"Pianist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pianist, a Hungarian by birth; born with a genius for music, his first efforts at composition were not successful, and it was not till he heard what Paganini made of the violin that he thought what might be made of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Pianist, harpist, poloist, violinist, phiz, ad, co-ed, curios, exam, cab, chum, gent, hack, gym, pants, mob, phone, proxy, photo, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... and his wife, the latter marrying the father of Woldemar Bargiel, while the former also entered into a second union, with Clementine Fechner at Leipsic. A daughter of this second marriage, Marie Wieck, won some fame as a pianist, but was far surpassed by her ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... mass of associations, which he had felt in ceasing to believe in a religion, or, more acutely, after quarrelling with a friend. He knew that was absurd. The picture came to him of encountering the Jew, or Diringer, or old Wolf, or little Streckmann, the pianist, in a raid on the East Coast, or on the Continent, slashing at them in a stagey, dimly-imagined battle. Ridiculous. He vaguely imagined a series of heroic feats, vast enterprise, and the ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... addition to his ability as a checker player, was a good pianist, and he obligingly played for them to dance. The piano belonged to the Tucker twins. Norma and Alice were "rushed" with partners, and they quite forgot their clothes in the enjoyment of dancing to ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... perfect' is a matter, as I have previously said, of daily observation. Whether we regard a juggler, a pianist, or a billiard-player, a child learning his lesson or an actor his part by frequently repeating it, or a thousand other illustrations of the same process, we see at once that there is truth in the cynical definition of a man as a 'bundle ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... kopecks for an easy dance, and a half rouble for a quadrille. But one-half of this price was taken out by the proprietress, Anna Markovna; the other, however, the musicians divided evenly. In this manner the pianist received only a quarter of the general earnings, which, of course, was unjust, since Isaiah Savvich played as one self-taught and was distinguished for having no more ear for music than a piece of wood. The pianist was constantly compelled to drag him on to new tunes, to correct and cover his ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... ELGAR has dedicated his new orchestral work, "Polonia," to M. PADEREWSKI. The report that the distinguished pianist-politician is thinking of retorting with a fugue, "Stiltonia," is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... Street, was a romantic discovery. Though it had "popular prices"—plain omelet, fifteen cents—it had red and green bracket lights, mission-style tables, and music played by a sparrowlike pianist and a violinist. Mr. Wrenn never really heard the music, but while it was quavering he had a happier appreciation of the Silk-Hat-Harry humorous pictures in the Journal, which he always propped up against an oil-cruet. [That never caused him inconvenience; ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... sit through an opera. However, since the nature and quality of the music does not matter here, we may quote: "Hearing a Barbary organ in the street, I picture the instrument to myself. I see the man turning the crank. If military music sounds from afar, I see a regiment marching." An excellent pianist plays for a friend Beethoven's sonata in C sharp minor, putting into its execution all the pathos of which he is capable. The other sees in it "the tumult and excitement of a fair." Here the musical rendering is misinterpreted ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... is not home, and will not come to-day. He is visiting—why do they bother us?" a woman's voice was heard to say, and the rhapsody continued, then ceased, and the sound of a chair moved back was heard. The angry pianist herself evidently wished to reprimand the importunate visitor who came at such a ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer^, trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral waits. vocalist, melodist; singer, warbler; songster, chaunter^, chauntress^, songstress; cantatrice^. choir, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... eighteen she had refused nearly all the young painters between Ecouen and Domaine de Vallieres; and had spent several summers in England, and four years at a Lausanne school. She feared neither man nor mouse, and once, when she saw a famous Polish pianist walking on his terrace at Morges, she took him by the hand, asked for a lock of his hair, and was not refused by the amiable virtuoso. After that Berenice was the acknowledged leader of her class. The teachers ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the Russian pianist, a short, corpulent man, with an apoplectic face and purplish skin, his thick, iron-gray hair tossed back from his forehead. Next to the German giantess sat the Italian tenor—the tiniest of men—pale, with soft, light hair, much in disorder, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... glancing at the Italians, for he perceived that neither of the players was happy; the pianist was avaricious, while the violinist's natural and habitual jealousy destroyed his peace ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... was the real self and the body merely a material encasement, it was no wonder that they valued the body less and held mind as of great value. They failed to see that mind without a material organ of expression is, in this world, of no account. A great pianist with no piano could not make music, and he would be considered a strange being if he did not care for his instrument most scrupulously. Think of a Rubinstein voluntarily breaking the piano strings or smashing ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... are so sorry for you!" Thus the two girls. And concurrence comes in various forms from Vereker, Fenwick, and the pianist, whom we haven't mentioned before. He was a cousin of Miss Wilson's, and was one of those unfortunate young men who have no individuality whatever. But pianists have to be human unless you can afford a pianola. You may speak of them as Mr. What's-his-name, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... "is the hero of that paragraph"—Langholm kicked him under the table—"that—that paragraph about his last book, you know. Severino, Langholm, is the best pianist we have had in the club since I have been a member, and you will say the same yourself in another minute. He always plays to us when he drops in to dine, and you may think yourself lucky that ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... play, offers an effective contrast to the major. A graceful Tempo di Menuetto brings the work to an effective close. The other Sonata in E flat[76] is much more difficult to play. The writing is fuller, and it contains passages which even a modern pianist need not disdain. It is really strange that the sonata is not sometimes heard at the Popular Concerts. In the opening Allegro the exposition section contains more than the two orthodox themes, and the development section ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... matter of the volume falls into three main divisions. Chapters II and III are based on the fact that we must all use words in combination—must fling the words out by the handfuls, even as the accomplished pianist must strike his notes. Chapters IV and V are based on the fact that we must become thoroughly acquainted with individual words—that no one who scorns to study the separate elements of speech can command powerful and discriminating ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Barwig what you know. If he can teach such a finished pianist as Helene, I am determined that you shall have the ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... he was forever tramping off to the pine-hooded hills, with his painting-kit over his shoulders and his camp-stool under his arm. Later, Elsa began to understand that he was a true scholar, not merely an educated man. He was besides a linguist of amazing facility, a pianist who invariably preferred as his audience his own two ears. Arthur would have been a great dramatist or a great poet, if . . . If what? If what? Ah, that had been the crux of it all, of her doubt, of her hesitance. If he had fought for prizes coveted by mankind, if he ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... to the doorway, stopping abruptly as he saw Bondsman. Could it be possible that Bondsman had not recognized his own tune? Bud shook his head. There was something wrong somewhere. Bondsman had not offered to come in and accompany the pianist. He must have been asleep. But Bondsman had not been asleep. He rose and padded to Shoop's horse, where he stood, a statue of rugged patience, waiting for Shoop to start ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Heubner; personal friends of Wagner—were captured and imprisoned; he himself was so lucky as to escape to Weimar, where Franz Liszt took care of him. It so happened that Liszt, who had given up his career as concert pianist (though all the world was clamoring to hear him), and was conducting the Weimar Opera, had been preparing a performance of "Tannhaeuser," to which Wagner would, under normal conditions, have been invited ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the cast has been in some measure restored by the pianist, who, with great presence of mind, plays a few bars of "Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?" to cover up Gertrude's exit, Martha Wrist will unleash a rope of silver tinsel from the foot of the tree, and, stringing it over the boughs as she skips ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... The pianist paused to thumb his nose casually at the entire audience, and then amid shouts and hisses sat down at the piano and began to ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... began the stream of violin and piano virtuosi which has continued in ever-increasing volume to the present day. Ole Bull, violinist, in 1843, Vieuxtemps and Artot, violinists, and Leopold von Meyer, pianist, in 1844, ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... school, tired of winter clothes, of the rutted streets, of the dirty drifts and the piles of cinders that had lain in the yards so long. There was only one break in the dreary monotony of that month; when Blind d'Arnault, the negro pianist, came to town. He gave a concert at the Opera House on Monday night, and he and his manager spent Saturday and Sunday at our comfortable hotel. Mrs. Harling had known d'Arnault for years. She told Antonia she had better go to see Tiny that Saturday evening, as there would certainly be music ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... chips represented a Krone, the white ones five Hellers. MacLean, who was hardly more than a boy, was winning, drawing in chips with quick gestures of his long pianist's fingers. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dream glow in the towering talent of a 12-year-old, Tyrone Ford. A child prodigy of gospel music, he has surmounted personal adversity to become an accomplished pianist and singer. He also directs the choirs of three churches and has performed at the Kennedy Center. With God as your composer, Tyrone, your music will be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... has seen, and which he unfolds to us—is always the character and expression of the deepest insight. Just look at our bill for the week which ends to-night: Monday, Vieuxtemps; Tuesday, Artot and Damoreau; Wednesday, Ole Bull, Miss Sperty (the new pianist), and Madame Sphor Zahn; Thursday, Castellan, Antoquin Brough and Sphor Zahn in the "Stabat Mater," followed by the "Battle of Waterloo Symphony," by Beethoven; Friday, Vieuxtemps again! Monday evening I could not hear Vieuxtemps, but went on Tuesday ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... diffidence seemed to give a peculiar value to what was definite and assured in her manner; it made it seem like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent, something that one might compare to an exquisite touch in a pianist. It was, in fact, Madame de Cintre's "authority," as they say of artists, that especially impressed and fascinated Newman; he always came back to the feeling that when he should complete himself by taking a wife, ...
— The American • Henry James
... of the largo, we must bear in mind that it was very frequently part of Purcell's design to have a cheerful ending. Unfortunately, there is no good edition of the sonatas. They are chamber music, and never were intended to be played in a large room. They should be played in a small room, and the pianist—for harpsichords are woefully scarce to-day—should fill in his part from the figured bars simply with moving figurations, neither plumping down thunderous chords nor (as one editor lately proposed) indulging in dazzling show passages modelled on Moscheles and Thalberg. Properly played, ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... naturally to be flabby-wristed when they are trying to learn to play, and to drop the wrists below the level of the keyboard seems to be the chief aim and object of every young pianist. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 46, September 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... first paper I happen to take up, that the violinist and the pianist are "a perfectly matched pair"; the applause, at the concert, was even more enthusiastic for Busoni than for Ysaye. I hear both spoken of as artists, as great artists; and yet, if words have any meaning, it seems to me that only one of the two is an artist at all, and the other, with all his ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... inducements; but there are people here who regard this orchestra as superlative. They say that the best orchestras in the world are in Germany; that the best in Germany is in Munich; and, therefore, you can see the inevitable deduction. We have another parallel syllogism. The greatest pianist in the world is Liszt; but then Herr Bulow is actually a better performer than Liszt; therefore you see again to what you must come. At any rate, we are quite satisfied in this provincial capital; and, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... melancholy, the same need of expansion that led him to receive, in his magnificent palace on the Bardo in Tunis, everybody who landed from France, from the petty tradesman and exporter of small wares, to the famous pianist on a ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sinking of hearts as Eustace Hignett moved down the room and took his place at the piano. A pianist! This argued more singing. The more pessimistic began to fear that the imitation was going to be one of those imitations of well-known opera artistes which, though rare, do occasionally add to the horrors of ships' concerts. They stared at Hignett apprehensively. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... genius, my dear aunt. His father pays for his music lessons, and his mother gives him an allowance. He's a pianist." ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... night. The great, richly furnished drawing-room was brilliantly lighted, and the magnificent Erard grand piano sang and rang again with music, now martial and loud, now soft and solemn, now gay and sparkling. I made the very pleasant discovery that Harold Beecham. was an excellent pianist, a gifted player on the violin, and sang with a strong, clear, well-trained tenor, which penetrated far into the night. How many, many times I have lived those nights over again! The great room with its rich appointments, the superb piano, the lights, the merriment, the breeze from the east, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... said contentedly. "I know that the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking, are actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know whether to offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in milk, or what! We had a pianist here about a year ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... intonations of voice, would beg of them to continue. She declared that it was la grace et la beaute, etc. The merriment did not cease until half-past six. Some of the company then left, and some few were detained for dinner. A new pianist and fresh officers arrived about nine o'clock, and dancing was continued until one or two in the morning. To yawning subalterns the house in Mount Street seemed at first like a little paradise. The incessant dancing was considered fatiguing, but there were interludes in which claret was ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... beside the piano, nervously tugged at the golden lace of her waist and, groaning with painful anxiety, counted in her mind the number of copecks which her partner placed together with the notes beside her. The pianist again struck the keys and Wolska and her partner began to sing together some comic couplets, interwoven with a kind of "Krakowiak" which they danced in a ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... are extremely nice people, and Mrs. Benson is very musical; in fact, Mr. Benson does something in that line himself. They have with them for a few days a violinist, Fairman I think his name is, from Boston, and a pianist—what was ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... conductor knows that the chord in the orchestra must be played "after the voice," as the technical phrase has it. But not every pianist or organist is familiar with this usage, and the effect would be very disagreeable if given as written. It should be ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various admirable enterprises. Madame Sennier, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... would shock the average young Englishman, all are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without a false note. At the end, the chairman calls "Prosit!" Everyone answers "Prosit!" and the next moment every glass is empty. The pianist rises and bows, and is bowed to in return; and then the Fraulein enters to refill ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... adopted son of Mrs. Scott Siddons, the English actress and dramatic reader—a famous beauty. He had been an infant prodigy as a pianist, but was overdriven by his father and Mrs. Siddons intervened and bought his freedom. She sent him to Woolwich Academy, the great Royal Artillery and Engineering School of Great Britain, where, curiously enough for a musician, he graduated ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... her friend and ardent admirer, Frederic Chopin, was recovering from a chest attack, the first presage of the illness that caused his early death. The eminent pianist and composer had also been recommended to winter in the South, and greatly needed repose and change of air to recruit him from the fatigues of the Parisian season. It was arranged that the convalescent ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... am sure it is very good—so far as it goes. I give my pianist ten pounds a night—and his washing. (That a good pianist could be hired for a small sum in England was a matter of amusement to Artemus. More especially when he found a gentleman obliging enough to play anything he desired, such as break-downs and airs which had the most ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... be tied together.[3] This was a great misfortune of which Kalkbrenner gives a manifest proof in the arrangement he has made of Beethoven's symphonies. Besides, this "legato" tyranny continues. Notwithstanding the example of Liszt, the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, and notwithstanding his numerous pupils, the fatal school of the "legato" has prevailed,—not that it is unfortunate in itself, but because it has perverted the intentions of musical authors. Our French professors have ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... musicians came out and unpacked a violin, a trombone, a flute and a drum. They sat down in the Medieval street painted on the scenery back of them, crossed their legs and asked for sol la from an esthetic young lady pianist, with whom they seemed on very familiar terms. The old man with the chin beard made an official entree from the wing, picked up the drum and became a part of the orchestra. The subscribers had begun to arrive, and when the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... who looks on the bright side of things is called an optimist, and one who looks on the dull side is called a pianist." ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... days M'Cord began to take the famous shoot trophies. Time came when this sort of thing was no longer a gamesome event, but a foregone conclusion. His rifle work was a revelation of genius—like the work of a prodigious young pianist or billiardist in the midst of mere ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, —touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found. A delicate woman is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... secession doctrines. Sumner, of course, could not let this pass without making some protest against it, and for this he was hissed. The incident was everywhere talked of, and came under discussion at the next meeting of the Saturday Club. Otto Dresel, a German pianist, who had small reason for being there, said, "It was not Mr. Sumner's politics but his bad manners that were hissed." Longfellow set his glass down with emphasis, and replied: "If good manners could not say it, thank heaven bad manners did;" and Lowell supported ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... here you know I'd be grateful if you could play it and give me a rest, my hands are so stiff," said Mrs. Colville, who had volunteered to act as pianist for the evening. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... graciously condescended to play for his hostess, and the sensitiveness of his ear was no longer shocked. She never dared to undeceive him, but mentioned the fact to another musician, a violinist, who exclaimed, greatly amused, "The idea of a pianist pretending to be fastidious about concord in music! Why, the instrument at its best is a bundle of discords." Both of these musicians were guilty of affectation; for, although the piano's chords are slightly dissonant, the intervals of the chromatic scale are made the same by the violin-player ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... that canvas. What a method! You are like an amateur pianist who tries laboriously to obtain tone, without having mastered the keyboard. One cannot blunder into great art. Only Englishmen make the attempt. You are a nation of amateurs. (He turns away, and sees a sketch on the L wall) Did you ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... of October, 1811, Franz Liszt, the greatest pianist of the last half century, was born at Raiding, in Hungary, and the entire musical world was united in celebrating his seventieth birthday, which took place ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... children seem to have inherited the Welsh musical gift, for they were all accomplished musicians. While a mere child, David could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this talent attracted the notice of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in America, who procured for him the professorship of music in the College of Bardstown, Kentucky. Mr. Hughes entered upon his academical career at Bardstown in 1850, when he was nineteen years of age. Although very fond of music and endowered by Nature with exceptional ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... polishing a paragraph with passionate care, salvaging perhaps a page, perhaps a sentence out of the morning's toil. Then she hooded her machine, lunched, and gave herself up to an afternoon of vivid living,—a Russian pianist, or an exhibition of vehemently modern pictures screaming their message from quiet walls in a Fifth Avenue Gallery, an hour at Hope House Settlement with Emma Ellis or Michael Daragh, tea and dancing with Rodney Harrison, or dinner and a play with him, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... thirty men, young and old, with possibly half a dozen women. At the piano, engaged in marking a sheet of manuscript music, was a short, heavy-set person, with a leonine mane and deep, brilliant eyes: a man known all over Europe, and to be known throughout America: one Anton Rubinstein, pianist, a maker of music. At his elbow, but talking to a frail-looking woman, was his brother, Nicholas, destined always to be overshadowed by Anton, but to whom the cause of Russian music was to owe far more, in the end, than to the more showy virtuoso. In the knot ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... that belongs to the sensational. In organ playing the foundation is Bach, and Bach alone. Nine-tenths of organ playing is comprised in the Bach works. Upon the piano his influence has been little less. While it is true that at least four works are necessary for making a pianist of the modern school, viz., the "Well Tempered Clavier," of Bach; the "Gradus ad Parnassum," of Clementi; the "Studies," of Chopin, and the Rhapsodies, of Liszt, the works of Bach form, on the whole, considerably more than one-third of ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... relentlessly in that most monotonous, yet agitated circle, yclept "a life of concerts." Should you find evidence too flagrant, even for your prepossessed eyes, of the inexperience of my pen, bear in mind, I pray you, that I am but a musician, and only a pianist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... pianist received such awe as Claire gave to this contemptuous young god, with grease on his peachy cheeks. She did come on. But she rather hoped that she was in great danger. It was humiliating to telephone to a garage for nothing. When she came into the gas-smelling ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... critics. These are, in fact, the protests of Derain's genius against his talent, and whether they are good or not I cannot say. Derain has a super-natural gift for making things: give him a tin kettle and in half a morning he will hammer you out a Summerian head; he has the fingers of a pianist, an aptitude that brings beauty to life with a turn of the wrist; in a word, that sensibility of touch which keeps an ordinary craftsman happy for a lifetime: and these things terrify him. He ties both hands behind his back and fights so. Deliberately he chooses the most ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... different from that in which his comrades won their spurs. It was only when, with the end of his schooldays in sight, he was putting away childish things, that he seriously turned his attention to the piano and his hands. They were those of the pianist, broad, strong and supple, and the new occupation soon engrossed him deeply; he gave up all his spare time to it, and, in a few months, attained so creditable a proficiency, that he went through a course of instruction with a local ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... has not been contented to stop there. He has worked for years upon the construction of an artificial arm, and has at length succeeded in arranging a mechanism, which, if it cannot serve a pianist or violinist, is yet equal to holding the reins in driving, receiving fees for professional services, and similar easy labors. Where Mr. Palmer means to stop in supplying bodily losses it would be premature to say. We suppose the accidents happening occasionally from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... rose from her knees, dried her little scarlet claws in her apron, and stood to attention. Having opened the debate by calling fervently upon her God to witness that she knew nothing of the matter, she proceeded, like a solo pianist, to run her fingers, as it were, lightly over the keys. Passing swiftly from her own birth, upbringing, invincible respectability, and remoteness from all neighbours, or knowledge of neighbours, she coruscated in a cadenza in which the families ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... her feet. The other girls all watched her with narrowed eyes. She was wearing such a pretty dress of light grey cotton poplin that she looked smarter than ever, they thought—in fact, almost pretty. She went close to the piano, and spoke to the pianist. "Oo, swank!" whispered the girls, when they saw that Sally was to play her own accompaniment. It was a thing none of ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... one, at least," he added with much conscientiousness, "as far as I can learn. Every fellow in the Quarter bows to her and she returns the salute gravely, but no man has ever been known to obtain more than that. Her profession, judging from her music-roll, is that of a pianist. Her residence is in a small and humble street which is kept in a perpetual process of repair by the city authorities, and from the black letters painted on the barrier which defends the street from traffic, she has taken the name by which we know her,—Rue Barree. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... went and found Tescheles, and they dined together with a famous pianist, Louis Brassin, and afterwards there was music, and Barty felt the north, and his bliss was transcendent as he went back to Malines by the last train—talking to Martia (as he expressed it to himself) in a confidential whisper which he made audible ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Scotch-Irish extraction who emigrated to America about the middle of the 18th Century. He was their third son. As a boy he studied the pianoforte with Juan Buitrago, a South American, Pablo Desvernine, a Cuban, and for a short time with the famous Venezuelan pianist, Teresa Carreno. He also indulged in childish composition on his own account. He was not a "wonderful" pupil and did not like the drudgery ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... very gay, soon acquired the absinth habit, and rapidly descended in the social scale, and now she was scarcely ever out of prison. It was very difficult to realize that this poor soul, who now was never known to use any but vile language and oaths, was once a beautiful young woman, a linguist, pianist, singer, also otherwise accomplished person. Though all efforts (there had been many) in her behalf had proved futile, I determined to make an attempt to save her. Accordingly I paid a special visit to the women's ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... Mr. Moiseiwitsch is to establish himself with the public he must play old stuff, even such dreadful things as the Mozart-Liszt "Don Giovanni." It is with Chopin valses and Liszt rhapsodies that a pianist plays an audience into a hall, but he should put on some stuff to play the audience out with. Under this arrangement those of us who have heard Chopin's Fantasie as often as we can endure may come late, while those ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... which Napoleon told his officer was beastly, never to be spoken, and in his dictionary not found. "With God all things are possible," and that means possible to whoever works with Him. Said the pianist to his pupils, "If you do not expect or intend to write finer music than Beethoven, you have no business to compose at all." Mr. Sumner aimed at the sun; and the feeling of philanthropic duty with which he stirred ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... my mother had been a concert pianist; now she had such large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... all her heart that Portia had not made a tragic mistake in this matter of her marriage. She couldn't herself quite see how a sensible girl like Portia could have done anything so reckless as to marry a romantic young Italian pianist, ten years at least her junior. It couldn't be denied that the experiment seemed to have worked well so far. Portia certainly seemed happy enough last night; contented. There was a sort of glow about her there never was before. But the question was how long would it last. How long ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Thomas J. Brennan, of Pottsville, Penna., were candidates for the divisional foot ball team that played at Souilly with a number of other divisional elevens. Philip J. Cusick, of Parsons, Penna., the battery's favorite pianist, was selected to make a tour with the regimental minstrel show that was put on to tour the circuit of A. E. F. playhouses. Cusick was recalled to the battery the latter part of February when he received notice of his early ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... be to-day; he is out visiting. What do they come bothering for?" came the sound of a woman's voice from behind the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and stopped, and the sound of a chair pushed back was heard. It was plain the irritated pianist meant to rebuke the tiresome visitor, who had come at an untimely hour. "Papa is not in," a pale girl with crimped hair said, crossly, coming out into the ante-room, but, seeing a young man in a good coat, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... who possessed a fine voice, willingly sang whenever a musical program was arranged for an evening, while his lovely young wife, who was an accomplished pianist, played his accompaniments, or rendered solos, thus generously adding to the pleasure of the ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... behind them she felt a sick longing for Catherine's shelter. Then all the pride in her rushed to the rescue and held that swooning dismay at the heart of her in check. And forthwith she capped Langham's minute account of the scale-method of a famous Berlin pianist by some witty stories of the latest London prodigy, a child-violinist, incredibly gifted, dirty, and greedy, whom she had made friends with in town. The girl's voice rang out sharp and hard under the trees. Where, in fortune's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chose to give most of her time to music. Without being a genius, she played remarkably well, and she made her work available for others by playing the organ in a church which was rich, in everything but money. I knew another fine pianist who gave lessons to children who could not otherwise have had them. In both these cases the ladies were as much bound by their self-imposed tasks as if they had been earning their living, and their characters received ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... first. In the "Connoisseurs" by Fortuny we have the second form, and in the "Huntsman and Hounds" the third. A most original and commendable arrangement of three figures by W. L. Hollinger appears in "The Pose in Portraiture," the members of a trio, violin, cello and piano. The pianist is designated by the suggestion of her action which is completed out of the picture. In her position however she accomplishes the balancing of ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Dan entered Elkhead. He rose in the stirrups, on his toes, stretching the muscles of his legs. He was sensing his strength. So the pianist before he plays runs his fingers up and down the keys and sees that all is in tune and ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... Minturn Peck (1854-1886) is a native of the South. He was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and spent most of his early years in that city. He was gifted in music and became an excellent amateur pianist. His published works include Cap and Bells, Rhymes and Roses, and Rings and Love-Knots, from which "The Grapevine Swing," one of his ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... there some slight obscuration, some penumbra, mist, or subtle vapour which, as he gazed, seemed to struggle to take human form. He ceased playing for a moment and rubbed his eyes, but as he did so all dimness vanished and he saw the chair perfectly empty. The pianist stopped also at the cessation of the violin, and ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... the Indo-European Telegraphs. A burly, jolly Dutchman stood drinks all round to members of the Russian and English Banks alike, and a French sage-femme just arrived discussed her prospects with the hotel proprietress. The Shah's A.D.C. and favourite music-composer and pianist came frequently to enliven the evenings with some really magnificent playing, and by way of diversion some wild Belgian employees of the derelict sugar-factory used almost nightly to cover with insults a notable "Chevalier d'industrie" ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a morning party. It affords ladies who do not attend evening receptions the pleasure of meeting on a semi-formal occasion, and is also a well chosen occasion for introducing a new pianist or singer. For a busy woman of fashion a matinee, beginning at two and ending at four or half-past, which are the usual hours for these entertainments, is a most convenient time. It does not interfere with a five o'clock tea, or a drive, nor unfit her for a dinner ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... than none," Morris Perlmutter commented, "which it is very clear to me, Abe, that with the example of Poland in front of them, the Italians being also a musical people and seeing that Poland has got it a first-class A-number-one pianist like Paderewski for a President, y'understand, they are taking the opportunity of Fiume to put in Caruso or Scotti or one of them ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... fellow, with a gravity equal to that of the sham showman, explained to his audience that he was composing an operetta, of which he would give them a few passages. He was a skilful pianist. He explained, as his fingers ran up and down the keys, that the scene was in Ratcliffe Highway. A tavern: a hornpipe. Jack ashore. Unseemly squabbles: here there were harsh discords and shrill screams. Drunkenness: the music getting very helpless. ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... as blind as Homer," said his friend. "Can't you see that her love is purely personal? Would she care to give a title to a pianist, if he were any other than Arnold Wulff? If you had other eyes in your head, or if there were another man inside even that same face of yours, the strains might flow out under your fingers like streams from Paradise, in vain, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... piano was old, but tuned to the middle of the note, and the keys were swept by a master hand. The wires were not hammered; they were touched knowingly as by the player's own fingers, and so they sang—and from out among the chords there stole an errant melody. This was not "piano-playing" and not a pianist's triumphant nimbleness—it was music. Art is the language of a heart that knows how to speak, and a heart that knew how was speaking here. What it told was something immeasurably wistful, something that might have welled up in the breast of a young ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive airs—for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand, operas, like Fidelio. Have you never heard this by your ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... play." Each one straightened her shoulders and leaned eagerly forward, fairly holding her breath in anticipation, for Azzie's fame as a pianist was far-reaching. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... Lloyd (Cheshire), Robinson (King's Liverpool), Laying (Gloucesters), Granville (Royal Fusiliers), who was in the same Battalion as Wynn, who was chaplain of Jesus, and Cuthbertson, the girl of the footlights; Steed, a pianist, Propert, and others. Our instructor, Higgins, was a topping chap, with the Military Cross. We had an awfully jolly time on ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... their voices and in a quite unintelligible manner a string of presumably obscene songs, accompanied on the piano with frantic gestures and astonishing musical skill by a man whom I had always regarded as a respectable Fabian Researcher, but who now turned out to be a Demon Pianist out-Heroding (my secretary put in two rs, and explains that she was thinking of Harrods) Svengali. A horribly sacrilegious character was given to the proceedings by the fact that the tune they were singing when I entered was Luther's hymn Eine Feste ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the etiquette of the ball-room is also the etiquette for the evening party. It is best for the hostess to provide a pianist, if she does not herself preside at the piano, as it is excessively ill-bred to expect part of the guests to play for the remainder to dance. Many good-natured people find themselves thus victimized—invited "because they are always so willing to play for dancing." ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... separation. A tutor employed for Herbart at this period developed in him a speculative tendency and taught him the power of forcible expression. Herbart learned to play on several musical instruments, and at the age of eleven displayed considerable talent as a pianist. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... even the mere spectator as much as it does the players. One of the company sits at the piano while another leaves the room. The rest of the party then hide some article, previously agreed upon, and recall the absent player. At his entrance the pianist begins playing some lively air, very softly, keeping up a sort of musical commentary upon his search, playing louder as he approaches the goal, and softer when he wanders away from it. In this way he is guided to at last discover the ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger |
