlike sonata ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... distances between the heavenly bodies were determined by the laws of musical concord. "These orbs in their motion could not but produce a certain sound or note, depending upon their distances and velocities; and as these were regulated by harmonic laws, they necessarily formed as a whole a complete musical scale." "In the whorl of the distaff of necessity there are eight concentric whorls. These whorls represent respectively the sun and moon, the five planets, and the fixed stars. On each ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... died in 1828), is as modern as the masters just named. He was as boldly original as Schubert, and as great a magician in the art of arousing deep emotion by means of novel, unexpected modulations. As an originator of new harmonic progressions he has had only three equals,—Bach, Schubert, and Wagner. Harmonies as ultra-modern as those of Wagner's "Parsifal" may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... newspaper, published any time between April and August, and range your eye down the third or fourth column of the first page—what an endless array of announcements of music, vocal and instrumental! Music for the classicists; music for the crowd; symphonies and sonatas; ballads and polkas; harmonic societies; choral societies; melodists' clubs; glee clubs; madrigal clubs. Here you have the quiet announcement of a quartett-party; next to it, the advertisement of one of the Philharmonic Societies—the giants of the musical world; pianoforte teachers announce ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... many voices in many keys, talk mingling with laughter more or less melodiously subdued, he made his way up the great staircase. As he neared the landing, there sounded the shrill squeak of a violin and a 'cello's deep harmonic growl. His hostess, small, slender, fair, and not yet forty, a jewel-flash upon her throat and in the tiara above her smooth low forehead, took a step forward ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... mazurkas and polonaises; and, what is noteworthy, more in the former, the dance of the people, than in the latter, the dance of the aristocracy. In Chopin's mazurkas we meet not only with many of the most characteristic rhythms, but also with many equally characteristic melodic and harmonic traits of this chief of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Micawber returned to the King's Bench when his case was over, as some fees were to be settled, and some formalities observed, before he could be actually released. The club received him with transport, and held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour; while Mrs. Micawber and I had a lamb's fry in private, surrounded by ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... important a part in the Pythagorean system as mathematics, or numbers. His idea appears to be, that order or harmony of relation is the regulating principle of the whole universe. He drew out a list of ten pairs of antagonistic elements, and in the octave and its different harmonic relations, he believed that he found the ground of the connexion between them. In his system of the universe fire was the important element, occupying both the centre and the remotest point of it; and being the vivifying principle of the whole. Round the central fire the heavenly ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of joyful enthusiastic multitudes, who saluted him as their benefactor, and proclaimed him as their sovereign; he spoke to these beings, the children of his dreams, in a language which he alone comprehended; he built his phalanstere, peopled, organized it; conducted himself the labours of his harmonic groups, founded his towns, his capitals, nay, his capital of the world, which he erected on the Bosphorus, uniting the east and west, the north and south. There he placed with his own hand the laurel, decreed by his million of phalanges, on the brow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... The harmonic arrangement is also purposely simple in consideration of the many mothers and kindergartners who cannot devote ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... like the noon. The fisher knew, that hour, That with vast concourse of the Sons of God That church was thronged; for in it many a head Sun-bright, and hands lifted like hands in prayer, High up he saw: meantime harmonic strain, As though whatever moves in earth or skies, Winds, waters, stars, had joined in one their song, Above him floated like a breeze from God And heaven-born incense. Louder swelled that strain; And still the Bride of God, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... chorus, and you may form some idea of the effect of this performance, when I tell you that all the persons who sing at the Queen's Chapel, at St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, were all singing together, besides part of the band of the Sacred Harmonic Society, pupils of the Royal Academy of Music, and many other ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... the minor key by those who wish to uphold the fundamental principle of the key-note being the pivot of reference for all keys, major and minor, is a very simple one. It consists in giving to the third and sixth of the harmonic form of the scale their logical names of maw and taw. The sixth of the ascending scale in the melodic form will of course be the same in the minor as in ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... of the Ninth Vibration and therefore a harmonic of truth. You are awake now. It is the day-time that is the sleep of the soul. You are in the Lower Perception, wherein the truth behind the veil of what men ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... compounds, such as air or brass, the rate of vibration of the compound is the least common multiple of the two or more rates. In chemical compounds, such as water or alcohol, the rate is that of the highest, the others uniting in harmonic fractions. ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... be the general idea. Of course, in the evening, when nothing better can be done, there will be harmonic meetings round the camp-fires. But while light lasts, the crack of the rifle and the ping of the bullet will be heard in all directions, vice the pop of champagne corks superseded. And if you don't like the prospect, my dear RIP, you had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... thousand years later. Not being perfectly self-confident in this matter, we always took the opinion of Mr. Y——, who, as I said before, was an experienced architect; and he invariably came to the conclusion that the Brahmanical idols formed a harmonic and genuine part of the whole, pillars, decorations, and the general style of the temple; whereas the statue of Buddha was an additional and discordant patch. Out of thirty or forty caves of Ellora, all filled with idols, there is only ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... bloods of his day, termed in the slang of his time "Corinthians," and the results are shown in his designs. He might often be seen at the "Craven's Head," in Drury Lane, kept by a host known to his patrons by the familiar title of "Billy Oxberry"; at the Saturday night harmonic meetings held at the "Kean's Head," in Russell Court, Drury Lane; at "The Wrekin," in Broad Court, Long Acre, at that time frequented by gentlemen of the Press; at "The Harp," in Russell Street, Drury Lane, a well known house of call for actors, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... on as his fingers snatched at fugitive harmonic experimentings: "It's not all right up town. I wish that you would run up some night. You've not seen Ellenora for months, and perhaps you could induce her to put the brake on." I was puzzled. Putting the brake on a woman is always ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... had, clung to the pines, muting their needles and stilling their branches, had dropped on during the day. Now the night wind which drove the clouds lingered through the pine tops and set them swaying gently in the vast, harmonic rhythm which is like the surging of a distant ocean. The everlasting whisper of the pines, that ancient hushed voice which through the countless centuries has never been still save when briefly silenced by ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... unwillingness to credit Mozart with a purely amiable purpose in quoting the operas of his rivals, Martin and Sarti. The latter showed himself ungrateful for kindnesses received at Mozart's hands by publicly denouncing an harmonic progression in one of the famous six quartets dedicated to Haydn as a barbarism, but there was no ill-will in the use of the air from "I due Litiganti" as supper music for the delectation of the Don. Mozart liked the melody, and had written ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... form, the melody almost audible as music, the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly strike as the INEVITABLE words (and hence, unforgettable), the subtle allusive touches, by which a secondary image is suggested to enrich the leading thought, as the harmonic "partials" give richness to the note struck upon the string; THERE, when we think of the vast fertility in subject and treatment, united with happy selection of motive, the wide range of character, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... best of spirits. Wounds were not mentioned, so it went without saying that these, owing to the healthy bodies of their owners, were giving no trouble. The only interruption of a non-harmonic nature was when a burly Muskymote dog of Rory's team took it into its head that a little tete-noire dog had received a portion of frozen fish from its master out of all proportion to its inconsiderable size, so, as soon as Rory's back was turned, showed its disapproval of such favouritism ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... suggested content, the most notable purist exceptions being the two pianoforte concertos. His tone colourings are never used densely or oppressively, but only serve to heighten the suggestiveness of the whole. He loved the pianoforte as an instrument for personal melodic and harmonic expression, and understood the range of its tonal resources. His biggest music for it is written with very broad and extended chords, strong in character, but always wonderfully clear and ringing, and eminently suited for pianoforte sonority. His tone nuances range from a shadowy, mysterious pppp ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... employment of terms, diagrams and mathematical statements, all of which would lie outside the scope of this narrative. But the principle of the thing was simple enough. It was upon the great scientific doctrine, which we have since seen so completely and brilliantly developed, of the law of harmonic vibrations, extending from atoms and molecules at one end of the series up to the worlds and suns at the other end, that Mr. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... this four-part song is interesting as giving evidence of the general cultivation in music that must have prevailed among the French people at the time. In the present day we are apt to think of the madrigal or motet writers as a class of specialists working at elaborate harmonic and contrapuntal problems for their own delight, but as having little influence on the national acceptance of music. Nothing could be further from the truth, as far as England, the Netherlands and Italy were concerned; and in France, where the art of the simple tunes of the troubadours ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... enough) when Beethoven is being murdered—by the most contemptible class of compositions that ever was put upon score-paper, and noised forth from an ill-disciplined band—if these be the means towards improving musical taste, Monsieur Jullien is undoubtedly the harmonic regenerator of this country. He is a great man—great in his own estimation—great to the ends of his moustachios and the tips of his gloves—a great composer, and a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... profound indebtedness which makes a great man attain his truest originality; and Gluck's training practically deprived him of Bach's direct influence, useful as that would have been to the attainment of his aims in harmonic and choral expression. The indirect influence no one could escape, for whatever in modern music is not traceable to Sebastian Bach is traceable to his sons, who were encouraged by their father in the cultivation of those infant art-forms ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... style of the choral music and organ music of the church to serve him as a model. For their art was essentially contrapuntal—the combination of several parts each of equal importance with the rest, each in a sense pursuing its own course. In modern music the essential principle is harmonic: the chords formed by the combination of parts are derived and developed in reference to roots and keys. In national dances few harmonies are used, but they are arranged on the same principles as the harmonies of a sonata or a symphony; and "what had to be found out in order to make ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... a woman, the more she is to be dreaded. But take a real woman at her best moment,—well dressed enough to be pleased with herself, not so resplendent as to be a show and a sensation, with those varied outside influences which set vibrating the harmonic notes of her nature stirring in the air about her, and what has social life to compare with one of those vital interchanges of thought and feeling with her that make an hour memorable? What can equal her tact, her delicacy, her subtlety of apprehension, her quickness ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... one of the most gracious coincidences between beauty and kindliness, the aesthetic emotion is even intensified by the knowledge of co-existence in others: the delight in each person communicating itself, like a musical third, fifth, or octave, to the similar yet different delight in his neighbour, harmonic enriching harmonic by stimulating ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... degradation of the molecular formative influence might be supposed involved in its frequent transference according to some such dynamic actions as occur in inanimate nature. Thus, ultimately, to the waste within the cell, to the presence of a force retardative of its perpetual harmonic motions, the death of the individual is to be ascribed. Perhaps in protoplasmic waste the existence of a universal death should be recognised. It is here we seem to touch inanimate nature; and we are led back to a ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... of symbols. My present purpose is to insist that there is nothing in the play which has no meaning on the natural-psychological plane, and absolutely requires a symbolic interpretation to make it comprehensible. The symbols are harmonic undertones; the psychological melody is clear and consistent without any reference to them.(4) It is true that, in order to accept the action on what we may call the realistic level, we must suppose Solness to possess and to exercise, sometimes ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... discord!—it was the marquess himself, who was on a serenading party in the country, while his spouse had run away from town.—The rest may be imagined; but, first of all, the lady tried to persuade him that she was there on purpose to meet him, and had chosen this method for an harmonic surprise. So much for this gossip, which amused me when I heard it, and I send it to you, in the hope it may have the like effect. Now we'll return ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... native land and tender emotions have come back to him; his childhood and its memories have blossomed anew in Robert's heart. And now his mother's shade rises up, bringing with it soothing religious thoughts. It is religion that lives in that beautiful song in E major, with its wonderful harmonic and melodic ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... style, literally debauched several generations of students. Shall I mention names? Better disturb neither the dead nor the quick. In the matter of writing for more voices than one we have retrograded considerably since the days of Bach. We have, to be sure, built up a more complex harmonic system, beautiful chords have been invented, or rather re-discovered—for in Bach all were latent—but, confound it, children! these chords are too slow, too ponderous in gait for me. Music is, first of all, motion, after that emotion. I like movement, rhythmical variety, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... dimmed streets humming with the harmonic echoes of the city's never-ending life, faint and delicate. He stopped at Sherry's, and at a small table in the side room sat down with a bottle of ale, a cigarette, and some stationery. When he rose, it was to mail a letter. That done, he went back to his costly little apartment ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... prepared and dried which, blown up, might be employed to hold and preserve aliments which might be utilised as primary matters for different fabrications, such as for harmonic chords, whip cords, rattles, machines, gold beaters skin and cartridge paper; applications which one of the committee, M. Payen, discovered, by and which would employ all the remains of intestines useless for the usage we ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... as one of the most valuable by-products of The Times article, the announcement that an international Balneo-Musical Congress will be shortly held in the Albert Hall, with a view to discussing the best methods of promoting harmonic hygiene. The arena, we understand, is to be converted into a vast demonstration-tank, in which prominent composers, conductors and singers will appear. Miss CARRIE TUBB has kindly promised to preside. Amongst other items in the programme we may mention an exhibition of under-water violin-playing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... musical growth lies in learning to appreciate music, as music. In instrumental music the development of a musical idea, the creation of musical symmetries, figures, and arabesques, and the legitimate building up of musical climaxes upon purely harmonic and rhythmic grounds are the phases of thought which interested the composer and gave rise to the composition. And while we may not attempt to assign limits to the inspiration and uplifting effects ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... ground during a vibration of the simplest character (known as simple harmonic motion) is represented in Fig. 1. The pointer of the recording seismograph is here supposed to oscillate along a line at right angles to AB, and the smoked paper or glass on which the record is made to travel to the left. The distance MP of the crest P of any wave from the line AB represents ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... The harmonic pauses, or those which are peculiar to poetry, are of three kinds: the final pause, which marks the end of each line; the caesural or divisional pause, which commonly divides the line near the middle; and the minor rests, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of one choir against the other, not in multiplicity of voice parts, but in imposing contrasts as of "deep answering unto deep." The development of fundamental chord harmonies was inevitable and from them in the fullness of time was bound to spring the pure harmonic style. Chord successions without any melodic union cannot be long sustained, and the Italians, with the tentative achievements of the frottolists before them, were not long blind to this fact. Leone Battista Alberti, father ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... points have been acquired, the trill, scales, arpeggios, chords, octaves and double notes follow in due course. At the same time the rhythmic sense is developed, all varieties of touch and dynamics introduced, and harmonic and structural analysis ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... Cutter. Teaches one to analyze the harmonic structure of both classic and modern music. ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... On band nights the Harmonic or Concordia Clubs, two beautiful and commodious buildings replete with every comfort, become the rendezvous of old and young, and dancing is kept up till half-past eight o'clock. It must be confessed that it made one perspire to see the dancers tread a measure ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... undulating curve representing wave motion. It is produced by compounding a simple harmonic motion, or a two and fro motion like that of an infinitely long pendulum with a rectilinear motion. Along a horizontal line points may be laid off to represent equal periods of time. Then on each point ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Sterndale Bennett and Sir George A. Macfarren, she devoted herself wholly to composition, and made it her life-work. Her music is clear and well balanced in form, excellent in thematic material, and endowed with an expressive charm of melodic and harmonic beauty. Among her orchestral works are two symphonies, one in C minor and the other in G; four overtures, "Endymion," "Lalla Rookh," "The Masque of Pandora," and "Jason, or the Argonauts and Sirens;" a concerto ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... confronted with the magic of reality itself, wondering why one thing was built of exquisite curves and another of harmonic angles. It was not a scientific passion in me, it was merely my sensing of the world of visible beauty around me, pressing in on me with the vehemence ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... with the courses in practical music. The first-year class, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musical selection played by one of its members, and must decide by internal evidence—such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as applied to the accompaniment and other characteristics—upon the school of the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of the musical selection and the reasons for her decision are set down in her notebook by the listening student. The second-year class ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... price write a melody to Schiller's verses, which are entirely intended for reading. These verses must be treated musically in a certain arbitrary manner, and that arbitrary manner, as it does not bring about a real flow of melody, leads us to harmonic excesses and violent efforts to produce artificial wavelets in the unmelodic fountain. I have experienced all this myself, and in my present state of development have arrived at an entirely different form of treatment. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... personality (without much effort of the imagination we might say that they are the qualities that shaped Beethoven's musical personality).... Her impatient melodies leap and dash with youthful life, while her accompaniments abound in harmonic hairbreadth escapes." Before he became acquainted with the later French idiom Harvey W. Loomis "spontaneously breathed forth the quality of spirit which we now recognize in a ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... English poet of consequence in the younger school who does not treat the strings of his lyre as though he were preluding with a slate-pencil upon a slate. That this is done purposely, and in accordance with mysterious harmonic laws entirely beyond the comprehension of ordinary ears, makes the matter worse. There is no heresiarch so dangerous as the priest of holy and self-abnegating life, and it is to a poet no less learned than Mr. Robert Bridges, that the twentieth century seems to owe the existing rage ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... of all human achievement is already a harmonic whole. That globe is complete. It is our business as men to make a pattern of it in matter—to make the dream come true in flesh, each man and each nation bringing ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... earnest nature, than has hitherto been awarded them. A high rank must be assigned by the future historians of music to one who distinguished himself in art by a genius for melody so rare, by such graceful and remarkable enlargements of the harmonic tissue; and his triumph will be justly preferred to many of far more extended surface, though the works of such victors may be played and replayed by the greatest number of instruments, and be sung and resung by passing ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... can by no possibility be made to recognize the slightest relation between the according notes of the simplest melody; and, though they can as readily as others distinguish the individual sounds, even to the degrees of flatness and sharpness, the harmonic agreement is to them as mere noise. Let us suppose ourselves present at a concert, in company with one such person and another who possesses what is called musical sensibility. How are they affected, for instance, by a piece of Mozart's? In the sense of hearing ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... greeted her. On arriving at the end of Cheapside, she was hailed out of the glimmering illumination and foggy lamplight by "God Save the Queen," again sung by many hundred voices, accompanied by a band of wind instruments, the performance of the Harmonic Society, and the music was followed all the way by enthusiastic cheering. The Baroness Bunsen remarked of such a scene long afterwards, "I was at a loss to conceive how any woman's sides can 'bear the beating of so strong a ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... and healing and life, she turned to the bosom of death, and imagined there a shelter of oblivious darkness! For life is a thing so deep, so high, so pure, so far above the reach of common thought, that, although shadowed out in all the harmonic glories of color, and speech, and song, and scent, and motion, and shine, yea, even of eyes and loving hands, to common minds—and the more merely intellectual, the commoner are they—it seems but a phantasm. To unchildlike minds, the region of love and worship, to which ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... being a Protestant ascendency, does not better it from the combination of a note or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. If Protestant ascendency means the proscription from citizenship of by far the major part of the people of any country, then Protestant ascendency is a bad thing, and it ought to have no existence. But there is a deeper evil. By the use that is so frequently made of the term, and the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... l'industrie, la douce tolerance remplacant la farouche inquisition; j'y vois un jour de fete; Peruvians, Mexicains, Americains libres, Francois, s'embrassant comme des freres, et benissant le regne de la liberte, qui doit amener partout une harmonic universelle.—Mais les mines, les esclaves, que deviendront-ils? Les mines se fermerout; les esclaves seront les freres de leurs maitres. Nouv. Voy. ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... spontaneous ways; the other delights in rule and rhythm, in ordered sequences, in authority and precedent, following the law. One carves the gargoyle and ogrillion, working in paths untrod, the other limits himself to harmonic ratios, balanced compositions, and to predestined fenestration. One has a grim, naif, virile humor, the other a dead, even beauty. One is hot, the other cold. The Dark Ages were sulphitic—there were wild deeds ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... which may have rustled in Shakespeare's head while doing Othello: it is about the pleasures of Military Life in the Chapter 'De l'Experience' beginning 'Il n'est occupation plaisante comme la militaire, etc.' in course of which occurs in Florio, 'The courageous minde-stirring harmonic of warlike music, etc.' What a funny thing is that closing Apostrophe to Artillery—but ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... affection for each rich note in her very touch. The other string tones followed her with exquisite sympathy, for Mrs. Gray was a musician from whom three of her four children had inherited an intense love for harmonic values. ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... different affair. Michael had shown both ingenuity and a great sense of harmonic beauty in the arrangement of the very simple little tune that Falbe had made him exercise his ear over, and the half-dozen variations that followed showed a wonderfully mature handling. The air which he dealt with haunted them as a sort of unseen presence. It moved in a tiny gavotte, or ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... given no other name than the sister of painting, inasmuch as it is subject to the hearing,—a sense inferior to the eye,—and it produces harmony by the unison of its proportioned parts, which are brought into operation at the same moment and are constrained to come to life and die in one or more harmonic times; and time is, as it were, the circumference of the parts which constitute the harmony, in the same way as the outline constitutes the circumference of limbs whence human ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... Hall, better known as "Holder's," was built in 1846, though for years previous the house was noted for its harmonic meetings; the present Hall has seats for 2,200 persons. Day's Concert Hall was erected in 1862 the opening night, September 17, being for the benefit of the Queen's Hospital, when L70 was realised therefor; the Hall will ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... passion for violence and blood which found expression in the operatic paraphrase of Victor Hugo's story, and the invitation which that passion extended to the modern musician suddenly emancipated from a lot of cumbersome formularies, and endowed with a mass of new harmonic and instrumental pigments with which to produce the startling contrasts and swift contradictions for which the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... colours in windows cannot be modified by the artist; all his talent consists in profiting by it, according to a given harmonic scheme on a single plane, like a rug, but not according to an effect of aerial perspective. Do what you like, a glass window never does and never can represent anything but a plane surface; its real virtues even exist only on that condition. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... ancient tunes, he has wisely preferred, in general, the arrangements of the older masters. The critical musician will see, and will not complain, that the original modal structure of the melodies is sometimes affected by the harmonic treatment. ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... hear the ominous melody the maestro has engrafted on to this profound harmonic composition, worthy to compare with the most elaborate structures of the Germans, but never fatiguing ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... a universal breeze. Therefore you feel no inconvenience. Get up, my child, and waltz an Oriental hesitation down the hall and convince yourself everlastingly that you are in truth only a mysterious unit in a universe of harmonic chords.' ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... founded on a relation to rest—on relative rest. Take a metallic plate, and strew sand on it; sound an harmonic chord over the sand, and the grains will whirl about in circles, and other geometrical figures, all, as it were, depending on some point of sand relatively at rest. Sound a discord, and every grain will whisk about without any order at all, in no figures, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the best of them to conceive music as a natural language of the soul that, when they did not make it an adjunct to painting, they dragged it into the outskirts of science, and reduced it to the level of a problem in harmonic construction. Some who were learned enough took upon themselves to show a thing or two to past musicians. They found fault with Beethoven, and rapped Wagner over the knuckles. They laughed openly at ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... me good even to watch the violinists drawing their bows so masterly—every motion a study. I allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... aching shoulders amidst the dripping pines. He could hear the rattle of the twigs that met and brushed through the shrill wailing of the wind about the sombre spires that pierced the growing darkness far above him, and the harmonic murmuring that rose and fell in cadence along the dim, vaulted roof. There was, however, nothing else beyond the growl of a rapid somewhere up the valley, and stretching out his arms wearily, he stooped with a little ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... for the first time in this or any other country, by a very full orchestra (the performance taking place immediately after supper), and a chorus composed of the entire "Sauer Kraut-Verein," the "Wee Gates Association," and choice selections from the "Gyascutus" and "Pike-harmonic" societies. The solos were rendered by Herr Tuden Links, the recitations by Herr Von Hyden Schnapps, both performers being assisted by Messrs. John Smith and Joseph Brown, who held their coats, fanned them, and furnished water during ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... is the form of movements. The dynamic is melodic, harmonic and rhythmic. Gesture is melodic by its forms or its inflections. To understand gesture one must study melody. There is great affinity between the inflections of the voice and gesture. All the inflections of the voice are common to gesture. The inflections of gesture ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... or that the fashionable colors which it has introduced are charming. It is said that these are so charming that a woman of the worst taste cannot choose amiss among them. In spite of her taste, her hat comes out a harmonic miracle; her gown, against all her endeavors, flows in an exquisite symphony of the tender audacities of tint with which nature mixes her palette; little notes of chiffon, of tulle, of feather, blow all about her. This is rather a medley of metaphors, to which several arts contribute, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... upon which a string is stretched with a peg to adjust its tension, is probably that described by Dr. Burney as having been seen by him at Rome on an Egyptian obelisk. In a notice of Claudius Ptolemeus, an Egyptian, who wrote upon harmonic sounds about the middle of the second century, we have an illustration of an instrument of a similar character to that found on the obelisk above noticed.[5] In all probability neither of these contrivances was intended to be used as a musical instrument further than for scientific purposes, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Pucci had no ear for music, and was laughed at by his brother cardinals when chanting mass in the Sistine Chapel. He thereupon invoked the aid of St. Cecilia, who rewarded the donor of her picture by remedying his harmonic deficiency. ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... emotion into that of philosophy, he destroys the poem in the process, much as the botanist destroys the flower in analyzing it, or the musical critic the composition in disentangling its interwoven melodies and explaining the mature of its harmonic structure. The analysis, whether of music, art, or poetry, must be followed by a synthesis, which, in the nature of the case, can be accomplished only by the hearer or reader for himself. All that I can do here is to illustrate ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... voice, we should see stamped on it the conditions of motion upon which its characteristic qualities depended; which is due to the fact that every vocal sound whose vibrations have a complex form can be decomposed into a series of simple notes all belonging to the harmonic series. These harmonics or overtones will be considered later when dealing with the timbre or quality of ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... Plate VII—The Harmonic or Solar Hand, indicates a character of great versatility, brilliant in conversation, and ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... two-part counterpoint we have to deal with intervals, rather than harmonies, still the harmonic progressions represented by these intervals should ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... been sung at the annual dinners of the Gloucestershire Society, from the earliest period of the existence of that institution; and in 1776 there was an Harmonic Society at Cirencester, which always opened its meetings with George Ridler's Oven ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... what it has not. The finest hospitality is that which welcomes you to the fireside and permits you to look upon the picture of a home-life so little disturbed by your coming that you are at once made to feel yourself a part of the little symphony—the rare bit of color just needed to complete the harmonic combination. With this flattering fact impressed upon your glowing memory you will hardly be able to recall the material adjuncts of the occasion. It is a sign of a gross nature to measure hospitality by the loaves and fishes, forgetting the miracle that goes with them. And it is equally a mistake ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... of numbers dwells harmony, and therefore it behoves us to identify ourselves with this harmony, because from it is derived the harmonic law which draws men together into companies. Through the revolution of the worlds through space around their suns, from their order, their constancy and their measure, the mind comprehends the progress and conditions of men, and their duties towards each other. The Bible, the ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... attended even-song at the cathedral. I shall not say what I felt when the white-surpliced boy choir entered, winding down those vaulted aisles, or when I heard for the first time that intoned service, with all its "witchcraft of harmonic sound." I sat quite by myself in a high carved-oak seat, and the hour was passed in a trance of serene delight. I do not have many opinions, it is true, but papa says I am always strong on sentiments; ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... learn to read three and four voices on separate staffs (as in a vocal score) in order to prepare himself for future reading of full scores. Let him study harmony, counterpoint, form, and, if possible, composition and orchestration. Let him work indefatigably at ear-training, and particularly at harmonic ear training, so that notes and tones may become closely associated in his mind, the printed page then giving him auditory rather than merely visual imagery; in other words, let him school himself to make the printed page convey to his mind the actual sounds of the music. Let him study the ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... perceives but the three or four primitive or fundamental notes of the chord, while, to the nicer perception, the more delicate susceptibility of the ear trained by long study and practice to analyze all musical sounds, come harmonic above harmonic, sounds of melody above, beneath, and beyond the few prime motors which act as the nucleus to the gush of tiny harmony which fills the ear—sounds clear and distinct, yet blending in perfect ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... conspicuous position one leads the whole table's activities: conversing to the right, laughing to the left, sharply on the lookout for any conversational gap, now and then drawing muted tete-a-tetes into a harmonic unison. She is, as it were, the leader of an orchestra of which the individual diners are the subsidiary instruments. Upon her watchful resourcefulness hangs the success of a dinner-party. But Missy, though a trifle fluttered, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... relieved from duty at intervals of two hours during the night, when the hammer bell in the centre of the palace grounds sounds its mournful but decided strokes. At midnight a big drum is struck, the harmonic case of which is semi-spherical and covered with a donkey-skin first wetted and made tight. It is by the sound of this smaller bell within the palace grounds that the signal is given at sunset to the "Big Bell" to vibrate through the air those sonorous ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... though so much the elder science, for music has been a science only since the harmonic combinations were discovered, possesses not a more inherent empire over the passions than music, of which Handel is the mighty ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... in the meridian of each cake, a kind of silvery fracture or membrane, with the grain of air-bubbles tending outward therefrom—showing, no doubt, if one knew the mechanics of refrigeration, just how the freezing proceeded. Even in so humble a thing as a block of ice are these harmonic and lovely patterns, the seal of Nature's craft, inscrutable, inimitable. I might have made a point of this in talking to that free verse poet. I'm glad I didn't, however: he would have had some tedious reply, convincing to himself. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... to the associations of ideas arising from ancestral reversions of memory, and from the principles of minimum muscular action and harmonic excitation. Such laws make themselves felt unconsciously from the commencement of life, with greater or less power, dependent on the susceptibility of the nervous system. They go far toward explaining the recurrence and permanence ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... wire a stout bar of metal fixed at one end only. The longitudinal vibrations of this rod contain overtones of a different ratio. The first harmonic is not an octave, but a twelfth. While a tensioned string is divided by nodes into two, three, four, five, six, etc., parts, a rod fixed at one end only is capable of producing only those harmonics which correspond to division ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... many passages of whose works Socrates speaks in such a manner that even when he is discussing morals, and virtues, and even public affairs and politics, he endeavors to interweave, after the fashion of Pythagoras, the doctrines of arithmetic, geometry, and harmonic proportions with them. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... such fellowes are Rarae aves in terris, nigrisque similimi cygnis, Rare birds upon the earth, and as geason as blacke swans. You shall have also your orient perfumes for your nose, your fragrant waters for your face, wherewith you shall bee all to besprinkled, your musicke againe, and pleasant harmonic, shall sound in your eares, and all to tickle the same with vaine delight. And in the end your cloke shall be brushed, and ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... way the same holds good of the violin—new works conceived only from the musical point of view bring about the stagnation of technical discovery, the invention of new passages, of novel harmonic wealth of combination is not encouraged. And a violinist owes it to himself to exploit the great possibilities of his own instrument. I have tried to find new technical ways and means of expression in my own compositions. For example, I have written a Divertiment for violin and orchestra in which ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... are united, Of German men a mighty choir, And from the lips of each, delighted, Our praying souls to heaven aspire; With high and sacred awe abounding We join in solemn thoughts today, And so our hearts should be resounding In clear harmonic song and play. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... dumb, and both engaged Bell's services as teacher. Bell lived in Sanders's home for a considerable period, dividing his time between teaching his little pupil how to talk and puttering away at a proposed invention which he called a "harmonic telegraph." Both Sanders and Hubbard had become greatly interested in this contrivance and backed Bell financially while he worked. It was Bell's idea that, by a system of tuning different telegraphic receivers to ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... Henry Chubb enjoyed it to such an extent that one day, just after the machine had been wound up ready for action he got to sucking the end of it, and in a moment of inadvertence it slipped, and he swallowed it. The only immediate consequence of the accident was that a harmonic stomach-ache was organized upon the interior of Henry Chubb and he experienced a restlessness which he well knew would defy the soothing tendencies of peppermint and make a mockery ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... lest it should be supposed that our enthusiasm has got the better of our sober judgment. The second theme, "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, yet he opened not his mouth," is quite Handel-like in the simplicity and massiveness of its magnificent harmonic progressions. With the scene of the denial, for which we are thus prepared, the dramatic movement becomes exceedingly rapid, and the rendering of the events in the high-priest's hall—Peter's bass recitative alternating its craven ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... musical forms, she has been an industrious student of the best music, so that all her compositions are what is called "well made," correct according to the rules of musical science, yet in melodic and harmonic inspiration characterized by originality and musical inventiveness. She writes with judgment, refinement and taste, avoiding on the one hand the pitfall of pretentiousness, and, on the other, the monotony of platitude found in the works of those who compose in the larger forms but lack the originality ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... analysis. In a musical note the lowest in pitch of these is generally predominant, and the others which are less marked are the octave, the twelfth, the second octave, etc., all harmonies of the fundamental predominant note; any two notes of our scale have many of these harmonic over-tones in common. It seems pretty clear then, that if an animal always wished to sing precisely the same song, he would guide himself by sounding those notes in succession, which possess many over- tones in common—that is, he would choose ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... procure a spinet, and to conceal it in a garret, whither he went to play when all the household was asleep—without any guidance finding out everything for himself, and merely by permitting his little fingers to wander over the keyboard, he produced harmonic combinations; and at seven years of age he discovered that he knew how to play upon ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... explained, speech first issued from the human breast in harmonious accents and rhythmic form, and these became in their turn the causes and genesis of versification and metre. The classic experiments of Helmholtz show that each note may be regarded as a harmonic whole, owing to the complementary sounds which accompany it in its complete development. With reference to our own race, the genesis of the composition of verse and metre are shown by the researches made by Westphal and others into the metrical system of the Vedic Aryans, the Turanians, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... and inherent pleasantnesses, whether in space, number, or time, and whether of colors or sounds, form what we may properly term the musical or harmonic element in every art; and the study of them is an entirely separate science. It is the branch of art-philosophy to which the word 'aesthetics' should be strictly limited, being the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves are pleasant to the human ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... unsatisfactory, often indeed misleading, but a single example will perhaps suggest some of the ways in which alliteration, consonance, and assonance are interwoven for harmonic effects that, not being altogether obvious, are felt rather than directly perceived. Similar experiments may be made by the reader with other passages. The opening stanza of Gray's Elegy, quoted on page 55, above, is remarkable for its smooth and quiet flow, symbolic of the atmosphere ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... According to the law of contradiction and reconciliation, a Schopenhauer must have followed directly after Leibnitz, to oppose his pessimistic ethelism to the optimistic intellectualism of the latter; when, in turn, a Schleiermacher, to give an harmonic resolution of the antithesis into a concrete doctrine of feeling, would have made a fine third. But it turned out otherwise, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... motifs than we have to weigh Greek rhythm of quantity or Saxon of alliteration against our weights by which we measure rhythm of rhyme and stress. In fact it is impossible for us even to judge concerning the true harmonic effect of these other measures, and it may well be doubted whether the very soul itself of our meter is not empty and tinny as compared with these others—quality ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... the tension sets in; but when it once has set in, the playwright must on no account suffer it to relax until he deliberately resolves it just before the fall of the curtain. There are, of course, minor rhythms of tension and resolution, like the harmonic vibrations of a violin-string. That is implied when we say that a play consists of a great crisis worked out through a series of minor crises. But the main tension, once initiated, must never be relaxed. If ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... The harmonic beauties of "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds were Singing in the Trees" are still inexhausted, but it sadly needs a piano accompaniment—with this it would be perfect; and so the whole crowd, including Yvonne, and Celeste, ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... Endowed with two qualities which seem incompatible,—a volcanic imagination, and a dogged pertinacity which the most tedious calculations could not tire,—Kepler conjectured that celestial movements must be connected with each other by simple laws; or, to use his own expression, by harmonic laws. These laws he undertook to discover. A thousand fruitless attempts—the errors of calculation inseparable from a colossal undertaking—did not hinder his resolute advance toward the goal his imagination descried. Twenty-two years he devoted to it, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... wholly rejecting the other. "On earth peace, good-will to men"—already that line was among the treasures of his intellect, but only, no doubt, because of its rhythm, its sonority. Life, to him, was a half-conscious striving for the harmonic in thought and speech—and through what a tumult of unmelodious circumstance was he beginning to ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... dampers is very different in the square from that in the upright. The dampers are above the strings. Instead of springs to hold them against the strings, they simply rest upon them with their weight. In many old squares some of the dampers fall upon nodal points, causing defective damping or harmonic after-tones. ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... (Cheshire) collectors form a family harmonic trio, a father, son, and grandson, of the surname of Chaloner, and of the several Christian names, Thomas, Jacob, and James. Thomas was an arms-painter in Chester about 1594; he knew the value of learning sufficiently ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... have made a queerer or a better combination. For it was in the Barnard laboratory that I met Prof. Darmstetter; and it was my bearing, my unending practice of the West Point setting-up drill, my Delsarte, my "harmonic poise" and evident health that drew ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... was a piece sounded (suonata, from sonando) by instruments; the other, one sung by voices. The form of these early sonatas (as they appear in Giovanni Gabrieli's works towards the close of the sixteenth century) was vague; yet, in spite of light imitations, the basis was harmonic, rather than contrapuntal. They were among the first fruits of the Renaissance in Italy. But soon there came about a process of differentiation. Praetorius, in his Syntagma musicum, published at Wolfenbuettel in 1619, distinguishes between the sonata and ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... irresistible. He had at his command a vast host of memories—everything from a Hungarian "Czardas" to Grieg. He rippled on fantastically, joining together the seemingly impossible by a series of harmonic transitions entirely his own. His crisp execution was as facile as that of a virtuoso; he did things contrary to even the first principles found in the instruction books of the pianoforte. He rushed from the Dance of the Sun Feast ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... m. pl., garments. habiller, to dress. habit, m., coat; fl., clothes, raiment. habiter, to dwell, inhabit. haine, f., hatred. har, to hate, loathe. hardi, bold, audacious. harmonic, f., harmony. hasarder, to risk. haut, high, loud; du — de, from the height of. h, why! what! h —? what? Hbreu, m., Hebrew, Jew. hlas! alas! Hellespont, Hellespont (the modern Dardanelles). heraut, m., herald. herbe, f., grass. hrsie, f., heresy, false religious doctrine. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... tragedies, I should say that the phalanx of noble minds and lofty souls dances the strophe, and the humble multitude the antistrophe. Burdened with painful and disagreeable tasks, but rendered omnipotent by their number and the harmonic arrangement of their functions, the latter execute what the others plan. Guided by them, they owe them nothing; they honor them, however, and lavish upon ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... broadly speaking, tunes with an accompaniment. The fugue was no contradiction of this. Even in its heyday, though the parts were ever so independent of one another, the mass of tone forms a great melody, or melos, moving on a firm harmonic foundation in the lowest part. The great choral fugues of Bach and Handel have often in the accompaniment a bass moving independently of the bass voice part, and this instrumental bass was figured so that the harmonies could be filled in, ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... noisy orchestration, big ensembles and thumping rhythms, but, in a far greater degree than in the Dutchman, in the stuff of the music itself. We find no more lumpish harmonies and basses of leaden immovability: the basses stalk about with arrogant independence, and the harmonic progressions, even when most daring and perilous, are superbly poised. The old awkwardnesses, due to the endeavour to copy and to be original at the same time, have disappeared. Wagner wrote Tannhaeuser entirely to express and to please himself: he had ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... see, you will become what no mortal can ever quite be: a perfectly functioning biological engine. Every sinew, nerve and muscle, every organ and gland, every tissue in your body will be in perfect harmonic balance with every other. Metabolically speaking, your catabolism and anabolism will be in such perfect balance that aging ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... torrent rushes over crags, foaming and roaring in an everlasting cascade. Before you may be a hillside, green with luxuriant pasturage, where flocks and herds graze quietly through the day, while the shepherd, with his crook and harmonic pipe, reminds you of classic scenes. Turn aside—and you may look down into cavernous recesses, whose gloomy, depths you cannot measure. Scenes fair and fearful meet in the same horizon. So, in life, the gentle ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... that day were anything but a satisfaction to Fraeulein Bernhardt, the piano teacher. Her mind was so abstracted that she kept continually playing wrong fingering, or even an occasional wrong note in the harmonic minors. Her study was little better, and her piece a dead failure. The mistress, with characteristic German patience, set her to work to try to conquer a couple of difficult phrases, through which Honor stumbled again and again, each time with the same old mistakes, ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil |
