"Symphony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... individual who does not comprehend, say, the influence of Wordsworth on Tennyson. But that is only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder, if requested to explain the influences that went to make Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic Symphony"? ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... Christ as being a mere figure. It is something a great deal more than that, and when once a man's eye is opened to look for it in the New Testament it is wonderful how it flashes out from every page and underlies the whole teaching. The Gospel of John, for example, is but one long symphony which has for its dominant theme 'I am come that they might have life.' And that great teaching—which has been so vulgarised, narrowed, and mishandled by sacerdotal pretensions and sacramentarian superstitions—that great teaching of Regeneration, or the new birth, rests upon this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... a symphony of Beethoven was to be played, Cosmo led Amos Blank through the crowded saloon and placed him near the musicians. He resisted at first, and when he saw the crowd he ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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, but you get my meaning?" In making ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... into the Old Manse as a boarder. The notion was sometimes alluded to by my mother in after-years with unfading horror.] I should like much to hear something about yourselves; what the genius loci says, whether through voice of ghost, or rat, or winter wind, or kettle-singing symphony to the happy duet; and whether by any chance you sometimes give a thought to ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... higher art of music—viz., that of symphony—there has been a working-out of the taste for the symmetric, the well proportioned, and the agreeable sounding; in other words, the beautiful as to proportion, charm of melody, and the satisfactory in harmony. In symphony the tragic and the ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Overhead, the cocos join in a continuous and lofty roof; blackbirds are heard lustily singing; the island cock springs his jubilant rattle and airs his golden plumage; cow-bells sound far and near in the grove; and when you sit in the broad verandah, lulled by this symphony, you may say to yourself, if you are able: "Better fifty years of Europe..." Farther on, the floor of the valley is flat and green, and dotted here and there with stripling coco-palms. Through the midst, with many changes of music, the river trots and brawls; and along its course, where we should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of time left him. The symphony of the hill winds from the south was in his ears; the beauty of the day in all his being. Vividly he recalled their ride in the early dawn and the brief moment she had lain unconscious in his arms. Ever since that moment he had barricaded himself against ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... better still, from their point of view, float downstream to found new colonies afar. When the beautiful jewelweed - a conspicuous sufferer - is hung about with dodder, one must be grateful for at least such symphony ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... to run Bouchalka down, but when we did find him Cressida promptly busied herself in his behalf. She sang his "Sarka" with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra at a Sunday night concert, she got him a position with the Symphony Orchestra, and persuaded the conservative Hempfstangle Quartette to play one of his chamber compositions from manuscript. She aroused the interest of a publisher in his work, and introduced him to people who were helpful ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... more simple glass for long-stemmed roses, carnations, or daisies; brown Van Briggle, Grueby, or Rookwood bowls for nasturtiums, golden rod, and black-eyed Susans; green for hollyhocks, dull red for dahlias, gladioli, etc., flowers and receptacles thus forming a true color symphony. ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... not always in working order at a moment's notice, so we had time for a walk round. The afternoon breeze was conducting a symphony of perfumes, and, as we strolled among the blossoms that were the orchestra, we could identify the part played by each flower; sometimes one became more prominent, sometimes another, but always through the changing harmonies we could distinguish the stately canto fermo of the roses, counterpointed ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... I could walk into Hampton Court Palace and the National Gallery (on free days) and enjoy Mantegna and Michael Angelo whilst millionaires were yawning miserably over inept gluttonies; because I could suffer more by hearing a movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony taken at a wrong tempo than a duchess by losing a diamond necklace, I was indifferent to the repulsive fact that if I had fallen in love with the duchess I did not possess a morning suit in which I could reasonably have expected her to touch me with ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... to myself an illustration: A bright young man is present at a grand concert. It is between the parts. He bends suavely over the back of a lady's chair and talks sweet music to her ear. He says: "Could you not follow every thought of the composer in that symphony?" (which they have just heard). "And was not the effect sublime when the storm reached the heights of the mountains, and all the elements of Nature struggled so stubbornly?" And the young woman ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... stood swaying at the Disk's base. The Keeper bent; angled. Again the planes above the supporting square hovered over the tablet. The tendrils swept down, pushed here and there, playing upon the rods some unknown symphony ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... myriad lyres that peal through Heaven's domes. But, oh! how sad and sweet the notes now come! Like music of the spheres that softly hum; It rises, falls, with measured melody, With saddest notes and mournful symphony. From all the universe sad notes repeat With doleful strains of woe transcendent, sweet; Hush! hear the song! my throbbing heart be still! The songs of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... tribute of an unutterable awe. If that be religion, I profess myself as religious as Mr. Wells. I am even willing to join him in some outward, ceremonial expression of that sentiment, if he can suggest one that shall not be ridiculously inadequate. What about kneeling through the C Minor Symphony? That seems to me about as near as we can get. Or I will go with him to Primrose Hill some fine morning (like the Persian Ambassador fabled by Charles Lamb) and worship the Sun, chanting to ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... individuality to the general purpose. Without this method a play when acted is at best a disjoined and incoherent piece of work, instead of being a harmonious whole like the fine performance of an orchestral symphony. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... mediocre and heroic, all between two heart beats; but the dead ask only our love. Genoa has never asked it, and never will. She is one of us, her future is hidden from her, and into her mystery none has dared to look. She is like a symphony of modern music, full of immense gradual crescendos, gradual diminuendos, unknown to the old masters. Only Rome, and that but seldom, breathes with her life. But through the music of her life, so modern, so full of a sort of whining and despair in which ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the Russian evoked the image of his compatriot, Michael Bakounine, another revolutionist, the father of anarchy, weeping with emotion at a concert after hearing the symphony with Beethoven chorals directed by a young friend of his, named Richard Wagner. "When our revolution comes," he cried, clasping the hand of the master, "whatever else may perish, this must be ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... before me, vanish in the multitude of my impressions, until I seize them anew with increased vigour no more to be parted from them. It is then that my transports give them every diversity of modulation: it is I who triumph over the first of these musical thoughts, and the shape I give it I call symphony. Yes, Bettina, music is the link between ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... ye happy people, And peal the changing chime From every belfried steeple In symphony sublime: Let cottage and let palace Be thankful and rejoice, And woods and hills and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... wind among the woods at evening, now strong and sonorous as the storm-wind battling with the mountain-pine. Saul is a vision of life, of time and of eternity, told in song as sublime as the vision is steadfast. The choral symphony of earth and all her voices with which the poem concludes is at once the easiest passage to separate from its context, and (if we may dare, in such a matter, to choose) one, at least, of the very ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common—this is to be my symphony." ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Symphony Club rehearsal this afternoon and report it. You've just ten minutes to get there," and Patty ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... light touches on the strings of a guitar followed, and then a symphony was rapidly and beautifully executed, by ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... have I been since my last Letter: and have seen the Old Masters; and finished them off by such a Symphony as was worthy of the best of them, two Acts of Mozart's 'Cosi.' You wrote me that you had 'assisted' at that also: the Singing, as you know, was inferior: but the Music itself! Between the Acts a Man sang a song of Verdi's: which was a strange ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... from bed to put on his armour, a necessary precaution if what he saw should really be a wild creature and at liberty; but the instant he stirred, a deep growl was uttered, such as the Count had never heard, but which might be compared to the sound of a thousand monsters at once; and, as the symphony, was heard the clash of iron chains, and the springing of a monstrous creature towards the bedside, which appeared, however, to be withheld by some fastening from attaining the end of its bound. The roars which it uttered now ran thick on each other. They were most tremendous, and must have ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... reassurance, some ground for felicitation. This rash challenge had consequences merely dreadful; the wretched volumes, imperturbable and impeccable, with their shyer secrets and their second line of defence, were like a beautiful woman more denuded or a great symphony on a new hearing. There was something quite sinister in the way they stood up to me. I couldn't however be dumb—that was to give the wrong tinge to my disappointment; so that later in the afternoon, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... there comes an onward phrase to me Of some transcendent music I have heard; No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered, No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory. But a glad strain of some still symphony That no proud ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... God, suffer from the melancholy of a cellar: my solitude is gay with light and verdure; I attend, whenever I please, the fields' high festival, the Thrushes' concert, the Crickets' symphony; and yet my friendly commerce with the Spider is marked by an even greater devotion than the young type-setter's. I admit her to the intimacy of my study, I make room for her among my books, I set her in the sun on my window-ledge, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... thither, they were buffeted, and choked, and blinded, but never once did he lose his presence of mind. Every now and then he even shouted out a few words to Erica. How strange his voice sounded in that chaos, in that raging symphony ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a German street-band will be recognized as a powerful tonic; a cornet solo will take the place of a blister; a symphony or a sonata may be recommended instead of morphine; the moxa will give way to Wagner, and opium to Brahms. A prolonged shake by a singer will drive out chills and fever, according to the theory of Hahnemann. Cots at symphony concerts may yet ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... subject-matter without meaning, though in truth the style cannot really be abstracted from the sense, still the style would, on that supposition, remain as perfect and original a work as Euclid's elements or a symphony of Beethoven. And, like music, it has seized upon the public mind; and the literature of England is no longer a mere letter, printed in books, and shut up in libraries, but it is a living voice, which has gone forth in its expressions and its sentiments into the world of men, which ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... For eight miles an hour he puts it on slightly, so that it only scrapes the wheel, producing a continuous sound as of the sharpening of a saw; for four miles an hour he screws it down harder, and you travel to an accompaniment of groans and shrieks, suggestive of a symphony of dying pigs. When he desires to come to a full stop, he puts it on to its full. If his brake be a good one, he calculates he can stop his carriage, unless the horse be an extra powerful animal, in less than twice ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... existed. I know no more dismal spectacle than a man talking shop on a moonlit hill in August, a woman gossipping by the rail of a steamer plunging through the sapphire of the Gulf Stream, or a couple perusing advertisements throughout a Beethoven symphony. I will not advance as typical a drummer I once saw read a cheap magazine from cover to cover in the finest stretch of the Canadian Rockies. He was not a man, but a sample-fed, word-emitting machine. These people, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... successful. I did stay out of sports—too dangerous; entertainment—didn't lend itself too well to the group approach; and music—they had never developed or used sound, and we agreed not to go into it. As I figured it, music in the soul may be very beautiful; but a full-size symphony in a sinus I could ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... notice anything; but after going some four or five hundred yards, he turned his head, while executing a symphony with his whip, and saw that the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... English university towns, it has been largely from among those who are seriously interested in a literary drama that the audiences have been drawn. It was such people as do not habitually go to the theatre, but that are to be found at revivals of old English comedy and Ibsen plays and symphony concerts, that made up the audiences of the Irish Players in America, whether in Boston or in Philadelphia or Chicago. These audiences approximated to the Dublin audiences only in the fact that they ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... quickening in her pulses; the old magic of Spring was stirring in her, too. Dark and deep, the waters of the river rolled dreamily by, waiting for the impulse which should send the shallows singing to the sea, and stir the depths to a low, murmurous symphony. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... but it is fundamental in our appreciation of music, poetry, and the plastic arts. From the sciences, likewise, we derive the satisfaction of symmetry on a magnificent scale. There is beauty as of a great symphony in the sweep and movement of the solar system. There is a quiet and infinite splendor about the changeless and comparatively simple structure which physics, in the broadest sense, reveals beneath the seeming multiplicity and variety of things. It is a desire for beauty as well as a thoroughgoing ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Reality, they think, inhabits yet inconceivably exceeds all that they know to be—as the soul of the musician controls and exceeds not merely each note of the flowing melody, but also the whole of that symphony in which these cadences must play their part. That invulnerable spark of vivid life, that "inward light" which these men find at their own centres when they seek for it, is for them an earnest of the Uncreated Light, the ineffable ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... situation had been developing beyond anything she had ever dreamed of; she was aquiver as to what might happen next. So absorbed was she in her chaos of feeling and thoughts that she did not even hear the humble symphony of the hundreds of bees drawing their treasure from the golden hearts of the roses; and did not see, across the path a score of yards away, the tall figure of Joe Ellison among the rosebushes, pruning-shears in ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... way," said the Woman of the World, "talking of music, have you heard that last symphony of Grieg's? It came in the last parcel. I have ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... story of a life which was so filled with the Holy Ghost that this Man became the symbol of the Most High, the sacrament of His Being and Presence, the sacred shrine of Deity. As when the long-drawn travail of instrumentation labors through the opening movements of the ninth symphony, with a strain too fine for any voicing save by man, there bursts at length upon the tumultuous storm of sound the clear, high, song of joy from human lips; so from the mounting efforts of a nation's insufficient utterance there rises at last a voice, which takes up every groaning ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... at the symphony the other day, and she spoke of going out to Denver to visit her mother; but she didn't say anything about the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... in that great symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live world's throbbing heart shall be One with our heart; the stealthy, creeping years Have lost their terrors now; we shall not die— The universe ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... from the flower, shaking the yellow dust—A Hen comes on the scene as in La Fontaine's fable. A Cuckoo calls, as in Beethoven's symphony. ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... sphears;{34} Once bless our humane ears (If ye have power to touch our senses so), And let your silver chime Move in melodious time, And let the base of Heav'ns deep organ blow, And with your ninefold harmony Make up full consort{35} to th' angelike symphony. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... SYMPHONY, an elaborate orchestral composition consisting usually of four contrasted and related movements; began to take distinctive shape in the 17th century, and was for long merely a form of overture to operas, &c., but as its possibilities were perceived was elevated ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... program for a musical evening would consist of the conversation or paper upon a certain musical form, such as the opera, symphony, or perhaps dance music, being illustrated and varied by the performance of examples of those forms. The organized musical clubs could here be of the greatest service in taking ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... brought to a successful conclusion when Helen, hanging head downward by one foot from a trapeze, balances lighted lamp on the other foot and plays Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the slide trombone. ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... centre of the ground stood the Government Building, with a ready-made look out of keeping with the other architecture. Critics declared it the only discordant note in the symphony, Looking from the Illinois Building across the North pond, one saw the Art Palace, of pure Ionic style, perfectly proportioned, restful to view, contesting with the Administration Building for the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... might have seen a dozen such audiences in Berlin, that night—and yet tourists generally speak of Berlin, compared with some of the German provincial cities, as a rather graceless, new sort of place, full of bad sculpture and Prussian arrogance. You might have seen them at the opera or symphony concerts, at Shakespeare, Strindberg, or the German classics we used to read in college, or standing in line at six o'clock, sandwiches in hand, so that they might sit through a performance of "Peer Gynt," with the Grieg music, beginning at seven ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... dinner, there came hot towels and tappings on his face, and other ministrations. All was done about half past ten, and when he came downstairs again for a short practice at the bass part of Beethoven's fifth symphony, ingeniously arranged for two performers on the piano, he looked with sincere satisfaction at his rosy face in the Cromwellian mirror, and his shoes felt quite comfortable again, and his nails shone like pink stars, as his hands dashed wildly about the piano in the quicker passages. But all ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... oasis in the midst of a wind-swept, snow-covered region. The usual Swiss trade of wood-carving appeared to be the principal occupation of the community. The single narrow street was thronged with goats, whose jingling many-toned bells made an incessant and agreeable symphony. Under the projecting roofs of the log-built chalets bundles of dried herbs swung in the frosty air; stacks of fir-wood, handy for use, were piled about the doorways, and here and there we noticed a huge dog of the St Bernard breed, with solemn face, and massive paws that left tracks ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... produced by it. They have a full tone between each first and second note, and a semitone between each third and fourth, and yet the same feelings are awakened in them by their music as in us by ours, so that harmony itself is simply a matter of education after all, and the glorious Fifth Symphony itself, "Lohengrin," or "Scots wha hae," played or sung as I have heard them, would convey no more meaning to these people than so much rattling of cross-bones; but imagine the Fifth Symphony on any scale but ours! I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that we have not ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... lead the way toward opera. Orchestral music was more remote from opera. If Claude set some wonderful poem, and a man like Jacob Crayford heard the setting, he might see a talent for opera in it. But he could scarcely see that in a violin concerto, a quartet for strings, or a symphony. So she argued. And she searched anxiously for words which might be set dramatically, descriptively. She dared not assail Claude yet with a libretto for opera. She felt sure he would say he had no talent ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... convenient to be able to speak of them as wholes, are what I call logical constructions or symbolic fictions. The particulars are to be conceived, not on the analogy of bricks in a building, but rather on the analogy of notes in a symphony. The ultimate constituents of a symphony (apart from relations) are the notes, each of which lasts only for a very short time. We may collect together all the notes played by one instrument: these may be regarded as the analogues of the successive ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... insubstantial, a water-colour, painted in grey and amber on a field of luminous blue. If he had wished it, he could have bathed himself in flowers; hyacinths, crocuses, jonquils, camellias, roses, grew round him everywhere, sending up a symphony of warm odours; further on, in the grass, violets, anemones, celandine; further still, by the margins of the pond, narcissuses, and tall white flowers-de-luce; and, in the shrubberies, satiny azaleas; and overhead, the magnolia ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... persuasion, had, with one exception, induced the occupants of the little gray house to share it with her. Soon afterward Mr. Stevens, Constance's foster-father, whose name she still bore and refused to change, had accepted a position as first violin in a symphony orchestra and had gone to fulfill his destiny in the world of music which he loved. Uncle John Roland and little Charlie, once puny and crippled, but now strong and rosy, had, with Constance, come into the lonely old woman's household at a time when she most needed ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... and the alarming frankness of Mrs. Lawrence were not all her life at the Home Club. With pretty Rose Larsen and half a dozen others she played. They went in fluttering, beribboned parties to the theater; they saw visions at symphony concerts, and slipped into exhibits of contemporary artists at private galleries on Fifth Avenue. When spring came they had walking parties in Central Park, in Van Cortlandt Park, on the Palisades, across Staten Island, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... power of allowing ourselves to be bored may seem to give the fine arts a chance sometimes. People will sit through a performance of Beethoven's ninth symphony or of Wagner's Ring just as they will sit through a dull sermon or a front bench politician saying nothing for two hours whilst his unfortunate country is perishing through the delay of its business in Parliament. But their endurance is very bad for the ninth symphony, because they never ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... silent—everything. But up in the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent. I listened so long to this ceaseless faint murmur that it began to bewilder me; it was surely a symphony from the rolling spheres above. Stars that intone ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... ballad most beautifully sung. He half-guessed then that she had genius; at least, he admitted that it was something more than just her beauty and her sorrow that so greatly stirred him. To speak such sentences in such a voice—that was a gift. She had no more need of words than had a symphony. The varied and vibrant cadences of her voice gave every delicate shading of feeling, of thought. She was utterly expressive. All night, after he had seen her eat and sent her to her bed, the phrases of her music kept repeating themselves ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... resumed her seat before the instrument, and played the symphony of an aria from "Favorite," which Salome placed on the piano-board. Barilli had assured her that she rendered this fiery burst of rage and hatred as well as he had ever heard it; and, folding her fingers tightly around each other she drew herself up to her ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a touch of self-mockery. 'When I am safe on shore again, I shall weave my symphony of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... allotted call. Much strange music emanates from the well-filled tank; the indescribable cries of the purple coots, the curious "fixed bayonets" of the cotton teal and the weird cat-like mews of the jacanas form the dominant notes of the aquatic symphony. ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... momentarily betrayed him, he caught the untamed instrument in mid-air, just as it was treacherously getting away from him, frantically balanced it there for an instant on all his clutching finger-tips, and had it prisoner again for a renewal of the weird symphony. ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... of Spring serene, 'Tis I thy joyous heart I ween, With sympathy shall move: For I with living melody Of birds in choral symphony, First wak'd thy soul to poesy, To piety ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... in honor of Napoleon. Before dinner he was presented with a table-service of silver-gilt by the city of Paris. Then he took his seat, with the Empress, on a platform beneath a canopy, and the meal began. During dinner, a band, hidden behind green foliage, played a symphony of Haydn's, and then was sung a cantata full of flattery for ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... determines the crowd's heart-beat. The man who has the most dominion over the imaginations of most of us, who stands up high before us out in front of our lives, the man who, as with a great baton, day after day, night after night, conducts, as some great symphony, the fate of the world above our heads, who determines the deep, unconscious thoughts and motives, the inner music or sing-song, in which we live our lives, is the man to whom we look for ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Joint Chiefs of Staff took their orders from Mr. Tannenwald, who was, according to the New York Times, "the Administration's composer, orchestrator and conductor of the most important legislative symphony of the Congressional session." ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... musicians, in order to keep together, agreed at length to follow the slight indications of time which the concertmeister (first violin-player) gave them; and not to attend to Beethoven's conducting-stick. Moreover, it should be observed, that conducting a symphony, an overture, or any other composition whose movements remain continual, vary little, and contain few nice gradations, is child's play in comparison with conducting an opera, or like work, where there are recitatives, airs, and numerous orchestral designs preceded ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... perpetually talking of their Symphonies. Did we forget and did they forget his immortal friend and countryman, Rossini? What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in a concert-room? What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony under another name? Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this, and this, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand had ever been composed by mortal man?"—And without waiting for a word of assent or dissent on my part, looking ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... fashionable, artistic crowd. The two young geniuses, George Ranger and Nevil Butt, had just given their rather electrifying performance, one playing the compositions of the other, and then both singing Faure together, and a small band of Green Bulgarians were now playing strenuously a symphony of Richard Strauss, when Cecil and Mrs Raymond appeared together. Lord Selsey received her as if she had been an old friend. When they shook hands they felt at once, after one glance at Cecil and then at each other, that they were more than ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... Miss Finch, who wore her dress high about the neck, and whose form was a symphony in angles, "such promiscuous associations may be shocking, but as to surprise—who knows anything of his life ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... ugliness of life, and they record their unfitness at considerable length. The bold and awful poetry of Job's complaint produces too many flimsy imitators; for there is always something consolatory in grandeur, but the symphony transposed for the piano becomes hysterically sad. This literature of woe, as Whitman calls it, this MALADIE DE RENE, as we like to call it in Europe, is in many ways a most humiliating and sickly phenomenon. Young gentlemen ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... symphonies and the "Creation"; Mozart's symphonies and his masses (though the masses are a little breezier, on the whole); Schubert's symphonies or songs and his masses or "The Song of Miriam"; Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the great Mass ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... bouquet of fire-works formed of everchanging sheafs, luminous flowers with gold and silver foliage, and calices of rubies, sapphires and diamonds; fountains of melted moonbeams, throwing their spray over crystal vases, which sang with voices like a harmonica the arias of the greatest singers. A symphony of perfumes followed this first enchantment, which vanished in a shower of spangles at the end of a few seconds; the theme was a faint odor of iris and acacia bloom which pursued, avoided, crossed ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... days of Caledon, [10] Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd, When lay of hopeless love, or glory won, Aroused the fearful or subdued the proud. At each according pause was heard aloud Thine ardent symphony sublime and high! Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed; For still the burden of thy minstrelsy Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... tempest-ridden sea, The crash of thunder, and the hollow moan Of winds complaining round the mountain-crags, The shrill and quavering cry of birds of prey, The fiercer roar of conflict-loving beasts,— All these wild sounds are potent in their place Within life's mighty symphony; the charm Of truth attunes them, and the hearing ear Finds pleasure in their rude sincerity. Even the broken and tumultuous noise That rises from great cities, where the heart Of human toil is beating heavily With ceaseless murmurs of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... stating that he wrote in the style of the modern Italians, that is to say, what were called the modern Italians in the later part of the last and the earlier part of this century. Elsner tried his strength and ability in all genres, from oratorio, opera, and symphony, down to pianoforte variations, rondos, and dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, imitations, and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... they melted out of sight, yet, seen by their blest Lord, They mingled with the glowing mass, and when in high church tower The bell was hung and daily rung, all people felt its power. Its booming tones were soft and sweet, and echoed o'er their hills In a grand symphony of praise, subduing all their wills, And calling forth from old and young a burst of rapturous praise. Their gifts, though small, were not despised; God turned them into lays. This world is one great smelting pot in which life's ore ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority. Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonise. Perhaps no writers of our times have discovered more of this delicacy of quotation than the author of the "Pursuits of Literature;" and Mr. Southey, in some of his beautiful periodical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... given to German and Flemish pictures and to miniatures, both of which are interesting. In the first are more Duerers, and that alone would make it a desirable resort. Here is a "Virgin and Child"—No. 851—very naive and homely, and the beautiful portrait of his father—No. 766—-a symphony of brown and green. Less attractive works from the same hand are the "Apostle Philip"—No. 777—and "S. Giacomo Maggiore," an old man very coarsely painted by comparison with the artist's father. Here also is a very beautiful portrait of Richard Southwell, by Holbein, with ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Paradise could scarcely be more beautiful; and the pinky-purple blossoms of the alamo shimmering in a rosy mist against dark cypress trees, or mingling with the white lace of hawthorn was a colour-symphony of Spring. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... above, was obscure enough, but crammed with copied loot of khedive and of czar. The seven-branch candlestick so biblical and supplicating of arms. An urn, shaped like Rebecca's, of brass, all beaten over with little pocks. Things—cups, trays, knockers, ikons, gargoyles, bowls, and teapots. A symphony of bells in graduated sizes. Jardinieres with fat sides. A pot-bellied samovar. A swinging-lamp for the dead, star-shaped. Against the door, an octave of tubular chimes, prisms of voiceless harmony and of ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... soul. I always felt that I must obtain religion wholly of myself; now I feel that God has begun the work in me. I am sustained and borne on. That baptism was the most powerful appeal that ever reached my heart. It seems to me, in its connection with the gospel, like a beautiful symphony of instrumental music in an anthem, which strives to interpret the words. It proved an overture to me, indeed, in the best sense. But, my dear sir, how near we came to losing all this ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... whereby an ear-ache becomes a Symphony Concert, a broken finger a diamond ring and a ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... exactly with his temper for the moment. He noted an undercurrent of rejoicing and triumphant cheeriness in the tone of the stream as it plashed among the pebbles on its precipitous bed that suggested to his mind some bars of a symphony which he determined to compose as soon as he got home again ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... lately offered a prize for the best symphony. Eighty-three have been offered, of which one only seems to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Kuyp sat in the first-tier box presented to her husband with the accustomed heavy courtesy of the Societe Harmonique. She went early to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the evening—Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young American composer. If she had gone late, it would have seemed an affectation, she reasoned. Her husband kept within doors; she could tell him all. And then, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was music in herself, A symphony of joyousness. She sang, she sang from finger tips, From every tremble of her dress. I saw sweet haunting harmony, An ecstasy, an ecstasy, In that strange curling of her lips, That happy curling of her lips. ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... English spoken by Celts. Language is, to say the truth, a shifting kaleidoscopic thing: a momentary aspect of racial expression. In a thousand years it becomes unintelligible; we are modifying ours every day, upon laws whose nature can be guessed. Yet ultimately all is a symphony and ordered progression, with regular rhythms recurring; it only seems a chaos, and unmusical, because we hear no more than the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of their singing together, and that "such harmony is in immortal souls," it leaves to poet and philosopher. The timbre, loudness, pitch, of musical tones, is a concern of science; but for this a Beethoven symphony is no better than the latest ragtime air from the music halls. In brief, science deals only with phenomena, and its gift to man is power over his ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... to the music he had heard that morning. All the vague yet eager hopes that had run riot in his brain, for months past, seemed to have been summed up and made clear to him, in one supreme phrase of it, a great phrase in C major, in the concluding movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. First sounded by the shrill sweet winds, it had suddenly been given out by the strings, in magnificent unison, and had mounted up and on, to the jubilant trilling of the little flutes. There was such a courageous sincerity ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... were bright with revelry, The beakers red with wassail; And music's grandest symphony Rung thro' the ancient castle; And she, the brightest of the throng, With wedding-veil and roses, Seemed like the beauty of a song Between ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... into China. I told him that I thought this was improbable, because if the Chinese play games, they do not care who is the winner; the fun of the game is to us the improvisation of it as opposed to the organisation which appeals to the people here. Upon which he said that cricket was like a symphony of music. In a symphony every instrument plays its part in obedience to one central will, not for its individual advantage, but in order to make a beautiful whole. 'So it is with our games,' he said, 'every man plays his part not for the sake of personal advantage, but so that his side may ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... to the sixteenth. A large anthology of poetical, artistic and musical tributes to Luther and the Reformation might be made to show how congenial they were to the spirit of that time. One need only mention Werner's drama on the subject of Luther's life (1805), Mendelssohn's "Reformation Symphony" (1832-3), Meyerbeer's opera "The Huguenots" (1836), and Kaulbach's painting "The Age of the Reformation" (c. 1810). In fact the Reformation was a Romantic movement, with its emotional and mystical piety, its endeavor to transcend the limits of the classic spirit, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... brought a pleasant little surprise for us; but, Mr. Pfeiffer, won't you explain the Children's Symphony to the performers?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... me see," said Joe Dumsby, assuming the air of one who endeavoured to recall something. "Could you come Beet'oven's symphony on ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... asked—Is there not in the regions of Poetry an aeolian harp, found in the cave of AEolus, on which the winds of heaven played many a celestial symphony, without the skill or touch of human hand? Grant all that the Poetic Muse assumes, and then we ask—Who made the harp? And whence directed came the musing sylvan Zephyrus and his choir? Came they not from a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dedicated one of his symphonies to Napoleon. But he lived to regret the hour. When he died in the year 1827, Napoleon was gone and the French Revolution was gone, but the steam engine had come and was filling the world with a sound that had nothing in common with the dreams of the Third Symphony. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the white man with a yell; a passing group of their compatriots joined the affray; the whole mass surged in around the tall fellow. Harrigan's head went back and his eyes half closed like a critic listening to an exquisite symphony. ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... about him seemed to mark the time of some eery music too fine for his senses, and the footfalls in the street below, hurrying footfalls of people shivering through the mists, seemed to be the drum beats of the weird symphony ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... references to his beloved art, and when he was writing "Massimilla Doni" he employed a professional musician to instruct him about it. Beethoven, in particular, he speaks of with the utmost enthusiasm, and after hearing his "Symphony in Ut mineur," he says that the great musician is the only person who makes him feel jealous, and that he prefers him even to Rossini and Mozart. "The spirit of the writer," he says, "cannot give such enjoyment, because what we print is finished ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... free coda, combine to give the whole a character closely analogous to that of a set of contrapuntal variations, such as the slow movement of Haydn's "Emperor" string quartet, or the opening of the finale of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Berlioz is fond of beginning his largest movements like a kind of round; e.g. his Dies Irae, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... motive floats. Presently the strings pierce through it, the Spear motive follows, and then, full of heavy pain, "Drink ye all of this," followed by the famous Grail motive—an old chorale also used by Mendelssohn in the Reformation Symphony. Then comes the noble ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... recognizing consciousness, as is so often true of our own condition in regard to the familiar sounds of nature. It was now almost as if she had received another sense, so strong, sweet, and cheering was the symphony. Robins, song-sparrows, blackbirds, seemed to have gathered in the trees nearby, to give her a jubilant welcome; but she soon found that the music shaded off to distant, dreamlike notes, and remembered that it was a morning chorus of a hemisphere. This universality ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Ralph Waldo Emerson evolved New England Transcendentalism, and very early Henry Thoreau added a few bars of harmonious discords to the symphony. Horace Greeley once contended in a "Tribune" editorial that Sam Staples, the bum bailiff who locked Thoreau behind the bars, was an important factor in the New England renaissance, and as such should be immortalized by a statue made of punk, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... 1870 (Bellalpe).—A marvelous day. The panorama before me is of a grandiose splendor; it is a symphony of mountains, a cantata ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... finished, and the chorus she had inspired had died away, there rose a deep contralto sound, which, though without effort, seemed to Lothair the most thrilling tone he had ever listened to. Deeper and richer, and richer and deeper, it seemed to become, as it wound with exquisite facility through a symphony of delicious sound, until it ended in a passionate burst, which made Lothair's heart beat so tumultuously that for a moment he thought he ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... be a concert, with the artists from the Conservatoire to sing the chorus from Armide, "Jamais en ces beaux lieux," the orchestra performing the symphony in A, and a solo on the horn by Vivier; or else Auber would bring the Opera Comique troupe, Roger, Chollet, and Anna Thillon; or else Arnot played L'Humonste with Mdme. Doche. There were Cabinet Ministers there as well. Lord ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... violins and oboes and 'cellos and brasses of humanity which seemed all at variance with each other will unite as one instrument; seeming discords and dissonances will blend into harmony, and the wail and blare and thrum of humanity's orchestra will sound in your ear the sublime melody of that great symphony ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... music. In the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo we feel impelled to remember phrases of Beethoven. Each of these statues becomes for us a passion, fit for musical expression, but turned like Niobe to stone. They have the intellectual vagueness, the emotional certainty, that belong to the motives of a symphony. In their allegories, left without a key, sculpture has passed beyond her old domain of placid concrete form. The anguish of intolerable emotion, the quickening of the consciousness to a sense of suffering, the acceptance of the inevitable, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... a windy hill. He, he, he!" Ev hit the flask as a trout the fly, and an engineer glared. The gradually rising stage lights signalled the Zero Second in a symphony ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... know nothing of Beethoven's symphony in C, they are not familiar with the melodies of Rossini, Madame Grisi has never in her terrible finale "Qual cor tradisti" made them weep, nor has the orchestra of Monsieur Jullien made them deaf. But what are these splendid wonders of the town to them? Have they not a melodious choir of birds ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Opal Preface Affinity — A Pantheistic Madrigal The Poem of Woman - Marble of Paros A Study of Hands I Imperia II Lacenaire Variations on the Carnival of Venice: I On the Street II On the Lagoons III Carnival IV Moonlight Symphony in White Major Coquetry in Death Heart's Diamond Spring's First Smile Contralto Eyes of Blue The Toreador's Serenade Nostalgia of the Obelisks: I The Obelisk in Paris II The Obelisk in Luxor Veterans of the Old Guard, December 15 Sea-Gloom To a Rose-Coloured Gown The World's ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... many hundreds of citizens and visitors. Eight Christmas Carols and an anthem were sung, the concluding Carol being "The First Nowell"; and the organist (Mr. J. B. Lott, Mus. Bac., Oxon) played the Pastoral Symphony from Sullivan's "Light of the World," Mendelssohn's March ("Cornelius"), the Pastoral Symphony from Handel's "Messiah," and other exquisite voluntaries. From the anthem, E. ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... accompanied his father's band to England, where they went to take part in a demonstration in honor of a Hanoverian, one George the Third, who later was to play a necessary part in a symphony that was to edify the American Colonies. America owes much ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the whole. Or again, only a certain stress and flow in the forms, suggesting line movements. But these line movements flowing through your panel are of the utmost importance; they are like the melodies and subjects of a musical symphony, weaving through and linking up the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... formed behind the town band, whose symphony suffered somewhat from the effort of the musicians to keep one eye on the music and throw the other eye backward ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... provision-routes; sits there, angrily deaf to the voice of the charmer; nothing to be charmed out of him, but gusts of indignation, instead of consent. A proud, high-going, indignant kind of man, with a will of his own. And sees well enough what is what, in all this symphony of the Lacys, the Montalemberts and surrounding adorers. Montalembert, who is here this season, our French best man (unprofitable Swedes must put up with an inferior hand), is extremely persuasive, tries all the arts of French rhetoric, but effects ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... It was, of course, just the moment for him. The multitude, shaken out of its usual symphony-concert calm, quivered with an excitement that was not suppressed. A dozen times it had sprung to its feet to cheer and wave and hurrah, as one person. When this man of culture and voice and power, as well as a dark ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... we can hear the echo of shrill calls of recrimination, muffled reveilles of alarm— pamphlet answering unto pamphlet across seas of misunderstanding— vituperations manifold, and recurring themes of rabid ribaldry—all forming a lurid Symphony in Red. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... practically most mischievous, and leads scores and even hundreds of people to waste their time in the most unprofitable manner that the wit of man can devise, on work in which they can no more achieve even the most moderate excellence than they can compose a Ninth Symphony or paint a Transfiguration. It Is a terrible error to suppose that because one is happily able to relish "Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyll, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie," therefore a solemn mission ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... by sounds of melody issuing from wind, wave, or bird, the rapt mind in strange and pleasing wonder contemplating the new and charming harmonies,—then it was that man received his first impressions, and took his first lessons in delightful symphony. ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... steeple-tops of Frankfurt, especially that steeple-top with the grinning skull of the mutinous malefactor on it, warning to mankind what mutiny leads to; this, then, is what we are to see of Frankfurt; and with such a symphony as our thoughts are playing in the background. Unhappy Son, unhappy Father, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... this country in search of the old saga-island are sometimes a little disappointed at finding here, in place of saga-tellers and bards, a modern community, with its own university, a national theatre, and a symphony orchestra. Be this as it may, literature still holds first place among the arts and cultures. A collection of books is indeed considered as essential a part of a home as the furniture itself. For such visitors, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... characteristic of the prairies than the prairie chicken's melodious booking that echoes afar like the low notes of a vast organ; the dusky grouse's booming call, that may seem to come from a distance even when the bird is near by, has its place in the great symphony of nature, yet these musical sounds are being steadily and relentlessly silenced by the gun of the sportsman. By this silencing that costs the lives of countless hundreds of innocent and harmless birds, the agriculturist is being robbed of one of his most powerful allies in the endless battle ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... This impressive effect is aided, it is true, by an infusion of the lyrical tone and by playing on the pathetic emotions. Roland is ideal and universal, and the story of his defeat, of the blast of his horn, and the last stroke of Durendal, is a kind of funeral march or "heroic symphony" into which a meaning may be read for every new hero, to the end of the world; for any one in any age whose Mood is the more as the Might lessens. Yet although Roland has this universal or symbolical or musical meaning—unlike the more individual personages in the Sagas, who ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been a real symphony of sorrow, passing through its rhythmically linked movements to its certain resolution, with that inevitableness that in Art characterises the treatment of every great theme.... I spoke of your conduct to me on three successive days three years ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... high-flying airplanes, darting like swallows in the shrapnel puffs of anti-air-craft fire. The roar of motors that are being tested, is punctuated by the staccato barking of machine guns, and at intervals the hollow whistling sound of a fast plane diving to earth is added to this symphony of war notes. ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... above my material self so that I might place myself in harmony with the flowing symphony of Absolute Truth," he lectured me sonorously. Oh well, his enrapturement with such terminology differed little from some of the sciences which tended to grow equally esoteric. And maybe it meant something. ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Painting completed whole. Music passing panorama. Not translatable into words. To follow, even anticipate composer. Bach's absolute knowledge. Fire of Prometheus. Inner sanctuary of art. Science of acoustics. Prime elements. Dr. Marx and Helmholtz. Motive. Beethoven's fifth symphony. Phrase. Period. Simple melody. "God Save the King." Our "America." Masters of counterpoint. Bach's fugues. Monophony and polyphony. Classical and romantic. Heretic and hero. Hadow on musical laws. Form the manifestation ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... has given the Venetians their title to fame. This is especially true of Tintoretto, and it becomes more so as he advances. His gamut becomes more golden-brown and mellow; the greys and browns and ivories combine in a lustrous symphony more impressive than gay tints, flooded with enveloping shadow and illumined by flashes of iridescent light. Another noticeable feature is the way in which he puts on his oil-colour, so that it bears the direct impression of the painter's hand. The Florentines had used flat tints, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... symphony of a song of Signor Millico's, in the second act, young Mr. Branghton said, "It's my belief that that fellow's going to sing another song!-why, there's nothing but ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... cymbals. All these were playing the "Little Wee Dog" to their brazen hearts' content, and only one gentleman on a feeble piccolo-flute trying to choke their impiety by tootling out a variation, just as the stringed instruments in the glorious "Reformation Symphony" of Mendelssohn try in vain to drown with their sensuous Roman airs the massive chords of the old Lutheran chorale—"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." I really could not bear it any longer, and was rising to go when they stopped; and as the gentleman who played the circular bass got outside ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... endowed an orchestra with an individual voice; and those two will live mostly because they created Beethoven. Ah, Beethoven! power and strength amidst serene suffering, Michael Angelo at the tomb of the Medici! A heroic logician, a kneader of human brains; for the symphony, with choral accompaniments, was the starting-point of all the great ones ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... been asking the wrong questions ... looking for the Final Fact. Now these are strange matters, brothers. But if a flower blooms, what man shall ask why? What lore do we seek in a symphony...?" ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she play'd, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... masses of tall forms of buildings which were the signs of world-commerce, the oncoming of boats and barges from the still distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of Mordecai's longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light in the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... a perverse digestion. But in a little while laughter broke out, the murmur grew, and voices were raised. The saturnalia, subdued for a moment, threatened at times to renew itself. The alternations of sound and silence bore a distant resemblance to a symphony ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... hear the airy ripple of Auber's 'Zanetta,' the swift passionate storm of Beethoven's 'Egmont,' the symphonic murmur of woods and waters and summer fields in the limpid 'Pastorale,' or the solemn grandeur of sustained pathetic human feeling in the 'Fifth Symphony.' The musical revival was all part of the new birth of the Transcendental epoch, although none would have more promptly disclaimed any taint of Transcendentalism than the excellent officers of the Boston Academy of Music. The building itself, the Odeon, was the old Federal Street Theatre, and had ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... confused twittering of bird-notes which had infused the solemn silence with a vague hint of life, strident sounds grew dominant—a crow calling to his mate from tree to tree—a short, sharp symphony of swallows—a cock announcing the coming of ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the concert of the Cicada, whose bellies sway and rustle with increasing frenzy as the temperature rises. The strident scrapings of the Cicada of the Ash, the Carcan of the district, lend their rhythm to the one note symphony of the common cicada. This is the moment: come along! And, for five or six weeks, oftenest in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, I set myself to explore ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the sort of symphony which Marius had lived since he had been in the habit of seeing Cosette, the past, even the most recent past, had become so confused and distant to him, that what Cosette told him satisfied him completely. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... symphony on the full band—mandolins leading, drums doing bass, and the whole lot of ugly fellows screeching forth what might have been esteemed air or accompaniment, as the case might be. That a sorry musical effect was produced will surprise no one who considers the build ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... same denominational value: he can play fast or loose with them at will. This too is why, in a merely human world without a God, the appeal to our moral energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power. Life, to be sure, is even in such a world a genuinely ethical symphony; but it is played in the compass of a couple of poor octaves, and the infinite scale of values fails to open up. Many of us, indeed,—like Sir James Stephen in those eloquent 'Essays by a Barrister,'—would openly laugh at the very idea of the strenuous mood being awakened ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... symphony concert. They had to go in by the entrance to a music-hall. They went down a winding passage to an ill-ventilated hall: the air was stifling: the seats were very narrow, and placed too close together: part of the audience was standing ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... symphony as above. Here the TAILOR walks round, accompanied by the SQUIRE'S SON. This form is observed after each subsequent introduction, all the new comers ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... who were pushing behind me. When Liszt appeared there was a terrible hissing—he looked as if petrified, glanced like a demon at the public, but nevertheless began to play the Scherzo and Finale of the Pastoral Symphony. Then there burst out a perfect thunder of applause, and all seemed pacified, while Madame Schmidt sang a song accompanied by a certain Mr. Kermann. As soon as that was over, a new storm of hisses arose, which was meant for this Mr. Kermann, who was a pupil, but at the same time ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... heard, not in full symphony as those by which the spheres are tutored; but, as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled; so to accommodate their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... her out into a broad stretch of hard sandy soil that the moon flooded with great splendor. They floated out like drifting moths under the rich hazy light, and as the fantastic symphony wept and exulted and wavered and despaired Ardita's last sense of reality dropped away, and she abandoned her imagination to the dreamy summer scents of tropical flowers and the infinite starry spaces overhead, feeling that if she opened her eyes it would be to find herself dancing ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... him as a companion and a voice. With it he cheered many a weary march or hungry bivouac; through it he told all his heart to the woman he loved; by it he won a place when he had no other means of earning his bread. Hence in "The Symphony," a poem which fronts one of life's hard problems, it is the flute that utters ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... it was probably an heirloom; it was too massive, too ornate for a betrothal ring; still he moved uneasily and set the cup down untasted. His eyes returned to her face, questioning, doubting. He was like a musician surprised to detect in a beautiful symphony the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... pattern of the whole— Can show you, somewhere in its golden scheme, The use of all such discords; and, at last, Their exquisite solution. Then darkness breaks Into diviner light, love's agony climbs Through death to life, and evil builds up heaven. Have you not heard, in some great symphony, Those golden mathematics making clear The victory of the soul? Have you not heard The very heavens opening? Do those fools Who thought me an infidel then, still smile at me For trying to read the stars in terms of song, Discern their orbits, measure their distances, By musical proportions? ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... silver haze of the sky, and on the wilderness of a sea that has sighed till it can sigh no longer. Or it may be heard at some Methodist Camp Meeting upon a Welsh hillside, but in the churches it is gone for ever. If I were a musician I would take it as the subject for the adagio in a Wesleyan symphony. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the Sylph of Spring serene, "'Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween. With sympathy shall move: For I with living melody Of birds in choral symphony, First waked thy soul to poesy, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and ragged robin; bed straw, hops, and wild clematis twined and hung among its branches, and all along its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces, and chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly in its depths, I heard a chirrup and the whirr ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... last-century poets dreamed of as the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. It surpassed Prince Albert's vision of an eternity of International Exhibitions. One would have expected such an occasion to be heralded by Schiller's Ode to Joy sounding through the triumph of the Choral Symphony. Long and dubious has been the music's struggle with pain, but at last, in great simplicity, the voices of the men give out the immortal theme, and the whole universe joins in harmony with ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson |
