"Wagnerian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new ones. The old Italian opera form is laughed at to-day as an absurdity by Wagnerians, who see nothing absurd in a many-legged monster with a donkey's head uttering deep bass curses through a speaking-trumpet; and perhaps to-morrow the Wagnerian music-drama and the many-legged monsters will be laughed at by the apostles of a new and equally absurd convention. It is absolutely the first condition of the existence of an art that one shall be prepared to tolerate things ludicrously ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... very beginning it was any music, just music. Then for a while Wagner held him. Any Wagnerian concert, any mixed entertainment which included Wagner—it seemed as though he sniffed them upon the breeze—and he would tramp for miles, wait for hours; biting cold, sleet, snow, mud, rain, all alike disregarded by that persistence which the very poor must bring to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... method of an art like music, are matters quite distinct from the values and the conditions prevailing in the culture with which it is in harmony, and that however many Christian elements may be discovered in Wagnerian texts, Nietzsche had no right to raise aesthetic objections because he happened to entertain the extraordinary view that these Christian elements had also found their ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... Wagnerian Kappelmeister, journeyed from Munich to Friedrichsruh to beg the honor of owning, as a souvenir, ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... and glass and tilework, where goes on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register—it was a gigantic, triumphant ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... we must admit the doom of democracy. And no Wagnerian crashes of orchestration mitigate the tragedy of the scene as our eyes are opened to the twilight of our new gods. For what other social methods are there left to us? In the struggle against nature's barriers upon human aspiration for perfect ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... critic was known to Owen by a small book he had written entitled "A Guide to the Ring." Before he was a Wagnerian he was the curator of a museum, and Owen remembered how desirous he was to learn the difference between Dresden and Chelsea china. He had dabbled in politics and in journalism; he had collected hymns, ancient and modern, and Owen was not in the least surprised to hear that he had become ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... himself, it would profit her nothing if she had not the strength to stand the wear and tear of rehearsals. He looked at Evelyn, and calculated her physical strength. She was a rather tall and strongly-built girl, but the Wagnerian bosom was wanting. He had always considered a large bosom to be a dreadful deformity. A bosom should be an indication, a hint; a positive statement he viewed with abhorrence. And he paused to think if he would be willing to forego his natural and cultured ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... is, perhaps, the best of the famous symphonic poems. The author was inspired by Victor Hugo's poetry and reproduced its spirit admirably. When will this typical work appear in the concert repertoires? When will orchestra conductors get tired of presenting the three or four Wagnerian works they repeat ad nauseum, when they can be heard at the Opera under better conditions, and Schubert's insignificant ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... how to use dramatic instruction; her Aida was almost Madame's own, for she had learned, then, and besides, did not understand the character; her Bruenhilde was herself, trained and assisted into the best canons of interpretation by a loyal Wagnerian. It is a short part, of course, but it showed what she could have done with the rest of it. At thirty-five she could have done the whole Ring; at forty I believe no one ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... representations will be spent in the restoration of the theatre, and it is expected in time to make Orange the centre of classic drama, as Beyreuth is that of Wagnerian music. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... even for the devoutest Wagnerian disciple to hear such a concert, perhaps, without leaving the hall in indignation, perhaps even without a protest. All the concerts were of uniform excellence, and the Easy Chair is a competent witness, at least so far as attendance is concerned, for it heard all of the Lind concerts in New ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... 22, 1770, to his mother and sister. Mozart as a lad was making a tour through Italy with his father. [There might be a valuable hint here touching the proper tempo for the minuets in Mozart's symphonies. Of late years the conductors, of the Wagnerian school more particularly, have acted on the belief that the symphonic minuets of Mozart and Haydn must be played with the stately slowness of the old dance. Mozart himself was plainly of ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Enwright and John Orgreave George had further cultivated the habit of classical music, already acquired in boyhood at home in the Five Towns. In the previous year, despite the calls upon his time of study for examinations, George had attended the Covent Garden performances of the Wagnerian "Ring" as he might have attended High Mass. He knew by name a considerable percentage of the hundred odd themes in "The Ring," and it was his boast that he could identify practically all the forty-seven themes in The Meistersingers. He raved about Ternina in ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... intensity, and yet our young man's fine sense found still a resource in the range of the eyes, without sound or motion, while all the rest of consciousness was held down as by a hand mailed in silver. It was better, in this way, than the opera—John alertly thought of that: the composition sung might be Wagnerian, but no Tristram, no Iseult, no Parsifal and, no Kundry of them all could ever show, could ever "act" to the music, as our friend had thus the power of seeing his dear contemporaries of either sex (armoured they so otherwise ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... must not hear it. She felt she must get him talking upon some impersonal theme at any cost. She snatched about in her mind. "What is the exact force of a motif?" she asked at random. "Before I heard much Wagnerian music I heard enthusiastic descriptions of it from a mistress I didn't like at school. She gave me an impression of a sort of patched quilt; little bits of patterned stuff coming ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... sensibly remote from Europe's centre. It was a lovely springtide, and new hope fallaciously decked Southern Germany, as if all trouble were over and all had been forgiven. We walked, too, in the gardens of the Nymphenburg Palace where the mad king used to play. We visited the State Theatre, where Wagnerian opera still holds the patient ear, and there we heard, not Wagner, but Shakespeare's "Lear," done in a jog-trot, uninspired, later-Victorian style. One felt as if the theatre had slept for thirty years and then, awakening, had ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the greatest aid in shaping and shading the tones. Wagnerian singers, for instance, who employ trumpet-like notes in certain passages are often seen shaping their lips like the mouthpiece of a trumpet, with a somewhat square opening, the ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... Bayreuth; and he grounded her in the principles that had guided the Master in the creation of his great characters. And so, when Leonora made her appearance on the stage one winter with the winged helmet and the lance of the Valkyrie, she attained an eminence in Wagnerian interpretation that was to follow her for the remainder of her career. Hans himself was carried away by her power, and could never recover from his astonishment at Leonora's complete assimilation of the spirit of ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... The Boche, a Wagnerian by birth and upbringing, cannot stand any more of this, so he has fired a rifle-grenade at the glee-party—on the whole a much more honest and direct method of condemnation than that practiced by musical critics in time of peace. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... ingredients and these, if they are natural essences, are complex mixtures of a dozen or so distinct substances. Perfumery is one of the fine arts. The perfumer, like the orchestra leader, must know how to combine and cooerdinate his instruments to produce a desired sensation. A Wagnerian opera requires 103 musicians. A Strauss opera requires 112. Now if the concert manager wants to economize he will insist upon cutting down on the most expensive musicians and dropping out some of the others, say, the supernumerary violinists and the man who blows a single blast or ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... second, bass; score; bourdon[obs3], drone, morceau[obs3], terzetto[obs3]. composer &c. 413; musician &c. 416. V. compose, perform &c. 416; attune. Adj. musical; instrumental, vocal, choral, lyric, operatic; harmonious &c. 413; Wagnerian. Adv. adagio; largo, larghetto, andante, andantino[obs3]; alla capella[It][obs3]; maestoso[obs3], moderato; allegro, allegretto; spiritoso[obs3], vivace[obs3], veloce[obs3]; presto, prestissimo[obs3]; con brio; capriccioso[obs3]; scherzo, scherzando[obs3]; legato, staccato, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Ingres. The example usually cited by exponents of this theory—that progressive politicians are reactionary in art—is the notorious hostility of Liberals to the romantic movement; but I believe that were they to study closely the histories of the Impressionist, the Pre-Raphaelite, and the Wagnerian movements they would find in them, too, evidence on the whole favourable to their case. Be that as it may, this theory, which once seemed paradoxical, quite loses its fantastic air when considered in the light of our discovery. Had ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... for the Children's Story Book we planned to do together. It's quite invigorating to sport about with them in imagination, in a grey-green stormy sea, out of reach of human banalities. I can feel the cold spray as I paint and the sense of power and rest in the elemental forces—an almost Wagnerian feeling of great ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... was the latest (last year's) Paris model, although the Woggle-Bug did not know that; and the designer must have had a real woggly love for bright colors, for the gown was made of red cloth covered with big checks which were so loud the fashion books called them "Wagnerian Plaids." ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum |
