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More "Musician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. George (I must not call him Vert-Vert) that I have recollected the name of the author of the clever novel 'Le Rouge et le Noir' (that is the right title of the book, which has nothing to do with the name); the author's name is Stendhal, or so he calls himself. I think that he was either a musician or a musical critic, and that he is dead.... My visitor has not yet arrived (6 o'clock, p.m.), frightened no doubt by the abruptness of the two notes which I wrote in reply to hers yesterday morning; and indeed ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... it aimed at the reality, aesthetically at the expression, of reserved power, and from the first set its subject on the thought of his personal dignity, of self-command, in the artistic way of a good musician, a good soldier. It is noted that "the general accent of the Doric dialect has itself the character not of question or entreaty, but of command or dictation." The place of deference, of obedience, was large in the education of Lacedaemonian ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... good fortune," Peter remarked, smiling, "that I saw Mademoiselle Celaire's name upon the bills this evening—my good fortune, since it has procured for me the honor of an acquaintance with a musician so distinguished." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fashionable world? Did the splendid mansion in the Rue de Berry really belong to her? Was she as rich as she was supposed to be? Where had she acquired such manners, the manners of a thorough woman of the world, with her many accomplishments, as well as her remarkable skill as a musician? Everything connected with her was a subject of conjecture, even to the name inscribed upon her ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... composers were in flower about the age of twenty-five. There is scarcely an instance of a musician producing his chef-d'oeuvre after the age of thirty. Rossini was not twenty when he composed his Tancredi, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... might come back now in a return match and reverse the verdict, so that my first chapter would serve better as my last one. Babe was older than I, and had pestered me from the time I was ten. Now I was eighteen and a man. I was a master puddler in the mill and a musician in the town band (I always went with men older than myself). Two stove molders from a neighboring factory were visiting me that day, and, as it was dry and hot, I offered to treat them to a cool drink. There were no soda ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... amidst the liberal culture of Henry's court a bold horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful dancer, a skilled musician, an accomplished scholar. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... the other with precious stones of an inestimable value. Attalus, so long the sport of fortune, and of the Goths, was appointed to lead the chorus of the Hymeneal song; and the degraded emperor might aspire to the praise of a skilful musician. The Barbarians enjoyed the insolence of their triumph; and the provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild influence of love and reason, the fierce spirit of their Gothic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... immediately, they want to know "what's wrong?" My answer is usually that "nothing is wrong" and that they need only keep steadily applying the instructions. Certainly, one doesn't become a proficient typist, musician, actor or sportsman because he has mastered the basic techniques. It ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... The mood, born of exceptional circumstances, was unique in his life. Had it been habitual, there would have been hope of a new poet, or, since his taste lay in the direction of wordless harmony, of a great musician. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... spiteful. She had been given the unfortunate name of Snandulia, and to Paklin's request that she should be re-christened Sophia, she replied that it was just as it should be; a hunchback ought to be called Snandulia; so she stuck to her strange name. She was an excellent musician and played the piano very well. "Thanks to my long fingers," she would say, not without a touch of bitterness. "Hunchbacks always have fingers ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... be he writer, painter, musician, or actor, must bear his private sorrows as he best can, and must separate them from the exercise of his public pursuit. But it sometimes happens, in compensation, that his private loss of a dear friend represents a loss on ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... words, mannerisms, habits, and oddities of human beings. If Hugh had been born in a household professionally artistic, and had been trained in art of any kind, I think he would very likely have become an accomplished artist or musician, and probably have shown great precocity. But he was never an artist in the sense that art was a torment to him, or that he made any sacrifice of other aims to it. It was always just a part of existence to him, and of the nature of an amusement, though in so far as it represented ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that I were a musician. 12. Were I so disposed, I could not gratify you. 13. This sword shall end thee unless thou yield. 14. Govern well thy appetite, lest sin surprise thee. 15. I know not whether it is so or not. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... as inspired genius comes to man in a great measure from Instinct, though as I noted before it is aided by reflection. As the young bird listens to its mother and then sings till as a grown nightingale it pours forth a rich flood of varying melody; so the poet or musician follows masters and models, and then, like them, creates, often progressing, but is never entirely spontaneous or original. When the artist thinks too little he lacks sense, when he thinks too much he loses fire. In the very highest and most strangely mysterious poetical flights ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the sweet musician sung The court and chorus joined And filled the wondering wind, And taxes, taxes, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... distinction came from her capability as a musician. In music she was not only an infant prodigy, but very much of a born genius. Her memory for any composition she heard once was unfailingly accurate; her rendition of anything she knew was more than perfect, since to perfection of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Schubert, the great musician, is written, "He gave much, but promised more"; and it is this immeasurable wealth of promise that makes the lives of our boys and girls so full of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... he replied, "except when hurt, and then I sing out. But see, our best musician has just seated himself at ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... like a would-be singer, a song written by a would-be poet, and set by a would-be musician. Verve was there none in the whole ephemeral embodiment. When it died a natural death, if that be possible where never had been any life, Vavasor said, "Thank you, Raymount." But Hester, who had been standing with her ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... does," thought Nell, as, mock-heroically, she placed near her lips a reed-pipe which she had snatched from a musician in the midst of the fun; and, whistling a merry tune which the pipe took no part in, she circled about the room, ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... played with a musician one night!" exclaimed a Shadow in another group, to which the king had first directed a passing thought, and then had stopped to listen.—"Up and down we went, like the hammers and dampers on his piano. But he took his revenge on us. For ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... in clearing away, and in arranging things in the house. Sara alone took no part in it, but took lessons on the harp from a distinguished young musician of the name of Schwartz, who had come a stranger to the city. She sate the whole morning at her music, which she loved passionately; in the mean time, Petrea had promised to enact the part of lady's-maid to her, and to put all her clothes ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... her own! Dark and keen and splendid: a type so different from the others that I found myself staring. If he had not said "ma fiancee" I should have understood better. After another pause he went on: "I will give you her address in Paris. She has no family: she lives alone—she is a musician. Perhaps you may find her there." His colour deepened again as he added: "But I know nothing—I have had ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Britannicus, the true heir to the throne, were murdered. The wealthy were plundered, and the feelings of his subjects outraged in every conceivable manner. The Emperor appeared in public, contending first as a musician, and afterwards in the ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... design is that of a sculptor, Andrea's of a colourist, Lionardo's of a curious student, Raffaello's of a musician and improvisatore. These distinctions are not merely fanciful, nor based on what we know about the men in their careers. We feel similar distinctions in the case of all great draughtsmen. Titian's chalk-studies, Fra Bartolommeo's, so singularly akin to Andrea del Sarto's, Giorgione's pen-and-ink ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... in eighteenth-century costume, with a strangely pathetic expression in her dark brown eyes as of one perpetually striving to understand and to be understood by others. Her mouth also showed the same fragile tenderness of feeling, and altogether she seemed intended to be—if not herself a musician or a poetess—at least the wife of a musician or ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... women of distinction in her nation, Vaninka was a good musician, and spoke French, Italian, German, and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... in his own way equally typical, was Hamilton Aide, who united to the life of society the cultivation of art, and was equally serious in his combined devotion to both. He was a musician, a poet, a singer of his own songs in a voice perfectly modulated. He was also as a painter in water colors one of the most distinguished amateurs of his time. His landscapes, indeed, and his sketches of old houses and gardens, Scotch castles, and the seclusions of Italian villas, were in themselves ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... one hope. Presently, she sought out an old friend who had been a musician of note and later a teacher and musical critic on an evening paper, and confided her difficulty to him. Hearing her story, he was interested and very sympathetic. He advised her to drop the concert idea and dwell wholly upon the possibility of opera as a lure: only the dramatic form and setting ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... and one-half inches. The general color is dark slate, somewhat lighter beneath; top of the head and tail, black; under side of tail near the base, chestnut; bill and feet, black; eye, brown. The female is like the male, but smaller. As a musician, this bird closely approaches the brown thrush. There are great differences in ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... the most beautiful melody of bells I ever heard is toning through the air. They are the bells of S. Michael's church, and I am told that the musician plays them by a set of pedal keys, and works himself into a mighty heat and flurry in the operation. But we cannot think of the wild manner and mad motions of the player in connection with those beautiful sounds, so clear and melodious; that half plaintive music so sweetly ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... 1859, the thought came to him "that a very good poem might be written on the Saga of King Olaf, who converted the North to Christianity." Two years later he completed the lyrics that compose "The Musician's Tale" in The Tales of a Wayside Inn, published in 1863, and in this work "The Challenge of Thor" serves as a prelude. The pieces after this prelude are not imitations of the Icelandic verse, but are like Tegner's Frithjof's ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... looked inquiringly at her mother, and received a smile of assent. She then took her lute and sang a romaunt of the day. Although but twelve years old, she was a well-taught and painstaking musician. Her little claw swept the chords with Courage and precision, and struck out the notes of the arpeggio clear, and distinct, and bright, like twinkling stars; but the main charm was her voice. It was not mighty, but it was ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... single purchaser. Kindness, too, he met but little, most of the people treating him as a pauper or a vagrant. Many advised him to try the sale of trinkets and drapery, or of pills and 'patent medicines,' instead of poetry; while others went so far as to recommend him to become an itinerant musician. Having traversed the country in all directions, suffering from want and fatigue, and, more still, from insults, and not gaining enough, to purchase the coarsest food, he at last began to see the utter uselessness of persevering further in his new occupation. However, as a last attempt ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... eyes. He advanced quietly to the side of the stage holding a ten-sou tin flute in his hand, and when he began to play, for an instant I forgot all about the Bois-le-Pretre, the trenches, and everything else. The man was a born musician. I never heard anything more tender and sweet than the little melody he played. The poilus listened in profound silence, and when he had finished, a kind of sigh exhaled from ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... hushed then was all the hubbub—some clear silver voice, sweet almost as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths, singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the musician was of the best and noblest blood of France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gabrielle!" And there might be seen, in the solitude of their own abstractions, men with minds that had sounded the profounds of science, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... 1. A merchant, who was very fond of music, was asked by a poor widow to give her some assistance. Her husband, who was a musician, had died, and left her very poor indeed. 2. The merchant saw that the widow and her daughter, who was with her, ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... monotonous air on his flute, one that he had learned from the shepherds of the Pyrenees. The shopkeeper, Galtier, came up the road, stood still, made a pretense of listening, but finally interrupted the musician, addressing him severely: "Why do you gad about and pretend to be ignorant, Colard? Don't you know, then, that the murder is said to have been ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... proceedings, and I saw him no more; but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz's cousin, appeared two days later, and was anxious to hear all the details about his dear relative's last moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. 'There was the making of an immense success,' said the man, who was an organist, I believe, with lank gray hair flowing over a greasy coat-collar. I had no reason to doubt his statement; and to this day I am unable to say what was Kurtz's profession, whether he ever had any—which ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... but at this time it was a small fortune to Haydn. He was able to do a good many things with it. First of all, he took a lodging for himself—another attic! Spangler had been very kind, but he could not give the young musician the privacy needed for study. It chanced that there was a room vacant, "nigh to the gods and the clouds," in the old Michaelerhaus in the Kohlmarkt, and Haydn rented it. It was not a very comfortable room—just ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... to be sorry for Merry. I'd rather pay board than live with a disposition like that. Down I pikes, out the front door and back through the shrubby. Meantime the musician has finished "Promise Me" and has switched to "Annie Laurie." It's easy enough to get the gen'ral direction the sound comes from; but I couldn't place it exact. First off I thought it must be from a little summer house down by the shore; but it wa'n't. I couldn't see anyone around ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... sensational circumstance which appeals to us, and that material for enthralling drama can be found in the life of the most commonplace person—of a middle-aged shopkeeper threatened with bankruptcy, or of an elderly musician with a weakness for good dinners. At one blow he destroyed the unreal ideal of the Romantic School, who degraded man by setting up in his place a fantastic and impossible hero as the only theme worthy of their pen; and thus he laid the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... about appear to father to be a sort of indoor game. It's all right to play the piano, if it's too wet to play golf. You can amuse yourself with painting if there aren't any pheasants to shoot. In fact, he will think that my wanting to become a musician is much the same thing as if I wanted to become a billiard-marker. And if he and I talked about it till we were a hundred years old, he could never possibly appreciate my point ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... into the body. He will be very liable to misquote his author's meaning while he is picking off his outside sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was only the tuning of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... upon a sheet of folio paper, he would nod across to me as one Tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl and encourage me with a heartfelt 'mitai!—good!' So might a deaf painter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and master of some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. A silly trade, he doubtless considered it; but a man must make allowance for barbarians—chaque pays a ses coutumes—and he felt ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forgotten the donation which he had received in the church. Continuing my pursuit, I gained an elevated situation: whence, looking down upon the spot where I had left the Savoyard, I observed him surrounded by the females—each and every one of them apparently convulsed with laughter! Even the little musician appeared to have ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in succession by poets, by painters, and by novelists. A great musician had the privilege of measuring the portions of the cake for some time; an ambassador succeeded him. Sometimes a man less well known, but elegant and sought after, one of those who are called according to the different epochs, "true gentleman," ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... appeared to slumber, the loquacity of the lady rendering speech impossible. The scientific celebrities, forgetting their mollusks and glacial periods, gossiped about art, while devoting themselves to oysters and ices with characteristic energy; the young musician, who was charming the city like a second Orpheus, talked horses; and the specimen of the British nobility present happened to be the most ordinary man of ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... introduction to Mr. Severn to his school-fellow Edward Holmes, who also had been one of the child-scholars at Enfield; for he came to us in the frock-dress. They were sworn companions at school, and remained friends through life. Mr. Holmes ought to have been an educated musician from his first childhood; for the passion was in him. I used to amuse myself with the piano-forte after supper, when all had gone to bed. Upon some sudden occasion, leaving the parlor, I heard a scuffle on the stairs, and discovered that my young gentleman had left his bed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... ground, but his bosom swelling high with hope and ambition. Within a bower of orange trees, in the deep recesses of the royal gardens, to which she had hastened, sat the panting princess. She selected some flowers from those which were scattered round her, and despatched them to her favourite musician and attendant, Acota. Who was there in the whole kingdom of Souffra who could so sweetly touch the mandolin as Acota? Yet, who was there, not only in Souffra, but in all the adjacent countries, who struck such occasional ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... holy anchoret, and was apprehended by the persecutors at Antinous in Egypt. Many heathens came to insult and affront him while in chains; and among others one Philemon, a musician, very famous, and much admired by the people. He treated the martyr as an impious person and a seducer, and one that deserved the public hatred. To his injuries the saint only answered, "My son, may God have mercy on thee, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... not like pussy-cats, but is too well-bred to tell you so, and the marquise who flatters you, and Blondel! Don't struggle—you cannot get away, I've got you tight. You are not going to have your way all the time. Look at me! Claws in and your ears up! There! And Tanrade, that big, whole-souled musician, with his snug old house and his two big dogs, either one of which would make mince-meat of you should you have the misfortune to mistake his garden for your own. Madame de Breville—do you hear?—who has but to half close her eyes to make Tanrade ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... time I saw Mrs. Somerville, she took me into her garden to show me her rose-bushes, in which she took great pride. Mrs. Somerville was not a mathematician only, she spoke Italian fluently, and was in early life a good musician. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... whirled breathlessly past, and her eyes followed him with a look which poor Barker would have given worlds to interpret as he stood sad and humble in all his unwonted magnificence by her side. The fiddler, who was a tin-peddler and a poet and the teacher of a "cipherin'-school," as well as a musician, played with great gusto, and was continually calling upon the dancers to "warm up 'n' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... was the musician whom you received so kindly. Your life is now in my hands; but I will give you your liberty if you will become a Christian and never again make war ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... establish such a relation between himself and the strange instrument, that, dumb and deaf as it had been to him hitherto, it would respond to his touch also, and tell him the secrets of its queerly-twisted skull, full of sweet sounds instead of brains. From that moment he would be a musician for music's own sake, and forgot utterly what had appeared to him, though I doubt if it was, the sole motive of his desire to learn—namely, the necessity of retaining ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... meaning of this phrase in our everyday life. The Spirit is that which gives life and movement to anything, in fact it is that which causes it to exist at all. The thought of the author, the impression of the painter, the feeling of the musician, is that without which their works could never have come into being, and so it is only as we enter into the IDEA which gives rise to the work, that we can derive all the enjoyment and benefit from it which it is able to bestow. If we cannot enter into the Spirit ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... examined. I am convinced that the belief that such people must be the best witnesses, is false, at least as a generalization. Benneke (loco cit.), has also made similar observations. "The chemist who perceives a chemical process, the connoisseur a picture, the musician a symphony, perceive them with more vigorous attention than the layman, but the actual attention may be greater with the latter.'' For our own affair, it is enough to know that the judgment of the expert will naturally be better than that of the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... myself an artist, sometimes a musician," went on the wistful voice. "Then again I think myself a great man an' doin' somethin' worth while in the world. Then there's times I've thought myself with a family of children an' planned how they ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... agreed to regard as of almost saintly character, and afterwards became his son-in-law. His varied gifts, aided by an excellent education, won for him the reputation of the most accomplished man of his time. He was orator, poet, musician, philosopher. It is his peculiar distinction to have handed on to the Middle Ages the tradition of Greek philosophy by his Latin translations of the works of Aristotle. Called early to a public career, the highest honours of the State ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... musician with long hair, don't you know instinctively that he's bad?" Clarissa asked, turning to Rachel. "Watts and Joachim—they looked just like you ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... lives down in Somerset, and his factory is at Bristol. We all dined together at the Junior Carlton, and Applegarth and I got on so well that he asked me down to his place. Oxford man, clever, a fine musician, and an astronomer; has built himself a little observatory—magnificent telescope. By Jove! you should hear him handle the violin. Astonishing fellow! Not much of a talker; rather dry in his manner; but no end ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Christophe to go and see them. Madame Roussin was a good musician, and played the piano charmingly: she had a delicate, firm touch: with her little head bowed over the keyboard, and her hands poised above it and darting down, she was like a pecking hen. She was talented and knew more about music than most ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he will serve to swell the band of choristers.' Then Ercole said somewhat vaguely that he would ask his master. He came to me, having fathomed and laid bare the whole intention of the plot, so that, if I had not been stark mad ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... of art, have decided to have been the next in merit? Nobody would, I am certain. For it is the invariable, property of an accomplished Orator, to be reckoned such in the opinion of the people. Though Antigenidas, therefore, the musician, might say to his scholar, who was but coldly received by the Public, Play on, to please me and the Muses;—I shall say to my friend Brutus, when he mounts the Rostra, as he frequently does,— Play to me and the ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... choir-master, and left Annecy in a furtive manner along with Rousseau, whom the too comprehensive solicitude of Madame de Warens despatched to bear him company. They went together as far as Lyons; here the unfortunate musician happened to fall into an epileptic fit in the street. Rousseau called for help, informed the crowd of the poor man's hotel, and then seizing a moment when no one was thinking about him, turned the street corner and finally disappeared, the musician being ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Socialist as you could find, and Socialists had nothing to do with bombs! But young Emil Forster—he had been making explosives in his spare hours, had he not? At which Jimmie became still more outraged. He knew young Emil well; the boy was a carpet-designer and musician, and if anybody had told such tales about him, they were lying, that was all. The questioner went on for an hour or so, tormenting poor Jimmie with such doubts and fears; until finally he dropped a little of his ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... he was a genial and entertaining companion, unsurpassed in conversational powers, delighting in witty and sarcastic observations and epigrammatic sentences. He was elegant in his manners and bland and refined in his deportment. He was a skilful musician and passionately fond of children, and it was his wont in early life to gather them in groups about him and beguile them by the hour with the music of the flute or violin. He was actually devoid of all ambition for power and place, and uniformly declined all offers of advancement to the highest ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... soon arrived one by one: one looked like a coal-heaver, another like a seedy musician, a third like a coach- driver. But they all walked boldly into the house and were soon all congregated in apartment No. 12. Here fresh disguises were assumed, and soon a squad of Republican Guards looked as like the real ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Egypt, and whose husband was maliciously sent back-by the English, was a frequent visitor to the treasury. On an occasion would be seen assembled there a distinguished scholar and an actor, a celebrated orator and a musician; on another, the treasurer would have payments to make to a priest, a courtesan, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... South American locusts are such wonderful performers that the Indians keep them in wicker cages, in order that they may enjoy the playing. There is a North American locust which is quite famous as a musician. It is known as the Katydid, on account of its peculiar notes, which resemble the words Katy-did-she-did. This note is kept up throughout the night. Our field-cricket plays by rubbing a row of teeth, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and then told him of his errand. A ray of sunshine seemed to enter the musician's life. The property was for sale, yes, and cheap, dirt cheap; so the transaction was partly arranged, and Volmer Holm went home to his wife and four children with quite ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... Goneril tried to imagine what a great musician could be like: long hair, of course; her imagination did not get much beyond the hair. He would of course be much older now than his portrait. Then she watched Angiolino cutting the corn, and learned how to tie the swathes together. She was occupied in this ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... "The Parliament of Foules" and "The Hous of Fame" there are distinct imitations of Dante. A passage from the "Purgatory" is quoted in the "Wif of Bathes Tale," etc. Spenser probably, and Milton certainly, knew their Dante. Milton's sonnet to Henry Lawes mentions Dante's encounter with the musician Casella "in the milder shades of Purgatory." Here and there a reference to the "Divine Comedy" occurs in some seventeenth-century English prose writer like Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor. It is thought that the description of Hell in Sackville's "Mirror for Magistrates" shows an acquaintance ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of her adoration Jane could not forbear a shaft of raillery. "You'll leave yourself some time to be a musician, won't you?" ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... in furnishing an excellent insight into the musical history of the period, and to the astonishing standard which the musician had to attain before even recognition was assured by the extremely critical music-loving class ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... knows. A capable man can do a thing; an able one does it. The term able cannot, therefore, be properly applied to genius. It is not correct, according to my way of thinking, to say an "able poet," an "able painter," an "able musician," an "able orator," an "able sculptor," because it is talent or genius, or both, that gives one rank in these callings in life, or in these particular undertakings. The word "able," as I understand it, is applicable to those arts only which involve the exercise of the mind ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... somebody. He was, alas! but a tailor from Bosnia, who had come on a speculation to Cettigna. A barren profession his, where fashions remain the same summer and winter, and a suit lasts till it drops off. He was an accomplished musician, as well, on the one-stringed instrument; boasted of a white pocket-handkerchief, and his Italian, added to our Servian, made up about twelve words in common; so that the evening passed very sociably, and we retired to rest full of hope for the morrow. But when that morrow came, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Mary's Isle, the kindness with which they were received appeased the poet's bitterness. The Earl was benign, the young ladies were beautiful, and two of them sang Scottish songs charmingly. Urbani, an Italian musician who had edited Scotch music, was there, and sang many Scottish melodies, accompanying them with instrumental music. Burns recited some of his songs amid the deep silence that is most expressive of admiration. ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... an athlete, a musician, an acrobat, a Lothario, a grim fighter, a sport of the first water. All day long the cat loafs about the house, takes things easy, sleeps by the fire, and allows himself to be pestered by the attentions of our womenfolk and annoyed by our children. To pass the time away he sometimes watches a ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... very grim and solemn the entertainment appeared to us. In one, for example, which was crowded with tall grave men calmly puffing at their pipes and sipping their coffee, we found a danseuse performing—a tall female figure, who glided and swayed about in the mazes of a strange dance, while the musician sat cross-legged in a corner of the room playing the inevitable tom-tom. This Arab danseuse was as unlike our performers of the ballet as she well could be. Her clothing was a loose flowing drapery, which fell from her shoulders to her heels, while instead of agility of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Street, a solitary musician plodded. His pretzel-shaped brass rested against his shoulder. He appeared to be the "scout" of one of those prevalent and melancholious German bands, which, under Brooklyn's easy ordinances, are privileged ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... much diligence. In like manner, he portrayed in a picture the Florentine Barbara, a famous and most lovely courtesan of that day, much beloved by many no less for her fine culture than for her beauty, and particularly because she was an excellent musician and sang divinely. But the best work that Domenico ever executed was a large picture wherein he made a life-size Madonna, with some angels and little boys, and a S. Bernard who is writing; which picture is now in the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... all that lies beyond the respectable hour for retiring! For the hour when fancy awakens and fills us with longings for the world of wonderland; then the painter sees only the dim outline in the moonlight, then the musician hears the silence, then the poet after his thoughtful day feels sprouting the first shoots of the next. After twelve freedom begins. The day's tumult is stilled, and the ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... painful scene and hour I was yet compelled to endure the night before our departure. Mr. Edgerton came to play his flute under our window. I say Mr. Edgerton, but it was only by a sort of instinct that I fixed upon him as the musician. Perhaps it was because I knew not what other person to suspect. Frequently, before this night, had I heard this music; but on this occasion he seemed to have approached more nearly to the dwelling; and, indeed, I finally discovered that he was actually beneath ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... strange? In the whole town there is not a single musician, not a single orator, not a ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... of the sort: it is the elements, the essence, the feeling which makes poetry if expressed. I have a passion for music, a perpetual desire to express myself in music, but as I can't sing and can't perform on any musical instrument, I can't call myself a musician. The poetic feeling that is in us and cannot be expressed remains a secret untold, a warmth in the heart, a rapture which cannot be communicated. But it cries to be told, and in some rare instances ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... able, by the time his play had been three weeks in rehearsal, to supply information on such points. She was a charming, exemplary person, educated, cultivated, with highly modern tastes, an excellent musician. She had lost her parents and was very much alone in the world, her only two relations being a sister, who was married to a civil servant (in a highly responsible post) in India, and a dear little old-fashioned aunt (really a great-aunt) with whom she lived at Notting ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... each other. Hence a person, who from bashfulness or any other reason is kept from intimate fellowship with others, will often find the best way to approach them, not to force himself into their companionship, against his will and probably against theirs; but to acquire skill as a musician, or reader, or student of science or letters, or philanthropy or social problems. Then along these lines of common interest he will meet men in ways that will be at once ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... more distinctly the calming effect on Milton's mind produced by his changed mode of life in the house in Barbican, after his wife's return and the publication of his little Volume of Poems. It is the well-known Sonnet to his friend Henry Lawes, the musician. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... have made my bed and I must lie on it; I cannot get rid of these things.' And, no doubt, in certain aspects, change is impossible. There are certain limitations of natural disposition which I never can overcome. For instance, if I have no musical ear I cannot turn myself into a musician. If I have no mathematical faculty it is no good poring over Euclid, for, with the best intentions in the world, I shall make nothing of it. We must work within the limits of our natural disposition, and cut our coat according to our cloth. In ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was transferred, at my own request, to Little York, Pennsylvania. Although now quite recovered, I was detained here some time, in the hospital drum corps, as a musician. We went out one night, on the occasion of a Republican meeting. We started to parade the principal streets with a transparency, the usual following of small boys, etc. A crowd of patriots cheerfully greeted us with stones, brickbats, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... hiding Alfred was constantly planning how it would be possible to vanquish the Danes, and another story tells how he disguised himself as a musician and boldly entered the Danish lines, to learn for himself how great their numbers might be. Here he wandered from one camp-fire to another, harping and singing, all the while keeping his eyes and ears open and escaping at last with information that would ensure his victory ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... only where he can compare himself with others of acknowledged excellence. This can be done only where men congregate in large and populous cities, where the want of amusement is best supplied; the recluse or the solitary man can be no musician. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Living as pigmies among the blind excesses of Nature, living on sufferance there, animalculae, her sons have been overwhelmed from the outset, have had no chance whatsoever of development. Even if they had a language of their own, they would have no literature. Not one painter, not one musician, have they produced; only couriers, guides, waiters, and other parasites. A smug, tame, sly, dull, mercenary little race of men, they exist by and for the alien tripper. They are the fine flower of commercial civilisation, the shining symbol ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Isabella, however, was not sent away to school, but was placed under the care of a very accomplished lady, a cousin of the king, who acted as her governess. In her leisure hours, the king, who was a fine musician, would play and sing for her, and, history gravely informs us, he would even play dolls with her ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... 'Because,' said the musician, 'I am very hungry. I have no one in the world that will give my dog or me a bit of anything to eat. I wish I could but work, and get for both of us a morsel of something; but I have lost my strength and sight. Alas! I laboured hard till I ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... career was uncertain. He went to Germany half intending to become a professional musician. There he studied the theory of music, perfecting himself meanwhile in Gaelic and Hebrew, winning prizes in both of these languages. Yeats found him in France in 1898 and advised him to go to the Aran Islands, to live there as if he were one of the people. "Express a life," ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... an enthusiastic musician, he was likewise fond of painting; his taste and talent in this respect also having been carefully cultivated. In these sunshiny early days, sunshiny in spite of their occasional clouds, he still possessed a moderate amount of leisure, notwithstanding the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... mean motive, because many of us are beset by an idea that the shortest way to be loved is to be admired. It is a great misapprehension, because admiration breeds jealousy quite as often as it breeds affection—indeed oftener! But from the child that plays its little piece, or the itinerant musician that blows a flat cornet in the street, to the great dramatist or musician, the same desire to produce ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination. You get this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and unfortunately in love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes THIS, a tapestry of glorious music, setting out love to lovers, lovers who love in spite of all that is wise and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... a famous musician, and dwelt at the court of Periander, king of Corinth, with whom he was a great favorite. There was to be a musical contest in Sicily, and Arion longed to compete for the prize. He told his wish to Periander, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... KOUEI.—Kouei, musician to the Emperor Yao, must have held his office between 2357 and 2277 B.C. The extract selected from one of his songs, which I have given at the beginning of the "Story of Ming-Y," is therefore more than four thousand years old. The same chant contains another remarkable fancy, evidencing ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... in performing an idea is likewise much the same as that taken up in performing a muscular motion. A musician can press the keys of an harpsichord with his fingers in the order of a tune he has been accustomed to play, in as little time as he can run over those notes in his mind. So we many times in an hour cover our eye-balls with our eye-lids without ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... appears at its maximum at the commencement or in the middle of the series, not increasing to the end, as it should do if it depended in any way on the transmission of acquired skill. Gauss was not the son of a mathematician, nor Handel of a musician, nor Titian of a painter, and there is no proof of any special talent in the ancestors of these men of genius, who at once developed the most marvellous pre-eminence in their respective talents. And after ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Ambuya or high steward, whose office it is to procure a successor, when the Mazarira or principal wife of the king dies, who must always be chosen from among the sisters or nearest relations of the king. The next great officer is the Inbantovo or chief musician, who has many musicians under his charge; the Nurucao, or captain, of the vanguard; Bucurumo, which signifies the king's right hand; Magande, or the chief conjurer; Netambe, or chief apothecary, who has charge of the ointments and utensils for sorcery; and lastly, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... like a sent angel came Mr. Norman Maugans, who played the pipe-organ at the church, and offered to exchange his services as musician for occasional lessons and the privilege of watching Prue dance, for which privilege, he said, "folks in New York would pay a hundred dollars a night if they ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... He was also a remarkable sculptor, as is testified by his admirable horses in relief. As an engineer, too, he built a canal in northern Italy and constructed fortifications about Milan. He was a musician and a natural philosopher as well. This many-sided man liked to toy with mechanical devices. One day when Louis XII visited Milan, he was met by a large mechanical lion that roared and then reared itself upon its haunches, displaying upon its breast ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Malone—'ad a great mop of 'air like a lion or a musician—must needs go washing one day on deck, like a fool. It was all right as long as 'e 'ad the 'ot water and the soapsuds goin'; but 'e give 'is 'ead a rinse, an' stood up, and, swelpme, before 'e could get the towel to work every single 'air 'e 'd got 'ad its own private icicle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... climate of Singhalut. The only shortcoming was the lack of the lovely young servitors Murphy had envisioned. He took it upon himself to repair this lack, and in a shady wine-house behind the palace, called the Barangipan, he made the acquaintance of a girl-musician named Soek Panjoebang. He found her enticing tones of quavering sweetness from the gamelan, an instrument well-loved in Old Bali. Soek Panjoebang had the delicate features and transparent skin of Sumatra, the supple long limbs of Arabia and in a ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... anything like that, was in the mind of the man who wrote it?" asked Ruth, rebellious. "The title says, 'To the Chief Musician ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... me that I should remain a little while longer and hear some Persian music. Two minstrels presently appeared, one of whom had a kind of mandolin with five strings; the other was a singer. The musician preluded very well, played European as well as Persian melodies, and handled his instrument with great facility; the singer executed roulades, and, unfortunately, his voice was neither cultivated nor pure; but he seldom gave false notes, and they both kept good time. The Persian music ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... and Diana from Juno by her being slender. That is very true; but those are general distinctions of class, not special distinctions of personal character. Even as general, they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician,—between a matron and a huntress; but in nowise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from the subtle Master of the Muses, nor the willful and fitful girl-goddess from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But judge for yourselves. In the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... "He's a real musician, though. I often wish I could study under him. I'd love to play something with him, just once, to see how it feels to have him accompany me. I think it would be so inspiring, it would just make one let oneself go! I stay every Sunday evening ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... tiers on tiers of the faint blue mountains of the Great Smoky Range in the distance, seeming ethereal, luminous, seen from between the dark, steep, wooded slopes of the narrow watergap hard by, through which Headlong Creek plunged and roared. The principal musician, perched with his fellows on a hastily erected stand, was burly, red-faced, and of a jovial aspect. He had a brace of fiddlers, one on each side, but with his own violin under his double-chin he alone "called the figures" of the old-fashioned contradances. Now ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... an old white-headed musician, who stood at the main hatchway, with his enormous bass drum full before him, and thumping it sturdily to the tune of "God Save the King!" though small mercy did he have on his drum-heads. Two little boys were clashing cymbals, and another was blowing a fife, with ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... almost from the nest, Now escap'd from his cage, and, with liberty blest, In a sweet mellow tone, join'd the lessons of art With the accents of nature, which flow'd from his heart. The CANARY, a much admir'd foreign musician, [p 8] Condescended to sing to the Fowls of condition. While the NIGHTINGALE warbled and quaver'd so fine, That they all clapp'd their wings, and pronounc'd it divine! The SKY LARK, in extacy, sang from a cloud, And CHANTICLEER crow'd, and the YAFFIL laugh'd loud. The dancing began, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... Jullien's vanity, for example, was sublime, rivalling that of the Knellers and Greuzes of earlier days; and his biographer sets forth how, in the scheme he imagined for the civilisation of the world by means of music, he had determined (though essentially a "dance musician") to set to music the Lord's Prayer. It could not fail, said Jullien, to be an unprecedented success, with two of the greatest names in history on its title-page! The musician ultimately died ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things—of diverse tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, sprightly and solemn: the musician who should only affect some of these, what would he be able to do? he must know how to make use of them all, and to mix them; and so we should mingle the goods and evils which are consubstantial with our ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... did Bott, the old musician, love his instrument, and no hand but his own was ever permitted to lift it from its case or ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... "come out" with the greatest eclat into our social circles. With wealth and beauty, grace and a certain number of showy accomplishments, she had made conquests without the slightest effort on her part. She was a finished musician, and had a sweet, thrilling voice. She talked pleasant nonsense, danced beautifully, flirted very artfully, and altogether seemed the living embodiment of every attribute which is calculated to endear a human creature to its fellow-men. She even gave a peculiar tone to the circle she moved in, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... said, as they strolled back, "that I were a good juggler or musician. It seems to me that it would be an excellent disguise, and we could go everywhere without question, and get admittance into all sorts of places we could not get a chance of entering into in any ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... their immediate necessities, and found a hen lying on the ground with an egg under her. He met a Jew to whom he sold the egg for twenty mahboubs. The hen laid an egg every day, which the Jew bought for twenty mahboubs, and the musician became rich and opened a merchant's shop. When his son was grown, he built a school for him at his own expense, where poor children were taught to read. Then the musician set out on pilgrimage, charging his wife not to let the Jew trick her out of the hen. A fortnight afterwards, the Jew called, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the faces, white now, and wet, pressed nearer, yet fading slowly: it was the Old Year going out, the worn-out year of her life. Holmes opened the window: the cold night-wind rushed in, bearing with it snatches of broken harmony: some idle musician down in the city, playing fragments of some old, sweet air, heavy with love and regret. It may have been chance: yet let us think it was not chance; let us believe that He who had made the world warm and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... a melancholy old barrel-organ in the courtyard, go to the window and give a penny to the poor errant [Footnote: Errant: wandering.] musician—perhaps it is Don Gaetano! If you find that his organ disturbs you, try if you like it, better by making him stand a little farther off, but don't send him away with harshness! He has to bear so many hard words as it is; why should not we then be a little kind to him—we ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... of these had taken refuge in the organ-loft, from which retreat they had viewed the preceding scene, themselves remaining invisible. One of these persons was a young man charged with the care of the organ, and quite musician enough to play on it. Deeply moved by the unexpected turn of an event which at first appeared so tragical, and yielding to an artistical inspiration, this young man, at the moment when he saw the people kneeling with Gabriel, could not forbear striking the notes. Then a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... years ago, on the bank of the Potomac River. An old soldier had taken me to visit the Great Falls, and as we were clambering over the rocks this grosbeak began to sing; and soon, without any hint from me, and without knowing who the invisible musician was, my companion remarked upon the uncommon beauty of the song. The cardinal is always a great singer, having a voice which, as European writers say, is almost equal to the nightingale's; but in this case the more stirring, martial quality of the strain had given place to an exquisite ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the action of music on the respiration (with the double pneumograph), the heart, and the capillary circulation (with the plethysmograph of Hallion and Comte) on a single subject, a man very sensitive to music and himself a cultured musician. Simple musical sounds with no emotional content accelerated the respiration without changing its regularity or amplitude. Musical fragments, mostly sung, usually well known to the subject, and having an ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... has just deposited at the inn, a German with his wife and child, he bearing so decidedly the stamp of a German musician, that we at once guessed his calling. They are from Mexico, from whence the fine arts seem to be taking their flight, and gave a most woeful account of the road ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Rosina in the Barbier de Seville and of Colette in the Devin du Village, the latter composed by the democratic philosopher, whose Contrat Social was to prove the Gospel of the Revolution.[158] Jean Jacques Rousseau, the solitary, self-centred Swiss engraver and musician, has described for us in words that will bear translation how an ineffaceable impression of the sufferings of the people was burnt into his memory, and the fire of an unquenchable hatred of their oppressors was kindled in his breast. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... you are not satisfied to be merely charming. You are clever and well educated, you know every book that comes out, you love poetry, you are a musician, and you talk delightfully. Women cannot forgive ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and Surrey, and of streets from the bridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares. To one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician's shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan's pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music, Mr. George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces from it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts tucked up, come forth with ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... in his passions is shown by an anecdote of George Sand's. According to her, he was in love with a young Parisienne, who received him very kindly. All went well until one day he visited her with another musician, who was at that time better known than Chopin in Paris. Because the young lady offered this man a chair before thinking of asking Chopin to be seated, he never called on her again, and apparently forgot her immediately. George Sand avers that during all this period he ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... The most perfect musician may be most tortured by incompetence; but he will be most likely to detect true merit, and give time to its training. "The powerfullest magnet will pick out, in the powdered dust of the ironstone, fine particles of metal that a second or third-rate ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... conscious purpose, and for that reason peculiarly winning, illuminating and convincing. The outward things in Mozart's life are all but ignored in it, but there is a frank and full disclosure of the great musician's artistic, intellectual and moral character, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... MUSICIAN: (Singing) I languish night and day, my suffering is extreme Since to your control your lovely eyes subjected me; If you thus treat, fair Iris, those you love, Alas, how ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... sostenuto piano has been the dream of many a musician whose ardent desire it was to perform his music exactly as it was written. A sustained piano note is, indeed, the great mechanical desideratum for the music of the future. In music, as at present written and published for the piano, ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... unique setting of some foreign workmanship, and he told himself it was probably an heirloom; it was too massive, too ornate for a betrothal ring; still he moved uneasily and set the cup down untasted. His eyes returned to her face, questioning, doubting. He was like a musician surprised to detect in a beautiful ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... little changed, amid the trees? Doubtless it is, yet I must see him in the very act. So I watched and waited, but to no purpose, till one day, while bee-hunting in the woods, I heard the sound proceed from beneath the leaves at my feet. Keeping entirely quiet, the little musician presently emerged, and, lifting himself up on a small stick, his throat palpitated and the plaintive note again came forth. "The queerest frog ever I saw," said a youth who accompanied me, and whom ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... on Georgia's doubly gifted son, Sidney Lanier, poet and musician, are given through the kind permission of Professor Edwin Mims and of Doubleday, Page & Company, publishers of Mrs. Clay's "A Belle ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... into a musician's gallery, which overlooked the chamber in which the incantations were about to take place, the sorcerer showed me a strange instrument, compounded of lenses set in a black box in which burned a small lamp. "Fear not, Benvenuto," he whispered, seeing that I ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... are thus engaged in a pleasant but indecisive daily round of amusement, Bellpine, a false friend, tries to turn Jemmy's affection to the fair musician, Miss Chit, in order to win Jenny for himself, but failing in that, circulates rumors of Jemmy's attachment to Miss Chit in hopes of alienating the lovers' regard. Emboldened by these reports of Jemmy's change of heart, Sir Robert Manley pays his court to Jenny on her ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... mother was her daughter, a beautiful young lady, who was an accomplished musician. Mr. Lincoln received the visitors in his usual kind manner, and the mother made known the object of her visit, accompanying her plea with tears and sobs and all ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... wonderful they were! They have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! The very way that he let go and went off and kept on—the amazing, inimitable spirit, the gayety, the rhythm, the swing! No trained musician ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... and safe in the little house. "Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." The fire still gleamed in the kitchen and the sitting-room, and it was the work of only a few moments to divest the little musician of his uncouth garments, to pop him into the tub of hot suds, to scrub him well, until his lean little body shone like bronze, to slip him into a night-gown, to give him a slice of bread and butter, and then to tuck him up ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... is that of scarcely another, so the contemplation of his personality is life-enhancing as that of scarcely any other man. Think that great though he was as a painter, he was no less renowned as a sculptor and architect, musician and improviser, and that all artistic occupations whatsoever were in his career but moments snatched from the pursuit of theoretical and practical knowledge. It would seem as if there were scarcely a field of modern science but he either ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... attention to listen to the himene of the musicians thirty feet away, which consisted mostly of familiar American airs, interpolated with bizarre staves and dissonances. One caught a beloved strain, and then it wandered away queerly as if the musician had forgotten the score and had done his best otherwise. I never heard in Tahiti one air of Europe or America played through as composed, without variation or omission, except the national ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Lark, and the Linnet; A BULL-FINCH, a captive! almost from the nest, Now escap'd from his cage, and, with liberty blest, In a sweet mellow tone, join'd the lessons of art With the accents of nature, which flow'd from his heart. The CANARY, a much admir'd foreign musician, [p 8] Condescended to sing to the Fowls of condition. While the NIGHTINGALE warbled and quaver'd so fine, That they all clapp'd their wings, and pronounc'd it divine! The SKY LARK, in extacy, sang from a cloud, And CHANTICLEER crow'd, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... was a fine musician. Arion was a lyric poet of Methymna, in Lesbos, who was saved from drowning by dolphins which he charmed with ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... latter: and when the Spartans destroyed and sacked the city of Thebes, they spared the house that had been inhabited by PINDAR, in respect to that great poet's memory. TERPANDER too, a lyric poet and musician is related by AElian to have appeased a tumult at Sparta by the sweetness of his notes and the fire of his poetry. They would not, however, endure either poetry or music which did not breathe exalted sentiment, and produce a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... eliminated from his life. He was to be no errant musician, improvising according to his mood; the score he was to play was before him, and he must play it note for note, paying strict attention to rests, keys, andantes, fortissimos, pianissimos. He had been born to this, had been made conscious ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... The gardener—no musician—who had happened to see them arrive, and, anticipating trouble, had been watching unperceived, hurried to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... as they strolled back, "that I were a good juggler or musician. It seems to me that it would be an excellent disguise, and we could go everywhere without question, and get admittance into all sorts of places we could not get a chance of entering ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... father of Norris, was heavily built and feebly vitalised, sensitive as a musician, dull as a sheep, and conscientious as a dog. He took his position with seriousness, even with pomp; the long rooms, the silent servants, seemed in his eyes like the observances of some religion ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conception? Who faithfully renders, who even thoroughly knows his idea? Here and there to some patient night-watcher the lofty gates are unbarred, "on golden hinges turning." But, for the greater part, the musician who would tell so much speaks to unheeding ears. We comprehend him but infinitesimally. It is the Battle of Prague. Adrianus sits down to the piano, and Dion stands by his side, music-sheet in hand, acting as showman. "The cannon," says Dion, at the proper place, and you imagine ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... applies to a blind negro musician who took the world by storm in the latter half of the nineteenth century of ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Following the example of Moliere and Voltaire, he changed his name, and called himself Beaumarchais. He married two rich widows. He formed a connection with the celebrated financier, Paris Duverney, who initiated him in the mysteries of stock-jobbing. Being a good musician, he obtained the protection of the king's daughters, taught them the harp, and conducted the weekly concerts which, during the life of Marie Leczinska, they gave to the king and the royal family. He ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... theater in John street that the now national air of 'Hail Columbia,' then called the 'President's March,' was first played. It was composed by a German musician by the name of Fyles, the leader of the orchestra, in compliment to the President. The national air will last as long as the nation lasts, while the meritorious composer has been ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... thus made her own judge, seemed to reflect a moment, and said, "I was a well-grounded musician, thanks to my parents; I was a very hard-working singer; and I had the advantage of being supported, in my early career, by a gentleman of judgment and spirit, who was a manager at first, and brought me forward, afterward a popular agent, and talked managers ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... whetstone on which to "sharpen his tongue like a serpent, that he might shoot out his arrows, even bitter words." As for conscience, he ridiculed the very idea of such an old- fashioned guide and monitor. "No," he would say, "as a true musician abhors discordant sounds, and as a skilled mechanic abhors bad work, and therefore cannot turn it out without doing violence to his finer and more cultivated sensibilities, so the best guide in morals to an enlightened ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... on his revolver belt and stole forth into the starlight. Yes, there was the sound again—a few notes, a bar or two of the song Pancha was singing at the willows the night before, and close to the edge of the willows crouched the musician. With his hand on the butt of his revolver, Blake strode slowly toward the shrinking form, and, beckoning, it rose and moved ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... people, neither the Irish love-songs collected by Dr. Douglas Hyde nor the Irish music edited by Moore could have survived. I do not mean to suggest that any art can be kept alive without the aid of such specialists as the poet, the singer, and the musician; but neither can it be kept healthily alive without the popular audience. Tolstoy's use of the unspoiled peasant as the test of art may lead to absurdities, if carried too far. But at least it is an error in the right ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... take the wholly conventional view of the musician," said her mother. "If I dared to say such a thing to my own child I might add, without telling a dangerous lie, because you are so old-fashioned in your views. You can't forget having read the Vie de Boheme, and having ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... was born in 1853 in Greenfield, Ind. He spent several years as a strolling sign-painter, actor, and musician, during which time he revised plays and composed songs, and grew closely in touch with the life of the Indiana farmer. About 1873 he first contributed verses, especially in the Hoosier dialect, to the papers, and before long had attained a recognized position as poet-laureate of the Western ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... sing as sweetly as the lark When neither is attended; and I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by reason reasoned are To their ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... had been distinguished arrivals from the South almost daily. Some of these songsters, like the fox-sparrow, sojourned a few weeks, favoring all listeners with their sweet and simple melodies; but the chief musician of the American forests, the hermit thrush, passed silently, and would not deign to utter a note of his unrivalled minstrelsy until he had reached his remote haunts at the North. Dr. Marvin evidently had a grudge against this shy, distant bird, and often complained, "Why ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... little change, too, about the ceremonies. When you have seen one you have seen all; and when you have seen them once, you can understand how to the Romans themselves these sights have become stale and dull, till they look upon them much as I fancy the musician in the orchestra of the old Princess's must have looked upon one of Kean's Shaksperian revivals when the season was ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... answer; and while with knit brows she was bending over her book, to her unbounded surprise she heard the hymn started by a clear, mellow tenor voice. Looking up she saw Gregory singing as gravely as a deacon. She was sufficiently a musician to know that the air did not belong to sacred music, though she had ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... and he can maintain this mastery, and the purity of his style, only where he can compare himself with others of acknowledged excellence. This can be done only where men congregate in large and populous cities, where the want of amusement is best supplied; the recluse or the solitary man can be no musician. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... callings? What was he? An artist who painted pictures for his bread? I thought that very probable. There was something free and artist-like in his manner, in his loose waving hair and in his keen susceptibility to beauty. I thought of his emotion at hearing that glorious Bach music. Or was he a musician—what Anna Sartorius called ein Musiker? But no. My ideas of musicians were somewhat hazy, not to say utterly chaotic; they embraced only two classes: those who performed or gave lessons, and those who composed. I had never formed to myself the faintest idea of a composer, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... neglected my own youth sadly; and am come to England but an ignoramus. Had my dear brother been alive, he would have represented our name and our colony, too, better than I can do. George was a scholar; George was a musician; George could talk with the most learned people in our country, and I make no doubt would have held his own here. Do you know, sir, I am glad to have come home, and to you especially, if but to learn how ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "A street musician," muttered he. "I must find out all about this. Now, Toto, listen to me; chuck Caroline over, and stick to the fellow with the harp; be off with you, for you have ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... years after his final separation from Madame de Warens, Rousseau did nothing to make any one suppose him to be a man of genius. He obtained and threw up the position of secretary to the French ambassador at Venice; he supported himself as a musician and as a private secretary; he lived from hand to mouth, having as a companion one Therese Levasseur, a grotesquely illiterate maid servant, picked up at an inn. Their five children he successively took to the Foundling, losing sight of them forever. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the dishonourable offer of a cornet of a regiment of crack hussars. It makes poor Jews, male and female, forsake the synagogue for the sixpenny theatre or penny hop; the Jew to take up with an Irish female of loose character, and the Jewess with a musician of the Guards, or the Tipperary servant of Captain Mulligan. With respect to the gypsies, it is making the women what they never were before—harlots; and the men what they never were before—careless fathers and husbands. It has made the daughter of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to be an earl if one wanted to rule one's mother and get one's own way generally, but when one wants to be a violinist, then an earldom is distinctly a bore. He had never heard of a British peer who at the same time was a great musician, but which of the two positions precluded the other ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... which seemed to Darrow to express her inmost quality. Sophy Viner, after moving uncertainly about the room, had placed herself beyond Mrs. Leath, in a chair near the piano, where she sat with head thrown back and eyes attached to the musician, in the same rapt fixity of attention with which she had followed the players at the Francais. The accident of her having fallen into the same attitude, and of her wearing the same dress, gave Darrow, as he watched her, a strange sense ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... took almost sole possession of Mrs Piper's organism, was far from being alone at first; his place was disputed. The first controls, if they themselves are to be believed, were the actress Mrs Siddons, the musician John Sebastian Bach, the poet Longfellow, Commodore Vanderbilt the multi-millionaire, and a young Italian girl named ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Cyrrus the musician entered, a slender Greek boy; and the low light was caught by the silver frame of the lyre he bore, and rippled on its strings. He put himself where he should not be too much under his lord's eyes, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... being the soul, are common opinions: the others are only entertained by individuals; and, indeed, there were many among the ancients who held singular opinions on this subject, of whom the latest was Aristoxenus, a man who was both a musician and a philosopher. He maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony in music, to be the soul, and believed that, from the figure and nature of the whole body, various motions are excited, as sounds are from an instrument. He adhered steadily to his system, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... pride—"gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy"—appealed to Van Kuyp. The stress of souls, the welter of cross-purposes which begirt the youthful dreamer, his love for Palma, and his swift death when all the world thrust upon him its joys—here were motives, indeed, for any musician of lofty aim ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... begun T' adventure resurrection From heavy squelch, and had got up Upon his legs, with sprained crup) 935 Looking about, beheld pernicion Approaching Knight from fell musician. He snatch'd his whinyard up, that fled When he was falling off his steed, (As rats do from a falling house,) 940 To hide itself from rage of blows; And, wing'd with speed and fury, flew To rescue Knight from black and blew; Which, e'er he cou'd atchieve, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... remarkably handsome and amiable lady, so that the house was as pleasant as any house could be. We had music and played quintets, and the eldest daughter sometimes played a duet with me. She was a good amateur musician, well educated in other ways, and with a great charm of voice and manner. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the old boyish attachment revived on my side, though there was nothing ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deep mortification, my father once said to me, 'You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to all your family.'" Harriet Martineau was thought very dull. Though a horn musician, she could do absolutely nothing in the presence of her irritable master. She wrote a cramped, untidy scrawl until past twenty. A visit to some very brilliant cousins at the age of sixteen had much to do in ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... ever want to go away from Dornton and play to people who understand what you mean," asked Delia, impatiently. "Instead of playing the organ in Saint Mary's and teaching me, you might be a famous musician in London, with crowds of people ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... in the bevy had charge of this African piano, and was said to be renowned for uncommon skill. Her feet, hands, wrists, elbows, ankles, and knees, were strung with small silvery bells; and, as the gay damsel was dancer and singer as well as musician, she seemed to reek with sound from every pore. Many of her attitudes would probably have been, at least, more picturesque and decent for drapery; but, in Jallica, MADOO, the ayah, was considered a Mozart in composition, a Lind in melody, and a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... amusement of von Bethmann-Hollweg. One of these toys, about two feet high, was a Hoochi-Koochi dancer and another successful one was a clown and a trained pig, both climbing a step ladder and performing marvellous feats thereon. Grew, who is an excellent musician, played the piano for the Chancellor and at his special request played pieces by Bach, the favourite composer of von Bethmann-Hollweg's deceased wife. One day we had tea in the garden of the villa formerly occupied by the Emperor, with the ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... sand or small pebbles, four or five inches thick; on this stand bricks or small tripods to hold the little pots used in cooking. Under each pot is a tiny fire. The skillful cook plays upon his several fires as a musician upon his keys, adding a morsel of fuel to one, drawing a coal from another; stirring all the concoctions with the same spoon. The baking differs only in there being an upper story of coals ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... said in praise of good biography. The girl should ask at home or in a library for an interesting life of some famous person. Perhaps she is specially attracted to a hero or heroine of history, to some famous writer, artist or musician. In any case, she may ask the librarian to advise her which biography to read first. While reading famous histories, such as Greene's Short History of England, she should not fail to read the history connected with her own neighbourhood. World history ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... will, although, even here, there may be two opinions possible; but there is another group, of an order of merit perhaps still higher, where we look in vain for any such playful liberties with Nature. Thus we have 'Conservation of Force'; where a musician, thinking of a certain picture, improvises in the twilight; a poet, hearing the music, goes home inspired, and writes a poem; and then a painter, under the influence of this poem, paints another picture, thus lineally ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and covers, I will not say earns, more money than he could by canvassing, piano tuning, or making brooms. And so, once started on this road, once accustomed to the acceptance of public charity, it is almost impossible to induce the street vender or musician to try a more legitimate means of livelihood. He invariably says, in answer to the protest of those who have the interest and advancement of the blind at heart, "When you can find me a job where I can earn ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... of western Europe, with philosophy, the sciences of painting, architecture, botany, zoology, gardening, entomology (he had a large collection of insects), and even heraldry. He was himself an excellent musician. Indeed almost the only subject of contemporary knowledge in which he was not proficient was mathematics, for which he had an aversion, and which prevented him from ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... should be gratified, the fancy took her that, if she might find apt means, she would, before she died, make her love and her resolve known to the King: wherefore one day she besought her father to cause Minuccio d'Arezzo, to come to her; which Minuccio, was a singer and musician of those days, reputed most skilful, and well seen of King Pedro. Bernardo, deeming that Lisa desired but to hear him play and sing a while, conveyed her message to him; and he, being an agreeable fellow, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... That he does not, to-day, touch hands at any point with his brother musicians of the elder school in France—with such, for example, as the excellent and brilliant and superbly unimaginative Saint-Saens—goes almost without saying. With Vincent d'Indy, a musician of wholly antipodal qualities, he disputes the place of honor among the elect of the "younger" school (whose members are not so young as they are painted); and he is the worshiped idol of still younger Frenchmen who envy, depreciate, and industriously imitate ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... because it is a thing so very much neglected, and because it is so very elegant, charming, and lady-like an accomplishment. Where one person is really interested by music, twenty are pleased with good reading. Where one person is capable of becoming a skilful musician, twenty may become good readers. Where there is one occasion suitable for the exercise of musical talent, there are twenty for that of reading. The culture of the voice necessary for reading well, gives a delightful charm to the same voice in conversation. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... cricketer and the scholar have been developed at the expense of the musician; and music, Richie, music unlocks the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exuberant and buoyant, and he was youthful in appearance. He had a passion for music, possessed rare skill as a violinist, and it is assumed that, had he failed to succeed with his pencil, he could have won a brilliant reputation as a musician. ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... relations of my wife whose names you mentioned—especially for her aunt, Mrs. J.E. Petherick, who is now past her youth, and to whom it would be a comfort. Also my wife's cousin Ruby, who is earning her livelihood on the continent by following the profession of a musician. Such a windfall would come as a ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... fine selection from Carmen to whistle on a load of logs when driving over frozen ground; every jolt gives a delightful emphasis to the notes, and the musician is carried along by the dictatorial leader as it were. What a strength there is in the air! It may be rough at times, but it is true and does not lie. What would the world be if all were open and frank as the day ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... nor never dream of doing. He was not impulsive, he was not high-spirited, he was not chivalrous; yet he could play upon the impulses, the high spirits, and the chivalries of those whom he wished to destroy as dexterously as your trained musician can play upon the strings of a lute. Of course it is impossible not to admire such a cunning, however perverted the application of that cunning may be. For there is many a rascal in the broad world that has no wit to appreciate anything outside the compass ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body and the mind. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... afternoon Margaret was at home making a glen-garry for him out of a piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded in from school, crying, "Come quick, mother, and you'll see him." Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician flying from Gavin and his friends. "Did you take stock of him, mother?" the boy asked when he reappeared with the mark of a muddy stick on his back. "He's a Papist!—a sore sight, mother, a sore sight. We stoned him for persecuting ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... of March, the soldier, Colard, was standing at the corner of the Rue de l'Ambrague, playing a monotonous air on his flute, one that he had learned from the shepherds of the Pyrenees. The shopkeeper, Galtier, came up the road, stood still, made a pretense of listening, but finally interrupted the musician, addressing him severely: "Why do you gad about and pretend to be ignorant, Colard? Don't you know, then, that the murder is said to have been ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... There were critics, literary men, journalists of both sexes, idealists of both sexes, arrivists, careerists, everybody who had ever pleaded publicly for the theatre as a vehicle of art. Professor Laverock declared it to be Mann's mission to open the theatre to the musician, the poet, and the painter, and, if he might express his secret hope, to close it to the actor. There were many speeches, but Clara sat through them all staring straight in front of her, wondering if a single person in the room really understood what Charles wanted and what ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... as the musician warmed to her work. Miss Hoag stirred uneasily in her chair. Captain Jethro ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... line he has continued up to date, now holding the position of Division Freight Agent, with headquarters at Chattanooga, Tenn., where he resides at 1020 Tenth Street. He is an Elder in the Frist Presbyterian Church of that city. Is a leading musician and Conductor of the ...
— The Stephens Family - A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens • Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
... outline drawing by E.H. Langlois, published by Delaqueriere in his "Description Historique des Maisons de Rouen" (Paris: Firmin Didot. 1821). The presiding shepherdess carries on her work with the usual embarrassing distractions. By her side a musician plays his hautbois to a dancing dog. Just behind them a spirited chase after a marauding wolf is in full cry; more houses, clouds, and birds complete the picture. The motto is "Nous somes des fins: aspirans a fins." The last scene represents men fishing, ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... more doubtful. The sambuca seems to have been a large harp, which rested on the ground, like the harps of the Egyptians. The psaltery was also a stringed instrument, and, if its legitimate descendant is the modern santour, we may presume that it is represented in the hands of a Susianian musician on the monument which is our chief authority for the Oriental music of the period. The symphonia is thought by some to be the bagpipe, which is called sampogna by the modern Italians: by others it is regarded ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... great, the reeds of the swell, piled one upon another in a splendid harmony. He looked up and saw the lengthened windows that indicated the location of the chapel, which apparently extended the full height of the building. The musician within added a two-foot stop, the final needed element of brilliancy, crowning the edifice of sound his fingers had reared, so that now the music seemed to burst through the half-open windows and to shake ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... attempted to systematize, by ignoring externality to the greatest possible degree, the notion of things dropping in upon this earth, from externality, is as unsettling and as unwelcome to Science as—tin horns blowing in upon a musician's relatively symmetric composition—flies alighting upon a painter's attempted harmony, and tracking colors one into another—suffragist getting up and making a political ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... then the sweet musician sung, Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young: The jolly god in triumph comes; Sound the trumpets, beat the drums! Flushed with a purple grace He shows his honest face: Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes! Bacchus, ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... rings!... Hiding himself away in a corner, he took from time to time a rapid survey of the faces of all the guests, without even distinguishing them, and then stared obstinately at his own feet. When at last a stray musician with a worn face, long hair, and an eyeglass stuck into his contorted eyebrow sat down to the grand piano and flinging his hands with a sweep on the keys and his foot on the pedal, began to attack ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... somewhat vicious mouth was partly concealed by a heavy black mustache, and the long-fingered, nervous hands were sure tokens of the artistic temperament. There could be no manner of doubt that this hapless individual was Jean de Courtois. He looked exactly what he was, a French musician, while initials on his boxes, and a number of letters on the dressing-table, all testified ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... the Count. "You know that I am an exquisite player on the violin, though I did not bring one with me; for I might have been mistaken, had I done so, for an itinerant musician. The idea that has occurred to me is that I will purchase one, so that I may be able to accompany the fair Vrouws when they play the piano. They are sure to be delighted, and I shall be raised still higher in their ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... violinist, was born in Bergen, Norway, on the 5th of February 1810. At first a pupil of the violinist Paulsen, and subsequently self-taught, he was intended for the church, but failed in his examinations in 1828 and became a musician, directing the philharmonic and dramatic societies at Bergen. In 1829 he went to Cassel, on a visit to Spohr, who gave him no encouragement. He now began to study law, but on going to Paris he came under the influence of Paganini, and definitely adopted the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... second-floor hall on Wood Street, Pittsburgh supplied it with seats and small tables, advertised largely, employed cheap attractions,—living statues, songs, dances, &c.,—a stage, hired a piano, and, upon the dissolution of his band, engaged the services of Nelson Kneass as musician and manager. Admittance was free, the ten-cent ticket required at the door being received at its cost value within towards the payment of whatever might be called for at the tables. To keep alive the interest of the enterprise, premiums were offered, from time to time, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life sounds;—and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... own country, are not at home, perhaps, so large a hill of potatoes. So with Jupiter and Apollo and Mercury, and the ladies of the court. I haven't a doubt that in the United States you think Jupiter a remarkably great man, and Apollo a musician, and Mercury a gentleman of some business capacity, but we Greeks know better. And as for the ladies—hum—well, your Excellency, they are not received. They are too bold and pushing. They lack the refinements, and as for their beauty ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... in the romantic country of Switzerland. He was educated tolerably well; he was a good musician, and could draw excellently. He possessed a small, though independent fortune. However, notwithstanding his advantages and acquirements, he proved, when he became a lover, to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... work, patience, memory, energy, a man can gain a reputation as a painter, or a sculptor, or a musician. In those arts there are material and mechanical procedures that he can make his own, thanks to ability, and can attain to success. The public to whom these works are submitted, having none of the technical knowledge involved, from the beginning regard the makers of ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... Constantly, one person was trying to throw pleasures in her way; one person reminded old friends that Rose was in town; one person suggested that Rose Bright, although she did not go to parties, might come in to hear some great musician at a friend's house; one person wanted to know her opinion on the last book; one person tried to find out when he could take her anywhere in his motor. And this very morning Rose had asked herself if this one friend ought to be allowed to do all these things? Was she sure that she ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... manner. In this they nearly succeeded, for a watchman, on guard in Kirinshkin Lane, caught the corpse by the collar on the very scene of his evil deeds, when attempting to pull off the frieze cloak of a retired musician. Having seized him by the collar, he summoned, with a shout, two of his comrades, whom he enjoined to hold him fast, while he himself felt for a moment in his boot, in order to draw out his snuff-box, and refresh his frozen nose. But the snuff was ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... side by side with the Livingstons—we should never have heard of Robert Ingersoll as the maker of an epoch. It is love that makes the world go 'round—and it is love that makes the orator and fearless thinker, no less than poet, painter and musician. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... at the age of 67, to his title of Viscount Winchendon and Earl of Wharton. In November, 1708, he became Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, with Addison for secretary. He took over with him also Clayton the musician, and kept a gay court, easily accessible, except to Roman Catholics, whom he would not admit to his presence, and against whom he enforced the utmost rigour of the penal code. He had himself conformed to the Church ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... pieces of gold, the other with precious stones of an inestimable value. Attalus, so long the sport of fortune, and of the Goths, was appointed to lead the chorus of the Hymeneal song; and the degraded emperor might aspire to the praise of a skilful musician. The Barbarians enjoyed the insolence of their triumph; and the provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild influence of love and reason, the fierce spirit of their Gothic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... mentioned of his being a tale-teller as well as a musician now occurred to me; and as, you know, I like tales of superstition, I begged to have a specimen of his talent ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... then in the "Bois de Boulogne" a residence named the Grey House, where there assembled round M. Coessin, the high-priest of a new religion, a number of adepts, such as Lesueur, the musician, Colin, private teacher of chemistry at the school, M. Binet, &c. A report from the prefect of police had signified to the Emperor that the frequenters of the Grey House were connected with the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... euphonism^; tonality; consonance; consent; part. [Science of harmony] harmony, harmonics; thorough-bass, fundamental-bass; counterpoint; faburden^. piece of music &c 415 [Fr.]; composer, harmonist^, contrapuntist (musician) 416. V. be harmonious &c adj.; harmonize, chime, symphonize^, transpose; put in tune, tune, accord, string. Adj. harmonious, harmonical^; in concord &c n., in tune, in concert; unisonant^, concentual^, symphonizing^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... tune I told you not to play!" exclaimed Teddy. But Giovanni, his eyes fixed upon the child, did not hear or did not heed him, but played on; while Cherry, trembling, pale, her hands clasped, lips apart, and eyes fixed intently upon the musician, seemed shaken to the very soul by some strange and undefined emotion. Suddenly a scarlet flush mounted to the roots of her hair, her eyes grew bright, her parted lips curved to a roguish smile; and, pointing her little foot, she spun away in the graceful movements of the dance, and continued ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... is as old, and as poor: it has but two stops; and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... say I could find a successor for your vacated niche," said Cicely lightly; "one thing I'm determined on though, he shan't be a musician. It's so unsatisfactory to have to share a grand passion with a grand piano. He shall be a delightful young barbarian who would think Saint Saens was a Derby winner ...
— When William Came • Saki
... incident to break in on my visions was when I gave the alarm of swarming, and the ranch folks rushed out with pots, pans, and buckets of water. I think the opening line of "Signa" was "It was only a little lad," yet he had dreams of becoming a great musician, and having all Europe at his feet. Well, I was only a little lad, too, but why could not I become what "Signa" dreamed ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... listen very attentively while Miss Thrale played on the harpsichord; and with eagerness he called to her, 'Why don't you dash away like Burney?' Dr. Burney upon this said to him, 'I believe, Sir, we shall make a musician of you at last.' Johnson with candid complacency replied, 'Sir, I shall be glad to have a new sense ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and emasculate. Life imposes by brute energy, like inarticulate thunder; art catches the ear, among the far louder noises of experience, like an air artificially made by a discreet musician. A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere in nature, neither represents it. The novel, which is a work of art, exists, not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little over indulgent, however, in the treatment of the German enemy alien within our gates. No American singer or musician could travel about Germany at will, unwatched by the police, collecting money from Americans to be used in propaganda, or things much worse, against America. Americans in Germany are compelled to report twice daily ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... as a matter of fact, a little of the poet, of the sculptor, of the musician, of the painter, of the prose writer: but how little, as compared with those who are so called, precisely because of the lofty degree in which they possess the most universal dispositions and energies of human nature! How little does a painter possess of the intuitions of a poet! How little ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... I have seen face to face once or twice. She is very clever—very accomplished—with talents and tastes of various kinds—a musician and linguist, in most modern languages I believe—and a writer of fluent graceful melodious verses, ... you cannot say any more. At least I cannot—and though I have not seen this last poem in the 'Book of Beauty,' I have no more trust ready for it than for its predecessors, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... society by abjuring the gentle tenets of her sex. A woman commits a sin in even going to a theatre; but to write the impieties that actors repeat, to roam about the world, first with an enemy to the Pope, and then with a musician, ah! Calyste, you can never persuade me that such acts are deeds of faith, hope, or charity. Her fortune was given her by God to do good, and what good does ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... well; and I have met a gentleman Hath promis'd me to help me to another, A fine musician to instruct our mistress: So shall I no whit be behind in duty To fair Bianca, so belov'd ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Ernest's happiness that Sophie should be friendly with her; and the difficulties were of a nature which, if not overcome at once, would not be overcome at all. Meeta entered the small parlor without knocking, and found herself tete-a-tete with the musician; a young, fair girl, delicately formed, with beautiful hands and arms, and pleasing, pretty face. As she saw the visitor, her song ceased. Meeta smiled on her, and extending her hand, said: ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... the momentary access of favor always excited in the mob by the presence and prestige of power. It was towards Greece and the East that a tendency was shown in the tastes and trips of Nero, imperial poet, musician, and actor. L. Verus, one of the military commandants in Belgica, had conceived a project of a canal to unite the Moselle to the Saone, and so the Mediterranean to the ocean; but intrigues in the province and the palace prevented ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... niggardliness of insight which can perceive only the minor flaws and shortcomings almost inevitable to any vast literary achievement, and be blind to the superb merits. One must prepare oneself to listen to a new musician, with mind and body alert to the novel harmonies, and oblivious of what other musicians have done or refrained ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... plaintive duet passed under our windows. Britain is not esteemed a melodious nation, yet the unclassical piano is ever with us, and even in the smallest provincial towns one is rarely out of hearing of the insistent note of some itinerant musician. And no matter how far one penetrates into the recesses of the country, he is always within reach of some bucolic rendering of the popular music-hall ditty of the year before last. But never during our stay in Versailles, a stay that included what is supposedly the gay time ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... not know if you would think her handsome. I don't. She is, however, an excellent musician; we play duets together every evening, to Mount Rorke's intense delight. You know my dialogue between a lady and a gentleman? She has written it down for me and corrected a few mistakes; I think I shall publish it. Darling, I love you better ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... into written form. When, however, some one else has taken her wonderful stock of material and reduced it to shape, she is a perfect critic. Her ear is as carefully attuned to the correct balance of words as that of a skilled musician to harmony in music. She will detect instantly a weak spot in a sentence or a paragraph and never fail to suggest the exact word or phrase needed to give it poise ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... humbug" amid shouts of laughter, the mother said quietly: "But surely you remember, my dear children, hearing of your Uncle Robert, who was drowned years ago, before any of you were born? He was a great musician. He wanted to give up his life to art, but he was persuaded to take up ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... please, when set off by the amiable qualities of the performer, or by any other agreeable circumstance. The flute of a shepherd, heard at a distance, on a fine summer day, amidst beautiful scenery, will give rapture to the wanderer, though the tune, the instrument, and the musician be such as he could not endure in any other place. If a song, or piece of music, should call up only a faint remembrance that we were happy the last time we heard it, nothing more would be needful to make us listen to it again ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... well without them, however. With a single set of quadrilles, and several country dances, we carried it on to a pretty late hour; and at length, having called upon our musician to strike up a waltz, I was just about to whirl Eliza round in that delightful dance, accompanied by Lawrence and Jane Wilson, and Fergus and Rose, when Mr. Millward interposed with:—'No, no; I don't allow that! Come, it's ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... celebrated Cynic philosopher, got such a box on the ear from Nicodromus, the musician, that his face swelled up and became black and blue; whereupon he put a label on his forehead, with the inscription, Nicodromus fecit, which brought much disgrace to the fluteplayer who had committed ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... only who have an ear for the celestial concords, as the musician only appeals to those who have the special endowment which enables them to understand his compositions. It is not for organizations untuned to earthly music to criticise the great composers, or for those who are deaf to spiritual ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the circumstances—made the girl go indoors to the piano and play to her. She knew that Rosanne gave, and was given to, by music in a way that is only possible to deep, inarticulate natures such as possess the musician's gift. One had only to listen to her music, thought Kitty, to know that there were depths in her that no woman would ever fathom, though a man might, some day. Denis Harlenden might—if she ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... imaginable form of art. For true art, in its last terms, is the adroit circumvention of an unsurmountable obstacle. I suppose that form and harmony and colour are very difficult to tame; and the sculptor, the musician and the painter quite probably earn their hire. But people don't go to concerts unless they want to hear music; whereas the people who buy the 'best-sellers' are the people who would prefer to do anything rather than be reduced to reading. I protest that the man who makes these ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... determined to find. To many there was uncanniness in the very extent of his knowledge, in his wide reading, in his mastery of more than one art, for, if he had not been an artist, he most assuredly would have been a musician or a writer. Added to all this, was the abnormal notice he attracted almost at once, the diligence with which he was imitated and parodied and the rapidity with which a ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... June, the evening was mild, and soft, and sweet. The little gate was open. As he raised the latch he heard the notes of Mr Harding's violoncello from the far end of the garden, and, advancing before the house and across the lawn, he found him playing;—and not without an audience. The musician was seated in a garden-chair just within the summer-house, so as to allow the violoncello which he held between his knees to rest upon the dry stone flooring; before him stood a rough music desk, on which was open a page of that dear sacred book, that much-laboured ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... he was as gentle as a lamb. He was the greatest thinker of all time, but there was no room in his brain for an impure thought. Notwithstanding he was still a young man, being but fifty years of age, nevertheless he had attained distinct success and fame as a musician, composer, scientist, inventor, architect, and athlete. He endeavored to unravel all the mysteries of nature which attracted his attention. One of the many occult forces he experimented with was human magnetism. It was his belief that man could preserve himself indefinitely, either ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... as, mock-heroically, she placed near her lips a reed-pipe which she had snatched from a musician in the midst of the fun; and, whistling a merry tune which the pipe took no part in, she circled about the room, making ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... great musician concentrate his energies upon the banjo—he may dignify the instrument, but he belittles himself in doing it. Kate," he pleaded, "don't throw away any years of happiness! Don't hurt your own character for a handful of nonentities whose importance ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... enough); they consider that the sole source of honour lies in the concert rooms from which they started and from which they were called; for, as I have said above, wherever the managers of a theatre happen to covet a musician of reputation for Capellmeister, they think themselves obliged to get him from some ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... still have their troubadours, who are hired by languishing lovers to improvise strains of longing or reproach under the windows of the fair, and perhaps the latter may listen with delight; but I know of no place where the Enraged Musician would so soon become insane. The isle is full of noises, and a Caliban might say that they hurt not; for me they murdered sleep, both ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... thing; he is tremendously devoted to music. We have some music in the evenings very often. You saw the organ in the gallery—it is rather a fine one, and he generally has someone here who can play. Lestrange is a first-rate musician. Father Payne can't play himself, but he knows all about it, and composes sometimes. But I think he looks on music as rather a dangerous indulgence, and does not allow himself very much of it. You can see how it affects him. And you mustn't be taken in by his manner. You might ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of this musician's childhood, his fears, fancies, and troubles, and his almost uncanny musical sense. He plays before the Grand Duke at seven, but he is destined for greater things. An idol of the hour, in some ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... It is the story—a favorite one to the ears of our forefathers two centuries ago—of the nightingale and the musician contending with voice and instrument in alternate melodies, till the sweet songstress of the grove falls and dies upon the lute of her rapt rival. It is something more than a pretty tale. Ford, the dramatist, introduced it briefly ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... speak of that later. For the present listen to my advice, and when you grow up I hope you will think with a little gratitude of the poor musician of whom you were so afraid when he took you from your adopted mother. The change may not be bad for ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... be allowed, possesses some great qualities. He has good sense, understands several languages, is fond of reading, speaks well, has studied much, is learned and acquainted with most of the arts, however difficult. He is a musician, and does not compose badly; he paints well, he understands chemistry, is well versed in history, and is quick of comprehension. He soon, however, gets tired of everything. He has an excellent memory, is expert ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... to the memory of Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the famous musician, is the only other monument in the aisle ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... countenance, of mine, there had been so much as one line which could induce even a Bohemian to mistake me for an Italian, and I felt proportionably flattered, more particularly as in attributing to me the qualifications of a musician, he paid as high a compliment to my tastes as his first mistake paid to my features. We made a very low obeisance, and assured him that we were neither Italians nor musicians. What then? Were we stocking-weavers; and did our load consist of stockings? This was too ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... certainly a magnificent one, and one that has but few equals in the world, or had at that time, it being then under the leadership of Bandmaster Berger, a musician of ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... behind the musician's chair muttering in an undertone: "Only one Bach, only one Bach." The King requested the improvisation of a fugue in six parts, which the master did to the astonishment of all present. But for the new instrument Bach had little use. He complimented Silberman on his production, but he ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... sound evidently came from the Mission garden; but in his ignorance of the language he could not even interrogate his Indian housekeeper. On the third night, however, his hymn was uninterrupted by any sound from the former musician. A sense of disappointment, he knew not why, came over him. The kindly overture of the unseen player had been a relief to his loneliness. Yet he had barely concluded the hymn when the familiar sound again struck his ears. But this time the musician ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... am fortunate. Miss Arrowpoint will teach me what good music is. I shall be entirely a learner. I hear that she is a thorough musician." ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... owls, and goat-suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent are the discordant cries of monkeys and macaws. As the sun rises higher, one musician after another seeks the forest shade, and the morning concert ends at noon. In the heat of the day there is an all-pervading rustling sound, caused by the fluttering of myriad insects and the gliding of lizards and snakes. At sunset parrots and monkeys resume their chatter ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the final impression we receive from the work of Robert Browning is that of a great nature, an immense personality. The poet in him is made up of many men. He is dramatist, humorist, lyrist, painter, musician, philosopher and scholar, each in full measure, and he includes and dominates them all. In richness of nature, in scope and penetration of mind and vision, in energy of passion and emotion, he is probably second among English ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... went about with it straddled over his nose. The jaguar now and then made a raid amongst the crowd of boys who were dressed as deer, goats, and so forth. The masquers kept generally together, moving from house to house, and the performances were directed by an old musician, who sang the orders and explained to the spectators what was going forward in a kind of recitative, accompanying himself on a wire guitar. The mixture of Portuguese and Indian customs is partly owing to the European immigrants in these parts having been uneducated men, who, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... system; and I verily believe the whole museum, bull, wings, Indian canoe, and Calmuc Tartar, would have been set into motion by this new Orpheus, had not Tarleton, in a paroxysm of rage, seized him by the tail of the coat, and whirled him round, fiddle and all, with such velocity that the poor musician lost his equilibrium, and falling against a row of Chinese monsters, brought the whole set to the ground, where he lay covered by the wrecks that accompanied his overthrow, screaming and struggling, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and his fellows sound the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful than the notes of other music are; though, indeed, some say the bass is the ground of music. And, for my part, I care not at all for that profession that begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in tune. God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul in tune for Himself. Only here was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing, he could play upon no other music but this, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that incident repeated in dumb show and accompanied by fescennine corybantics. Except in 'name and borrowed notoriety' the music-hall sensation has no relation whatever to the drama which so profoundly moved the whole of Europe and the greatest living musician. The adjectives of contumely are easily transmuted into epithets of adulation, when a prominent ecclesiastic succumbs, like King Herod, to the fascination ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... prince of gentlemen he) that the little outbreak, and the rebuke of it, had jarred the ease of their unexpected meeting. How blessed is the presence of mind with which the musician of real genius passes from song to song, "whate'er the occasion be!" With the ease of genius he changed the tone of his melody again, and sang his own hymn, "To Earth, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... not leave the crowded room, The grand, but cold musician's art; To wander 'neath the calm still moon. When nature speaks 'mid wild perfume, So sweetly to ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Vienna stage. The text was at first to have been furnished by Rellstab, but was ultimately written by Madame de Chezy, and written in so imperfect and impracticable a style, that, with all Rellstab's alterations never had a musician more to contend with than poor Weber had to do with this old French story. As it is, however, he has caught the spirit of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... and suggestive prelude, describing the musician, we read such passages as this, which suggest the theme as ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... fire in the grate. As he sat, dreaming rather than thinking, there came upon his ear the weak, wailing, puny sound of a distant melancholy flute. He had heard it often before, and had been roused by it to evil wishes, and sometimes even to evil words, against the musician. It was the effort of some youth in the direction of Staple's Inn to soothe with music the savageness of his own bosom. It was borne usually on the evening air, but on this occasion the idle swain had taken up his instrument within an hour or ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... you know. They'd note the bare floors, the sparse but heavy furniture, the piano, the violin, the flute, the book-lined walls, and the absence of every sort of curtain, cushion, or knickknack. 'Here lived a plain man,' they'd say; 'a scholar, a musician, stern, unloved and ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Italian lemonade vender, was the most popular of the boulevard cafes, and was generally thronged with fashionables from all parts of Europe. Here Louis Blanc, historian of the Revolution, spent many hours in the early days of his fame. Talleyrand; Rossini, the musician; Alfred Stevens and Edouard Manet, artists, are some of the names still linked with the traditions of the Tortoni. Farther down the boulevard were the Cafe Riche, Maison Doree, Cafe Anglais, and the Cafe de Paris. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... now, that this musical artist is offered an exceptionally good salary to appear in vaudeville with another musician, who performs equally well upon two or three, or even more, very different instruments. He accepts the offer; he and his partner "open" in the act; and, after a week or two, in order to "build up" the act as well as to become capable of playing ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... spake to Moses, saying, "Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with your trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings." And again in the Psalm of Asaph to the chief musician upon Gittith: "Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day." This is the word also that Isaiah uses in describing the bravery of the daughters of Zion, "the tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... the Knight sung in a manner and with an expression that proved him to be an accomplished musician, and in some contrast with the less artful style of Arundel, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... recognised as the son of his old friend Sophroniscus, with whom he never had a difference to the hour of his death. Socrates is also known to Nicias, to whom he had introduced the excellent Damon, musician and sophist, as a tutor for his son, and to Laches, who had witnessed his heroic behaviour at the battle ...
— Laches • Plato
... answer that these are fictitious Names: an excellent Answer indeed! As if those whom he attack'd were no better known; as if we were ignorant that Fabius was a Roman Knight who compos'd a Treatise of Law, that Tigellius was a Musician favour'd by Augustus, that Nasidienus Rufus was a famous Coxcomb in Rome, that Cassius Nomentanus was one of the most noted Rakes in Italy. Certainly those who talk in this manner, are not conversant with ancient Writers, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... morning, light-hearted and thinking of nothing at all, for a pleasant stroll along the Sacred Way (Sat. I, ix).[1] A man whom he hardly knew accosts him, ignores a stiff response, clings to him, refuses to be shaken off, sings his own praises as poet, musician, dancer, presses impertinent questions as to the household and habits of Maecenas. Horace's friend Fuscus meets them; the poet nods and winks, imploring him to interpose a rescue. Cruel Fuscus sees it all, mischievously ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... made of the names and trades and mode of employment of the men at work. Of the forty in the shops at that moment, eight were carpenters, twelve labourers, two tailors, two sailors, three clerks, two engineers, while among the rest was a shoemaker, two grocers, a cooper, a sailmaker, a musician, a painter, and a stonemason. Nineteen of these were employed in sawing, cutting and tying up firewood, six were making mats, seven making sacks, and the rest were employed in various odd jobs. Among them was a Russian carpenter who could not speak a word of English. The ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... many instances to two or even three—fruit and 'sweet-stuff' manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a 'musician' in the front kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one—filth everywhere—a gutter before the houses and a drain behind—clothes drying and slops emptying, from the windows; girls of fourteen or fifteen, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... suspended while the musician had sandwiches and glasses of a fragrant and delicious-looking but weak punch. The Fosses' waiter knew him well and fraternally attended ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... emmeleia[obs3]; unison, unisonance[obs3]; chime, homophony; euphony, euphonism[obs3]; tonality; consonance; consent; part. [Science of harmony] harmony, harmonics; thorough-bass, fundamental- bass; counterpoint; faburden[obs3]. piece of music &c. 415[Fr]; composer, harmonist[obs3], contrapuntist (musician) 416. V. be harmonious &c. adj.; harmonize, chime, symphonize[obs3], transpose; put in tune, tune, accord, string. Adj. harmonious, harmonical[obs3]; in concord &c. n., in tune, in concert; unisonant[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... verse they came to the town of Tooraloo, and that put a stop to the singing, because you can't sing in the public streets unless you are a musician or a nuisance. The town of Tooraloo is one of those dozing, snoozing, sausage-shaped places where all the people who aren't asleep are only half awake, and where dogs pass away their lives on the footpaths, and you fall over cows ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... I. p. 160, of his Zoological Mythology, says, "The drum or kettle-drum thunder is a familiar image in Hindu poetry, and the gandharvas, the musician warriors of the Hindu Olympus, have no other instrument than the thunder." "The magic flute is a variation of the same celestial instrument," ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... the street; And to his lips again Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling; Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering; And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... party, the poet and chief musician, the nondescript already mentioned, was no less than the boatswain of the butcher—gang, answering to the driver in an agricultural one. He was clothed in an entire bullock's hide horns, tail, and the other particulars, the whole ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
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