"Nocturne" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the nocturne. She played rather badly, but with feeling. Her sister played nothing but polkas and waltzes, and even that very seldom. She would go sometimes with her indolent step to the piano, sit down, let her coat slip from her shoulders down to her elbows (I never saw her without ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... when six months had swift glided away, Again at the instrument seated, Miranda a nocturne had just ceased to play, When old Thomas desired ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... remained in affluent circumstances, having married a Russian lady of rank and wealth. Field was idolized by the Russians, and they claim his compositions as belonging to their music. He is now distinctively remembered as the inventor of that beautiful form of musical writing, the nocturne. Spohr, the violinist, met Clementi and Field at the Russian capital, and gives the following amusing account in his "Autobiography": "Clementi, a man in his best years, of an extremely lively disposition and very engaging manners, liked much to converse ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... skull, that he saw—his mundane surroundings did not disturb his visions. And the waves of dolour swept over his consciousness. A mingling of tuberoses, narcissus, attar of roses, and ambergris he detected in the air—as triste as a morbid nocturne of Chopin. This was followed by a blending of heliotrope, moss-rose, and hyacinth, together with dainty touches of geranium. He dreamed of Beethoven's manly music when whiffs of apple-blossom, white rose, cedar, and balsam reached him. Mozart passed roguishly ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... does," replied the young man. He really gazed admiringly at the older woman, who made, under the glimmering shadows of the oaks, a charming nocturne of elderly womanhood. The faint pink on her cheeks seemed enhanced by the pink seen dimly through the ashen shimmer of her gown; the creamy lace harmonized with her yellow-gray hair. She was in her own way as ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... two hours the man who was no longer manikin and the girl who in real life was only a frail little bookkeeper played to David: a brilliant polonaise, a nocturne that was moonlight and shadow set to music, a concerto that only the masters attempt, a few noble old classics. Between them she sang thrice, songs chosen by Jonathan, each a little more taxing than the one before. ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... fashion. After a moment Liszt said: "No, no, it is not quite that." Hatzfeldt got up. Liszt seated himself at the piano, played two or three bits of songs, or waltzes, then, always talking to Hatzfeldt, let his fingers wander over the keys and by degrees broke into a nocturne and a wild Hungarian march. It was very curious; his fingers looked as if they were made of yellow ivory, so thin and long, and of course there wasn't any strength or execution in his playing—it was the touch of an old man, but a master—quite unlike anything I have ever heard. When he ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... office for the dead received this name from the antiphon with which the first nocturne in the mattens commenced, taken from Psalm v. 8, "Dirige, Domine Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam." ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... eighteenth century John Field of Dublin was a distinguished pianist. He subsequently (1814) invented the nocturne, developed by Chopin. Sir John Stevenson (the arranger of the Irish Melodies), Tom Cooke, William Southwell (inventor of the damper action for pianofortes), Henry Mountain, Andrew Ashe (flautist), Barton, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... put something on that eye of yours. It will probably resemble a Whistler 'Nocturne' by morning. What are ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... chair he had himself been sitting in. There was a little time of stillness, filled only by the crack and rustle of the fire. Then, into the silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth Prelude—climbing higher and higher in a mournful triumph of ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... content her impetuous visitor, Mrs. Fleming gave in. She pulled a volume of Chopin from the stand, and began the twelfth nocturne. It was years since she had played it, but as she touched the keys the old spirit crept back into her fingers, and the notes came rippling out delicately and easily. Diana, sunk back in the recesses of the long basket-chair, ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... played the flute or piano, while members of the family accompanied him. "Memory pictures," says one of his admirers, "that frail, slender figure at the piano, touching with white, shapely hands the chords of Chopin's 'Nocturne'." "He was a frequent visitor to our house," says another, "and would often play for us on his beautiful silver flute. The image of him standing in his rapt passion, while he poured forth the entrancing sound, I ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... from Harvard University in 1912 and in August of the same year married Miss Jessie McDonald, of Montreal, Canada. Mr. Aiken's first volume of poetry, "Earth Triumphant", was published in 1914, and has been followed by "Turns and Movies", 1916; "Nocturne of Remembered Spring", 1917; and "The Charnel Rose", 1918. Mr. Aiken is a keen and trenchant critic, as well as a poet, and his volume on the modern movement in poetry, "Skepticisms", is one of the finest and most stimulating contributions to the subject. ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... out of the window, then opening her piano, for the first time since her father's death, she sat down and played a nocturne by Mendelssohn. The music seemed a natural expression of her feelings,—suited to the heart "steeped in golden languors," in the "tranced summer calm." The tones rang through the silent rooms, pervading all the charmed air, so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... sometimes one and sometimes another read poetry, and sometimes they read the Psalms, especially the Twenty-third, and sometimes Martha played the Melody in F, or the Shower of Stars or the Cinquieme Nocturne. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... the mockingbird plays a part. The poet's treatment of the bird is entirely ideal and eminently characteristic. That is to say, it is altogether poetical and not at all ornithological; yet it contains a rendering or free translation of a bird-song—the nocturne of the mockingbird, singing and calling through the night for its lost mate—that I consider quite unmatched in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... that, and for a time the low sweet harmonies of the nocturne Penelope was playing filled ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... had its origin in Ruskin's comment upon the "Nocturne in Black and Gold," described as "a distant view of Cremorne Garden, with a falling rocket and other fireworks." The picture is now the property of Mrs. Samuel Untermyer, of New York. On the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery, in 1877, Ruskin wrote in Fors Clavigera: "The ill-educated ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... Whistler painted the "Nocturne," and that was his affair. If Ruskin did not think it beautiful, that was his affair; but when Ruskin went one step further and accused the painter of trying to hoodwink the world for a matter ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... coup, dtach des cieux, Un rayon de l'astre nocturne, Glissant sur mon front taciturne, Vient mollement toucher ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... moment of aimless wandering to and fro. Margot was no great performer, but what she could play she played by heart, and Nature had provided her with a sweet, thrush-like voice, with that true musical thrill which no teaching can impart. At the first few bars of a Chopin nocturne Mr Macalister's newspaper wavered, and fell to his knee. Margot heard the rustle of it, slid gradually into a simpler melody, and was conscious of a heavy hand waving ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... beaten. I'd fight to the last gasp, if I had any show to win. But these conditions, which I foolishly but honestly brought about myself, have defeated me so far in advance that I have absolutely no hope to redeem myself. That's all. Don't speak of it again, girls. Play me that nocturne that I ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... would ask his secretary to play the orchestrelle, which at great expense had been freighted up from New York. In that high situation, the fire and the music and the stormbeat seemed to lift us very far indeed from reality. Certain symphonies by Beethoven, an impromptu by Schubert, and a nocturne by Chopin were the selections he cared for most,[12] though in certain moods he asked, for ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... conversational electroplate which accompanied his former London dinner-parties. He did not dare to think of Elise at all. She was the intoxicating climax of his past life. She was the blending of his life's melodies into a brief, tender nocturne of love that his heart would never ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Marjorie's Prelude, Evie's Nocturne, Stephanie's Mazurka, and Gertie's recitation all went off without a hitch, and received their due reward of appreciation. It was now Rona's turn. For a moment she grew pale as she mounted the platform, then ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil |
