"Pianoforte" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that blew as it does on the open sea, shaking the old doors and the window-sashes below in the wood-sheds. Beneath him he could hear sounds well known and full of charm, songs that escaped in the satisfaction of work accomplished, assembled laughter, the pianoforte lesson being given by Bonne Maman, the tic-tac of the metronome, all the delicious household stir that pleased his heart. He lived with his darlings, who certainly never could have guessed that they ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... air, and went and ran her fingers up and down the keys of the pianoforte, which great new instrument had supplanted the old harpsichord in the house. Tom and I, standing at the fireplace, watched her face as the ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... forget the pianoforte among your occupations, or, indeed, music generally. You have such fine talent for it. Why not devote yourself entirely to it—you who have such feeling for all that is beautiful and good? Why will you not make use ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... pianoforte with a vast complication of machinery and wires inside, but with no means of telling who the player is, and with only a guess as to why the player plays at all. I can only know what is being played, whether the mode is merry or mournful, when the notes are sharp or flat, ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an utter futility. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... censorious criticisms of an epoch in which some of the purest could not escape unassailed. I saw her at Pyrmont in 1803; and even then, though the mother of many children, she looked as young and beautiful as ever. She was remarkably well educated and accomplished, a profound musician on the harp and pianoforte, graceful in her conversation, and a most charming dancer. She seemed to bear the vicissitudes of fortune with a philosophical courage and resignation not often to be met with in light-headed French women. She was amiable in her manners, easy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... neither he nor anybody else is wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, or rather hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thought the study a great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs, like a clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave; Mr Toots takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worrying the weak-eyed young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks a glad defiance down the cliff; while Melia, and another of the Doctor's female domestics, looks out ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... (two of them had in the meantime become fathers, and the wife of Keyl II., nee Moeller, was in an interesting condition), and chatted about their various uncles and aunts. As of yore, the singing, violin and horn-playing Manitius was at the piano, turning over the leaves of a pianoforte arrangement of the "Trompeter von Saekkingen." And again, as of old, the little red-haired Dr. von Froeben held forth learnedly to every one who would listen. There were only two new men who had entered the regiment during his illness, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... of Miss Alexander is as suggestive of the colour as a pianoforte arrangement of Tristan is of the orchestration. The sounds of the different instruments come through the thin tinkle of the piano just as the colour of the blond hair, the delicate passages of green-grey and green, come through the black and white ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Brezzi. An acquaintance with Hebrew was the result of her own unaided efforts. From Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michaels, Coventry, she received lessons in music, although it was her own fine musical sense which made her in after years an admirable pianoforte player. Nothing once learned escaped her marvellous memory; and her keen sympathy with all human feelings, in which lay the secret of her power of discriminating character, caused a constant fund of knowledge to flow into her treasure-house from ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... a holiday, hearing that an auction was to take place at the neighbouring town, at which a pianoforte was for sale, set off to attend it. There was some competition, but he had 20 pounds in his pocket, saved from his earnings, and it was finally knocked down to him at that price. With proud satisfaction he at once hired a spring cart, and set off with it for his home, where he had ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... to say, that a larger proportion of the people, outside the classes which professedly account themselves musical, have more or less acquaintance with his music), just as they know the work of half a dozen English composers, MacDowell, though he had played his pianoforte concertos in London, remained almost unknown in England outside of strictly musical circles. It is certain that had MacDowell been an Englishman he would have been immensely better known in America than, being an American, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the blue-coated, bright-buttoned butler, "who gave quite a winey flavour to the table-beer—he poured it out so superbly!" We had Dr. Blimber himself, besides, with his learned legs, like a clerical pianoforte—a bald head, highly polished, and a chin so double, it was a wonder how he ever managed to shave into the creases. We had Miss Blimber, in spectacles, like a ghoul, "dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages." We had Mrs. Blimber, not learned herself, but pretending ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... up a subject and pursuing it." "Work," said Mozart, "is my chief pleasure." Beethoven's favourite maxim was, "The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, 'Thus far and no farther.'" When Moscheles submitted his score of 'Fidelio' for the pianoforte to Beethoven, the latter found written at the bottom of the last page, "Finis, with God's help." Beethoven immediately wrote underneath, "O man! help thyself!" This was the motto of his artistic life. John Sebastian Bach said of himself, "I was industrious; whoever ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... cry upstairs, and a cloud of ill-temper has often been dispersed by a timely practice. One of Schubert's friends used to say that, although very cross before sitting down to his piano, a long scramble-duet through a symphony or through one of his own delicious and erratic pianoforte duets, always restored ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... resolved to let them go ashore as little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already, however, before our visit, gone from the plantation-house, which was now used only as a picket-station. The only valuable article was a pianoforte, for which a regular packing-box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made up my mind, in accordance with the orders given to naval commanders in that department,* to burn all picket-stations, and all villages from which ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of any immediate design of a new dramatic composition, and delighted at the effect which his public performance on the pianoforte had created at Vienna, Mozart forgot all the fears he had expressed previously to his journey to Paris; thought no more that teaching would interfere with the higher vocation of his muse; and was content to become the fashionable performer, teacher, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a resident of France, among the German composers, may require an explanatory word. Chopin's whole early training was in the German school, and he may be looked on as one of the founders of the latest school of pianoforte composition, whose highest development is in contemporary Germany. He represents German music by his affinities and his influences in art, and bears too close a relation to important changes in musical form to be omitted ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... meditative form, that music was his calling. The duties inherent to the post of "music taster" to the house of Novello, Ewer, & Co., he hopefully acquitted for many years, succeeding to that office on the retirement of my once, in a choral sense, esteemed conductor, Sir Joseph Barnby. The pianoforte accompaniment to many of the classical works of continental composers he transcribed and carefully arranged for his employers, whose confidence he completely enjoyed, whether in addressing them ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... the pianoforte while she sang, bending and commanding her eyes. He seemed to wish to put himself where he was before he ever left her, to awaken everything lovely in her, to bring her before him as utterly developed as she might be,—not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... box—alas! a regular country patent leather one, and invest himself in a Quaker-collared blue coat, with a red vest, and a pair of blue trousers with a broad red stripe down the sides, to drive the Honourable old Miss Wrinkleton, of Harley Street, to Court in a 'one oss pianoforte-case,' as he called a Clarence, he could stand it no longer, and, chucking the nether garments into the fire, he rushed frantically up the area-steps, mounted his box, and quilted the old crocodile of a horse all the way home, accompanying each cut with an imprecation ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Herald gives each month, in reply to questions, lists of songs, pianoforte and organ pieces, violin pieces, orchestral pieces, choral works, all of which carry ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... silence, in which Mrs. Mansfield glanced about the room. Despite its size it was cozy. It looked as if it were lived in, perpetually and intimately used. There was nothing in it that was very handsome or very valuable, except a fine Steinway grand pianoforte; but there was nothing ugly or vulgar. And there were quantities of books, not covered with repellent glass. They were ranged in dark cases, which furnished the walls, and lay everywhere on tables, among magazines and papers, scores and volumes of songs and loose manuscript music. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... thought immersed, Now gloomy seemed and cheerful now, But he who by the Muse was nursed Is ever thus. With frowning brow To the pianoforte he moves And various chords upon it proves, Then, eyeing Olga, whispers low: "I'm happy, say, is it not so?"— But it grew late; he must not stay; Heavy his heart with anguish grew; To the young girl he said adieu, As it were, tore himself away. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... open question, and thought it a good thing to "learn occasionally what is according to rule that one may hereafter come to what is contrary to rule." It is said that Haydn persisted in regarding Beethoven, not as a composer at all but as a pianoforte player; and certainly Beethoven regarded Haydn as being behind the age. That he was unjust to Haydn cannot be gainsaid. He even went so far as to suspect Haydn of willfully trying to retard him in his ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Tangle's learned friends, each armed with a little summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... only as a dramatic singer, but also as a harp virtuoso, I, with my sister Marie, received a very careful musical education; and later a notable course of instruction in singing from her. From my fifth year on I listened daily to singing lessons; from my ninth year I played accompaniments on the pianoforte, sang all the missing parts, in French, Italian, German, and Bohemian; got thoroughly familiar with all the operas, and very soon knew how to tell good singing from bad. Our mother took care, too, that we should hear all the visiting ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... string directly he begins to play. I should have thought he would be pretty well used to it by now, but he never gets in tune again for the rest of the evening. You would be quite disappointed if Mrs. Green ever concluded her most finished and spirited pianoforte solo on ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... brother of the eminent violinist, Mr John Tiplady Carrodus, who, by the way, paid a visit to his native town of Keighley a few weeks ago. Mr Fred Carrodus had with him a gentleman whom he introduced to me as Mr Hermann, pianoforte manufacturer, and to whom I was introduced by Mr Carrodus as Bill o' th' Hoylus End, the Yorkshire poet. For four or five hours we were bosom friends and comrades, as it were. Mr Hermann knew his way about London to perfection, and he took ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... to hear that in this church Mendelssohn's Wedding March was first played at a wedding. The 'Midsummer Night's Dream' music had just been published as a pianoforte duet, when Mr Samuel Reay, of Tiverton, made an arrangement of it for the organ, and the first marriage at which the march was played was that of Mr Tom Daniel and Miss Dorothea Carew, in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... published in 1814 entitled Tales from the Mountains, the mountains being those dividing England from Wales. A story in the same volume which I nearly included has the promising style 'The Spotted Cow and the Pianoforte,' but its matter is not equal to its title. It is, indeed, a variation upon a very old theme, being the narrative of two girls of equal age who, coming into a little prosperity, at once gratify old desires: one, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... genius in a woman! Of his neighbours generally, Mrs. Baerens, the wife of a German merchant, an exquisite player on the pianoforte, was the most inclined to lead him to speak of Lady Camper. She was a kind prattling woman, and was known to have been a governess before her charms withdrew the gastronomic Gottfried Baerens from his devotion to the well-served City club, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... improvement. But the colonial girl is sharper at picking up what her mistress does know than the English one, and she has more of the boy's emulation. Whatever her station in life, she is bound to strum the piano; but in no country is a good pianoforte player more rare, or do you hear greater trash strummed in a drawing-room. Languages and the other accomplishments are either neglected or slurred over; but, on the other hand, nearly every colonial girl learns something of household work, and can cook some sort of a dinner, yea, and often ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... she a carriage of her own? What ladies took care of her when she went out? Did she like dancing? What were the fashionable dances at noblemen's houses? Did young ladies in the great world practise the pianoforte much? How many offers had my sister had? Did she go to Court, as well as my father? What did she talk about to gentlemen, and what did gentlemen talk about to her? If she were speaking to a duke, how often would she say "your Grace" to him? and would a duke get her a chair, or an ice, and wait ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... same time vigorously pulling off one of her gloves in evident preparation for the attack. After much pressing, she reluctantly yields to what she had from the first made up her mind to do; takes her seat at a grand pianoforte, behind a couple of candles and an enormous music-book, and—crash go the keys in a thundering prelude, (the pedal, and every other means of increasing the noise being unscrupulously resorted to,) which, after superhuman exertions, lands her in what, to our affrighted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... honourable house, Mr. Captain, and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain, and I always, always dislike any scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles again, and then he lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and that is not at all right in an honourable house, and he ganz broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said so. And he took up a bottle and began hitting everyone with ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Solidly schooled, his technical attainments were only of a respectable order; but when excited he revealed traces of a higher virtuosity than was to have been expected. I recall his series of twelve historical recitals, in which he practically explored all pianoforte literature from Alkan to Zarembski. These recitals were privately given in the presence of a few friends. Old Fogy played all the concertos, sonatas, studies and minor pieces worth while. His touch was dry, his style neat. A pianist made, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... him was neither meat nor drink,—it was creative flame; ideas, plans, melodies glowed within him. To create, to do, to accomplish; to know the white glory of mighty midnights and the pale Amen of dawns was his day of days. Songs, pianoforte and violin pieces, trios and quintets for strings, incidental music, symphony, orchestral, and choral works rushed from his fingers. Nor were they laboriously contrived or light, thin things made to meet sudden ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... eighteenth century, some time between 1709 and 1720, Bartolomeo Cristofori made a "clavier" which allowed the performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in Italian, "piano" and "forte." This instrument with certain changes became our "pianoforte" or piano. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Musicians' lives, work, and influence. Throughout all this instruction—and from the very first—let them become acquainted with the elements of musical theory, both in their minds and also as exemplified on the pianoforte keyboard: and when all this has been done we shall have a cultivated musical public—a public that is able to discriminate between the good and the bad, the true and the false art."[3] This may perhaps be the counsel of perfection of an enthusiast, but progress lies more along the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... primarily as a preface or reason for the [writer's] second Pianoforte Sonata—"Concord, Mass., 1845,"—a group of four pieces, called a sonata for want of a more exact name, as the form, perhaps substance, does not justify it. The music and prefaces were intended to be printed together, but as it was found that this would make a cumbersome volume they are separate. ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Alma Frothingham, not quite twenty-one, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, and, according to her friends, promised to excel alike on the piano and the violin, having at the same time a 'really remarkable' contralto voice. Of late the young lady had abandoned singing, rarely used the pianoforte, and seemed satisfied to achieve distinction as a violinist. She had founded an Amateur Quartet Society, whose performances were frequently to be heard at ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... other points she came on exceedingly well, for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte of her own composition, she could listen to other people's performances with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Side.' Her absolute unconsciousness of his spiritual tumult, her stolidity before this spectacle of his triumphant genius, her matter-of-fact acceptance of his racial affinity, her refusal to be impressed by the heroism of a Hebrew pianoforte solo, all she said and did not say, jarred upon his quivering nerves, chilled his high emotion. 'Will you say I shall have much pleasure?' he ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... was an auctioneer, And made three hundred pounds a year; And HARRIET HALE, most strange to say, Gave pianoforte lessons at a ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness, as the nuns told the master of Cotenoir. The ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... After passages of dark music, in which the formless ugly reigned, occurred the poetic duel between Sordello and Eglamor at Palma's Court of Love. But why all this stress and fury? On the pianoforte the delicate episode sounded gratefully; with the thick riotous orchestration came a disillusioning transformation. There was noise without power, there was sensuality that strove to imitate the tenderness of passion; and she had fancied it a cloudy garden ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... fever and expired. She has no relatives left now, though so frail and delicate, but lives with an old maid in a very small domicile. She is cultivated to an extreme, and is so fond of music that, though her house is too small to admit of the pianoforte entering by the door, she had it introduced by the window of the salon, which had to be unbricked—the window, I mean. She has, moreover, three violins—one of which belonged to her ever-to-be-lamented fiance—and, though she is too frail to stand, she will sit, when her health ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... her gifted father a great talent for music. She was a remarkably skilful performer upon the pianoforte. So retentive was her memory that she could play without notes a large portion of the works of Handel, Beethoven ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... nowadays. A professional told me the other day that until nineteen-twentieths of the profession were strung up, there would be no chance for the rest; and as for amateurs, there is simply no room for them whatever. I can't conceive anything more passe than amateur pianoforte playing!' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... any habitual action to become inherited—and it can be shown that this does sometimes happen—then the resemblance between what originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished. If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at three years old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune with no practice at all, be might truly be said to have done so instinctively. But it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... sent for his pianoforte, and it gave Jude a lead. Why should he not write to the schoolmaster, and ask him to be so kind as to get him the grammars in Christminster? He might slip a letter inside the case of the instrument, and it would be sure to reach the desired eyes. Why not ask him to send any old second-hand ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... sisters, she had had her 'affaires' in the plural. A Greek prince, so far as I could make out, was the last of her adorers. But I sometimes got into scrapes by mixing up the Greek prince with a Polish count, and then confounding either one or both with a Hungarian pianoforte player. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... boy. We haven't done anything at my house but talk about you for a week. Now, you must be reasonable. We intended to give you a good start. Miss Grant wishes to put an upright pianoforte in the saloon. There is just room for it at the end of the stateroom on the starboard side. When that is put in, we shall let you alone. Now, Lawry, take this money; if you don't, ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... to his pianoforte studies, I beg you will keep him strictly to them; otherwise his music-master would be of no use. Yesterday Carl could not play the whole day, I have repeatedly wished to hear him play over his lessons, but have been obliged to come away without ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... the paddock is easy enough, but where will you put Mrs. Lookaloft, whose husband, though a tenant on the estate, hunts in a red coat, whose daughters go to a fashionable seminary in Barchester, who calls her farm-house Rosebank, and who has a pianoforte in her drawing-room? The Misses Lookaloft, as they call themselves, won't sit contented among the bumpkins. Mrs. Lookaloft won't squeeze her fine clothes on a bench and talk familiarly about cream and ducklings ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... not play upon the pianoforte; or, as Mrs. Walters would declare, she does not perform upon the instrument. Sylvia does; she performs, she executes. There are times when she will execute a piece called "The Last Hope" until the neighbors are filled with despair and ready to stretch their heads on the block to any more ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... music—Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn, and all the composers whose music Miss Sabina disliked. This music had belonged to Fred's mother, a fair and unfortunate creature, whose own story I shall some day write. Miss Sabina's performances upon the pianoforte were limited to such compositions as the "Canary Birds' Quadrilles," "My Heart is Over the Sea," etc., which she never played at all now. But she looked at the old piano, and recalled her sister-in-law's pretty baby looks ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... sympathy on her part with the rude, unlettered clowns, with whom she necessarily came so much in contact, should be impossible. He laughed my hints to scorn. 'It is idleness—idleness alone,' he said, 'that puts love-fancies into girls' heads. Novel-reading, jingling at a pianoforte—merely other names for idleness—these are the parents of such follies. Anne Dutton, as mistress of this establishment, has her time fully and usefully occupied; and when the time comes, not far distant now, to establish her in marriage, she will wed into a family I wot ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... house in Hampstead A Woman's Fancy Her Song A Wet August The Dissemblers To a Lady Playing and Singing in the Morning "A man was drawing near to me" The Strange House "As 'twere to-night" The Contretemps A Gentleman's Epitaph on Himself and a Lady The Old Gown A night in November A Duettist to her Pianoforte "Where three roads joined" "And there was a great calm" Haunting Fingers The Woman I Met "If it's ever spring again" The Two Houses On Stinsford Hill at Midnight The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House The Selfsame Song The Wanderer ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... ('Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers', p. 217). Beckford had been taught music by Mozart, and Rogers says ('ibid'.) that "in the evening Beckford would amuse us by reading one of his unpublished works; or he would extemporize on the pianoforte, producing the most novel ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... as much at home apparently as if they were driving through the streets of St. Paul, or St. Anthony, or Minneapolis, instead of upon that remote highway towards the North Pole; but this was not a whit more novel than to hear the pianoforte, and played, too, with both taste and skill. While another 'lion' of those parts that met our view was a topsail schooner lying in the river at the lower fort, which made occasional trips into Great Lake Winnepeg of the North, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... a-half for the three cows gives one some support under the blow of only eleven guineas for the tables. Eight for my pianoforte is about what I really expected to get; I am more anxious to know the amount of my books, especially as they are said to ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... The pianoforte glimmers dully with its black, bent, glossy side; the yellow, old, time-eaten, broken, gap-toothed keys glisten faintly. The stagnant, motionless air still retains yesterday's odour; it smells of perfumes, tobacco, the sour dampness of a large uninhabited room, the perspiration ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and Frances, as usual, was seated at the pianoforte, and Major Elliott, as usual, turning over the leaves of her music-book, she almost lost her breath with agitation when the gentle closing of a door aroused her to the fact, that they were alone. Mr and Mrs Gaskoin had quietly slipped out of the room; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... Shakespeare student will deny that some general help is necessary, when Schmidt's admirable Lexicon commits itself to such a misleading statement as that a virginal is a kind of small pianoforte, and when a very distinguished Shakespeare scholar has allowed a definition of a viol as a six-stringed guitar to appear in ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Miss Bouverie opened it herself with the inevitably thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs. Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung |
