"Melodic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... choosing to modernize the spelling of Milton, for surely the reading of our classics should be made as little difficult as possible, and he is right also in making an exception of such abnormal forms as the poet may fairly be supposed to have chosen for melodic reasons. His exhaustive discussion of the spelling of the original editions seems, however, to be the less called-for as he himself appears to admit that the compositor, not the author, was supreme in these matters, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of music, with the exception of intentionally rhapsodic utterances, begins with some group of notes of distinct rhythmic and melodic interest, which is the germ—the generative force—of the whole, and which is comparable to the text of a sermon or the subject of a drama. This introductory group of notes is called, technically, a motive or moving force and may be defined as the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... a quiet rhythmical, mournful movement, which suddenly changed to a raging presto. The melodic figure was shattered like a bouquet of flowers in a waterfall almost before it had had time to take shape and display real composure. The dissipated elements, scattered to the four corners of the earth, then returned, hesitatingly and with evident contrition, to be ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... in London, and all things were fair and clean. It is old-world music, yet it stands nearer to us than most of the music written in and immediately after Handel's period, the period of dry formalism and mere arithmetic. There is not a sign of the formal melodic outlines which we recognise at once in any piece out of the contrapuntal time, not an indication that the Academic, "classical," unpoetic, essay-writing eighteenth century was coming. The formal outlines had not been ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman |
