"Modulation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me—by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice—and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you want?" said she to me, in a voice without modulation as we might suppose that of a ghost. "I should wish to see the interior of your convent."—"That is impossible."—"But I am very wet, and want to dry myself."—She immediately touched a spring which opened ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... through some parts where a good shower of rain has fallen, the stridulous piercing notes of the cicadae are perfectly deafening; a drab-colored cricket joins the chorus with a sharp sound, which has as little modulation as the drone of a Scottish bagpipe. I could not conceive how so small a thing could raise such a sound; it seemed to make the ground over it thrill. When cicadae, crickets, and frogs unite, their music may be heard at the distance of a quarter of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... that small primitive differences of a certain order, must, in the long run, bring about a wide divergence of the human stock from the others. It is a reasonable supposition that, in the earliest human organisms, an improved brain, a voice more capable of modulation and articulation, limbs which lent themselves better to gesture, a more perfect hand, capable among other things of imitating form in plastic or other material, were combined with the curiosity, the mimetic tendency, the strong family affection of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... see. It is by these he gets his spiritual growth; it is by these we see his character revealed, his purpose, and his gifts. Some play with a certain natural passion, an unstudied directness, without grace, without modulation, with no study of the masters or consciousness of the pervading spirit of the plot; others give all their thought to their costume and think only of the audience; a few act as those who have mastered the secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to the great ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Plain Chant) was the earliest form of Christian church music. As its name indicates, it was a plain, artless chant without rhythm, accent, modulation or accompaniment, and was first sung in unison. Oriental or Grecian in origin, it had four keys called Authentic Modes, to which were added later four more called Plagal Modes. These modes, called Phrygian, Dorian, Lydian, etc., are merely different presentations ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... or breathe heavily, but the strong pulsation of the carotid artery or the moistness of the skin from perspiration will not come with an imitated emotion. Of course, that is true of the actor on the stage, too. But the content of the words and the modulation of the voice can help so much that the shortcomings of the visual ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... that of the speakers of the world, may arise in the difference between art and nature. The person who prepares his lecture for the lecture-room, or his sermon for the pulpit, studies the formation of his sentences, which are to be accompanied by a modulation of the voice. This modulation is artificial, for it is usually taught. The Quakers, on, the other hand, neither prepare their discourses, nor vary their voices purposely, according to the rules of art. The tone which comes out, and which appears disagreeable to those who ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... walked toward me. And a great calm came over my own soul. My Cremona spoke of peace—soft, sweet, and deep; the profound peace that dwelleth in the soul which has its hope in fruition. The tone widened into sweet modulation—sweet ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... to discover a kind of scale of linear expression—the two extremes at either end: the horizontal and the vertical, with every degree and modulation between them; the undulating curve giving way to the springing energetic spiral, the meandering, flowing line sinking to the horizontal: or the sharp opposition and thrust of rectangular, the nervous resistance of broken curves, the flame-like, triumphant, ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... not Mirah to be there? What furniture can give such finish to a room as a tender woman's face?—and is there any harmony of tints that has such stirrings of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice? Here is one good, at least, thought Deronda, that comes to Mordecai from his having fixed his imagination on me. He has recovered a perfect sister, whose affection is waiting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... there a more broadly good- humored countenance, or a smile more expressive of meritoriousness, nor an utterance more coaxing in its modulations than his "E-f-fendi, backsheesh." as he repeats the appeal; the smile and the modulation is well ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... are dependent upon degrees of positive and negative vibrations, as is every form of life in the great Cosmic Unity of the Universe. Both are tones with endless modulation, but the integral fact, in either case, is one. Disease, then, is a Unit—a degenerate function of the blood—and, such being the case, the failure of any curative principle or system aspiring to remedy that degenerate functioning, in any degree, is a failure of that principle or system ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... breathless under this impaired and yet sovereign voice. All yielded in rapt astonishment to the spell. There was no prestige, no theatrical illusion. Iphigenia was a professor in a black frock coat; the orchestra was a piano, giving forth here and there an unexpected modulation. This was his whole force; yet the hall was mute, hearts beat, tears flowed from many eyes, and when the recital ended, enthusiastic shouts arose, as if Iphigenia in person had ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Irish music in the middle ages a superiority over that of all other nations. It is Cambrensis who remarks that "the attention of these people to musical instruments is worthy of praise, in which their skill is, beyond comparison, superior to any other people; for in these the modulation is not slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, but the sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet sweet and pleasing. It is extraordinary, in such rapidity of the fingers, how the musical proportions are preserved, and the art everywhere inherent among ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... made dismal by it. Laughter, when out of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little child,—the madman's laugh,—the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot,—are sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends Or hobgoblins so fearfully ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... adventures, and the varied experiences he had gone through in order to arrive at some straight and clear comprehension of "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" of the Gospel of Love and Mutual Labour. His practised voice, perfect in all modulation, inflexion, and expression, carried each simple, well- chosen word home to the hearts of his hearers,—not one so ignorant as not to understand him—not one so blind as not to see the beauty of work and creative effort as he depicted them,—not one so insensate as not to feel the calm, the grandeur, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... musical sounds for S and F, together with the frequent increase and multiplication of vowel sounds, give the dialect a by no means inharmonious expression, certainly it would not be difficult to select many words which may for their modulation compete with others of French extraction, and, perhaps be superior to many others which we have borrowed from other languages, much less analogous to the polished dialect of our own. I have added, ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... have any value; for this alternation of images had effected a change of front in my desire, and—as abrupt as those that occur sometimes in music,—a complete change of tone in my sensibility. Thus it came about that a mere atmospheric variation would be sufficient to provoke in me that modulation, without there being any need for me to await the return of a season. For often we find a day, in one, that has strayed from another season, and makes us live in that other, summons at once into our presence and ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... first utterance of the voice was not pleasant to the ear, the tone being harsh and the key too high. As the speech progressed, however, the speaker seemed to get into control of himself; the voice gained a natural and impressive modulation, the gestures were dignified and appropriate, and the hearers came under the influence of the earnest look from the deeply-set eyes and of the absolute integrity of purpose and of devotion to principle which were behind the thought and the words of the speaker. In place of a "wild and woolly" ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... well liked by his congregation, and we have heard of no fighting over either his virtues or defects. He has quite a clerical look, and, if he hadn't, his voice would give the cue to his profession. There is an earnest unctuous modulation about it, which, as a rule, is acquired after men have flung overboard the common idioms of secular life. The salary of Mr. O'Dell is about 160 pounds a year, and although he would like more, he can make himself and Mrs. O'Dell, and the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... mad. Timidly she tried to excuse herself for disobeying his directions for her safety. Every modulation of her enchanting voice cut deep into his very breast, so that he could hardly understand the words for the sheer pain of it. He turned his back on her; but a sudden drop, an extraordinary faltering of her tone, made him spin round. On her white neck her pale head dropped as in a ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... to the highest notes ever reached by mortal singers. Her trills are as sweet and bird-like as those with which the 'Swedish Nightingale' once entranced the world. In Verdi's famous 'Traviata' there was not a note or modulation wrong: her rendition was faultless, her voice the most sweet and musical we ever ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... circle of readers. In an association of this kind, embracing one or two acute minds, the excellent practice of reading aloud finds its best results. Here, too, the art of expression becomes important, how to adapt the sound to the sense, by a just emphasis, intonation, and modulation of the voice. In short, the value of a book thus read and discussed, in an appreciative circle, may be more than doubled ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... in these Preludes that Ignaz Moscheles first comprehended Chopin and his methods of execution. The German pianist had found his music harsh and dilettantish in modulation, but Chopin's originality of performance—"he glides lightly over the keys in a fairy-like way with his delicate fingers"—quite reconciled the elder man ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... quick look of inquiry. They had subtle modes of communication. Charlotte could command him by the flicker of an eyelash or a modulation of tone, so that Jerry seemed, in the resultant act, to be following only his own careless or ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... he returned from the last stanza to a repetition of the first; the fine modulation in which his voice stole upon the first line, and the pathetic energy with which it pronounced the last, were such as only exquisite taste could give. When he had concluded, he gave the lute with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... I have seen four, five, and (once) six of them sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations together without either sound or gesture. Their peculiar hooting invariably preceded feeding; it had no modulation, and was, I believe, in no sense a signal, but merely the expiration of air preparatory to the suctional operation. I have a certain claim to at least an elementary knowledge of psychology, and in this matter ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... looking at her, and her father had given her one of his glad kisses before he went away to the mowing field. Several village people having heard of the accident through Hollis and the doctor had stopped at the door to inquire with a sympathetic modulation of voice if she were any better. But the safe feeling was the most blessed of all. Towards noon she lay still with her white kitten cuddled up in her arms, wondering who would come next; Hollis had not come, nor Miss Prudence, ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... hope of its ignorant prosperity. Behind every scale in music, the gayest and cheeriest, the grandest, the most triumphant, lies its dark relative minor; the notes are the same, but the change of a semitone changes all to gloom;—all our gayest hours are tunes that have a modulation into these dreary keys ever possible; at any moment the key-note ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... heart of their sister. She, meanwhile, bids the lyre to sound for their delight, and the playing is heard: she bids the pipes to move, the quire to sing, and the music and the singing come invisibly, soothing the mind of the listener with sweetest modulation. Yet not even thereby was their malice put to sleep: once more they seek to know what manner of husband she has, and whence that seed. And Psyche, simple over-much, forgetful of her first story, answers, "My husband comes from a far country, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... eyes fixed upon him, watching for the least word, the least modulation of the voice. The curiosity-dealer was now laughing, with a nervous laugh, while resuming the self-control of a man who feels sure of himself: and he walked up to Rnine with jerky movements that revealed ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... everything else which enthralled the listener, there were four qualities, two specially conspicuous in the substance of his eloquence—inventiveness and elevation; two not less remarkable in his manner—force in the delivery, expressive modulation in ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... upon the universality, the necessity, and the majesty of death. Bryant's blank verse when at its best, as in Thanatopsis and the Forest Hymn, is extremely noble. In gravity and dignity it is surpassed by no English blank verse of this century, though in rich and various modulation it falls below Tennyson's Ulysses and Morte d'Arthur. It was characteristic of Bryant's limitations that he came thus early into possession of his faculty. His range was always a narrow one, and about his poetry, as a whole, there ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... advantage by their dress. Now I think of it, I believe you are in great danger of making a little god out of your caps and your drab color, and 'thee' and 'thou.' Besides, the tendency is quite questionable. The moment certain shades of color, or a certain combination of letters, or modulation of sounds, or arrangement of seams and angles, are made the sine qua non of religion and principle, that moment religion and principle are hurled from their vantage-ground and become slaves instead of rulers. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... representations of flowers, leaves, and vegetables carved in stone with "accuracy and precision so delicate that it almost made visitors distrust their senses when they considered the difficulty of subjecting so hard a substance to such intricate and exquisite modulation." This superb convent was dedicated to St. Mary, and the monks were of the Cistercian Order, of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... nasal chanting of the priests there had suddenly burst a chorus of children, singing absolutely independent of all time and tune; grunting of priests answered by squealing of boys, slow Gregorian modulation interrupted by jaunty barrel-organ pipings, an insane, insanely merry jumble of bellowing and barking, mewing and cackling and braying, such as would have enlivened a witches' meeting, or rather some mediaeval Feast of Fools. And, to make the grotesqueness of such music still ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... he was by all odds the most popular fellow of his time. His very popularity increased the danger." As if he had been pleading his own cause, Thayer's voice was full of earnest eagerness. Even in the midst of her anxiety and pain, Miss Gannion felt the power of its flexible modulation; and her half-formulated condemnation of Lorimer ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... be beautiful and satisfying in itself, but expressive of the motive which is at the root of the picture. Play of light over the surfaces and round the contours of the human form; the breaking-up and modulation of masses of colour by that play of light; strength, and beauty of general tone—these are now Titian's main preoccupations. To this point his perfected technical art has legitimately developed itself from the Giorgionesque ideal of colour and tone-harmony, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... is very well, and begs to be remembered in the old way to you. I used all my eloquence, all the persuasive flourishes of the hand, and heart-melting modulation of periods in my power, to urge her out to Harvieston, but all in vain. My rhetoric seems quite to have lost its effect on the lovely half of mankind. I have seen the day—but this is "a tale of other years." In my conscience I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... as a continuous sound akin to the bellowings or other cries of the various wild mammals. It is characteristic of all these primitive forms of utterance that they are, to a great extent, involuntary, and that when the outcry is begun it continues in a mechanical manner, with no trace of modulation arising from the conditions of the moment. In other words, these actions resemble, in a way, sneezing or hiccoughing in human kind; actions which are stimulated by certain states of the body, but which are not at all under the control of the will. Howling or bellowing doubtless represents, in ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... large, and peculiarly constructed, with an unusually high pulpit, to suit the high galleries;" and moreover, "the said Rev. George Henderson is considered to be destitute of a musical ear, which prevents the correct modulation of ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... and converted into harmony. A certain general style, a certain general manner of expression, are common to all, as is also the case in, let us say, The Tempest. But what distinction, what variation of tone, what delicacy and expressiveness of modulation! As a simple matter of fact, few writers have ever had a greater ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... artificially and externally, but internally through the elements of the story which produce the pause. Tone-color, which is to ordinary speech what melody is to music—those varied effects of intonation, inflection, and modulation—is to be sought, not as a result from an isolated study of technique, but from attention to those elements in association with the complete realization of the life of the story. Genuine feeling is worth more than mere isolated exercises to secure ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... one of the simplest strains to be heard,—as simple as the curve in form, and mellower than the tenderest tones of the flute,—delighting from the pure element of harmony and beauty it contains, and not from any novel or fantastic modulation of it,—thus contrasting strongly with such rollicking, hilarious songsters as the Bobolink, in whom we are chiefly pleased with the tintinnabulation, the verbal and labial excellence, and the evident conceit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... see you, Mr. Vancouver," said his host, whose extremely Celtic appearance was not belied by unctuous modulation of his voice, and the pleasant roll ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... three, the powers are under the predominance of irritability; but sensibility, which is dormant in the insect, begins to awaken in the fish, and, though still subordinate, is quite awake in the bird, of which no better proof can be given than its power of sound, with the rudiments of modulation, in the large class of singing birds, and in some others a tendency to acquire and to imitate articulate speech. The next step of ascent brings us to the mammalia; and in these, including beasts and men, the complete and universal presence of a nervous ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... more so. You know one can't see the modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of the ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... power. She could even listen to what was being said. She had never dared as yet to look at Mr Donne, though her heart burnt to see him once again. He sounded changed. The voice had lost its fresh and youthful eagerness of tone, though in peculiarity of modulation it was the same. It could never be mistaken for the voice of another person. There was a good deal said at that breakfast, for none seemed inclined to hurry, although it was Sunday morning. Ruth was compelled to sit there, and it was good for her that ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... men, like the travelling gents, were creatures of coarser mould; but her experienced eye told her the solitary occupant of the opposite section was a gentleman. The clear cut of his pale features, the white, slender hand and shapely foot, the style and finish of his quiet travelling-dress, the soft modulation and refined tone of his voice on the one occasion when she heard him reply to some importunity of the train-boy with his endless round of equally questionable figs and fiction, the book he was reading,—a ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... tuned. The necessity of playing the strings with the fingers renders it difficult to obtain equality in the sounds. It gives only the natural sounds of the diatonic gamut, and in order to obtain changes of modulation, the pedals must be employed. Harmonics and shakes are very difficult to execute on the harp, and—last, but not least—it is not provided with dampers. The external form of the clavi harp resembles that of the harp, and all the cords, or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... hair and bearing of an official, made a low obeisance before the wife of Darvid, and seemed to lay at her feet smiles full of homage. Hence she grew affable, pleasant, vivacious, elegant in gestures, and in the modulation of her beautiful voice, she answered politeness with politeness, requests with promises, and gave opinions in return for questions touching the ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... not pleased Hope Wayne. The sudden modulation into sentiment offended her. Before she replied—indeed she had no intention of replying—the round eyes of Mrs. Van Kraut informed her partner that she was ready for another turn, and forth they ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... back a pace, with an expression of awe. He soon recovered himself, and shouted angrily to the men to go on. But again the dirge-like noise rose, louder and louder. It swelled, and then as gradually died away; but this time with a quavering modulation. ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... the Mass for men's voices to Vienna. The Gloria, which was performed at the University Jubilee Festival of Jena last August, was made most effective by your excellent instrumentation. You will observe a slight alteration at the conclusion (six bars instead of five, and a slightly less risky modulation), which I beg you to follow at any performance there may chance to be ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... repeating the words tabak-tabak, keibo-keibo, ke-bang-e-nu-to-eek, kebang-enutoeek, amatama-amatama, in the order in which they are here placed, but each at least four times, and always by a peculiar modulation of the voice, speaking them in pairs as they are coupled above. The sound is made to proceed from the throat in a way much resembling ventriloquism, to which art it is indeed an approach. After the last amatama Iligliuk ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... delighted that my scheme of wounding her vanity had succeeded, and I began by reading aloud an anacreontic, adding to its beauties by the modulation of my voice, and keenly enjoying her pleasure at finding her work so fair. When I improved a line by some trifling change she noticed it, for she followed me with her eyes; but far from being humiliated, she was pleased with my corrections. The picture was still ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... like those of string music, short and transient, which rise and perish upon a single touch; those of other languages are like the notes of wind instruments, sweet and swelling, and lengthened out into variety of modulation. ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... CITY. Here, however, a foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to him and stood in his way. It was the same fool whom the people called "the ape of Zarathustra:" for he had learned from him something of the expression and modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to borrow from the store of his wisdom. And the fool ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different actions that complete a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... "Wagner's harmonies are clear and pure; they are never arbitrary, nor coarse nor brutal, but throughout conscientious and clean according to the strict rules of pure diction (des reinen Satzes). Consequently the sequences and combinations of the chords and the course of the modulation are easily followed by those who know harmony. Similarly, his polyphonic style is easily intelligible to the trained contrapuntist"—and more to the same effect, Jadassohn is here only expressing what every competent ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... sensibility and emotion, giving, effect to the Italian language, so pompous and so sonorous, produced upon Oswald an impression entirely novel. The English prosody is uniform and veiled, its natural beauties are all of a sombre cast; its colouring has been formed by clouds, and its modulation by the roaring of the sea; but when Italian words, brilliant as an Italian festival, resonant like those instruments of victory, which have been compared to scarlet among colours; when these words, bearing ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of this volume should read these lines of mine before he proceeds farther. The author of this little book is both blind and deaf! For many years he has been absolutely blind. He has utterly lost the sense of hearing also; and whilst he speaks with singular clearness, and with some modulation of voice, he can receive no communication from his fellow-creatures except through an alphabet which he carries upon his hand! Every word must be ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... when a fearful struggle was going on within me, and (no matter whether right or wrong) I thought myself very near death, an organ in the street played a Scotch air which I had heard a thousand times before; but then, for the first time, I understood it. Each note had a meaning, each modulation had a sense, which has never been lost to me since. Suffering and emotion are necessary (I believe it firmly) to expand our faculties in every line, and, with our powers of comprehension, increase our powers of admiration. I shall never feel the real beauty of military music, or the full sense ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... adjoining chamber. She was singing the pathetic ballad of old Rob with the most heart-melting falls and pauses. Jemima had half-opened the door, when she distinguished her voice, and Maria stood close to it, scarcely daring to respire, lest a modulation should escape her, so exquisitely sweet, so passionately wild. She began with sympathy to pourtray to herself another victim, when the lovely warbler flew, as it were, from the spray, and a torrent of unconnected exclamations and questions ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... loaded with precious stones, (the brilliancy of every one of which illuminated the room,) and laid it before my throne, made his obeisance and stood [in respectful silence]. The khwaja also kissed the ground, and offered up his prayers [for my prosperity]; he spoke with such sweet modulation, as if he were the nightingale of a thousand melodies. I greatly admired his elegant and decorous speech; but, assuming a face of anger, I exclaimed, "O, you Satan in human form! what net is this that thou hast spread, and ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... free as their lives; no intermediate modulation, no chords, no transition, it goes from one key to another. From ethereal heights they precipitate you into the howling depths of hell; from the plaint, barely heard, they pass brusquely to the warrior's ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... wrinkles and camphor aroma of a long packing away are yet discernible. Often they are still wearing sun helmets or double terai hats, pending a descent on a Piccadilly hatter two days hence. They move slowly and languidly; the ordinary piercing and dominant English enunciation has fallen to modulation; their eyes, while observant and alert, look tired. It is as though the far countries have sucked something from the pith of them in exchange for great experiences that nevertheless seem of little ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... technical term in music for "the running a simple strain into a great variety of shorter notes to the same modulation" (Nares). The "plain song" was the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... favorite passages, he ascended to the topmost heaven of delight. Never, in all the women he had heard speak, had he heard a voice like hers. The least sound of it was a stimulus to his love, and he thrilled and throbbed with every word she uttered. It was the quality of it, the repose, and the musical modulation—the soft, rich, indefinable product of culture and a gentle soul. As he listened to her, there rang in the ears of his memory the harsh cries of barbarian women and of hags, and, in lesser degrees of harshness, the strident voices of working women and of the girls of his own class. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... offered its blood to the Flag. The old Roman spirit breathed through the verses of these music-hall songs, written perhaps by hungry poets au sixieme etage, but alight with a little flame of genius. The women who sang them were artists. Every gesture was a studied thing. Every modulation of the voice was the result of training and technique. But they too were stirred with a real emotion, and as they sang something would change the audience, some thrill would stir them, some power, of old ideals, of traditions strong as natural instinct, of enthusiasm for their ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... offend you anyway. You know me better than that." He let his voice fall into a caressing modulation and put a propitiatory hand on her skirt, but under the uncompromising hardness of her gaze the hand fell away to his side. "I'm your friend— leastways I ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... message was sent from the throat of the frightened Pawnee. Deerfoot could not be certain that the cry conveyed the meaning he desired, but he noticed that the modulation of the voice was different and he was almost ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... soul (supposing that she had one). He turned his head to every possible angle, and cocked his ears to every conceivable elevation, and rubbed his nose against Fan's, and barked softly, in every imaginable degree of modulation, and varied these proceedings by bounding away at full speed over the rocks of the beach, and in among the bushes and out again, but always circling round and round Fan, and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... standby light quivered hysterically from bright to dim and back again. The rate of quivering was fast. It was very nearly a sine-wave modulation of the light—and when a Mahon-modified machine goes into sine-wave flicker, it is the same as ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of his professional cleverness, that he would engage, that very day, to put him out, at such a place, without his being aware of it, so that he should not be able to proceed. He accepted the wager; and Beethoven, when he came to a passage that suited his purpose, led the singer, by an adroit modulation, out of the prevailing mode into one having no affinity with it, still, however, adhering to the tonic of the former key; so that the singer, unable to find his way in this strange region was brought to ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... two ideas, both of them important in our modern use of the term: The general meaning is that of "a pleasing modulation of sounds." In this sense the term is used constantly by poets, novelists and even in conversation—as when we speak of the "music of the forest," the "music of the brook" or the "music of nature." There is also a reminiscence of the etymological ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... priggishness, and perhaps over-stepped the border; but nevertheless it made me feel jealous for our village children, for in the conversation of village children one never hears that suggestion of a considerate mental attitude towards one another. The speech is without flexibility or modulation of tone; harsh, exclamatory, and screaming, or guttural and drawling. Rarely, if ever, does one derive from it an impression that the children are growing to regard one another's feelings, or one another's thoughts. A further point must be mentioned. I hinted that there might be an additional cause, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... writers. Achilles stands as tall as Troy, Merlin is as old and as wise as the world. Rhythm and poetical expression are essential attributes of dramatic genius, but the original sign of race and mission is an instinctive modulation of man with the deeds he attempts or achieves. The man and the deed must be cognate and equal, and the melodic balance and blending are what first separate Homer and Hugo from the fabricators of singular adventures. In Scott leather ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a preacher, making him strike unerringly those master chords that are common and universal in every audience. Gifts of oratory he had, both natural and acquired,—a full, melodious voice, so sympathetic in modulation and so attuned to [131] reverence that I have heard more than one person say that his first few words in the pulpit did more towards lifting them to a truly religious frame of mind than the whole service ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... spot on the dial where there was re-radiation of his message, as if from a tuned receiver. But he could not get a fix on it, and nobody might be listening. He exhausted the normal communication pattern. Then he broadcast on old-fashioned amplitude modulation which a modern communicator would not pick up at all, and which therefore might be used by men ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... it is the sky which makes the landscape. Given the identical fields, woods, and retreating hills, and every change of sky, every modulation of light, will produce a new landscape; in light and atmosphere are concealed those mysteries of colour, of distance, and of tone which clothe the changeless features of the visible world with infinite variety and charm. This fruitful marriage of the upper and the lower firmaments ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... what I have been saying about Oxford Street and the House of Commons in this book, strike out all after Oxford Street and read Broadway, and all after the House of Commons and read Congress, and it would be essentially true with the necessary English or American modulation. In the same way it would be possible to go through and strike out all after the President and read ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... less prosperous Member States; NOTING that the European Investment Bank is lending large and increasing amounts for the benefit of the poorer regions; NOTING the desire for greater flexibility in the arrangements for allocation from the Structural Funds; NOTING the desire for modulation of the levels of Community participation in programmes and projects in certain countries; NOTING the proposal to take greater account of the relative prosperity of Member States in the system of own resources, REAFFIRM that the promotion of economic and social cohesion is vital to the ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... her affections. Speak that word—bolt and bar fly open: she takes you by the hand and welcomes you to her most sacred and secluded retreat. That word is sympathy: let her feel it in your tender embrace, see it in the glance of your eye, hear it in the modulation of your voice. It is for this she yearns and sighs, and refuses to be ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... limb of a tree, to keep her in position. As soon as she had attained the upright attitude, another peal of laughter came ringing from her lips, as wild as that with which she had announced her approach; but there was also in its tones a certain modulation that betokened scorn! Neither of us uttered a syllable; but, observing a profound silence, stood waiting to hear what she had to say. Another scornful laugh, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... can be raised and lowered at the bird's will, or be made to quiver and roll, and by this means the air column forced up from the lungs is manipulated in a wonderful way, producing in some cases an almost unlimited variety of modulation. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... sing or try to sing, though he had a deep, manly voice, read as very few are able to read, and his modulation was rich and varied, and very agreeable, both to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... brings some others. The wounded man calls: 'Kamerad! Do not kill me!' We reassure him as to our intentions, and as he has a shattered hip we carry him to our lines, and on the way in spite of his suffering, he keeps on repeating with every kind of modulation, 'Good comrade.' He was a young man, scarcely eighteen years old, of the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the Lady Jane's attention, A modulation toward the theatre, Also, in the case of revolution, ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... the use of suitable fields of force it can be used as a carrier wave. Most of this stuff of the fields of force—how to carry the modulation up and down through all the frequency changes necessary—was figured out by the Martians ages ago. Used as a pure carrier wave, with a sender and a receiver at each end, it isn't so bad—that's why our communicator and radio systems ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... others were grave. The rest of the band, as well as those who performed upon the bamboos, sung a slow and soft air, which so tempered the harsher notes of the above instruments, that no bye-stander, however accustomed to hear the most perfect and varied modulation of sweet sounds, could avoid confessing the vast power, and pleasing effect, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... island is but little. I saw the harvest of a small field. The women reaped the Corn, and the men bound up the sheaves. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of the harvest song, in which all their voices were united. They accompany in the Highlands every action, which can be done in equal time, with an appropriated strain, which has, they say, not much meaning; but its effects are regularity and cheerfulness. The ancient proceleusmatick ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... % 140. [Difference at different times.] Change. — N. change, alteration, mutation, permutation, variation, modification, modulation, inflexion, mood, qualification, innovation, metastasis, deviation, turn, evolution, revolution; diversion; break. transformation, transfiguration; metamorphosis; transmutation; deoxidization[Chem]; transubstantiation; mutagenesis[Genet], transanimation[obs3], transmigration, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... kind of whistle, chiefly used at theatres, to interrupt the actors, and damn a new piece. It derives its name from one of its sounds, which greatly resembles the modulation of an intriguing ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... this bit!" said Lancelot, desperately. And dashing at a piano that stood handy, he played a couple of bars. "That's quite a new modulation." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Poetry shapes this modulation into uniformity for its outline, and variety for its parts, because it thus realizes the last idea of beauty itself, which includes the charm of diversity within the flowing round ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... they alight on Charles Avison's "Grand March."[135] It is a simple continuous air, such as hearts could beat to in the olden time, though flat and somewhat thin, and unrelieved by those caprices of modulation which are essential to modern ears; and as it repeats itself in Mr. Browning's brain, the persistent melody gains force from its very persistence: till it fills with the sound, as it were glows with the aerial clashings, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... written at Ravenna; it is so said within itself; and the description of Dante's sepulchre there may be quoted for its truth, and the sweet modulation of the moral reflection interwoven ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... turf; as such he had often seen the brilliant 'sportman,' Victor de Mauleon; sometimes talked to him. Yes, that was the voice,—the slight Norman intonation (Victor de Mauleon's father had it strongly, and Victor had passed some of his early childhood in Normandy), the subdued modulation of speech which had made so polite the offence to men, or so winning the courtship to women,—that was Victor de Mauleon. But why there in that disguise? What was his real business and object? My confrere had no time allowed to him to prosecute such inquiries. Whether Victor or the rich ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that our analysis has confined itself to the barest elements of the musical experience. Our music to-day, with its many-voiced harmonies, with its procession of chords instead of single tones, with its modulation into related keys, has an infinite wealth and complexity defying description. A large part of the astonishing effect of music is derived from the fact that in a brief space we seem to hear and absorb so much: the careers ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... his I ever saw, "Gente Conocida," impressed me, I remember, at a time when I understood about one word in ten and had to content myself with following the general modulation of things, as carrying on to the stage, the moment the curtain rose, the very people, intonations, phrases, that were stirring in the seats about me. After the first act a broad-bosomed lady in black silk leaned back in ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... he's perfect." He began to quote softly and fluently, to her uttermost surprise. His English was at times a thing to shudder at, but his Greek was irreproachable, perfect in its modulation and its flow. Freed from all flaws of accent, the musical quality of his voice declared ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... to the new hymns was probably that species of sobbing, without distinct notes, which is still the music of the Greek Church, of the Maronites, and in general of the Christians of the East. It is less a musical modulation than a manner of forcing the voice and of emitting by the nose a sort of moaning in which all the inflections follow each other with rapidity. That odd melopoeia was executed standing, with the eyes fixed, the eyebrows crumpled, the brow ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... possesses a powerful, masculine voice, and who is a very popular speaker, but she is an exception. Anyhow I believe the worst speaker, male or female, could improve by practising private declamation, and awakening to the importance of articulation, modulation, and—the pause. ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... satisfied with seeing and whose ear with hearing? Who would rather have the truth than the power to seek it? There is a way of reading Ecclesiastes and Schopenhauer with a triumphant lilt in the voice. After all, it is the modulation that carries the message of the text. When you write the history of love, I find it fair reading. When you tell me love is primal and engrossing, I hold it the more a sin to crouch away ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... lovely and beloved, thou my love; Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes, Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise, Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above All modulation of the deep-bowered dove, Is like a hand laid softly on the soul; Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control Those worn tired brows it hath the ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... Mr. Torrens." A modulation of Gwen's tone was not done intentionally. It came with her wish to change ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the King, it may be added, no nomination could have given greater satisfaction. The official odes of Warton evince all the elegant traits which characterize his other writings. Their refined taste and exquisite modulation are admirable; while the matter is far less sycophantic than was to be expected from so devout a monarchist. The tender of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... particular performances with particular words conveyed to him in the finger-language. They unanimously agreed that it was quite impossible. The German set to work, and the young man now speaks very plainly and distinctly: without the least modulation, of course, but with comparatively little hesitation; expressing the words aloud as they are struck, so to speak, upon his hands; and showing the most intense and wonderful delight in doing it. This is commonly acquired, as you know, by the deaf and dumb who learn by sight; but it ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... uncertain note in the answer; if anything, there was in it more than the usual toneless decision. Mac's voice was machine-made—as innocent of modulation as a buzz-saw, and with the same uncompromising finality as the shooting of a bolt. "I'm ready to ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... gives the music for the poetical parts,—music that is little more than a modulation. There is a different notation for the first two lines, but for the other lines this notation is repeated in couplets, except that the last line of each song or laisse—being a half-line—has a cadence of its own. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... richly curling hair blown back from it, is extremely fine and entirely suited to the treatment; as is also the similar contrast between the richly inlaid bow, shield, and arrows, and the broad and flowing modulation of the energetic ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... near mid-day, or before the decline of the sun, the notes of two small birds will be sure to attract our attention. These notes are very similar, and as slender and piercing as the chirp of a grasshopper, being distinguished from the latter only by a different and more pleasing modulation. The birds to which I refer are the Red Start (Muscicapa ruticilla) and the Speckled Creeper (Sylvia varia). The first is the more rarely seen of the two, being a bird of the deep forest, and shunning observation by hiding himself in the most obscure parts of the wood. In general appearance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... outpouring when sitting at the piano in a lonely, dreary hour, perhaps in the twilight. The quaver figure rises aspiringly, and the sustained parts swell out proudly. The piquant cadenza forestalls in the progression of diminished chords favourite effects of some of our more modern composers. The modulation from C sharp minor to D major and back again (after the cadenza) is very ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... meson]; third, the conjunct, termed [Greek: synemmenon]; fourth, the disjunct, named [Greek: diezeugmenon]; the fifth, which is the highest, is termed in Greek [Greek: hyperbolaion]. The concords, termed in Greek [Greek: symphoniai], of which human modulation will naturally admit, are six in number: the fourth, the fifth, the octave, the octave and fourth, the octave and fifth, and the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... for an answer, he sprung to the other side of the street, and was lost in darkness. Immediately on his disappearance, we heard him give a low whistle of peculiar modulation, which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... remember, said she, putting her delicate arm upon his, remember your character and my honour. My master instantly dropped upon his knees, with eyes swimming with love, cheeks glowing with desire, and in the gentlest modulation of voice he said: My dear Caroline, in a few months our hands will be indissolubly united at the altar; our hearts I feel are already so; the favours you now grant as evidence of your affection are favours indeed; yet, when the ceremony is ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... and the voices, gave her the new sense of being at home. Nevertheless, Daisy mused a little over some things that were not altogether pleasant. The faces that she scanned had none of them the placid nobleness of the face of her black nurse; no voice within her hearing had such sweet modulation; and Daisy felt a consciousness that Juanita's little cottage lay within the bounds of a kingdom which Mrs. Randolph's drawing-room had no knowledge of. Gradually Daisy's head became full of that thought; ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Finck, "Grieg is one of the most original geniuses in the musical world of the present or past. His songs are a mine of melody, surpassed in wealth only by Schubert's, and that only because there are more of Schubert's. In originality of harmony and modulation he has only six equals: Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt. In rythmic invention and combination he is inexhaustible, and as orchestrator he ranks among the most fascinating. To speak of ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... indeterminate tones that stir nothing. Mme. Lasalle it was, with a bevy of ladies, older and younger, among whom it was impossible at first to distinguish one from the other. So similar was in every case the display of French flowers, gloves and embroidery; so accordant the make of every dress and the modulation of every tone. Mme. Lasalle herself was, however, prominent, having a pair of black eyes which once fairly seen were for ever after easily recognizable. Fine eyes, too; bright and merry, which made themselves quite at home in your face in half a minute. She was overflowing ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... attention was attracted by soft strains of music emanating from the room I had just left, and I stood still and listened. Arletta had evidently set the orchestral mechanism in motion again, and was accompanying it by tenderly singing her own requiem. With tremulous modulation, her vocal chords produced sounds such as I had never heard before, and of which I am powerless to give the faintest description. Like a statue, I stood and listened to the almost supernatural melody, and inwardly prayed that it might continue forever. ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive, to our minds, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... metultron, surrounded by an insulating shell of inertron, and this in turn by a spherical shell of katultron, from which the current radiates in every direction, tuning being accomplished by frequency of intermissions, with audio-frequency modulation. The receiving battery has a core pole of katultron and an outer shell of metultron. The receiving battery, of course, picks up all frequencies, the undesired ones being tuned out ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... Duc de Navarreins would be very useful to me, with an all-powerful person in Russia,' she went on, persuasion in every modulation of her voice, 'whose intervention I need in order to have justice done me in a matter that concerns both my fortune and my position in the world, that is to say, the recognition of my marriage by the Emperor. Is not the Duc de Navarreins ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... gentle rest from my sleeping eye, nor doth the loud-chattering sea-mew suffer me to rest in the night, forcing its wearisome tale into my dainty ears; nor when I would lie down doth it suffer me to be refreshed, clamouring with doleful modulation of its ill-boding voice. Safer and sweeter do I deem the enjoyment of the woods. How are the fruits of rest plucked less by day or night than by tarrying tossed on ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... manner in which, in general, the verses of the French tragedy are repeated, and the delight which the French people take in the uniform and balanced modulation of voice with which they are accompanied. In an ordinary actor, this peculiar tone is often, to many foreigners, extremely fatiguing, but it is defended in France, as securing a pleasure in some degree independent of the merits of the actor, and defending ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... eloquent orator or preacher, or to a man calling angrily to another, or to one expressing astonishment, without being struck with the truth of Mr. Spencer's remarks. It is curious how early in life the modulation of the voice becomes expressive. With one of my children, under the age of two years, I clearly perceived that his humph of assent was rendered by a slight modulation strongly emphatic; and that by a peculiar whine his negative expressed obstinate determination. Mr. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... upturned to the long, jewel-like head of Nagaya, which twined round the summit of the ebony staff, seemed to peer down at her in a sort of drowsy reflectiveness. Then, all suddenly, Lysia spoke, . . how enchanting was the exquisite modulation of that slow, languid, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... sweetness were blended in them. They were articulated with a distinctness that was unexampled in my experience. But this was not all. The voice was not only mellifluent and clear, but the emphasis was so just, and the modulation so impassioned, that it seemed as if an heart of stone could not fail of being moved by it. It imparted to me an emotion altogether involuntary and incontroulable. When he uttered the words "for charity's sweet sake," I dropped the cloth that ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... greatly that he thought it was his own. But in general it is not so much the sentiments and images that are new as the modulation of the verses in which they float. The cold obstruction of two centuries' thaws, and the stream of speech, once more let loose, seeks out its old windings, or overflows musically in unpractised channels. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... And the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used to bring the house down in the days of our grandparents, just as the subtle orchestral blendings of Wagner entrance hearers incapable of distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of following a modulation. ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Boaden's life of my uncle the following notice of Le Texier: "On one of these incidental topics we must pause for a moment, with delighted recollection. We mean the readings of the celebrated Le Texier, who, seated at a desk, and dressed in plain clothes, read French plays with such modulation of voice, and such exquisite point of dialogue, as to form a pleasure different from that of the theatre, but almost as great as we experience in listening to a first-rate actor. We have only to add to a very good account given by Mr. Boaden of this extraordinary ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... his right hand, pointing to the chairman and moving slightly to lend emphasis to his narrative, was the only thing that modified the rigid immobility of his figure. Without a single change in the pitch or modulation of his voice, never hurrying, but speaking with the slow and dreary monotony with which he had begun, he nevertheless—partly by reason of these evidences of his incredible self-control—made a formidable ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... all the other vocal sounds. They are necessarily produced at certain fixed localities or Seats of Sound, in the mouth, and by a certain fixed modulation or mechanical use of the Organs of Speech. At least they are produced in and are confined to certain circumscribed regions of the mouth, and so differ in the method of their production as to be appropriately distributed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... instead of for loudness, he opened a path in which later masters, including Wagner, eagerly followed him. Schubert was also the first composer who revealed the exquisite beauty and the great emotional power of the freest modulation from key to key. His poetic impromptus for piano became the model for Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words," and the multitudinous forms of modern short pieces, while his melodious, dainty, graceful valses were the forerunners ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... tell some secret that must not yet be uttered; and indeed, as he spoke of the change from the little street in Shepherd's Bush to that ancient house in the woods of the far west, a change seemed already to possess himself, and his voice put on the modulation of an antique chant. Mary looked at him steadily and touched his arm, and he drew a long breath before ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... which, as in the best coins, the sculptured mass projects so as to be capable of complete modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. The formation of a coin by the blow of a die necessitates, of course, the severest obedience ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... curious gentle, almost tender, modulation of tone in this last sentence, which covered a good deal of possible ground. Mr. Linden drew up one of her mufflers which had fallen off a little, giving her as he did so a silent though laughing answer, as comprehensive as ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... language tempts to a borrowing from the richer terminology of music. Musical terms, such as "pitch, key, note, tone, chord, modulation, nocturne, and symphony," are frequently used in the description of color, serving by association to convey certain ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... reaped the corn, and the men bound up the sheaves. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of the harvest-song, in which all their voices were united.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... ago most organs were so tuned that the player had to limit himself to certain key signatures if his music was to sound at all pleasant. Using excessive modulation or wandering into forbidden keys resulted in his striking some discordant interval, known as the "wolf." The writer remembers being present at a rehearsal of Handel's "Messiah" in St. George's Hall, Liverpool, Eng., in 1866, when the organ was tuned on the unequal temperament ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... Whinchat, the Pied-Wagtail, and the Spring- Wagtail; yet its imitations are chiefly confined to the notes of alarm (the fretting-notes as they are called here) of those birds, and so exactly does it imitate them in tone and modulation, that if it were to confine itself to one (no matter which), and not interlard the wailings of the little Redpole and the shrieks of the Martin with the curses of the House-Sparrow, the twink, twink of the Chaffinch, and its own care-for-naught ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... French. Her voice struck me—it was so musical, and adapted itself so delicately to varying shades of thought and emotion. I have often reflected how little we get out of the voice in talking. How delightful is the natural modulation which follows the sense, and how much the sense gains if it is so expressed rather than in half-inarticulate grunts, say, between the inspirations and expirations of a ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... she knew not why; her veil hid her features, and masked an expression, which, if seen by the Egyptian, would have at once damped and enraged him; in fact, he never was more displeasing to her—the harmonious modulation of the most suasive voice that ever disguised unhallowed thought fell discordantly on her ear. Her whole soul was still filled with the image of Glaucus; and the accent of tenderness from another only revolted and dismayed; yet she did not conceive ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... little progress in composition, and was more ambitious to become a brilliant performer. Hence by the periodicals of that day, he is not allowed to possess the ability of composition; harshness of modulation, melodies more singular than pleasing, and a constant struggle to be original, are among the principal faults of which he was accused. As to the latter charge it may be remarked, that it is the besetting sin ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... the time to me. Strange how exactly I remember every word he says! I could set down any conversation of his, word for word, from beginning to end; if there were any means of doing so, I could reproduce every modulation of his voice. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... incongruity between practice and precept so commonly exemplified. Comely in all respects, with his black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features, ready and winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous, expressive gestures—an inclination of the head, a lift of the eyebrows, a modulation of the lips, an assertive or deprecatory wave of the hand, conveying so much—and a voice at that time of a singular penetrating sweetness, he was, even without that light of the future upon his forehead which she was so swift to discern, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... pronounced individuality or high artistic uplift, it none the less commands the respect due to the exhibition of a vigorous mentality combined with a notable mastery of orchestral resource and mellifluous modulation. At the conclusion of the performance Mr. Walbrook was constrained to make the transit from the artistes' room to the platform no fewer than three times before the applausive zeal of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... shews all the initial letters, or their powers in the language; the second, the number of terminations, or the remaining part of the monosyllable beside the initial; and the third, expresses the number of monosyllabic sounds that may be given to each by inflexion, or modulation of voice, and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... was of singular quality; if she raised it the effect was not agreeable, owing possibly to its lack of strength, but in low tones, such as she employed at present, it fell on the ear with a peculiar sweetness, a natural melody in its modulation. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... stand, may hear a sermon, but it will be that of mere sound to him. I have known of people hearing somewhat after the same manner. They can tell nothing, and seem to remember nothing of what they have heard. Some hear to criticise the preacher's style of expression, including his language, modulation of his voice, and gestures. Others hear as the Pharisees and Herodians tried to hear Christ, "that they might catch him in his talk;" and like the scribes and Pharisees, "laying in wait for him, to catch something out of his mouth" with which to accuse him. But these ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... trace to excite obscene thoughts. Never was a child rubbed with oil below the belt; the rest of their bodies thus retained its fresh bloom and down, like a velvety peach. They were not to be seen approaching a lover and themselves rousing his passion by soft modulation of the voice and lustful gaze. At table, they would not have dared, before those older than themselves, to have taken a radish, an aniseed or a leaf of parsley, and much less eat fish or thrushes or cross ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al |
