"Piece of music" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an amateur, though, compared with the professional performers, he necessarily made rather an unkingly figure. Frederick, who was afraid of nothing else, was so much afraid of failure in his flute playing, that whenever he had a new piece of music, he shut himself up in his closet some hours beforehand, to practise it; and although no one was permitted to be present at those concerts except a very few select friends, he was always observed to be remarkably nervous at the commencement. He had a fine collection of flutes, all made by the same ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... favorite piece of music, dear? Mine is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. I have found that out within a day ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... painter quite different from any of those that we already know, or, better still, when some one has taken us and set us down in front of a picture of which we have hitherto seen no more than a pencilled sketch, or when a piece of music which we have heard played over on the piano bursts out again in our ears with all the splendour and fullness of an orchestra, my grandfather called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge of Tansonville, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... certain mood, but also to avoid rendering that mood monotonous by unduly protracting it. A further stage was reached when the interpretations of contrasted moods were made to follow one upon the other, and the charm of light and shade was discovered; and yet another step was made when the same piece of music was allowed to contain a contrast of the ethos—for instance, the contest between a male and a female theme. All these, however, are crude and primitive stages in the development of music. The fear of passion suggested the first rule, and the fear of monotony the second; all ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... by the Rev. Dr. SEWALL: At 12 o'clock the cannon at Castle William and the batteries in this town and Charlestown were discharged: In the afternoon the Bells rang; and His Excellency with the two Houses was escorted by his Company of Cadets to Concert Hall, where a fine piece of music was performed, to the satisfaction of a very large assembly; and in the evening there were beautiful illuminations, and a great variety of fire works in many parts of the town.... We hear there has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... attempts to interpret, and so express the emotions aroused by it from their slumbers in his own bosom that a responsive echo may be found in the bosoms of the listeners. A most ingeniously constructed music-box, with the presentation of a complicated piece of music, may fail to move a heart that will be stirred to its depths by a simple song, into which the singer's whole ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... chateau in France where he visited had an excellent voice, and every time she began to sing, a donkey belonging to the establishment invariably came near the window, and listened with the greatest attention. One day, during the performance of a piece of music which apparently pleased it more than any it had previously heard, the animal, quitting its usual post outside the window, unceremoniously entered the room, and, to exhibit its satisfaction, began to bray with ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... its precepts to deliver on the embellishment, generally, of what is near at hand, on the adornment of life, till, in a not impracticable rule of conduct, one's existence, from day to day, came to be like a well-executed piece of music; that "perpetual motion" in things (so Marius figured the matter to himself, under the old Greek imageries) according itself to a kind ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... suddenly back into the past and into a bush dance, for there was a concertina going upstairs. He was sitting on the bed, with his legs crossed, and a new cheap concertina on his knee, and his eyes turned to the patch of ceiling as if it were a piece of music and he could read it. "I'm trying to knock a few tunes into my head," he said, with a brave smile, "in case the worst comes to the worst." He tried to be cheerful, but seemed worried and anxious. The letter hadn't ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... took his words literally, and thought her present circumstances too discordant for the fulfilling his request, opened the supposed piece of music with an aking heart; but when she had perused it, and found the artifice her lover had made use of to communicate his generous intentions to her, it is extremely fine, said she to the valet, and I will do what ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... G.B.S., you understand a good deal about politics and political economy, Socialism, and Fabians, painting and actors [and so on, with untrue and ill-natured remarks ad lib.], but evidently you understand very little about Schubert. That 'Rossini crescendo' is as tragic a piece of music as ever was written." Yet, after dismissing the twain in this friendly manner, I should have an uneasy feeling that there was some good reason for their lack of enthusiasm for Schubert. The very fact of there being such wide disagreement about the value of music that is now ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... hands on a bar,—which may at once transform the thing from a trifle to a wonder. An unpractised eye can no more appreciate the difficulty of a gymnastic exercise by seeing it executed, than an inexperienced ear, of the perplexities of a piece of music ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... begins with the slamming of a door and a healthy footfall across the room. The piano is opened. Then some occasional noises—the falling of a piece of music behind the piano, perhaps, and its extraction by means of the tongs—I know it is tongs she uses by the clang. Then the music-stool creaks, and La Belle Dame is ready to play. She puts both her ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells |
