"Violoncello" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... white woollen scarf, and the sleeves of the overcoat were finished off with white woollen gloves. Under one arm he carried a vast inanimate form whose extremity just escaped the ground. This form was his violoncello, fragile as a pretty woman, ungainly as a navvy, and precious as honour. Mrs Swann looked down the street, which ended to the east in darkness and a marl pit, and up the street, which ended to the west in Trafalgar Road and electric cars; and she ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... been music on the landing outside my door to-night. Two violins and a violoncello. One of the violins played a solo, and the others struck in as an orchestra does now and then, very well. Then he came in with a small tin platter. "Bella musica," said I. "Bellissima musica, signore. Mi piace moltissimo. Sono felice, signoro," ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... them. Some of them, in alarm, rose high above the bluff, wheeling and darting hither and thither, and the girls could hear their c-h-u-n-g as if some hand, high up in the air, had smote the bass chord of a violoncello. But when the flame from the camp fire arose, terror seized every feathered thing in the bluff, and they all flew, in wild haste, away from the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... purpose some good work on bowing should be studied, but meanwhile a few words on the subject at this point will give the absolute beginner at least a small amount of indispensable information. The signs commonly employed in music for violin, viola, violoncello, and double-bass, to indicate various manners of bowing, are ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... friends unanswered. Music, in which he had formerly delighted, he could not endure to hear from others, after the loss of his first son; though a few months before the death of the second, he had begun to accompany him when he sang, on his own favourite instrument, which was the violoncello. Afterwards, as may be supposed, the sound of it was painful to him. He still took some pleasure in books, and in the company of a very few amongst his oldest friends. This was his condition till the beginning of April 1799, when he was seized with a paralytic stroke, which rendered his speech ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... members of all big families! His eldest brother, Hugh, was bent on making an all-round athlete of him; another brother saw in him an embryo county cricketer, while a third was most particular about his music, giving him lessons on the violoncello with clockwork regularity. The games were terribly thrilling and dangerous, especially when the schoolroom was turned into a miniature battlefield, with opposing armies of tiny lead soldiers. But Donald never turned a ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... Smuggled dinners are private parties in a student's room, when the dinner is brought into college from a tavern: various are the ingenious stratagems of the togati to elude the vigilance of the authorities: trunks, packing-boxes, violoncello-cases, and hampers are not unfrequently directed as if from a waggon or coach-office, and brought into college on the shoulders of some porter. Tin cans of soup are drawn up by means of a string from the back windows in the adjoining street. It is not long since Mr. C- of Christ Church ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... his private theatre two companies, one from Germany and one from Italy. The persons employed in the musical department of his household numbered 124. The principal band, conducted by Dobrzyrnski pere, a good violinist and conductor, consisted of four violins, one viola, one violoncello, one double bass, one flute, one oboe, one clarinet, and one bassoon. Villagers were trained by these players to assist them. Then there was yet another band, one of wind instruments, under the direction of Karelli, a pupil of the Russian composer ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Isolde's voice and sinks into her arms as she enters. The love-motive is heard in the wood-wind like a long dying breath as, breathing the word "Isolde," he expires. The orchestra dies away; one chord is heard alone on the harp, and the violoncello continues the love-motive as he breathes away ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... a lover of music, and her daughters were carefully instructed in singing, and often appeared in operatic performances at court. Maria Theresa's son, afterward the Emperor Joseph, also sang well, and played both the harpsichord and the violoncello. ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... of biographical tattle about the prince's boyhood. It is told with what astonishing rapidity he learned all languages, ancient and modern; how he rode beautifully, sang charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. That he was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high spirit: and once, when he had had a difference with his father, burst into the royal closet and called out, "Wilkes and liberty for ever!" He was so clever, that he confounded his very governors in learning; and one of them, Lord Bruce, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... began by a magnificent symphony, after which Laschi and Baglioni sang a duet with great talent and much taste. They were followed by a pupil of the celebrated Vandini, who played a concerto on the violoncello, and was warmly applauded. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... should have done nothing else[680].' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, did you ever play on any musical instrument?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. I once bought me a flagelet; but I never made out a tune.' BOSWELL. 'A flagelet, Sir!—so small an instrument[681]? I should have liked to hear you play on the violoncello. That should have been your instrument.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I might as well have played on the violoncello as another; but I should have done nothing else. No, Sir; a man would never undertake great things, could he be amused with small. I once tried knotting. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... public; the cleverest of them being a festal march, written for his father's birthday, and a grand funeral march. He shares his father's intense devotion to Bach and Handel, as well as his fondness for the works of Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Mozart, and is a most accomplished performer on the violoncello, being a pupil of the well-known master of that instrument, Professor Luedemann. Prince Albert's sister, the widowed Duchess William of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, has been particularly active as a composer of songs for mezzo soprano, but none ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Beatrice, "lend me that delightful sermon. And can you come and drink tea with me and Selina, and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful Chesterfield Street." And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the most eminent pianist of his time, who also obtained world-wide celebrity as a composer and orchestral conductor, was born at Raiding, Hungary, Oct. 22, 1811. His father was an accomplished amateur, and played the piano and violoncello with more than ordinary skill. He was In his ninth year Liszt played for the first noblemen encouraged him to continue his studies, and guaranteed him sufficient to defray the expenses of six years' tuition. He went to Vienna at once and studied the piano with Czerny, besides taking lessons ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... in 1792, was Andrea Lucchesi, a native of Motta, in the Venetian territory, a fertile and accomplished composer in most styles. The concert-master was Joseph Reicha, a virtuoso upon the violoncello, a very fine conductor, and no mean composer. The violins were sixteen in number; among them were Franz Ries, Neefe, Anton Reicha,—afterward the celebrated director of the Paris Conservatoire,—and Andreas Romberg; violas four, among them Ludwig van Beethoven; violoncellists ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... that all hands were in the gangway; then a violoncello, of whose existence on board I was not aware, was passed up to the hurricane-deck. Landy Perkins played on this instrument, which had been purchased at St. George. I knew that Ben Bowman had formerly played in the Montomercy Brass Band, and I saw him ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... Monsieur Lindemann of Hanover, has promised me to play one or two violoncello solos, and the rest of the programme ...
— 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
... money, but the count said not a word about the quintet; and the composer soon afterwards had the satisfaction of seeing it published by Artaria, arranged as a quartet, for the pianoforte, violin, tenor, and violoncello. Mozart's quintets for wind instruments, published also as pianoforte quartets, are among the most charming and popular of his instrumental compositions for the chamber; and this anecdote is a specimen of the manner in which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... vague eyes, stepped forward and began to call the roll. He rattled off the names in a thin, piping voice, while the men, who had come up and ranged themselves in front of him, responded in accents of varying pitch, from the deep rumble of the violoncello to the shrill note of the piccolo. But there came a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... more readily and more loudly when music was played, or a merry song struck up. Usually they kept time with the music, and altogether displayed a singular degree of intelligence. Sometimes a loud rhythmic scraping, as of a violoncello bow on a piece of wood, would accompany the music. Again and again I placed my ear on the very spot on the table whence this rough fiddling appeared to proceed, and felt distinctly the rhythmic vibration of the table, but no tangible cause was visible either above or below the table.... On ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... me, my friend," Roncivalli answered. The liquid Italian played against the German guttural like the warble of a flute answering the snarl of a violoncello. "I am doing what I know. Until our friend Rossano came to England I had a place from which he was good enough to depose me. You may say what you like, Herr Sacovitch, but the independence of my country ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Adelade gave the sign to Argirio, and they took up the duo, 'Splenda terribile,' before the orchestra, equally electrified with the audience, were prepared for it, so that Adelade's clear ringing 'Mi' soared out like a mellow violoncello note, and she sang the three following measures unaccompanied. The short symphony which follows this little bit was not heard for the cries of applause, which were silenced only by the grand finale, 'Se il ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Carancro was a Creole gentleman who looked burly and hard when in meditation; but all that vanished when he spoke and smiled. In the pocket of his cassock there was always a deck of cards, but that was only for the game of solitaire. You have your pipe or cigar, your flute or violoncello; he had his little table under the orange-tree and his ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... introduction of stoves, a violoncello, Wesley's hymns, and a choir split the church in twain. These old Scotch Presbyterians were opposed to all innovations that would afford their people paths of flowery ease on the road to Heaven. So, when the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... we passed in music (he was musical, and played on more than one instrument, flute and violoncello), in which I was audience; and I think that our chief beverage was soda-water. In the day we rode, bathed, and lounged, reading occasionally. I remember our buying, with vast alacrity, Moore's new quarto (in 1806), and reading ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... again, if it were only to remind me of those evenings I used to spend with you when at Iffley. I am afraid you will have enough of my bass to satisfy you without Beethoven in the course of next term." N.B.—"He was to be in Froude's room over my head,—J.H.N."[14] Mr. Bowden also played the violoncello, and Newman was further supported by one who was a musician, and a deal more besides. "Mr. Blanco White," he writes, November, 1826, "plays the violin, and has an exquisite ear."[15] "I have only one sister alive now," he said sadly in September, 1875, "and she is old, but plays Beethoven very well.[16] ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... is passing, time is flying," becomes one of those rapid airs which have made Offenbach famous, when he composes a dance for conspirators. The andante amoroso, "Thou hast said it, aye, thou lovest me," becomes a real vivace furioso, and the violoncello ceases to imitate the inflections of the singer's voice, as indicated in the composer's score. In vain Raoul cries, "Speak on, and prolong the ineffable slumber of my soul." Valentine cannot "prolong." It is evident that an unaccustomed fire devours her. Her b's ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... doctor had given up; make 21 at the butts with the rifle, when the poor captain only scored 18; give him twenty in fifty at billiards and beat him; and draw tears from the professional Italian people by her exquisite performance (of voice and violoncello) in the evening;—I say, if a novelist would be popular with ladies—the great novel-readers of the world—this is the sort of heroine who would carry him through half a dozen editions. Suppose I had asked that Bearded Lady to sing? Confess, now, miss, you would not have been displeased if I ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... secret satisfaction in having duties to discharge, which rarely exposed him to be singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way—after business; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1631), improved the principles of violin-building, and gave the world the modern viola and violoncello. A rich viola-like quality characterizes the Maggini violin. De Beriot used one in his concerts, and its plaintive tone was thought well suited to his style. He refused to part with it for 20,000 francs when Wieniawski, in 1859, wished ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... gravely and massively like a violoncello, and America—played more lightly, is full of the sweeps and the lulls, the ecstasy, the overriding glory ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... apartment is reached—for the musicians are tuning up. The beautiful duchess is soon recognized, and as soon in deep gossip with her friends. But who is that gentlemanly man leaning over the chamber-organ? That is Sir Roger L'Estrange, an admirable performer on the violoncello, and a great lover of music. He is watching the subtile fingering of Mr. Handel, as his dimpled hands drift leisurely and marvelously over the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... was a fine performer on the violin and harpsichord. At the representation of Arsinoe and the other earliest operas, he played the harpsichord and Haym the violoncello. Dieupart, after the small success of the design set forth in this letter, taught the harpsichord in families of distinction, but wanted self-respect enough to save him from declining into a player at obscure ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... each. The choir organ, enclosed in separate swell-box, has geigen principal, dolce, concert flute, quintadena, fugara, flute d'amour, piccolo harmonique, clarinet,—61 pipes each. The pedal organ has open diapason, bourdon, lieblich gedeckt (from stop 10), violoncello-wood,—30 pipes each. Couplers: swell to great; choir to great; swell to choir; swell to great octaves, swell to great sub-octaves; choir to great sub-octaves; swell octaves; swell to pedal; great to pedal; choir to pedal. Mechanical ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... to circumstances. My hunting in the Base country formed his theme, and for at least an hour he sang of my deeds in an extremely loud and disagreeable voice, while he accompanied himself upon his fiddle, which he held downward like a violoncello. During the whole of his song he continued in movement, marching with a sliding step to the front, and gliding to the right and left in a manner that, though intended to be graceful, was extremely comic. The substance of this minstrelsy was explained to me by Taher Noor, who listened ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... and sabre stood a piano open, and with a piece of music on the stand—a movement by Chopin; a violoncello leaned in its case in one corner, a cornet-a-piston showed itself, like an arrangement in brass macaroni packed in red velvet upon a side-table; and in front of it lay open a small, flat flute-case, wherein were the two halves of a silver-keyed instrument ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... moon-stricken Pierrot chants—rather declaims—his woes and occasional joys to the music of the Viennese composer, whose score requires a reciter (female), a piano, flute (also piccolo), clarinet (also bass clarinet), violin (also viola), and violoncello. The piece is described as a melodrama. I listened to it on a Sunday morning, and I confess that Sunday at noon is not a time propitious to the mood musical. It was also the first time I had heard a note of Schoenberg's. In vain I had tried ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... and even since the destruction of the society, the missionaries of Rio Meta have continued at San Miguel de Macuco a fine church choir, and musical instruction for the Indian youth. Very lately a traveller was surprised to see the natives playing on the violin, the violoncello, the triangle, the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... which come from murmuring streams, far from the capitol, to use the finest olive oil. This delicate dish duly powdered and garnished with slices of lemon is fit for a cardinal. [Footnote: Mr. Aulissin, a very well informed Neapolitan lawyer, and a good amateur performer on the violoncello, dining one day with me, and eating some thing that pleased him, said—"Questo e un vero boccone di cardinale." "Why," said I, in the same tongue, not say "boccone in Re." "Seignore," said he, "we Italians do nothing; a king cannot be a gourmand, for royal dinners ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... the painter's studio was one of the most agreeable we ever spent. But what shall I say then of the evening in a salon musicale; with the first violoncello playing in the world, and the Princess Czartoryski at the piano? We were invited at eight, but it was nine before we entered our carriage. We arrived at the hotel of Mrs. Erskine, a sister of Lord Dundalk, and found a very select party. There were chairs and sofas ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... were," says Byron, in his Diary ('Life', p. 31), "rival swimmers, fond of riding, reading, and of conviviality. Our evenings we passed in music (he was musical, and played on more than one instrument—flute and violoncello), in which I was audience; and I think that our chief beverage was soda-water. In the day we rode, bathed, and lounged, reading occasionally. I remember our buying, with vast alacrity, Moore's new quarto (in 1806), and reading it together in the evenings. ... His ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... when his daughter left the room, and he had recourse to an old trick of his that was customary to him in his times of sadness. He began playing some slow tune upon an imaginary violoncello, drawing one hand slowly backwards and forwards as though he held a bow in it, and modulating the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... piano bench—gloomily sawing at a violoncello. Robert,—nine now, with all his pretty baby roundness gone, a lean little burned, peeling face, and big teeth missing when he smiled, stood in the bay window, twisting the already limp net curtains into a tight rope. Each boy gave Margaret a kiss that ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... she pursued, "how differently he bows from the other men, though it is only dance music. Oh, how his ears are torn by that violoncello! He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answered, her voice vibrating like a swept violoncello, "is a devil. Did you not see what he gave me? It was not food at all, but freezing snow. Snow should not be in a glass, but on the ground. It is plain that he ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... beyond the green; and there was a bagatelle board in the room, in case we should desire to unbend our minds after the solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs. Wemmick no longer unwound Wemmick's arm when it adapted itself to her figure, but sat in a high-backed chair against the wall, like a violoncello in its case, and submitted to be embraced as that melodious instrument ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was a composer—had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it—and played what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little concert, in which Richard—who was enthralled by Ada's singing and told me that she seemed to know all the songs that ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... scheme for bringing forward "my 'Don Giovanni,'" as he always called it. Crivelli was a second-rate tenor, and could not be trusted with the part of Don Ottavio, and a Frenchman named Milon, whom I conclude to have been a violoncello player, afterward identified with the organization of the Philharmonic Society, was engaged for that part. A Mme. Barbieri was cast for the part of Donna Anna, Mme. Garcia for that of Donna Elvira, Manuel Garcia, Jr. (who died in 1906 at the age of ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Messrs. Aldridge, Bartleman, Cooper, Greaves, Halewood, Hime, Jackson (a distinguished violoncello player, by the way), Langhorne, Maybrick, Tayleure (a distinguished double bass), and Vaughan. In "Bombastes Furioso," King Artaxomines was personated by Mr. Richmond; Fusbos by Mr. Clay; General Bombastes by Mr. J. H. Parr, who ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... strutted off my stage with a merry gobble, the orchestra opened before me with a flourish of trumpets. The katydid led off with a trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E. flat cornet; the bumblebee played on his violoncello, and the jay-bird, laughed with his piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... known, except that he was a pupil of Bartolozzi, and lived in Newman Street about thirty years ago. He is said to have been very fond of music, and having a small independence and less ambition, he was content to engrave but little, and with his violoncello and musical friends, passed a ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... the orchestra recognized him as one of themselves; and as time went on, he was intrusted with the often needed miscellaneous musical instruments which form no part of the regular band of a boulevard theatre. For a very small addition to his stipend, Schmucke played the viola d'amore, hautboy, violoncello, and harp, as well as the piano, the castanets for the cachucha, the bells, saxhorn, and the like. If the Germans cannot draw harmony from the mighty instruments of Liberty, yet to play all instruments of music comes to them ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... "The violoncello," said Ronnie, sitting up and turning towards her as he spoke. "When I think of a 'cello I seem as if I know exactly how it would feel to hold it between my knees, press my fingers up and down the yielding strings, and draw ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... heterogeneous, contents. You would think a small music warehouse, a miniature tobacco shop, or branch depot of foreign grammars and dictionaries were before you. Every kind of musical instrument seems to have met with a companion in this tiny apartment. Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh harp and unstrung guitar. On this shelf are pipes of all sorts and sizes, forms, and nations—the straight English, the short German, and the long Turkish; on that are cigar-boxes, snuff-boxes, and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... age. Durant knew a man who had taught himself the 'cello at fifty-five. But the Colonel was not that sort of adventurous dilettante. Neither was Mrs. Fazakerly exactly like a violoncello, she was more like a piano; while Miss Tancred, from the Colonel's point of view, was like a hurdy-gurdy. Not a difficult instrument the hurdy-gurdy; you have only to keep on turning a handle to make it go. To be sure, you can get rather more out of a ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... example, though he had encountered more annoyance than usual, he went to his private sitting-room and played a good hour on the violoncello. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... seems to steal away out of the universe. Instead of the Sierra there is nothing; omnipresent nothing. No sky, no peaks, no light, no sound, no time nor space, utter void. Then somewhere the beginning of a pallor, and with it a faint throbbing buzz as of a ghostly violoncello palpitating on the same note endlessly. A couple of ghostly violins presently take advantage ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... was Herr Gottfried's greatest friend and was notable for three things, his enormous size, his surpassing skill on the violoncello and his devoted attachment to the veriest shrew of a little sharp-boned wife that ever crossed from Germany into England. For all these things Peter loved him, but Herr Lutz was never very actively conscious of Peter because from the moment that he entered Herr ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... do of a death's head, or a memento mori: "I never see it," said he, "but I think upon hell fire." It stands almost unrivalled in history, and ranks at least with that which gave a cognomen to Ovid,[8] and the one to which the celebrated violoncello player, Cervetto, owed the sobriquet of Nosey. This epithet reminds me of another nose of theatrical notoriety, whose rubicund tint, when it interfered with the costume of a sober character which its owner was enacting, was moderated by his wife, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... wash-stand without any soap or exit for the water, and some hardwood pegs drove into holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that furnished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make you feel like getting back home from an amateur violoncello solo at ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Simeon on first violin, Alexander second violin, John violoncello (or double bass if required), and Cleveland on the piano-forte. The father fulfilled the duties of musical director and business manager; and occasionally he took part in the performances as ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... As it appears from the following letters that Amenda was again at home in 1800, the date of this note is thus ascertained. It is undoubtedly addressed to Baron Zmeskall von Domanowecz, Royal Court Secretary, a good violoncello-player, and one of Beethoven's earliest friends in Vienna. The "guitarist" was probably the celebrated ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... Campagnola. Said to be Titian and Giorgione, playing violin and violoncello. The former attribution to ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... was rapt in the story. His voice had the deep tone of the violoncello, powerful, vibrant, and colorful. He had lived in that strange past, and the things he ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... are truly respectful," whispered Christina to me, "they know their betters."), and take their seats in a long row against the wall. The choir clamber up into the gallery with their instruments—a violoncello, a clarinet and a trombone. I see them and soon I hear them, for there is a hymn before the service, a wild strain, a remnant, if I mistake not, of some pre-Reformation litany. I have heard what I believe was its remote musical progenitor ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... grace and began singing for us; Smith accompanied her on the violoncello. The materials for a bowl of punch were brought and the flame of burning rum soon cheered us with varied lights. The piano was abandoned for the table; then we had cards; everything passed off as I wished and we succeeded in diverting ourselves ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... giovani di tromba marina is a name given to those youths who go trumpeting about everywhere the favours accorded them by women; but the tromba marina is a stringed (not a wind) instrument, a sort of primitive violoncello with one string.] ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... through a long life," said another elderly man, "and have therefore had my share of trouble; but the grief of being obliged to give up music was the grief which held me longest, or which perhaps has never left me. I still crave for the gracious pleasure of touching once more the strings of the violoncello, and hearing the dear, tender voice singing and throbbing, and answering even to such poor skill as mine. I still yearn to take my part in concerted music, and be one of those privileged to play Beethoven's string-quartettes. But that will have ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... "but I think it's a black one. I dont know where the deuce all the pins go to." Then, casting off the subject, she whistled a long and florid cadenza, and added, by way of instrumental interlude, a remarkably close imitation of a violoncello. Meanwhile the man went into her room for the pin. On his return she suddenly became curious, and said, "Where are you going to-night, if ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... as well as Mr. Toepke and Mr. Gustave Hinrichs. After Mr. Morgan's lamented death, Miss Lowell took his place as teacher of the organ in the conservatory founded by him, where also taught Mr. Morgan (piano), Mr. Louis Lisser, Mr. Henry Heyneman and Mr. Julius Hinrichs (violoncello), Miss Susie Morgan, Mr. D.P. Hughes and dear old Stephen W. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... are to be congratulated on having attained this verdict. Everything that people cannot quite understand is called CLAP-TRAP in England; as for instance the matchless violin-playing of Sarasate; the tempestuous splendor of Rubinstein; the wailing throb of passion in Hollmann's violoncello—this is, according to the London press, CLAP-TRAP; while the coldly correct performances of Joachim and the 'icily-null' renderings of Charles Halle are voted 'magnificent' and 'full of colour.' But to return to yourself. Will you play ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... request, took her seat at the harpsichord. Lucy Bertram, who sung her native melodies very sweetly, was accompanied by her friend upon the instrument, and Julia afterwards performed some of Scarlatti's sonatas with great brilliancy. The old lawyer, scraping a little upon the violoncello, and being a member of the gentlemen's concert in Edinburgh, was so greatly delighted with this mode of spending the evening, that I doubt if he once thought of the wild-ducks until Barnes informed the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... my brother can have from me is 1, a Septett per il Violino, Viola, Violoncello, Contrabasso, Clarinetto, Cornto, Fagotto, tutti obligati; for I can not write anything that is not obligato, having come into ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... exploits as a schoolboy. According to his account, not only he, but most of his schoolfellows, used to lead merry lives enough at school. They had what they called the "Academy Band," and grand music it made, with a hat-box for a drum, cricket-bat for violoncello, and paper flute and trumpets. You would not recognize Uncle John, whom you know only as a man six feet high, in that little lad on the left side of the picture with a battledore for a fiddle. They had a great deal of what he called excellent ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... when residing at Canterbury some years ago, was reckoned a good violoncello-player. His sight being dim obliged him very often to snuff the candles, and in lieu of snuffers he generally employed his fingers in that office, thrusting the spoils into the sound-holes of his violoncello. A waggish friend of his popped a quantity of gunpowder into B——'s ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... London we enjoy at Edinburgh, in a small compass. Here is a well conducted concert, in which several gentlemen perform on different instruments — The Scots are all musicians — Every man you meet plays on the flute, the violin, or violoncello; and there is one nobleman, whose compositions are universally admired — Our company of actors is very tolerable; and a subscription is now on foot for building a new theatre; but their assemblies please me above all ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the duke of Coethen, a post which he held from 1717 to 1723. The Coethen period is that of Bach's central instrumental works, such as the first book of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier, the solo violin and violoncello sonatas, the Brandenburg concertos, and the French and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... to a query; "he doesn't mean to carry it all the way. He'll pick up a cab at the corner." The query was about the violoncello, and Fenwick was coming back to the room where his wife was closing the piano in anticipation of Ann. He had discreetly launched the instrument and its owner under the stars, and left the street door standing wide open—a shallow ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... was wonderfully sweet and rich, vibrating with the intense pathos of minor chords in a mellow old violoncello, and either from physical weakness, or the weight of woe, it quivered at last into a thrilling cry. Tears were dripping over Leo's cheeks, as she went up to the chancel railing, and leaning across, put out her hand. Beryl rose and came forward, and so, with only the pine balustrade between, the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... seemed to come and run round the walls. The men looked at one another in astonishment; for the effect was magical. The staircase being enclosed on all sides with stone walls and floored with stone, they were like flies inside a violoncello; the voices rang above, below, and on every side of the vibrating walls. In some epochs spirits as hardy as Raynal's, and wits as quick as Riviere's, would have fled then and there to the nearest public, and told over cups how they had heard the dames of ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... for piano. Opus 6. Prelude and Nocturne. Sarabande. Petite Valse. (For left hand alone.) Polonaise. Three pieces for piano. No opus number. Impromptu in G Minor. Gavotte in B Minor. Sarabande and Courante from the Violoncello Sonatas of Bach. Arranged by ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... carried out on to the lawn for the occasion, and Miss Lowe, the music mistress, took her seat at it. She was supported by a small school orchestra of three violins and violoncello, and together they struck up some Eastern music. When it was well started there was a flashing of white among the bushes on the farther side of the lawn, and out came tripping a bevy of charming wood nymphs. They were all clad in Greek chitons, very delicately draped, their hair was bound with ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... our neighbours the Welsh, the Irish, or the Scotch; for our music, like out language, is a mere riccifamento, stolen from every nation in Europe. But our king (God bless him) is an excellent musician, and plays the violoncello most delightfully; and we have an Academy of Music. Then we have an Italian Theatre that burns the feet and fingers of all who meddle with its management—witness, Mr. Ebers, who, by being "married" to sweet sounds, lost the enormous sum of 47,000l.—it must ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... exclamations, one knows how readily these may be imitated upon the violin, or in the case of the deeper or more guttural sounds, on the violoncello. The natural effect is greatly aided by the sliding of the finger along the note, especially in the case of the lowing of cattle; but there are other exclamations that are readily reduced to music. Gardiner gives one or two ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,) I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, It shakes mad-sweet pangs through ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the book you kindly sent me on "The Technics of Violoncello Playing," which I found excellent, particularly for beginners, which naturally was your scope. With many thanks for kindly ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... at the bottom of each photograph he had written the date of birth and death—on the walls were framed texts and vile chromolithographs of Mozart and Beethoven. A little piano stood in one corner, a great violoncello in another; rows of books higgledy-piggledy, pipes, and in the window pots of geraniums. It was like being surrounded with friends. The old man could be heard moving about in the next room, and planing or hammering, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... good deal circumscribed at the instant, by the arrival of a party of five or six musicians; one of whom, a German, under the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham, was particularly renowned for his performance on the violoncello, but had been detained in inactivity in the antechamber by the non-arrival of his instrument, which had now ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of a ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... discovered the producer of the half-fierce, half-mournful noise, in the person of the Honorable Frank Villiers, who, with that amazingly serious ardor so often displayed by amateur lovers of music, was persistently endeavoring to combat the difficulties of the violoncello. He adored his big instrument,—the more unmanageable it became in his hands, the more he loved it. Its grumbling complaints at his unskilful touch delighted him,—when he could succeed in awakening a peevish dull sob from its troubled depths, he felt a positive thrill of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and murmur an ejaculation of respectful surprise, as I recognize no less a person than the Right Honorable the Countess of Knightsbridge, taking her tea, breaking up little bits of toast with her slim fingers, and sitting between a Belgian horse-dealer and a German violoncello-player who has a conge after the opera—like ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... drove us for shelter to a farmhouse, where we entered a sort of oratorio attached to the house; a room which is not consecrated, but has an altar, crucifix, holy pictures, etc. The floor was strewed with flowers, and in one corner was an old stringless violoncello, that might have formed a pendant to the harp ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... are rather inclined to think that fiddlers, as a class, are maligned, and that they are no worse than their neighbours in this respect, perhaps not so bad. Certainly, if any fiddler really deserves the imputation, it must be a violoncello player, because he ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting duets between violin and piano (what human voice ever came up to a good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting two steps, xylophone symphonies, and dreamy, sensuous waltzes. This gramophone Linda learnt to work; and while Michael read voraciously the works of Hunter, Hugh Owen Thomas, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... the woman, Green, was acting as check taker. Campbell and Lewis were enacting their parts upon the stage, and Joseph Burrows was in his theatrical dress between them, with his face painted and wearing a huge pair of moustaches. John Pillar was in a temporary orchestra with a large violoncello, scraping away most melodramatically, whilst the players were endeavouring to humour the sounds, and to suit their action to the word, and the word to the action; and just at that part of the performance when Burrows ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the upper strings, and then his own voice took up the words in tones breathed out so easily that the highest never seemed to be high, nor to cost him more effort than ordinary speech. Of all instruments the violoncello can yield notes most like such a voice, when the bow ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... cithern[obs3]; gittern[obs3], rebeck[obs3], bandurria[obs3], bandura, banjo; bina[obs3], vina[obs3]; xanorphica[obs3]. viol, violin; fiddle, kit; viola, viola d'amore[Fr], viola di gamba[It]; tenor, cremona, violoncello, bass; bass viol, base viol; theorbo[obs3], double base, contrabasso[obs3], violone[obs3], *psaltery; bow, fiddlestick[obs3]. piano, pianoforte; harpsichord, clavichord, clarichord[obs3], manichord[obs3]; clavier, spinet, virginals, dulcimer, hurdy-gurdy, vielle[obs3], pianino[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... brilliant virtuosi, play the most difficult piano compositions of Balakireff, etc., superbly. I shall recommend to them Cui's Suite (piano and violoncello). ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated |
