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More "Soprano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him that he is volatile; that he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a dreamer, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... grown very pretty, indeed," said Adrien, taking up the conversation, "and is really a very nice girl, indeed. She sings beautifully. She is the leading soprano in her church ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... string trios, a few divertimenti in five parts, a piece for four violins and two 'celli, entitled "Echo," twelve minuets for orchestra, concertos, trios, sonatas and variations for clavier, and, in vocal music, a "Salve Regina" for soprano and alto, two violins and organ. It would serve no useful purpose to deal with these works in detail. The symphonies are, of course, the most important feature in the list, but of these we shall speak generally when treating of Haydn as the father ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... great spaces opened out before her a thought, childishly superstitious, came to her, and she turned abruptly, went out, made her way to the beggar who had worried her, gave him a coin and said something kind to him. His almost soprano voice, raised in clamorous benediction, followed her as she returned to the church, moving slowly with horrible loose slippers protecting its floor from her Christian feet. She always laughed in her mind when she wore those ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... particularly their own. Both sang from one book, with much reserve, yet with such sweetly persuasive voices that those about them first listened and then added their own very best. The second tune was "Geer," and, with John's tenor going up every time Barbara's soprano came down, and vice versa, it was as lovely see-sawing as ever thrilled the heart of youth with pure and undefiled religion. They sang the last ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... was decisive, for that sound Hushed "Academie" sighed in silent awe; The fiddlers trembled as he looked around, For fear of some false note's detected flaw; The "Prima Donna's" tuneful heart would bound, Dreading the deep damnation of his "Bah!" Soprano, Basso, even the Contra-Alto, Wished him five fathom ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... February 10.—A French soprano, and it is the first time she has sung on an English platform. She walks on slowly and stands statuesquely motionless while the preliminary bars are being played. One notes her elegant Parisian costume, clinging and very low-cut, every detail of her appearance ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turned up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of the majesty, of ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... know. Mrs. Delmont is not always dropping her handkerchief like Lady Gusto, as if she expected a miserable cavalier servente to be constantly upon his knees; or giving those odious expressive looks, which quite destroy my nerves whenever I am under the same roof as that horrible Lady Soprano. There is a little too much talk, to be sure, about Roman churches, and newly-discovered mosaics, and Abbate Maii, but still we cannot expect perfection. There are reports going about that Ernest Clay is either ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... because of them short pants you speak about. I can't stand bein' laughed at, Mr. Gray. It comes hard to stand up in a class along with a bunch of children and make mistakes and have a little boy in a lace collar and spring heels snap his fingers and sing out in a sweet soprano, 'Oh, tee-cher!' Then have him show you up. They put me in with a lot of nursin' babes. What the hell? I weigh a hundred and ninety and I ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the sky, the blue in the sea, and the red in the figures in the boats,—as in a vocal trio we have the only three possible musical sounds of the human voice, the soprano, the basso, and the falsetto of the child's voice. All these colors are distinctly asserted and perfectly harmonized in a most exquisite play of tints, but it is still no more like Nature than the trio in "I Puritani" is like conversation. Turner never dreamed of painting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... French audiences, with their abominable claqueurs, this first German audience seemed serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic. They use more judgment about applause than the French. They never interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... not quite know. I do not think that they're in love with one another, because she is not jealous of me. She is Madame Socani in the plot, and a genuine American from New York; but she can sing; she has a delicious soprano voice, soft and powerful; but she has also a temper and temperament such as no woman, nor yet no devil, ought to possess. Of Monsieur Socani, or Signor Socani, or Herr Socani, I never yet heard. But ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... tremulous, and Aeolian in character, wandering over the entire room, as if walls and ceiling were honey-combed with sensitive musical cells, answering to the deeper vibrations. These floating aerial sounds also answered to the higher notes of some of the female singers, resembling soprano voices, brightened and spiritualized in a wonderful degree; and then the wide room would be filled with a mist, as it were, of this floating, formless melody, which seemed to come from invisible harpers hovering ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... morning's work, found himself continually murmuring whole phrases of a chant which he had heard once upon a time when he was staying in an old town in France, It was the Litany of the Blessed Virgin sung at Benediction by some unseen singer with a wonderfully sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice. The Tenor had gone again and again to hear her in this chant, the music of which suited her as well as it did the theme. The words of adoration, "Sancta Maria, Sancta Dei Genetrix, Sancta Virgo virginum," were uttered evenly on notes that admitted of the tenderest expression, while the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... its silvery song, Voice of the restless aspen, fine and thin It trills its pure soprano, light and long— Like ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... of them pushed hers back, and I recognized the golden hair of Alathea, as she joined a group rather formally collected on one side of the grave. She looked round as if to see that all were ready, and then in such a soprano voice as one seldom hears, she "started" the funeral hymn. It ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... young cavaliers of the party—but all came right in due time. For after supper, which was early, Barty played the fool with Mr. Gibson, and taught him how to do a mechanical wax figure, of which he himself was the showman; and the laughter, both baritone and soprano, might have been heard in Russell Square. Then they sang an extempore Italian duet together which was ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... big male voices were shouting out the Boat Club song, Polly's soprano sweet and clear over the rest, while Frieda smiled encouragement over the edge of the robe in which she was wrapped ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... strong for them, and the hedge will grow its own way in spite of pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?' The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... awaited them from the first. True, the hall was in darkness, and, as far as they could judge, so was the rest of the house. But from somewhere upstairs came the unmistakable sound of a piano, and of somebody singing in a sweet but plaintive soprano voice. Gurdon clutched his companion ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... smart individual, in striking contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel—a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will ces dames desire a salon—there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the dinner to be ready; and evenings after supper she played other things: old ballads and tender, touching melodies from old masters simplified, for such as she. Michael sometimes lingered a half hour before hurrying away to the alley, and joined his rich natural tenor with her light pretty soprano. Sometimes Will French, a young fellow who was in the same law office and also boarded at Mrs. Semple's, stayed awhile and sang bass. It was very pleasant and made it seem more as if he were ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... appeared, only to fill an unexpected place, or make a decorous entry afterward, to play accompaniments. Fortunately Kitty Meryon sang, in a pinched little soprano, not nearly so pretty as her ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... train were several others; a few on or with donkeys, but more on foot. In vain we told them that we would engage no donkeys at all, and no horses till we reached our destination; in vain we bade them allow us to "pursue the even tenor of our way" in peace, and hush their high soprano tones. It was one perpetual babble in praise of their horses, their donkeys, and their capabilities as guides, with the constant repetition of the names of the surrounding peaks, which we already knew perfectly well. When we reached the gorge which ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... missed. Johnny Byrd had an infectious way of making a party go and Maria Angelina's sweet soprano had become so much a part of every gathering that its absence now made ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... interest even such a cultivated man as M. Bois-le-Duc in Marie Gourdon. She had inherited from her mother a remarkable talent for music, such as many of the French Canadians have strongly developed. Her soprano voice was powerful, clear and flexible, and her ear was very correct. The good cure judged that, if given proper training, and the advantages Paris alone could afford, the little Canadian girl might become an artist of ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... inspiration by evangelists and prophets. It has stood the bombardment of ages, but with the result of more and more proof of its being a book divinely written and protected." "Science and Revelation are the bass and soprano of the same tune," he said. He defied the attempts of the loud-mouthed orators to destroy belief in the Bible. "I compare such men as Ingersoll, in their attacks on the Bible, to a grasshopper upon a railway-line with the express ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... made to understand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... some miserable rebec, from the infancy of the art, still imprisoned in the re-la-mi. But it was around the Pope of the Fools that all the musical riches of the epoch were displayed in a magnificent discord. It was nothing but soprano rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs, and tenor rebecs, not to reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers will remember that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... sing in Vienna. He became a chorister in St. Stephen's Church, but offended the choir-master by the revolt on the part of himself and parents from submitting to the usual means then taken to perpetuate a fine soprano in boys. So Haydn, who had surreptitiously picked up a good deal of musical knowledge apart from the art of singing, was at the age of sixteen turned out on the world. A compassionate barber, however, took him in, and Haydn dressed and powdered wigs down-stairs, while he worked away at ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... he takes a perch and sings; but for the most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction; but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything else perhaps, may be said to ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... dividing line that it requires wide experience and a fine ear for quality on the part of a teacher to determine in what direction they should be developed to greatest advantage. A fine ear may determine that the seeming mezzo is a true soprano, that the notes of the pupil who comes as a baritone have the tenor quality and that his scale safely can be added to, while the would-be tenor has the baritone timbre which will prevent his notes from ever ringing out with the true tenor quality. Yes, this initial task of voice classification ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... did not think much of him, turned to her companion and resumed their conversation—which, being of an essentially private and intimate nature, she conducted, after the manner of her kind, in a ringing soprano which penetrated into every corner of the lobby. Archie, waiting while the brigand reluctantly made change for a dollar bill, was privileged ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... small, nearly unheard-of, German town. And so personal force, musical genius, business talent, education, and general brain power went to the making of a man who hobnobbed with dukes and kings, who ruled musical England with an iron rule, who threatened to throw distinguished soprano ladies from windows, and was threatened with never an action for battery in return, who went through the world with a regal gait, and was, in a word, the most astonishing lord of music the ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... discovery of Fannie's voice proved of much more importance than any of the girls had foreseen. Evelin Hatfield, who had a very clear soprano voice, and who had been cast for the solo parts in the concert, came down with tonsilitis and had to go to the Infirmary. The Seniors met in English room to discuss finding a substitute, after Miss King had assured them that there was no chance of ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... granted. We do not, for example, expect to hear male sopranos at the opera. The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe admired this artificial form of voice almost to the exclusion of all others. His favourite singer, indeed, Pacchierotti, was a male soprano. But other breaks have been made with tradition, breaks which are not yet taken for granted. When you find that all but one or two of the singers in every opera house in the world are ignoring the rules in some respect or other you may be certain, in spite ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... of course, there came trouble. I have it from the soprano—a little lady who possessed even more than the usual unprejudiced judgment of her sex—that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct was simply shameful; that her conceit was unbearable; that, if she considered the rest of the choir as slaves, she (the soprano) would like to know it; that her conduct on Easter ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... stairs. In the distance, the soprano dog had reached A in alt., and was holding it, while his fellow artiste executed ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... rendered by a soprano, a contralto, a bass, and a baritone, each with the full effect of its quality and the personal equation besides, I was quite ready to admit that selecting phonographed books for one's library was as much more difficult as it was incomparably ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... one of my happy discoveries;" said the old gentleman, complacently. "She possesses, I don't hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... four children. Behind her was a long line of ancestry of which anyone might rightfully be proud. Her face was pure and sweet and her eyes revealed the frankness and honest purpose of past generations. After breakfast she played for the hymns at prayers and in a clear, true, soprano led the singing. A twelve-year-old brother had selected the part of the Bible to be read and the eight-year-old sister had chosen the hymns. The father's prayer was simple and sincere and some of its sentences were remembered for many a day. After prayers the girl attended to the flowers. ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... vulgar child meant that class distinctions were ridiculous. She had this way of rushing subjects, eliding the obvious, and relying on her hearers. "He told me all about it. He'd been universally provided, he said; and I promised not to tell. Miss Erskine Peel—that's Orange, you know, the soprano—went to the manager and said her mother said they must get more men, though it wasn't dancing, or the rooms looked so bad; only they mustn't be fools, and must be able to say Wagner and Liszt and things. And he hoped I didn't think he was ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... you are most admirable, but why, oh! why, in the name of the immortals, will you, why will you present flags? Don't do it any more, please. They are always packed up in a box and left somewhere almost as soon as your handkerchiefs have ceased waving, your soprano hurrahs ceased ringing; or else they are given to some pet officer for a coverlet. They cost a great deal of money; they oblige the poor soldiers to endure a mort of flatulent oratory at a parade rest; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and the singers forced to give encore after encore. One youth who played the part of a little maid from school, and sang in a sweet soprano voice, caused the greatest enthusiasm of the evening; but then everything seemed to ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... if the composers are their slaves no longer, the spectators and managers still are so. In Paris and elsewhere it is often found impossible to do justice to the secondary stage appointments because the salaries of the soprano and the tenor swallow the whole income. The Germans, on the other hand, are too artistic and rational to endure such an imposition. To them the one-star-and-ten-satellites system seems an abomination, and doubtless Emperor William had the sympathies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... not accept this refusal, and produced a portfolio of old music. His niece selected a duet for soprano and tenor, and said that she would sing if any one would take the tenor; she stood with the music in her hand, looking dubiously at the circle of men around her. Not one could sing. Mrs. Delancey, my companion at the dinner-table, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... although it was Christmas Eve, and the only carol I heard in the trenches was the loud, deep chant of the guns on both sides, and the shrill soprano of whistling shells, and the rattle on the keyboards of machine-guns. The enemy was putting more shells into a bit of trench in revenge for a raid. To the left some shrapnel shells were bursting, and behind the lines our "heavies" ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... good choir for them days; the only trouble was that everybody wanted to be leader. That's a common failin' with church choirs, I've noticed. Milly Amos sung soprano, and my Jane was the alto; John Petty sung bass, and young Sam Crawford tenor; and as for Uncle Jim Matthews, he sung everything, and a plenty of it, too. Milly Amos used to say he was worse'n a flea. He'd start out on the bass, and first thing you knew he'd be singin' tenor with Sam ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... at first in the chest register, and then gradually to extend the compass of the voice upward. "Every student can for himself with perfect ease recognize the difference between these two separate registers. It will suffice therefore to commence by singing the scale, for example, if a soprano, from G to d;[10] let him take care that these five notes are sonorous, and say them with force and clearness, and without effort." For uniting the registers, "the most certain means is to hold back the tones of the chest and to sing the transition notes in ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... genius and serene wisdom of art, addressed herself to song, as the orchestral symphony prepared the way for the voice in Casta Diva. A better test-piece could not have been selected for her debut. Every soprano lady has sung it to us; but nearly every one has seemed only trying to make something of it, while Jenny Lind WAS the very music of it for the time being. We would say no less than that; for the wisest and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... first time since that terrible and memorable day, nearly eight years ago, broke into song. And finally they began to sing duets together, his clear, rich, mellow tenor blending well with Flora's sweet, sympathetic soprano. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... I'm too young for compliments! As for my voice, it's getting so strong that Mummy and the Blossom are always saying to me, 'Not so loud.' If I let it out in the house, they put their fingers in their ears. If I let it out in church, Jemmy says I'm drowning the soprano—and so I ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... morning with a song echoing in his ears. He had dreamed of singing; and as consciousness slowly returned, the dream-song became real. It floated in from the living room on a clear, sweet soprano. When a child he had heard such voices in the choir loft of the great Seville cathedral, and he had thought that angels were singing. As he lay now listening to it, memories of his childish dreams swept over him in great waves. The soft, sweet cadences rose and fell. His own heart swelled ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... whole career. As I have said, music was represented in our family by these two sisters. It was chiefly owing to Clara's career that the musical conductor C. M. von Weber often came to our house. His visits were varied by those of the great male-soprano Sassaroli; and in addition to these two representatives of German and Italian music, we also had the company of Mieksch, her singing master. It was on these occasions that I as a child first heard German and Italian music discussed, and learnt that any one who wished ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... he leaned on the pasture bars, and suddenly his memories sped; and the voice that was singing Schubert's serenade across the way touched him with the urgent, personal appeal that a present beauty always had for him. It was a soprano; and without tremolo, yet came to his ear with a certain tremulous sweetness; it was soft and slender, but the listener knew it could be lifted with fullness and power if the singer would. It spoke only of the song, yet the listener thought of the singer. Under the moon thoughts run ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... house. But then Kitty Tynan was as fond of singing as a canary, and relieved her feelings constantly by this virtuous and becoming means, with her good contralto voice. She was indeed a creature of contradictions; for if ever any one should have had a soprano voice it was she. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on the monuments and decoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral of Terra Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, the soprano for whom Gluck had written Che faru senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such a performance in such ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... all the noise, they heard a cracked soprano voice singing with some unauthorized flatting ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... nonsensical song of the moment. The chorus was caught up, and swelled in the shadows. Waving her scarf as she had done in the dance-room in Melbourne on the night when Done first saw her, she sang again, and her clear soprano rang in the gullies like the call of a bird, and brought the miners from their tents and their arguments. When the song ended half the diggers on Jim Crow were gathered about Burton's camp-fire, and the loudest roar of applause came from Mary Kyley! ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... begun, have you?" yelped the proprietor, whose voice in his anger had gradually reached the soprano. "I suppose you would like to ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... singers among them, and these have positions, with a fitting salary attached, in all the churches, from the cathedral to the poorest ministry; and thus they are being trained, from the time when they sing soprano. They are fond of verses and representations. They are excellent translators, and can translate a Spanish comedy with elegance into verses of their own language. And thus, although all, both men and women, are fond of reading, they are indefatigable when verses are concerned, and they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive. In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice. Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and acrobats, alas! command ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... the explosive headgear and came forward in response to the light keeper's command. She looked at the chair by the ancient parlor organ and announced: "Yes, indeed, it'll do real well, thank you, Cap'n Jethro." Her voice was a sharp soprano with liquid gurgles in it—"like pourin' pain-killer out of a bottle," this last still another quotation ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... English soprano sang Bach's Heart Ever Faithful. Variety was always welcomed at the parties ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... soprano, and a bass and tenor, too. I can thrill and slur and frill and whirr and shake you through and through. I'm a Jews' harp—I'm an organ—I'm a fiddle and a flute. Every kind of touching sound is found in ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard, genuinely astonished, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... and delicacy of the errand he had undertaken came home to him. Impulse had brought him thus far, but now he stood staring helplessly at a row of bells, speaking tubes, and cards. Which, for example, belonged to the lady whose soprano voice pervaded the neighbourhood? He looked up and down the street, in the vain hope of finding a messenger. The song continued: he had promised to stop it. Hodder ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Polly who was standing apart from the guests, and looking as if in anything but a pleasant mood. Her face brightened, however, when told that it would be a pleasure to hear her sing, and after a little urging, she consented. She possessed a light soprano voice which had been carefully trained, and when she chose, she ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... a waving of caps boys burst out of one door, while girls came out of the opposite one more demurely, but with the piping of gay soprano voices. For school was out, and young America free of restraint for eighteen hours at least. Resilient youth, like a coiled spring that has been loosed, was off with a bound. Horses were saddled or put to harness. The ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... Criterion, or it indicates with great subtlety that, like Members of Parliament, "Peers are, after all, human—very human," and that one old Peer is uncommonly like another old Peer. Miss EVELYN MILLARD, as the soprano heroine, and Mrs. PATRICK CAMPBELL as the base heroine, look handsome, and act excellently. They take the audience with them as far as the audience will go. As good as they possibly can be in such conventional puppet-parts are Messrs. GLENNY and ABINGDON, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail of water on her to make her let go, and all the time she would be biting and shaking ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... towards Amy in some surprise. I knew she sang very prettily, but I had thought she was rendered too nervous by the storm to do aught but sit quiet in her chair. However, there she was at the piano, and in another moment her fresh, sweet mezzo-soprano rang softly through the room in Tosti's plaintive song, "Good-bye!" We listened, but none of us moved from the open window where we still inhaled what air there was, and watched the ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... sparked and hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every ear-drum; patting From muffled tympani made a ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... allotment was made out, There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female, Who (after some discussion and some doubt, If the soprano might be deem'd to be male, They placed him o'er the women as a scout) Were link'd together, and it happen'd the male Was Juan,—who, an awkward thing at his age, Pair'd off with ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... collection will be taken up at the door to defray expenses.' Well, I though the people in church would sink through the floor. There was not a person in the church except the poor old deacon, but who understood that some wicked wretch had deceived him, and I know by the way the tenor tickled the soprano that he did it. I may be mean, but everything I do is innocent, and I wouldn't be as mean as a choir singer for two dollars. I felt real sorry for the old deacon, but he never knew what he had done, and I think it would be real mean to tell him. He won't be at the slugging match. That remark about ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... used to go up to the little fort chapel to attend service on Sunday; I knew the chaplains quite well. One Sunday I was late; as I went in, the choir were busy with something in the way of music. I have no idea what it was, but it went on and on, seemingly a race between the soprano and tenor, with occasional bursts of hurried sentences from the alto and bass, until my patience and ears were weary. The next day I met the chaplain, and, in the course of conversation, I spoke of the music the previous day. 'Was it an anthem or ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... soprano emblem grassy concise nothing ginger faraway kettle shadow next mercy scrub hilltop internal recite shoestring narrative thunder seldom harbor jury eagle windy occupy squirm hobby balloon multiply necktie unlikely supple westbound ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... chorus, in strains which rise above the other voices and supplement the air sung by Kadijah in contrapuntal treatment. Omar, the father of another maiden who is to be Mahomet's concubine, follows Abubekir's example; he and his daughter join in to form a quintette. The girl Ayesha is first soprano, Hafsa second soprano; Abubekir is ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... In writing, use soprano, alto and tenor, or alto, tenor and bass; and do not separate upper parts more than an octave. For a chord or two they may (for the sake of better voice-leading) ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!" "Amen!" trilled the soprano voices of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of us hear voices calling," broke in Katherine. "And each is a different voice according to our natures. Now Margaret's voice is soprano, but Jessie hears ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... to be hung behind the Olio—for the act opened in One—and when the Olio went up, after the act's name was hung out, the lights dimmed to the blue and soft green of evening in the Quarter. Then the soprano commenced singing, the tenor took up the duet, and they opened the act by walking rhythmically with the popular ballad air to stage-centre in the amber of the spot-light. When the duet was finished, on came the baritone, and then the contralto, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... molto umano, Perche avea preso gia di lui pietate; Quanto sei, disse, piu franco e soprano, Piu di te mi rincresce in veritate, Che sarai morto, e non sei Cristiano, Ed anderai tra l'anime dannate; Ma se vuoi il corpo e l'anima salvare, Piglia battesmo, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which may be either tenor, contralto, soprano or baritone. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... sang a reg'lar American song, with music to it. When she reached the chorus she stopped. Then away up in the balcony sounded the tiny treble of a boy's soprano, sweet as the ring of silver. The audience turned, to a man, and we seen, perched among the newsboys, the littlest, golden-haired youngster, 'bout the size of your thumb, his eyes glued to the face of his mother on the stage below, pourin' out his lark song, serious and frightened. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... hollow, higher still, with an inarticulate mutter of mingled reproach, and warning, and anxiety. Rufe settled himself on the platform, his bare feet dangling about jocosely. Then, beating his hands on either thigh to mark the time he sang in a loud, shrill soprano, prone now and then to be flat, and yet, impartially, prone now and then ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... through the moonlight of memory, it seems as good a place to go away from as any other, after a stifling night in a net, the wooden shutters left open in the remote hope of air, and admitting the music of a whole opera-troupe of dogs, including bass, tenor, soprano, and chorus. Instead of bouquets, you throw stones, if you are so fortunate as to have them,—if not, boot-jacks, oranges, your only umbrella. You are last seen thrusting frantic hands and feet through the iron bars, your wife ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... each service of much divided opinion. Opinion was divided because the choir was divided—separated, in fact, into several small, select cliques, each engaged in deadly and bitter feud with the rest. When the moon-eyed soprano arose, with a gentle flutter, and opened her charming mouth in solo, her friends settled themselves in their pews with a general rustle of satisfaction, while the friends of the contralto exchanged civilly significant glances; and on the way home the solo in question was disposed ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... once more hear my 'Flauto Magico!'" humming, in scarcely audible voice, the lively bird-catcher song. The same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, he called his friends together, and asked for the score of his nearly completed "Requiem" to be laid on his bed. Benedict Schack sang the soprano; his brother-in-law, Hofer, the tenor; Gerl, the bass; and Mozart himself took the alto in a weak but delicately clear voice. They had got through the various parts till they came to the "Lacrymosa," when Mozart burst into tears, and laid the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... had followed his; for the first time in Somerset's experience, she produced a double eyeglass; and as soon as the full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her trilling and soprano laughter. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had started. Fra Domenico at the foot of the altar had pattered through the Confiteor, his deep voice responded to by the soprano of the ministering page. The Kyrie was being uttered when the attention of the congregation was attracted by the sound of steps approaching the chapel door to the accompaniment of an ominous clank of steel. The men rose in a body, fearing ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... Yes, I've got a case; Her voice is such a sweet soprano; Her people come from Northern Thrace; You ought to hear her play piano. If she would like my suicide— If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing, Me for a glass ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... for their instruments. It was impossible to sing the chants, as the string instruments could not hold the tones, so anthems were used instead—mostly Millard's—and they were very beautiful. Not one mistake has ever been made by anyone, but Sergeant Moore has vexed me much. He is our soprano, and has a clear, high-tenor voice and often sings solos in public, but for some unexplainable reason he would not sing a note in church unless I sang with him, so I had to hum along for the man's ear alone. Why he has been so frightened' I do not know, unless it was the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... whether it means that the stout matter-of-fact lighter has been christened as a shadowy ghost, or a royal symbol. The veriest urchin steers her, with a little fat hand on the heavy tiller twelve feet long, and a hunch of good rye-bread in his other fist. Now and then he sings out in a thin soprano, "Fayther, boat's a'ead," and his father, (hidden below), answers deep-toned, from the cabin, "Keep 'er away, lad." From him I asked, "How old is your boy?" and the parent's head popped up to see, but it was the child that smartly answered, "Eight years old." He looked five. Round ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... regarded it as medicine, and hoped especially for a favourable effect from the exquisite soprano voice in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ears. White dog cocked her head to one side, and the six puppies followed their parents' example. Duke uttered a low deep howl that chimed in with Beth's singing. White dog howled in a high soprano and the six little dogs did likewise, but in shriller tones. Beth was so surprised that she stopped singing, and the dogs immediately ceased howling, evidently waiting for ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... distinct kinds of voices: Soprano, alto, tenor and bass. There are also intermediate voices, possessing the peculiar quality of the kind to which it belongs, for example: Mezzo-soprano, with the quality of the soprano and only differing from the soprano in range, the range of this voice being lower than ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... round an' join the choir. Sam Merritt has come up from Palmer to spend Thanksgivin' with the ol' folks, an' he is singin' tenor to-day in his ol' place in the choir. Some folks say he sings wonderful well, but I don't like Sam's voice. Laura sings soprano in the choir, and Sam stands next to her ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... in his own inimitable fashion. Then Nora's sweet, high soprano voice began the "Serenata" to the subdued tinkling accompaniment of Reddy's mandolin. Two years in the conservatory had done much for Nora's voice, though its plaintive sweetness had been her natural ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... snoring audibly, not to say visibly. There was Professor Phyle, the celebrated phrenologist—a tall man, with a gaunt face and long gray hair. He had been a lion once, but was now out of date. There were also present Mrs. Blenkin, a comparatively new soprano, having seen only two seasons; Lieutenant Wray, a lion just caught, or rather polar bear, having only then returned from a trip to the arctic regions, in which his ship had covered itself with glory; a young lady who had written ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... greatly ornamented with pictures and gilding, but the most attractive part of the Russian service is the singing, particularly at the Vespers, when the boys taking the soprano parts, accompanied by some most extraordinary deep bass tones of the men, swelling and filling the entire cathedral; all this, with occasional recitations from their sacred books, without any knowledge of their contents, excited in us the most serious and delightful ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... begin it, Raise their high-pitched voices in it, And the shrill soprano piping sets the pace; Then the others join the singing Till the echoes soon are ringing With the big green-coated leader's double-bass. All the lilies are a-quiver, And the grasses by the river ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... door was opened a flood of music floated out. A divinely sweet mezzo-soprano voice was singing to the accompaniment of a harp. As the master of the house flung wide the sitting-room door and announced the visitor, the sounds ceased, but the musician sat with her hands resting upon the gilded strings for a moment, her eyes turned in inquiry ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... extensive sense, instead of to a narrow one like touch. From the experience I have had with voices I guess how the eye distinguishes shades in the midst of light. While I read the lips of a woman whose voice is soprano, I note a low tone or a glad tone in the midst of a high, flowing voice. When I feel my cheeks hot, I know that I am red. I have talked so much and read so much about colours that through no will of my own I attach meanings to them, just as all people ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... having music constantly on tap means to a pilgrim from a town where two concerts in a winter is a gorge, and where about the only regular musical diversion is going to church on Sunday morning and betting on where the veteran soprano in the choir is going to hang on to the key or skid on the high turns. You laugh at me because I can't eat down-town unless I am encouraged by a bull fiddle, and because I gulp at free concert tickets like a young robin swallowing worms. But ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... replied, after a long silence, her voice solemn and veiled like that of an emotional soprano, "I love you because you, too, have something in your face that resembles those of my race, and yet you are as distinct from them as is the servant from the master. I love you... I don't know why. In me there dwells the soul of the ancient Jewesses of the ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was not pure: it had the rich depth and pathos of contralto, and the vibrant clearness of soprano. Now it threaded a tremulous pathway among the pathetic minor notes, while the fingers seemed to drop a faint sigh ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... twice to the San Carlo, which we were the more pleased to do, because when we were here before, that fine theatre was closed. The singing is so-so, and the tenor especially is gifted with limbs rather than with voice or ear. But there is a baritone worth hearing and a soprano, whom the Neapolitans delight to honour ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the tenor ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... on that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, who called them ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... strings of a piano; the larger ones of stringed instruments generally; bass voices; and large bells. Familiar high pitches are right-hand piano strings; smaller ones of other stringed instruments; soprano voices; small bells; and the voices of most ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... without great expense. Mlle. Caroline Salla was given the part of Helene. With her beauty and magnificent voice she was certainly remarkable. But the passages which had been written for the light high soprano of Madame Carvalho were poorly adapted for a dramatic soprano. They concluded, therefore, that I didn't know how to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... brown thrasher breaks into a melody from the top of a wild cherry, and then it is as if a famous operatic coloratura soprano had joined the village choir. For power and continuity of song he is without a peer. With head erect and long tail pendant he pours forth such a flood of melody, so varied and so sweet that we forget the exquisite hymn-like ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... ground at Miss Jenny Ann's feet the girls sang the splendid song. They forgot the story that had suggested their music. Their voices rang true and sweet. Madge sang the soprano part and Phil the alto. The tune inspired the two girls and gave Miss Jenny Ann fresh courage for the unpleasant interview which she thought ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... the soprano looked very interesting with her wet eyelashes, the tears stopped halfway in their course down her rounded cheek. The closing hymn promised endless peace and rest, but was voiced in the same tragic and hopeless music ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... every Man should wed two wives—" "Why two?" asked I. "You carry your affected simplicity too far", he cried. "How can there be a completely harmonious union without the combination of the Four in One, viz. the Bass and Tenor of the Man and the Soprano and Contralto of the two Women?" "But supposing," said I, "that a man should prefer one wife or three?" "It is impossible," he said; "it is as inconceivable as that two and one should make five, or that the human eye should see a Straight Line." ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... sings the anthem, Cum appropinquaret etc. When the procession is in the portico, two soprano singers reenter the basilica, and shut the door: then turning towards the door, they sing the first verse of the hymn Gloria, laus et honor[38] and the other verses alternately with the choir, which remains without. The subdeacon knocks at the gate with the cross, ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... that was new to me, evidently Brewer's sparrow. Its favorite resort was in the low bushes growing on the border of the mesa and along the edge of the cliff. Its song was unique, the opening syllable running low on the alto clef, while the closing notes constituted a very respectable soprano. A few extremely shy sparrows flitted about in the thickets of a hollow as we began our descent, and I have no doubt ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... ears. But there were other sounds which enchained my attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... made a quartet. Susan was ready with her beautiful contralto, Mrs. Blair sung the soprano, Mr. Blair the ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... not believing it to be a bird, but rather some joyous dreamer in the gloom. Removing her large straw hat, Sina Karsavina now began to sing a Russian popular air, sweet and sad like all Russian songs. Her voice, a high soprano, though not powerful, was ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... usually find, even in large cities and in musical institutions, I exempt from any special criticism, for they would not be able to understand my views. They permit soprano voices to sing scales in all the five vowels at once; begin with c instead of f; allow a long holding of the notes, "in order to bring out the voice," until the poor victim rolls her eyes and grows dizzy. They talk only of the fine chest-tones ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... come and see the Kamtchatkans in Scriptural opera-ballet! Only second to Noe is La Femme de Lot, with dear Sarkavina, in clouds of white, doing a sensational whirling dance as she turns into the Pillar, while that amazing soprano, Scriemalona, sings the mysterious Salt Music. Bishops quite swarm at these performances. They say they consider it their duty to go, and that they never really understood the true character of NOAH till they saw Ternitenky's beautiful flying leap into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... words were being doled out at long and impressive intervals, like the tolling of a heavy bell, more than half a hundred soprano voices were hastily getting in their requisite number ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... actor and singer, Cavalier Nicolino Grimaldi, commonly called Nicolini, had made his first appearance in an opera called 'Pyrrhus and Demetrius,' which was the last attempt to combine English with Italian. His voice was a soprano, but afterwards descended into a fine contralto, and he seems to have been the finest actor of his day. Prices of seats at the opera were raised on his coming from 7s. 6d. to 10s. for pit and boxes, and from ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... all the garden wakes to sound, for not a bird is mute: The robin pipes the piccolo; the blackbird plays the flute; While high upon a cedar-top a thrush with bubbling throat Lifts up to this accompaniment her clear soprano note. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... studious school-boy, whistling over his Latin Grammar; that wild, long note is poor Mrs. Fondle's farewell of her dead boy; the ugly barytone, rising from the tap-room, is what Wandering Willie calls a sculduddery song—shut your ears, and pass on; and that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... at her own freedom from nervousness. She sang neither better nor worse than usual—sang in the clear and pleasant soprano which she flattered herself was not unmusical. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... this time," said Pete Murphy. "Beautiful, all of them. Soprano, high and clear. They've got a language, all right, too. What did you think of ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, and as she took some steps of her dance ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... He had not asked her to do that. Had not, on the contrary, her marriage really furthered it? Was she not more of a person to-day than the discouraged young woman he had found singing for pittances the leading dramatic soprano roles in the minor municipal operas of Germany and Austria? Wasn't that what she had said this morning—that falling in love with him was the best thing that could possibly have happened to her? He had taken ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the victim, in consideration of being educated, and maintained, and paid a certain amount, is bound, legally bound, to devote her services to a master for a given time. The impresario of the 'Fenice' had often heard from travellers of that wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which was captivating all Rome, where the beauty and grace of the singer were extolled not less loudly. The great skill of these astute providers for the world's pleasure is evidenced in nothing more remarkably than the instinctive quickness with which they pounce upon the indications ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... and change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien. Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in its singing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... The boy soprano, clad in white surplice, stood in the organ loft. The light shone full upon his crown of fair hair, and his pale face, with its serious blue eyes, looked paler than usual. Perhaps it was something in the tender thrill of the voice, or in the sweet words, but there were tears ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the piano and sang in a thin but trained soprano. The song was a ballad with a quaint air full of sadness and heartbreak. To Raphael, who had never heard the psalmic wails of "The Sons of the Covenant" or the Polish ditties of Fanny Belcovitch, it seemed also full ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... be high or low according to the number of vibrations which the ligaments are capable of producing, or in other words, according to their dimensions and their tension. This difference is easily seen by comparing the voicebox of a soprano with that of a bass, because there the proportions are so manifestly smaller in the one than in the other. There are similar distinctions between soprano and contralto on the one hand, and between tenor ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... lesser canals, rose the manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not have been born at the time when Casanova ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... main altar, tearing half a yard of crimson damask and nearly upsetting the priest officiating; and then, while Caper (red in the face, and totally unfit to hear the fine chorus of voices, among which Mustafa's, the soprano, came ringing out) was composing himself to listen, Pepe grabbed him with a 'Music's over; andiamo (let's go). Did you hear Mustafa? Bella voce, tra-la-leeeee! Mustafa's a contadino; I know his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was beautifully sung. Quincy had a fine well-trained tenor voice, while Miss Putnam's mezzo-soprano was full and melodious and her rendition fully as artistic as that of her companion. One, two, three, four, five, six encores followed each other in quick succession, in spite of Professor Strout's endeavors to quell the applause and take up the next number. The ovation given earlier in ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... primitive harmony was a perfect fifth resulting from the attempt of men with different ranges to sing together. The difference between a bass and a tenor voice is just about a fifth. Between an alto and a soprano it is about a fourth. The difference in these voices made it impossible to sing melodies of wide range in unison, and so the basses and tenors sang in consecutive fifths. When women took up the chanting, they sang either ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... mountains donned their royal purple, the intervening shadows of valleys making the folds of their robes. As they approached the shore the resonant song of the robins blended with the human voices. Burt, however, heard only Amy's girlish soprano, and saw but the pearl of her teeth through her parted lips, the rose in her cheeks, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... us immediately, and I prefer to direct the singer's chief attention to the second occurrence.) One part may press toward the palate, the other toward the cavities of the head. The division of the breath occurs regularly, from the deepest bass to the highest tenor or soprano, step for step, vibration for vibration, without regard to sex or individuality. Only the differing size or strength of the vocal organs through which the breath flows, the breathing apparatus, or the skill with which they are used, are different ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... and I will have to follow the trails together, yes?" She smiled down into Doris' piquant, freckled little face, and just at this moment there came from the living-room, where Helen was dusting, Dinorah's Shadow Song, sung in a clear, girlish soprano. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... young gentleman named Valentine Veery, who was a distant cousin of Jolly Robin's, was the singing leader. He had been chosen on account of his being able to sing both alto and soprano at the same time. And as soon as everybody had found a comfortable seat ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of devotion than is often ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... whole days the town was excited and amused by the scandal; then there came other news—a victory in Germany; doubtful accounts from America; a general officer coming home to take his trial; an exquisite new soprano singer from Italy; and the public forgot Lady Maria in her garret, eating the hard-earned meal ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church, Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful, I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing; Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head, Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... this time lightly, joyously, and we re ponded to her mood like harp-strings all in accord. The room, awakened to melody after the long years of silence, seemed transformed by Una's splendid gift, a fine, clear soprano, not big nor yet thin or reedy, but rounded, full-bodied and deep with feeling. Jerry was smiling now, the shadow seemed to ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... that the great demand to-day is for dramatic, and not for lyric, singers. Formerly, it was the bravura singer who bought dukedoms with his shekels; to-day, with the solitary exception of Patti, it is the dramatic soprano or tenor that gets from $500 to $1,000 a night. When will teachers and pupils wake up and recognize the new situation? When will American girls cease flocking by the hundreds to Milan to learn such roles as Lucia ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... head and smiled provocatively. Martin fled to the cloak-rack near the door. Hurriedly he donned top-coat and hat. Until he finally closed the front door behind him, a tinny wail poured out of the little parlor and assailed his ears, a reedy soprano declaiming passionately that she had raised no son of hers to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... their plaintive hinney. There are dogs, too, that howl and bark, with other sounds that come from farther off—from the wild denizens of the wilderness; cries of the cougar in contralto, wolf-barkings in mezzo-soprano, screaming of eagles in shrill treble, snorting of bears in basso, and hooting of scared owls in lugubrious tone, to be likened only to the wailing of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Days Are Over." Bert and Mary joined in; but when Billy attempted to add his voice he was dissuaded by a shin-kick from Bert. Saxon sang in a clear, true soprano, thin but sweet, and she was aware that ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... you take me for a soprano?" cried the boy, laughing, as he washed off the paint and the gum where the beard had stuck. Presently he got into his frock, which, as I told you, was a real one, provided by Ercole's brother, the Franciscan—quite quietly, of course, for it would seem a dreadful thing to use a real monk's frock ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... yodle, in which both the baritone of the cliff and the Alpine soprano united, was so melodious that Mr. Hahn sprang to his feet and swore an ecstatic oath, while Fritz, from sheer admiring abstraction, almost stuck the lighted end of his cigar into ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Sebastian left his brother's roof and entered the Latin school connected with the Church of St. Michael at Lueneburg. It was found he had a beautiful soprano voice, which placed him with the scholars who were chosen to sing in the church service in return for a free education. There were two church schools in Lueneburg, and the rivalry between them was so ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... and A Maid Sings Light form one of the gramophone records made for "His Master's Voice" series by Alma Gluck. This lyric soprano has sung the two MacDowell songs with sympathy and perfect phrasing. The accompaniments were played by a Mr. Bourdon, who unfortunately disregarded the composer's tone ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... at the piano and her rich soprano voice faultlessly led her straggling chorus, filled for the most part by the men grouped outside on the wide porch. He could see them through the long, French windows, sitting or standing as each felt inclined, but all with that earnest seriousness of demeanor which befitted the day and ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... Lil's attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed at ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... upon the ears of the waiting multitude the glorious soprano voice of Mrs. Jones. So far above, yet so thrillingly sweet and distinct, one could scarcely refrain from imagining that the Pearly Gates had opened, and we were listening to the voice of one of the Redeemed. ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... call of Simon Peter and his brethren is next described in a tenor recitative; and the acceptance of the glad tidings is expressed in an aria, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," which, by an original but appropriate conception, is given to the soprano voice. In the next number, the disciples are dramatically represented by twelve basses and tenors, singing in four-part harmony, and alternating or combining with the full chorus in description of the aims of the new religion. The ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... for that sound Hushed "Academie" sighed in silent awe; The fiddlers trembled as he looked around, For fear of some false note's detected flaw; The "Prima Donna's" tuneful heart would bound, Dreading the deep damnation of his "Bah!" Soprano, Basso, even the Contra-Alto, Wished him five ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... canals, rose the manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not have been born at the time when ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... almost continuous labor she was the leader of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, of Nashville, Tenn., who traveled extensively, both in America and Europe, giving popular entertainment of a species of singing which originated among the slaves of the South. She possesses a soprano voice of rare quality that is ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... Water Templars, and later becoming a member of the Sons of Temperance and Good Templars. She is active in all Christian work, being a member of the First Congregational Church of Lockport, in whose church work she takes prominent part, and whose solo soprano she has been for thirteen years; she is also an active member of the Christian Endeavor ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... frock and white trowsers, a white hat jauntily set upon one side of his head, and primrose gloves. He cast a momentary glance of a very undervaluing import upon the crowd around him, and then, turning to the Consul, said in a very soprano tone— ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... pearls which were lost in the great battle. The music of the forest is an orchestra consisting of Fairy voices and stringed instruments, harps, violins, and 'cellos. And now and then I caught a high soprano note beyond the powers ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... remonstrant eyes, suddenly looked out of a hollow, higher still, with an inarticulate mutter of mingled reproach, and warning, and anxiety. Rufe settled himself on the platform, his bare feet dangling about jocosely. Then, beating his hands on either thigh to mark the time he sang in a loud, shrill soprano, prone now and then to be flat, and yet, impartially, prone now and ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... capital stock. The ice and lighting plants were enlarged, and the city bought a site up the river, built a dam, installed pumping engines and constructed water mains into the city. An opera house was built, which, though its walls never re-echoed to the high soprano notes of a prima donna; had trembled to their foundations at the invectives of E. T. Franks; had shed sections of blistered plaster at the sad wailings of Gus Wilson, and had been moved by the matchless eloquence ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... altar, tearing half a yard of crimson damask and nearly upsetting the priest officiating; and then, while Caper (red in the face, and totally unfit to hear the fine chorus of voices, among which Mustafa's, the soprano, came ringing out) was composing himself to listen, Pepe grabbed him with a 'Music's over; andiamo (let's go). Did you hear Mustafa? Bella voce, tra-la-leeeee! Mustafa's a contadino; I know his pa and ma; they changed him when only five years old. Thought he was a Turk, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lives lean upon somebody, and at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... instruments; and their inclination for music is very great, and they make instruments. There are good singers among them, and these have positions, with a fitting salary attached, in all the churches, from the cathedral to the poorest ministry; and thus they are being trained, from the time when they sing soprano. They are fond of verses and representations. They are excellent translators, and can translate a Spanish comedy with elegance into verses of their own language. And thus, although all, both men and women, are fond of reading, they are indefatigable ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Peter and his brethren is next described in a tenor recitative; and the acceptance of the glad tidings is expressed in an aria, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," which, by an original but appropriate conception, is given to the soprano voice. In the next number, the disciples are dramatically represented by twelve basses and tenors, singing in four-part harmony, and alternating or combining with the full chorus in description of the aims of the new religion. The poem ends with the choral, "How lovely shines ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... veil. I write songs, and all your countrymen and countryvomen sing dem. I haf a choral company, too, and it is for dat I vant you. I go to de first houses in de land, de lords, de ministers, de princes. You shall come vith me. Your voice is soprano—no, mezzo-soprano—and it vill grow. I vill pitch it, and vhen it is ready I vill bring you out. But now get away from dis place and naivare come back, or I vill be ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Kamtchatkans in Scriptural opera-ballet! Only second to Noe is La Femme de Lot, with dear Sarkavina, in clouds of white, doing a sensational whirling dance as she turns into the Pillar, while that amazing soprano, Scriemalona, sings the mysterious Salt Music. Bishops quite swarm at these performances. They say they consider it their duty to go, and that they never really understood the true character of NOAH till they saw Ternitenky's beautiful flying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... the music lovers of the East and Middle West during the last few months, will sail for Rio Janeiro on Sunday on the San Salvador of the Blue Star Line. The company has been augmented by the engagement of several soloists, among them Madam Ida Bellethorne, the English soprano, who has made many friends here during the ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... sparkled and hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every eardrum; patting From muffled tympani made ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of that bull voice of his. He used it frequently. So they taped him, and Al here—" the name plainly referred to the machine—"used to play it back switched up so he sounded like a squeaky girl. That poor guy, he liked to busted a blood-vessel when he heard himself speakin' soprano. He raised hell and they sent Al here to be rehabilitated. But I switched another machine for him and sent it back, instead. Of course, Al don't ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... proffer *Re back, again return, resound *Retro back, backward retroactive, retrospective *Se apart, aside seclude, secession *Semi half semiannual, semicivilized *Sub under, less than, subscribe, suffer, subnormal, inferior subcommittee *Super above, extremely superfluous, supercritical, soprano *Trans across, through transfer, transparent *Ultra ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... cabin and listened to the first few night sounds of the foothills. The clear piping notes of migrating plover floated softly down to him, punctuated by the rasping cry of a nighthawk. A coyote raised his voice, a perfect tenor note that swept up to a wild soprano, then fell again in a whirl of howls which carried amazing shifts of inflection, tearing up and down the coyote scale. One after another added his voice to the chorus until it seemed that the swelling volume could be produced by no less than a full thousand musical prairie wolves ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... Seventh Wife Motive seems to be written in a curiously low key if we conceive it to be the index to the character of a soprano heroine; but let us look further. What are the two principal personages in the music-drama to be to ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... laden with the odor of trees and sweetbrier, and to the song the breath of the south wind played an accompaniment of exquisite cadence upon the leaves. I seem to hear them singing,—Billy's piping treble, plaintive, quaint, and almost sweet, carrying the tenor to Dic's bass. There was no soprano. The concert was all tenor and bass, south wind, and rustling leaves. The song helped Dic to express his happiness, and enabled Billy to throw off the remnants of his heartache. Music is a surer antidote to disappointment, past, present, and future, than the philosophy ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... sea in seductive cadences. Then two female voices sang sweetly to the accompaniment of the harp; and so exquisite was the effect that I fancied rejoicing angels whispering their songs to the winds that played so gently around us. One of the voices was a soprano of much sweetness and flexibility, for it ascended the scale with great ease, and its higher notes were flutelike. The other was a contralto of no mean order. And there joined in chorus with these, two male voices, evidently well trained, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... others; a few on or with donkeys, but more on foot. In vain we told them that we would engage no donkeys at all, and no horses till we reached our destination; in vain we bade them allow us to "pursue the even tenor of our way" in peace, and hush their high soprano tones. It was one perpetual babble in praise of their horses, their donkeys, and their capabilities as guides, with the constant repetition of the names of the surrounding peaks, which we already knew perfectly well. ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... 211 of the Secular Cantatas, and was published in Leipzig in 1732. In German it is known as Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be silent, do not talk). It is written for soprano, tenor, and bass solos and orchestra. Bach used as his text a poem by Piccander. The cantata is really a sort of one-act operetta—a jocose production representing the efforts of a stern parent to check his daughter's propensities in coffee ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Epstein, the soprano soloist from St. Louis, will sing a symphony known as the "Surprise Symphony" at the concert by the University Orchestra in the auditorium to-morrow night. The piece was written by Haydn. The symphony was so named by the composer on account of ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... was followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and screeched them ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... day in a railway-car en route to the great Columbian Fair in Chicago when the tired passengers were suddenly surprised and charmed by the music of this melody. A young Christian man and woman, husband and wife, had begun to sing "My Jesus, I love Thee." Their voices (a tenor and soprano) were clear and sweet, and every one of the company sat up to listen with a look of mingled admiration and relief. Here was something, after all, to make a long journey less tedious. They sang all ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... had often heard it before, that waked me. Presently a window was softly closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation with which we always awake from nightmare dreams, when I heard the sound which seemed to me as of a woman's voice,—the clearest, purest soprano which one could well conceive of. It was not loud, and I could not distinguish a word, if it was a woman's voice; but there were recurring phrases of sound and snatches of rhythm that reached me, which suggested ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... attended by many ladies, of whom one was a dowager countess, but there were also a bishop and a midshipman. The last had a bad cold and kept on blowing his nose during the performance of the soprano, a lady of strange appearance, said to be a Serbian refugee ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... "Hastings from the Sea," we have the further step from monochrome to polychrome; we have the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the sky, the blue in the sea, and the red in the figures in the boats,—as in a vocal trio we have the only three possible musical sounds of the human voice, the soprano, the basso, and the falsetto of the child's voice. All these colors are distinctly asserted and perfectly harmonized in a most exquisite play of tints, but it is still no more like Nature than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... surpassed by Rubini's performance of the air. On another occasion, at the same theatre, the prima donna was taken suddenly ill in the midst of a terzetto, in which Tamburini had the bass, and, while supporting her on the stage, this accomplished musician actually took the soprano in his falsetto, and performed the part of the indisposed lady in a manner which drew down universal applause. The English school, "still tardy," and "limping after" the Italian, is yet far behind. It has, undoubtedly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... lady Kwiatkowski said that she took as much trouble and pride in giving choice musical entertainments as other people did in giving choice dinners. In Sowinski's Musiciens polonais we read that she had a beautiful soprano voice and occupied the first place among the amateur ladies of Paris. "A great friend of the illustrious Chopin, she gave formerly splendid concerts at her house with the old company of the Italians, which one shall see ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... own dear Pollyanna, the glad girl, adopted by an aunt in "Crime and Punishment." Even Dostoyevsky must have laid down his doleful pen to give her at last a happy wedding—flower-girls and angel-food, even a shrill soprano behind the hired palms and ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... seemed serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic. They use more judgment about applause than the French. They never interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... roses after a shower, out they came, dripping, and laughing and screaming with glee. The little mother was kept busy enough, for it was Christmas-eve, and the carols and anthems were to be rehearsed for the last time, and Mrs. Morton's clear soprano voice could not be spared. Indeed, her voice was all that kept Teddie and Clover and Daisy in their neat little box of a house, for their father, a brave fireman, had been killed more than two years before at a fearful fire, and since then their mother ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... seems when this allotment was made out, There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female, Who (after some discussion and some doubt, If the soprano might be deemed to be male, They placed him o'er the women as a scout) Were linked together, and it happened the male Was Juan,—who, an awkward thing at his age, Paired off with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Passover dishes were, and how sweet the wine. Fedoka listened attentively, and cast his eyes on Feitel's blouse. He was still thinking of "matzo." Suddenly there was a scream, and a cry in a high-pitched soprano: ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... genius, the same sympathy with the Genius that governs his, the old love with the old limitations, though love and limitation be all untold. And I see well what a piece of Providence he is, how material he is to the times, which must always have a solo Soprano to balance the roar of the Orchestra. The solo sings the theme; the orchestra roars antagonistically but follows.—And have I not put him into my Chapter of "English Spiritual Tendencies," with all thankfulness to the Eternal ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... glad to be amused; open-armed to any one who amused it; patient with every one who did not insist on putting himself in its way, or costing it money; but this was not consideration, still less power in any of its concrete forms, and applied as well or better to a comic actor. Certainly a rare soprano or tenor voice earned infinitely more applause as it gave infinitely more pleasure, even in America; but one does what one can with one's means, and casting up one's balance sheet, one expects only a reasonable return on one's capital. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... stories, and the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the staccatoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano of the dear ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... anything—can't even carry an air," Aurora put in in a regretful voice. "But Gerald has a fine tenor voice, and perhaps Dorothy can take the soprano ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... the same fat Englishwoman who had driven Arithelli's horses in the chariot. She was by no means young, she had applied her rouge with a lavish hand, and her golden wig was an outrage. Her airs and graces were those of a well-fed operatic soprano. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... sang the soprano looked very interesting with her wet eyelashes, the tears stopped halfway in their course down her rounded cheek. The closing hymn promised endless peace and rest, but was voiced in the same tragic and hopeless music with which the ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... pretty picture together, father and daughter,—the girl with the wide blue eyes and open mouth, standing shoulder to shoulder with the little man, each with one gloved hand grasping an edge of the hymn-book and singing, Milly in a high soprano,— ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... famous Italian coloratura soprano of the day, declares that she began to sing before she learned to talk. Her parents were not musical, but her elder sister, now the wife of the eminent conductor Cleofante Campanini, was a public singer of established ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... matter-of-fact lighter has been christened as a shadowy ghost, or a royal symbol. The veriest urchin steers her, with a little fat hand on the heavy tiller twelve feet long, and a hunch of good rye-bread in his other fist. Now and then he sings out in a thin soprano, "Fayther, boat's a'ead," and his father, (hidden below), answers deep-toned, from the cabin, "Keep 'er away, lad." From him I asked, "How old is your boy?" and the parent's head popped up to see, but it was the child that smartly answered, "Eight years old." He looked five. Round the next ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... had I been the Khan of Tartary she could not have been more polite and frigid. The music to the first hymn was an air I had never heard before, so I stumbled miserably through the tenor, although Miss Mayton rendered the soprano without a single false note. The sermon was longer than I was in the habit of listening to, and I was frequently conscious of not listening at all. As for my position and appearance, neither ever seemed so insignificant as they ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... of Madame's laughter rang through the house and echoed along the corridor. As though in answer, the clock struck ten, the canary sang happily, and a rival melody came from the kitchen, in cracked soprano, mercifully muted by ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... decoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral of Terra Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, the soprano for whom Gluck had written Che faru senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... was rumored that at the coming concert—the benefit of von Francius—a new soprano was to appear—a young lady of whom report used varied tones; some believable facts at least we learned about her. Her name, they said was Wedderburn; she was an English woman, and had a most wonderful voice. The Herr Direktor took a very ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... enter fully into our pleasures, I must tell you that first of all I had to ride in a chariot with the duchess and Dioda, and as we drove we sang more than twenty-five songs, arranged for three voices. That is to say, Dioda took the tenor part, and the duchess the soprano, whilst I sang sometimes bass and sometimes soprano, and played so many foolish tricks that I really think I may claim to be more of a fool than Dioda! And now farewell for to-night, and I will try to improve still further, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... miserable rebec, from the infancy of the art, still imprisoned in the re-la-mi. But it was around the Pope of the Fools that all the musical riches of the epoch were displayed in a magnificent discord. It was nothing but soprano rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs, and tenor rebecs, not to reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers will remember that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... evenings with Handel's holy music. "I know that my Redeemer liveth," and "He shall feed his Flock," which I heard for the first time from that gentle schoolmate of mine, recall her meek, tranquil face and, liquid thread of delicate soprano voice, even through the glorious associations of Jenny Lind's inspired utterance of those divine songs. These ladies were daughters of a high dignitary of the English Church, which made my sermon-writing for their succor rather comical. Besides ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Aeolian in character, wandering over the entire room, as if walls and ceiling were honey-combed with sensitive musical cells, answering to the deeper vibrations. These floating aerial sounds also answered to the higher notes of some of the female singers, resembling soprano voices, brightened and spiritualized in a wonderful degree; and then the wide room would be filled with a mist, as it were, of this floating, formless melody, which seemed to come from invisible harpers hovering in the ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... voice Evan knew she was young and adorable. It was a low-pitched voice for so little a woman, low and thrilling; a mezzo-soprano. His spirit went to ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... They mounted into the carriage. In the corner house just opposite there was a great company; light streamed through the long curtains, a low tenor voice and a high ringing soprano mingled together in ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... started the air for their parting hymn. The girl was not thinking of herself and so was unconscious that the others, even while singing, were also listening with surprise and pleasure to the clear, rounded tones of her beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. In reality Esther Clark was thinking only of Betty and the news that Dick Ashton had just told her. Mr. Ashton, his father, had been taken ill in Italy and, though there was no immediate danger, might never be well again. For the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... placing her carefully in the corner of a bench, would retire to a short distance and pretend to be absorbed in a book, while her sharp eyes kept up the watch for a long-haired tenor, or a beautifully dressed soprano, who should suddenly rush out from the ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... vengeance and threatening annihilation. He brandished his pole in the face of Ortrud, stamping and roaring, then, bending his knees, waddled across the room and prodded Elsa, who winced perceptibly but continued to mingle her light soprano with the rolling bass of Mr. Church and the vociferations of the poet. Finally, at the staccato command of Mr. Todd's hoarsening voice, she toppled over into his arms and they both fell on Ortrud. The ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... triumphal march of the Pope carried on a platform amid feather fans, at which Josephina was not present. At other times the good Father made the mysterious announcement that on the next day Pallestri, the famous male soprano of the papal chapel, was going to sing; the Spanish lady got up early, leaving her husband still in bed, to hear the sweet voice of the pontifical eunuch whose beardless face appeared in shop windows among the portraits of dancers ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... too, regarded it as medicine, and hoped especially for a favourable effect from the exquisite soprano voice in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... activities. Two hundred and fifty-eight vibrations of air per second produce on the ear the sensation we call do, or C of the soprano scale; five hundred and sixteen give the upper C, or an octave above. So the sound runs up in air till, above, say, thirty-five thousand vibrations per second, there is plenty of sound inaudible to our ears. But not inaudible to finer ears. To them the morning stars sing together ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni Hasse, whose famous rivalry in 1726 and 1727 is here referred to, were singers of remarkable powers. Cuzzoni's voice was a soprano, her rival's a mezzo-soprana, and while the latter excelled in brilliant execution, the former was supreme in pathetic expression. Dr. Burney("History of Music," iv. 319) quotes from M. Quanta the statement that so keen was their supporter's ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... smallish, cinnamon-colored young gentleman named Valentine Veery, who was a distant cousin of Jolly Robin's, was the singing leader. He had been chosen on account of his being able to sing both alto and soprano at the same time. And as soon as everybody had found a comfortable seat for himself, Valentine ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... paradise. Brilliantly-plumaged birds flitted here and there, their colours contrasting with the green foliage. Gauzy-winged insects buzzed to and fro. The notes of the nightingale, or some kindred songster, could be heard, singing an ecstatic soprano to the cooing bass of the dove and the rippling obbligato of babbling brooks—that filtered through golden-yellow sands into the lap of the mother of waters—amid the sympathetic harmony of gushing ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... himself continually murmuring whole phrases of a chant which he had heard once upon a time when he was staying in an old town in France, It was the Litany of the Blessed Virgin sung at Benediction by some unseen singer with a wonderfully sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice. The Tenor had gone again and again to hear her in this chant, the music of which suited her as well as it did the theme. The words of adoration, "Sancta Maria, Sancta Dei Genetrix, Sancta Virgo virginum," were uttered evenly on notes that admitted of the tenderest expression, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to the care of the great teacher Marchesi, who soon put her in the front rank of singers. Her success upon the stage was unquestioned, and her voice was one of the most remarkable in all the history of music, being a pure soprano, with a compass of nearly three octaves,—from G to F,—and so clear and powerful that it rose fresh, penetrating, and triumphant above the music of any band or orchestra which might be playing her accompaniment. Bell-like in quality ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Vesque's new opera "Der lustige Rath." Various local circumstances have delayed the performance at Vienna of this really pretty, nicely worked out opera. The mise-en-scene does not require any special efforts; the piece only requires a somewhat piquant and not unskillful soprano singer. Altogether the opera appears to me to be written in a charming style, not too superficially conservative, and to be one of the best among the new operas mezzo-carattere. In case you still have time and are not indisposed to give the opera ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... he said solemnly; "she really and truly was. And her mother said to her teacher,—there in Dresden: 'She will be the greatest soprano, won't she?' And he said: 'Madame, she has only that one ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... taken up at the door to defray expenses.' Well, I though the people in church would sink through the floor. There was not a person in the church except the poor old deacon, but who understood that some wicked wretch had deceived him, and I know by the way the tenor tickled the soprano that he did it. I may be mean, but everything I do is innocent, and I wouldn't be as mean as a choir singer for two dollars. I felt real sorry for the old deacon, but he never knew what he had done, and I think it would be real mean to tell him. He won't be at the slugging match. ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... composers are their slaves no longer, the spectators and managers still are so. In Paris and elsewhere it is often found impossible to do justice to the secondary stage appointments because the salaries of the soprano and the tenor swallow the whole income. The Germans, on the other hand, are too artistic and rational to endure such an imposition. To them the one-star-and-ten-satellites system seems an abomination, and doubtless Emperor William had the sympathies and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... And Monsieur Jean—he, the great artist and stricken father—he too was gay and amusing. He sang a wonderful little French song that was applauded violently by people at the nearby tables, and he drew wonderful caricatures of the musicians, the head waiter, the shockingly bad soprano, and of Mr. Bingle himself. Rouquin alone was nervous and uneasy, but of course only on account of his illustrious guests. He was constantly imploring both Madame and Monsieur Rousseau to reflect before speaking, and they obeyed him by reflecting ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... bit of the second part's rather trying," said a young man behind her. "There's an awkward jump of two full tones that was too much for our soprano when we tried it at the choral union. Miss Ismay's very true in intonation, but I don't suppose most of the rest would notice it if she shirked a little and left that ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... at once, as if hoping to lighten their labours—lovers of music as these people are—a shrill, musical, woman's voice arose, starting a familiar chorus, which was taken up directly by the young, to rise and fall and swell along the valley, the sweet soprano tones supported by ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... rispose molto umano, Perche avea preso gia di lui pietate; Quanto sei, disse, piu franco e soprano, Piu di te mi rincresce in veritate, Che sarai morto, e non sei Cristiano, Ed anderai tra l'anime dannate; Ma se vuoi il corpo e l'anima salvare, Piglia battesmo, e ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Nesta's promising soprano, and her mother's contralto, and his baritone—a true baritone, not so well trained as their accurate notes—should be rising in spirited union with the curtain of that secret: there was matter for song and concert, triumph and gratulation in it. And during the whole passage of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... offices of the parson, and the soprano's voice from behind the flowers, singing "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me"—Marthy's favorite hymn—brought the tears trickling, but he could not believe that what had happened had happened. He got through the melancholy honor ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... an independent, interesting episode from the life of Margaret Donne, the fascinating English girl who later became the most famous lyric soprano of her day. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... debut of Madame Caradori-Allan, noted soprano, in Rossini's opera "Il Barbiere di Seviglia" at the Park Theatre, ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... a soprano scream of delight. "Well, say—did you ever have a brick house fall on you?—well, that's just the way it feels—just like when they're digging you out of the ruins. Jack's got a left that spells ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... choice fell upon Anna Magdalena Wulken, a Coethen court singer of twenty-one years, and the happy consummation occurred on December 3d. She was a good musician, and did much to enliven the domestic circle by her beautiful soprano voice. Not content with merely taking part in her husband's works, she learned from him to play the clavier and read figured bass, and rendered him valuable aid by copying music ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... he, Robert Spinrobin, felt that he naturally belonged as "one of the family." They were like the four notes in the chord: Skale, the great bass; Mawle, the mellow alto; himself and Miriam, respectively, the echoing tenor and the singing soprano. The imagery by which, in the depths of his mind, he sought to interpret to himself the whole singular business ran, it seems, even then to music and the analogies ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... down the steps had a clear soprano voice, cultured and commanding. The gray Medical uniform seemed molded to her shapely figure and her red hair glistened in the lights of the street. Her snub nose and determined mouth weren't the current fashion, but nobody stopped to think of ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... by an official of the Venetian arsenal, seemed like a real lagoon idyll. They generally sang only three-part naturally harmonized folk-songs. It was new to me not to hear the higher voice rise above the compass of the alto, that is to say, without touching the soprano, thereby imparting to the sound of the chorus a manly youthfulness hitherto unknown to me. On fine evenings they glided down the Grand Canal in a large illuminated gondola, stopping before a few palaces as if to serenade (when requested and paid for doing so, be it understood), ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... precentress ('tis always a woman that leads) did better than I ever heard them, and to my great pleasure I understood it all except one verse. This gave me the more time to try and identify what the parts were doing, and further convict my dull ear. Beyond the fact that the soprano rose to the tonic above, on one occasion I could recognise nothing. This is sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better before I am done with it ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that quaint and simple hymn, Cicely Bourne glanced at Miss Eden and Susie Prescott with a little suggestive smile, and caught their appealing glances,—then, as the quavering chorus of boys and girls began, she raised her voice as the 'leading soprano,' and like a thread of gold it twined round all the notes and tied them together ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... benefit of those not learned in Sixteenth-Century Music, it may be interesting to hint that the melody is written here for the Second Soprano, and to add, for their encouragement, that the experiment of performing this Madrigal, unaccompanied, with two ladies, and two male voices in the Alto parts, proved perfectly successful, thanks to the science of Mr Fuller-Maitland and ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... will prefer Dilettantism in this world for his outfit, shall have it; but all the gods will depart from him; and manful veracity, earnestness of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. He can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for hire;—and probably that is the real goal ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... said with the calm self-confidence of a connoisseur. "Tell me, have you composed anything for a woman's voice, for a mezzo-soprano?" ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... a flood of music floated out. A divinely sweet mezzo-soprano voice was singing to the accompaniment of a harp. As the master of the house flung wide the sitting-room door and announced the visitor, the sounds ceased, but the musician sat with her hands resting upon the gilded strings for a moment, her ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... laughing and chattering with the men whose applause, of course, took the jocose form, there was no doubt but she admired it. "What I can't understand is how Mrs. Westangle got the notion of this. There's the soprano note in it, and some woman must have given it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... would tune his guitar, and in a deep deacon's bass strike up "In the midst of the valley." We would begin singing. My tutor took the bass, Fyodor sang in a hardly audible tenor, while I sang soprano in ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... French descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room. Daphne's soprano voice—agreeable, but making its mark always, like its owner—could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed to be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tenor rises, Music in hand, a linnet and a king. The bullfinch bass, that other emperor, Leans back indifferently, and clears his throat As if to say, "This prelude leads to Me!" While, on their own proud thrones, on either hand, The sumptuously bosomed midget queens, Contralto and soprano, jealously eye Each other's plumage. Round me the music throbs With an immortal passion. I grow aware Of an appalling mystery.... We, this throng Of midgets, playing, listening, tense and still, Are sailing on a midget ball of dust We call our planet; will have sailed ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... pushed hers back, and I recognized the golden hair of Alathea, as she joined a group rather formally collected on one side of the grave. She looked round as if to see that all were ready, and then in such a soprano voice as one seldom hears, she "started" the funeral hymn. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of his family, "They are one and all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can already form a concert, both vocal and instrumental, of my own family, particularly as my present wife sings a very clear soprano and my eldest daughter joins ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... a psalm, an' we all stan' up an' turn round an' join the choir. Sam Merritt has come up from Palmer to spend Thanksgivin' with the ol' folks, an' he is singin' tenor to-day in his ol' place in the choir. Some folks say he sings wonderful well, but I don't like Sam's voice. Laura sings soprano in the choir, and Sam stands next to her ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... made its author master of the heart of Italy. The very lack of concentrated passion lent it power. Its suffusion of emotion in a shimmering atmosphere toned with voluptuous melancholy, seemed to invite the lutes and viols, the mellow tenors, and the trained soprano voices of the dawning age of melody. We may here remember that Palestrina, seven years earlier in Rome, had already given his Mass of Pope Marcello to ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Hall. Mr. William Cross of Hanwell represented England; Mr. T. Owens, F.C.I.S., represented Wales; Mr. S. S. A. Cambridge, a black barrister, represented his homeland, British Guiana; Miss Ruth Bucknall, the celebrated lyric soprano, who artistically contributed the solos, represented Australia; while Scotland and the Emerald Isle were also represented in the orchestra and elsewhere in the hall; Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Boote, of Auckland, New Zealand, represented "the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... us, who were musicians, were anxious to meet the famous dramatic soprano, Lilli Lehmann, who was living quietly in one of the suburbs of the city. Notes were exchanged, and on a certain day we were bidden to come, out of the regular hours for ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... in preference to the four-line notation so long in use. The clef for do (C clef) remained in use until very lately, and is still used by many strict theorists, being written upon the first line for the soprano, the fourth line for the tenor, the third line for the alto. The G clef, also, when first introduced, was often written upon the third or the first line; the F clef, moreover, was not definitely established on the fourth line until toward ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... chosen so important a part, nor the admirable prudence of the Abbe Brigaud in placing him in a house which he habitually visited almost daily, so that his visits, however frequent, could not be remarkable. It was not the dignified speeches of Madame Denis, nor the soprano of Mademoiselle Emilie. It was neither the contralto of Mademoiselle Athenais, nor the tricks of M. Boniface. It was simply poor Bathilde, whom he had heard so lightly spoken of; but our reader would be mistaken if he supposed that M. Boniface's brutal ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... lighted up the snowy road to a crowded restaurant, from the first floor windows of which came the shrieks of a woman's soprano, followed every now and then by a storm of applause. Farther on, a roundabout, crammed with people, was going round under an illuminated roof to the ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... he sang, pausing at the end of every few bars to preen and call. His song was the soul of serenity, of all that is spiritual. Accompanied by the lower, more continuous notes from among the trees, it rose, a clear, pure, wonderful soprano, lifting the whole wide ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... commenced, I presume, about the age of 131/2 years. I place it at this period from the following circumstances, which are fixed very strongly in my memory: I had, as a child, a soprano voice that was praised considerably by older friends, and about which I was inordinately conceited, I enjoyed greatly taking part in operettas, cantatas, etc. The dramatic instinct, if so it may be called, has always ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... before. For purposes of identification she says: "This is the hith of him 5-6 light eyes dark hair unwave shave and a Suprano Voice his age 58 his name Steve...." Even though Mr. Washington did not agree to spend his spare time looking for a disloyal husband with a soprano voice, he sent the poor woman a kind reply and suggested some means of tracing ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... asked her to do that. Had not, on the contrary, her marriage really furthered it? Was she not more of a person to-day than the discouraged young woman he had found singing for pittances the leading dramatic soprano roles in the minor municipal operas of Germany and Austria? Wasn't that what she had said this morning—that falling in love with him was the best thing that could possibly have happened to her? He had taken it wrong when she said it, as if ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... on the concert stage. The poignant sadness cross-shot with humor of another of Schubert's songs, The Hurdy Gurdy, vanishes in the concert room, melts hopelessly into the dulcet tones of the young lady soprano, whose friends titter when she is done, "What a pretty song." But my one-fingered rendering—aided in this song by occasional jabs with three fingers of the left hand—brings to my inward ear the pathos of the barrel-organ, heard over ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... in the human voice depends partly on the person who is speaking. You know that the fundamental of a bass voice is lower than that of a soprano. Besides the fundamental, however, there are a lot of higher notes always present. This is particularly true when the spoken sound is a consonant, like "s" or "f" or "v." The particular notes, which are present and are important, depend upon what ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... hear my 'Flauto Magico!'" humming, in scarcely audible voice, the lively bird-catcher song. The same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, he called his friends together, and asked for the score of his nearly completed "Requiem" to be laid on his bed. Benedict Schack sang the soprano; his brother-in-law, Hofer, the tenor; Gerl, the bass; and Mozart himself took the alto in a weak but delicately clear voice. They had got through the various parts till they came to the "Lacrymosa," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... Tyson's manner was a little disconcerting. He found her at the piano, singing in her pathetic mezzo-soprano a song that used to he a favorite of Tyson's. The selection was another freak; it was the first time Louis had heard her sing that ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... rich, fibrous mezzo-soprano; and the music she sang, half chant, half melody, was evidently an improvisation. The words were the exquisite ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... perfect as it may be in tone, is yet always very deficient in compass, as is obvious from the fact that the bass voice, the barytone, the contralto, and the soprano have all different registers, and are all required to produce a complete vocal harmony. If we could make organ-pipes with movable, self-regulating lips, with self-shortening and self-lengthening tubes, so that each tube should command the two or three octaves of the human voice, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... hands and raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang "counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the mountains—ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's time or earlier most quaintly amidst the localities ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... out the melody on the Choir Clarinet; to play on the Choir and bring out the melody on the Swell Vox Humana or Cornopean; or to play a fugue with the full power of the Great organ (except the Trumpet) and bring out the subject of the fugue every time it enters, whether in the soprano voice, the ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... for your first introduction to German music," said he, "and that it was grand old Johann Sebastian Bach whom you heard. That is one of the soprano solos in the Passions-musik—that ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... patience into his voice. "Leonard, please try to realize that the Terran Federation government doesn't give one shrill soprano hoot on Nifflheim whether it's fair or not, or whose fault what is. The Federation government's been repenting that charter they gave the Company ever since they found out what they'd chartered away. Why, this planet is a better world than Terra ever was, even before the Atomic Wars. Now, if they ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... the voice of a boy is purer, more impersonal and sexless, somehow, than the clearest soprano of a woman, therefore exactly fulfilling our idea ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... at her without turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to be observed, but her face held him. A color slowly flamed out on his pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted. A soprano singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and tittered, but he did ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... very pretty, indeed," said Adrien, taking up the conversation, "and is really a very nice girl, indeed. She sings beautifully. She is the leading soprano in ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... bobbed her suspiciously yellow head and smiled provocatively. Martin fled to the cloak-rack near the door. Hurriedly he donned top-coat and hat. Until he finally closed the front door behind him, a tinny wail poured out of the little parlor and assailed his ears, a reedy soprano declaiming passionately that she had raised no son of hers to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... 1, 1882, he heard at the Festival the same composer's Mass in C, and characterized as "beautiful" the fugue at the end of the Gloria, the part in the Offertory where the chorus enters in support of the soprano solo, and the conclusion of the Dona. It came as a relief to him after Brahms, who was not understood at a first hearing, and this inability in general to grasp good music at once is exhibited in his Italian correspondence. "This last week," he writes from Rome in April, 1833, "we have heard ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... tiresome songs which so satisfy the musical taste of Bayswater—baritone songs about the Army and the Navy and their rollicking ways, and about old English country life; tenor songs about Grey Eyes and Roses and Waiting and Parting and Coming Back; soprano songs about Calling and Wondering and Last Night's Dance and Remembering and Forgetting—foolish words, foolish melodies, and clumsy orchestration. But they seem to please the well-dressed crowd that comes to ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... gesture, or in a rhythm of speech. Visualization may catch the stimulus and the result. But the intermediate and internal is often as badly caricatured by a visualizer, as is the intention of the composer by an enormous soprano in the sweet ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Niagara-like, and your resting place a veritable Lake Erie. Your fragrance of a thousand flowers may be the pungent aroma of the skunk, borne by the evening breeze; and your evening serenade perhaps will be made by an immense number of "no see ems" whose shrill and infinitely fine soprano is paid for in so many installments of blood, to say nothing of the furious itching and nights of "watchful waiting." Even to enjoy Nature in her finer moods you must always pay a price, and people gain "beauty, as well as bread, by ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Diana Pitkin, and many were the whispers and speculations as to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before—the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... service, and a new soprano, on trial, exploited her skill in solo parts. She sang without Winifred's refinement of artistic sense, but sang fashionably. She sang dramatically, and cast languishing glances at the unresponsive backs of the congregation, blinking over her notes as though invisible ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... back, swinging their gold-headed canes, and they had another meeting in the City Hall. Then they decided to send the highest Soprano Singer in the church choir to the Wise Woman; she could sing up to G-sharp just as easy as not. So the high-Soprano Singer set out for the Wise Woman's in the Mayor's coach, and the Aldermen marched behind, swinging their ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... the four sides. Reaching the large chamber at the top, we paid our respects to the seven bells, whose intricate changes I had so many times tried to follow. Their ringing is a puzzle. In the middle hung the melancholy campanone, with a silvery soprano by its side—a very Dante and Beatrice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!" "Amen!" trilled the soprano voices ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... from the attendant, and in helping her to put it on, touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver. The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's passionate soprano, Ich kann's ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... a wailing waltz that Medora had learned from the hand-organs. She followed the air with nodding head in a sweet soprano hum. Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered in what strange waters Binkley had caught her in his seine. She smiled at him, and they raised glasses and drank of the wine that boiled when it was cold. Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the unusual spring catch of shad. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... until I could take B natural. Later on, when the tone of my voice; had lowered to the barytone, impelled always by my desire to accomplish something, I took lessons in music from the Maestro Terziani, and appeared at a benefit with the famous tenor Boucarde, and Signora Monti, the soprano, and sang in a duet from "Belisaria," the aria from "Maria di Rohan,"and "La Settimana d'Amore," by Niccolai; and I venture to say that I was not third best in that triad. But I recognised that singing and declamation were incompatible pursuits, since the method of producing the voice is totally ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... a Sunday evening in early June and the hour for Vesper service at Saint Zita's convent. Reverend Mother mounted the staircase leading to the chapel, then paused, with her hand upon the door, to listen as the wonderful soprano again ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... assembly. At every moment the crowd increased. The aroma of new-sawn timber and sawdust began to be mingled with the feminine odour of sachet and flowers. There was a babel of talk in the air—male baritone and soprano chatter—varied by an occasional note of laughter and the swish of stiffly starched petticoats. On the row of chairs that went around three sides of the wall groups began to settle themselves. For a long time the guests huddled close ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... it is sure to appear at the most inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of devotion than is often caused by ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... French soprano, and it is the first time she has sung on an English platform. She walks on slowly and stands statuesquely motionless while the preliminary bars are being played. One notes her elegant Parisian costume, clinging and very low-cut, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... on the porch in the twilight. While Tony played on his flute they sang many songs. They were surprised how much talent they had in their own family circle. Aunt Bettie and Edith both had good soprano voices and Ruth a fair contralto. Bob sang tenor and his uncle bass. It was Maria, though, that surprised them with ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... approaching, and we all knew that his safety lay in getting ashore before it broke. We lighted a fire, but the blaze could not be seen far in such inky darkness. We hallooed, but received no answer, and finally ceased our efforts. Then one of the young ladies who possessed a very high and clear soprano voice, began singing at the very top of her power. It reached the wanderer in the darkness, and he rowed straight toward it. From that time on he became infatuated with the singer, declaring that her voice had come to him in his despair like an ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... goods, the host started his beloved gramophone for the general benefit, and a fearful hash of music drifted out into the waving palms. Presently some one announces that the cargo is all aboard, whereupon the supercargo puts down his paper and remarks that they are in a hurry. A famous soprano's wonderful high C is ruthlessly broken off short, and we all run to the beach and jump on the backs of boys, who carry us dry-shod to the boat. We are rowed to the steamer, and presently descend to the storeroom, which smells of calico, soap, tobacco and cheese. Anything may be bought here, from ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys who were yet to make their "start," overlooking ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... enforcing it, but nature has been too strong for them, and the hedge will grow its own way in spite of pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?' The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... element of personality from the faith. "On this point, Mrs. Eddy feels very strongly," said a gentleman to me on Christmas eve, as I sat in the beautiful drawing-room, where Judge and Mrs. Hanna, Miss Elsie Lincoln, the soprano for the choir of the new church, and one or two other ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turned up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of Mr. Napier was the avowed organ of the ruling Whig powers—is sorely tested in the same way. The rival house may bribe his stars. His popular epigrammatist is sometimes as full of humours as a spoiled soprano. The favourite pyrotechnist is systematically late and procrastinatory, or is piqued because his punctuation or his paragraphs have been meddled with. The contributor whose article would be in excellent time if it did not appear before the close of the century, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... character. Her whole appearance gave one the impression of intelligence, purity, and benevolence. She was of medium height, and her figure would have served as a model for the skill of a Phidias. Her greatest accomplishment was music. Her voice was a high soprano, and its naturally pure tone was improved by ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... — N. creak &c v.; creaking &c v.; discord, &c 414; stridor; roughness, sharpness, &c adj.; cacophony; cacoepy^. acute note, high note; soprano, treble, tenor, alto, falsetto, penny trumpet, voce di testa [It]. V. creak, grate, jar, burr, pipe, twang, jangle, clank, clink; scream &c (cry) 411; yelp &c (animal sound) 412; buzz &c (hiss) 409. set the teeth on edge, corcher les oreilles [Fr.]; pierce ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... little chaps begin it, Raise their high-pitched voices in it, And the shrill soprano piping sets the pace; Then the others join the singing Till the echoes soon are ringing With the big green-coated leader's double-bass. All the lilies are a-quiver, And the grasses by the river Feel the mighty chorus shaking every blade, While the dewy rushes ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was a mezzo-soprano of great volume and purity, and had been brought to absolute perfection by the severe training of her father. Her private character was irreproachable. Few women have been more beloved for their ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... same theatre, the prima donna was taken suddenly ill in the midst of a terzetto, in which Tamburini had the bass, and, while supporting her on the stage, this accomplished musician actually took the soprano in his falsetto, and performed the part of the indisposed lady in a manner which drew down universal applause. The English school, "still tardy," and "limping after" the Italian, is yet far behind. It has, undoubtedly, made some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... long succession of "crumbs" and "china plates"—conversationally. According to Kate, the roads had been muddy; the sun had been too bright; there had been chops when there should have been croquettes for luncheon; the concert seats were too far forward; the soprano had a thin voice, and the bass a faulty enunciation; at dinner the soup was insipid, and the dessert a disappointment; afterwards, in the evening, callers ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... highly educated, handsome, attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She knew all the nice London people of her day: Lady Feenix, who in some ways resembled her, Diana Dombey, who did not quite approve ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Taplovitch he would have shifted its gloom to a sunny ending. Fancy our own dear Pollyanna, the glad girl, adopted by an aunt in "Crime and Punishment." Even Dostoyevsky must have laid down his doleful pen to give her at last a happy wedding—flower-girls and angel-food, even a shrill soprano behind the hired palms and a ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... and made new symbols for the hours. She was in a shop now, it seemed, moving lithely among the velvets and the furs, her own dress making, as she walked, a debonair rustle in that world of silken rustles and cool soprano laughter and scents of many slain but living flowers. The Minnies and Pearls and jewels and jennies would gather round her like courtiers, bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo her cheeks ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... action might not have been prompted merely by a sense of Christian duty; had I been the Khan of Tartary she could not have been more polite and frigid. The music to the first hymn was an air I had never heard before, so I stumbled miserably through the tenor, although Miss Mayton rendered the soprano without a single false note. The sermon was longer than I was in the habit of listening to, and I was frequently conscious of not listening at all. As for my position and appearance, neither ever seemed so insignificant as they did throughout ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... vain we told them that we would engage no donkeys at all, and no horses till we reached our destination; in vain we bade them allow us to "pursue the even tenor of our way" in peace, and hush their high soprano tones. It was one perpetual babble in praise of their horses, their donkeys, and their capabilities as guides, with the constant repetition of the names of the surrounding peaks, which we already knew perfectly well. ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... performance was of excellent quality. Perhaps summer air and moonbeams helped the effect. At any rate, the first performance, a duet between a flute and a violin, was undoubtedly listened to; and that is saying much. The performers were out of sight. Then a fine soprano voice followed, in a favourite ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... Y.M.C.A. Here, comfortable seats, meals, and music could be obtained. Other places were picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers on the stage. ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... climax of surprise and thunder, than hear it sung by any man at present on the concert stage. The poignant sadness cross-shot with humor of another of Schubert's songs, The Hurdy Gurdy, vanishes in the concert room, melts hopelessly into the dulcet tones of the young lady soprano, whose friends titter when she is done, "What a pretty song." But my one-fingered rendering—aided in this song by occasional jabs with three fingers of the left hand—brings to my inward ear the pathos of the barrel-organ, heard over the distant hum of a careless city, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... parts. Sahwah could hardly believe it was the Winnebagos, so perfect was the harmony. This was followed by "I Would That My Love," sung by Gladys and Nyoda. Sahwah drew a long, rapturous breath at the beautiful blending of alto and soprano. She was passionately fond of music. Then Gladys sang "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming," her clear high voice ringing over the water like a flute. The notes died lingeringly away, and the silence was broken by the soft ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... picture together, father and daughter,—the girl with the wide blue eyes and open mouth, standing shoulder to shoulder with the little man, each with one gloved hand grasping an edge of the hymn-book and singing, Milly in a high soprano,— ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... two songs in his own inimitable fashion. Then Nora's sweet, high soprano voice began the "Serenata" to the subdued tinkling accompaniment of Reddy's mandolin. Two years in the conservatory had done much for Nora's voice, though its plaintive sweetness had been her natural heritage. As they listened to the clear, rounded tones, with just a suspicion ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... comes to him from a music-room. He pushes his way through the crowds, for poor Chancer has been doomed to disappointment in his wish to have this fair woman sing to him alone, for when the now full rich notes, now sweet to intoxication, of her mezzo-soprano voice fell on the air, the languid, sentimental or gay ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... not to," he answered; and dropped the cigarette and began to sing "John Brown's Body" with all his strength. With that she seized his hand, sprang up beside him, and over the swelling chorus her full soprano rose, lifted with ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... highest among the rights of woman are fond of alluding to the fact that only here and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the work of singing bass. The large majority of women prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what has this fact to do with the matter of right in the premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without onions, but I never knew that fact to be brought forward as an argument against the right of a man to eat it ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... of the dog—picked up handfuls of dog. There was a struggle. The dog made fierce motions as if swimming, and whined in a thin and desperate soprano. Its body heaved upwards, its forepaws clutched the edge of the brushwood ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... to an inconclusive thing by a wobbling soprano, and then Mrs. Phillips put the other ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... were musicians, were anxious to meet the famous dramatic soprano, Lilli Lehmann, who was living quietly in one of the suburbs of the city. Notes were exchanged, and on a certain day we were bidden to come, out of the regular hours ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... up his ears. White dog cocked her head to one side, and the six puppies followed their parents' example. Duke uttered a low deep howl that chimed in with Beth's singing. White dog howled in a high soprano and the six little dogs did likewise, but in shriller tones. Beth was so surprised that she stopped singing, and the dogs immediately ceased howling, evidently waiting for ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... vociferous—so long as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys who were yet to make their ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... 'Flauto Magico!'" humming, in scarcely audible voice, the lively bird-catcher song. The same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, he called his friends together, and asked for the score of his nearly completed "Requiem" to be laid on his bed. Benedict Schack sang the soprano; his brother-in-law, Hofer, the tenor; Gerl, the bass; and Mozart himself took the alto in a weak but delicately clear voice. They had got through the various parts till they came to the "Lacrymosa," when Mozart burst into tears, and laid the score aside. The next day ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... lean upon somebody, and at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, Early ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... first few night sounds of the foothills. The clear piping notes of migrating plover floated softly down to him, punctuated by the rasping cry of a nighthawk. A coyote raised his voice, a perfect tenor note that swept up to a wild soprano, then fell again in a whirl of howls which carried amazing shifts of inflection, tearing up and down the coyote scale. One after another added his voice to the chorus until it seemed that the swelling ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... an indistinct feeling that it sounded vulgar,—why she would have been unable to explain. Nevertheless, since anything was preferable to being called "Mother" at the top of Leonetta's strident soprano in the public highway, and for some reason or other Leonetta would not make use of the name "Edith," she felt that it would perhaps be ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... are full, are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turned up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of the majesty, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... an' we all stan' up an' turn round an' join the choir. Sam Merritt has come up from Palmer to spend Thanksgivin' with the ol' folks, an' he is singin' tenor to-day in his ol' place in the choir. Some folks say he sings wonderful well, but I don't like Sam's voice. Laura sings soprano in the choir, and Sam stands next to her ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... enlarged, and the city bought a site up the river, built a dam, installed pumping engines and constructed water mains into the city. An opera house was built, which, though its walls never re-echoed to the high soprano notes of a prima donna; had trembled to their foundations at the invectives of E. T. Franks; had shed sections of blistered plaster at the sad wailings of Gus Wilson, and had been moved by the matchless eloquence of A. O. Stanley ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... caricature, detracted somewhat from the restfulness of the haven. However that may have been, such intrusion was never resented; my Swedish prima donna, or my qualifications as a basso profondo, or a brass-bandsman, were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that I never ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... explosive headgear and came forward in response to the light keeper's command. She looked at the chair by the ancient parlor organ and announced: "Yes, indeed, it'll do real well, thank you, Cap'n Jethro." Her voice was a sharp soprano with liquid gurgles in it—"like pourin' pain-killer out of a bottle," this last still another quotation from the ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in the songs. The early chanting of all peoples was quite likely by men. Probably the most primitive harmony was a perfect fifth resulting from the attempt of men with different ranges to sing together. The difference between a bass and a tenor voice is just about a fifth. Between an alto and a soprano it is about a fourth. The difference in these voices made it impossible to sing melodies of wide range in unison, and so the basses and tenors sang in consecutive fifths. When women took up the chanting, they sang either in fifths ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... low notes, soft notes and shrill notes, all travel at the same rate. If bass notes traveled faster or slower than soprano notes, or if the delicate tones of the violin traveled faster or slower than the tones of a drum, music would be practically impossible, because at a distance from the source of sound the various tones which should be in unison ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... fashion. Next came a song—"Old Folks at Home"—and in spite of her resentment Ethelyn found herself listening intently as James' rich, deep bass, and John's clear tenor, and Andy's alto joined in the chorus with Melinda's full soprano. The Markham boys were noted for their fine voices; and even Richard had once assisted at a public concert; but to-night he did not sing—his thoughts were too intent upon the wife upstairs and what she might be thinking of the performance, and he was glad when the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... dashed with the gloom of over-pampered luxury, can stoop to chairs and china, ever and anon, with the zeal of an auctioneer—revel in the design of a clock or a candlestick, and be as ecstatic about a fiddler or a soprano as the fools in Hogarth's concert. On such occasions he reminds us, and will, we think, remind everyone, of the Lord of Strawberry Hill. But even here all we have is on a grander scale. The oriental prodigality of his magnificence shines out even in trifles. He buys a library where the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... had a sweet mezzo-soprano voice, of no great strength or compass, but perfectly trained and very pleasing to the ear. The sort of voice, Sir Philip thought, that would be soothing to the nerves of a tired man in his own house. Whereas, ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... contrive to perpetuate babyhood, in the vain hope of preferring innocence: nor could I shelter myself by saying how little I understood of the dialect it was written in, as the action was nothing less than equivocal; and in the burletta which was tacked to it by way of farce, I saw the soprano fingers who played the women's parts, and who see more of the world than these friars, blush for shame, two or three times, while the company, most of them grave ecclesiastics, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... selected a piece of rag to act as napkin, tablecloth, and subsequently a face towel, the old lady restored the remainder of her effects to the 'valise' and fell to. Noticing Richard was awake she addressed him in a singularly soprano voice. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room. Daphne's soprano voice—agreeable, but making its mark always, like its owner—could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed to be admonishing, instructing, someone. Could it be ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he sat doing nothing, lacking the energy to attack his task. Now and then he heard a few notes on the piano, and once he opened the door to listen to the elder Miss Peach's rendering of a song he knew, for Mollie Peach had a sweet, limpid soprano voice which no amount of chatter ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... gayety began to spread throughout the assembly. At every moment the crowd increased. The aroma of new-sawn timber and sawdust began to be mingled with the feminine odour of sachet and flowers. There was a babel of talk in the air—male baritone and soprano chatter—varied by an occasional note of laughter and the swish of stiffly starched petticoats. On the row of chairs that went around three sides of the wall groups began to settle themselves. For a long time the guests ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... scene, and still that same ominous silence reigned. Glogowski was unable to sit there quietly! He heard the baritone voice of Topolski, the soprano of Majkowska and the somewhat hoarse voice of Glas, but it was not that which he wished to hear. Not that! He bit his fingers so violently that tears came to ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... real relish for his task, which bespeaks a knowledge of the responsibility belonging to the post of Basso. The ecclesiastic seated next to Titian, wearing the chain with crucifix, is performing on a Soprano Viol. The instruments, in short, are Italian Viols, the Tenors of which were strung with six strings, and the Violono, or Bass, with six or seven. It is this order of Viols to which reference is made in the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... the tone of my voice; had lowered to the barytone, impelled always by my desire to accomplish something, I took lessons in music from the Maestro Terziani, and appeared at a benefit with the famous tenor Boucarde, and Signora Monti, the soprano, and sang in a duet from "Belisaria," the aria from "Maria di Rohan,"and "La Settimana d'Amore," by Niccolai; and I venture to say that I was not third best in that triad. But I recognised that singing and declamation were incompatible pursuits, since ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... continually. As soon as he had finished a piece, he had it rehearsed by the friends who happened to be present. At two o'clock in the afternoon of the day before his death, Schack, who was the first 'Tamino,' sang soprano, Mozart himself contralto, Hofer, his brother-in-law, tenor, and Geri, who was the first 'Sarastro,' bass. At the 'Lacrymosa' Mozart began to weep violently, and laid down the score. Toward evening, when his sister-in-law, Sophie Haibl, came in, Mozart begged her to remain and help Constance, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... (1849-1891), American singer, was born at Chicago and studied in Milan and Paris. She had a fine soprano voice, and appeared first in opera in London under Colonel Mapleson's direction at Covent Garden, also singing at important concerts. She organized an opera company known by her name, and toured extensively ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to her side. Gratitude for his darling's deliverance filled his heart. Turning to him, she put one arm around his shoulders. His throaty tenor joined the caroling soprano. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... when seen through the moonlight of memory, it seems as good a place to go away from as any other, after a stifling night in a net, the wooden shutters left open in the remote hope of air, and admitting the music of a whole opera-troupe of dogs, including bass, tenor, soprano, and chorus. Instead of bouquets, you throw stones, if you are so fortunate as to have them,—if not, boot-jacks, oranges, your only umbrella. You are last seen thrusting frantic hands and feet through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... in the same Habits, and indulge in the same Diversions and Luxuries: When Husbands are ruin'd, Children robb'd, and Tradesmen starv'd, in order to give Estates to a French Harlequin, and Italian Eunuch, for a Shrug or a Song; [Footnote: Farinelli, an eminent Italian soprano, went to England in 1734, remained there three years, sang chiefly at the Theatre of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then under the direction of Porpora, his old Master, became a great favorite, and made about, L5,000 ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... them from the first. True, the hall was in darkness, and, as far as they could judge, so was the rest of the house. But from somewhere upstairs came the unmistakable sound of a piano, and of somebody singing in a sweet but plaintive soprano voice. Gurdon clutched ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... water-beds are the giants' pearls which were lost in the great battle. The music of the forest is an orchestra consisting of Fairy voices and stringed instruments, harps, violins, and 'cellos. And now and then I caught a high soprano note beyond the powers of ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... profoundly. No one—even the youngest—smiled; every one—even the youngest—became suddenly attentive. Turning over the leaves of the hymnbook, he then gave out the first two lines of a hymn. The choir accordion in the front side bench awoke like an infant into wailing life, and Cissy Appleby, soprano, took up a little more musically the lugubrious chant. At the close of the verse the preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with a breezy bass that seemed to fill the little building with the trouble of the sea. Then ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Quincy had a fine well-trained tenor voice, while Miss Putnam's mezzo-soprano was full and melodious and her rendition fully as artistic as that of her companion. One, two, three, four, five, six encores followed each other in quick succession, in spite of Professor Strout's endeavors to quell the applause and take up the next number. The ovation given ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... from the Grand Canal and the lesser canals, rose the manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not have been born at the time when Casanova escaped ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... such thing. She jes likes to hear me sing. You're crazy!" The tramp-boy's young voice had its fashion of breaking and shrilling into a high soprano, like a girl's, for emphasis; he was as red as a beet, and he put his foot back in the stirrup, thrust out his under jaw and looked at the stirrup as though he had to determine how much wood had gone into its making. Again Bruce was conscious of a little ache for the boy. "But you go on over ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... when, at the age of fifteen, he quitted his brother's roof and, with a school-fellow from Ohrdruff, entered the Michael Gymnasium, or Latin School, attached to the Church of St. Michael at Lueneburg. The discovery that he possessed a beautiful soprano voice gave him a place at once amongst those scholars who were selected to sing the principal parts in the Church services in return for a free education. Lueneburg possessed two schools, attached respectively to the Churches ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Mrs. Trent at the piano and her rich soprano voice faultlessly led her straggling chorus, filled for the most part by the men grouped outside on the wide porch. He could see them through the long, French windows, sitting or standing as each felt inclined, but all with that earnest seriousness of demeanor which ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... praise. First the warble; then a pause of about five seconds; then a slow, sweet, solemn utterance of the holy name in a tone as of meditative wonder; then another pause; then another wild, rich, passionate warble. Could you see him, you would marvel how so powerful and penetrating a soprano could ripple from so minute a throat; for he is one of the very tiniest of all feathered singers, yet his chant can be heard far across the broad river, and children going to school pause daily on the bridge, a whole cho ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... playing bull, shuffle-board, or deck quoits with her brother, promenading the poop with her mother, and occasionally condescending to exchange a few remarks with the parson or the doctor. But she was a musician of rare ability, and possessed a soprano singing voice of exquisite richness and purity, as I had frequent opportunity of judging by hearing her playing and singing in the drawing-room below while I was on duty on ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... sale, where the victim, in consideration of being educated, and maintained, and paid a certain amount, is bound, legally bound, to devote her services to a master for a given time. The impresario of the 'Fenice' had often heard from travellers of that wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which was captivating all Rome, where the beauty and grace of the singer were extolled not less loudly. The great skill of these astute providers for the world's pleasure is evidenced in nothing ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... blameworthy. Once in a while, it is true, he takes a perch and sings; but for the most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction; but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything else perhaps, may be said to characterize him. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... one for Adelaide, being an earnest of the future for which, if she had not worked hard, she had controlled much. Edgar sang solos to her accompaniment, and put in his rich baritone to her pure if feeble soprano; he played chess with her for an hour, and praised her play, as it deserved: naturally, not thinking it necessary to make love to his sisters, he paid her almost exclusive attention, and looked the admiration he felt. She really was a very pretty young woman, and she had unexceptionable manners; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... thus far, has called for one. An obbligato? Never so much honored. No, indeed. Why, to me it would seem almost like singing with an orchestra. Imagine a 'cello. Imagine a flute—still I'm not a soprano going mad. Or imagine a ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... voices calling," broke in Katherine. "And each is a different voice according to our natures. Now Margaret's voice is soprano, but Jessie ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... gave a soprano scream of delight. "Well, say—did you ever have a brick house fall on you?—well, that's just the way it feels—just like when they're digging you out of the ruins. Jack's got a left that spells two matinees and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... lyric vocalists; but Mme. Marchesi herself admits that the great demand to-day is for dramatic, and not for lyric, singers. Formerly, it was the bravura singer who bought dukedoms with his shekels; to-day, with the solitary exception of Patti, it is the dramatic soprano or tenor that gets from $500 to $1,000 a night. When will teachers and pupils wake up and recognize the new situation? When will American girls cease flocking by the hundreds to Milan to learn such roles as Lucia or Amina, for which there is now no demand, either in Europe or America, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... had a voice like Mere Ursule's lovely soprano, and Mr. Pepys a pretty tenor; and you can imagine nothing more silvery sweet than the union of the two voices to the staccato notes of the viol, dropping in here and there like music whispered. The setting was Mr. Pepys' own, and he ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... special entreaty, and plays more than simply well, with taste, feeling, and correctness. You can see that she loves the really fine and impassioned in music, that show and dash have had no place in her training. She sings very sweetly with a mezzo-soprano voice that is ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... apartment house next door that something—of the difficulty and delicacy of the errand he had undertaken came home to him. Impulse had brought him thus far, but now he stood staring helplessly at a row of bells, speaking tubes, and cards. Which, for example, belonged to the lady whose soprano voice pervaded the neighbourhood? He looked up and down the street, in the vain hope of finding a messenger. The song continued: he had promised to stop it. Hodder accused himself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Grammar; that wild, long note is poor Mrs. Fondle's farewell of her dead boy; the ugly barytone, rising from the tap-room, is what Wandering Willie calls a sculduddery song—shut your ears, and pass on; and that clear soprano, in nursery, rings out a shower of innocent idiotisms over the half-stripped baby, and suspends the bawl ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... article already alluded to, "to think of the greatest prima donna, not only of her day, but of modern times—the most fascinating woman upon the stage in the first half of the nineteenth century—as singing the soprano parts of psalm tunes and chants in a small town then less known to the people of London and Paris and Vienna than Jeddo is now. Grace Church may well be pardoned for pride in a musical service upon the early years of which fell such a crown of glory, and which has since then been guided ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I've got a case; Her voice is such a sweet soprano; Her people come from Northern Thrace; You ought to hear her play piano. If she would like my suicide— If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing, Me for a glass ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... utterance of the romance in Otello—the tone with which she gave the words "Sul mio sasso," in the Capuletti—is ringing in my memory yet. Her lower tones were absolutely miraculous. Her voice embraced three complete octaves, extending from the contralto D to the D upper soprano, and, though sufficiently powerful to have filled the San Carlos, executed, with the minutest precision, every difficulty of vocal composition-ascending and descending scales, cadences, or fiorituri. In the final of the Somnambula, she brought ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as a solo violin, and the beautiful melody only added to both Mulberry's and Gladys's happiness. Many others also played and sang, and at last by dint of great persuasion Gladys consented to sing. She had a magnificent clear soprano voice and as he listened Mulberry ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... general benefit, and a fearful hash of music drifted out into the waving palms. Presently some one announces that the cargo is all aboard, whereupon the supercargo puts down his paper and remarks that they are in a hurry. A famous soprano's wonderful high C is ruthlessly broken off short, and we all run to the beach and jump on the backs of boys, who carry us dry-shod to the boat. We are rowed to the steamer, and presently descend to the storeroom, which smells of calico, soap, tobacco ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the choir sings the anthem, Cum appropinquaret etc. When the procession is in the portico, two soprano singers reenter the basilica, and shut the door: then turning towards the door, they sing the first verse of the hymn Gloria, laus et honor[38] and the other verses alternately with the choir, which remains without. The subdeacon knocks at the gate with the cross, and it is immediately ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... said solemnly; "she really and truly was. And her mother said to her teacher,—there in Dresden: 'She will be the greatest soprano, won't she?' And he said: 'Madame, she has only that one chance—to ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... A. I. Epstein, the soprano soloist from St. Louis, will sing a symphony known as the "Surprise Symphony" at the concert by the University Orchestra in the auditorium to-morrow night. The piece was written by Haydn. The symphony was so named by the composer on account of the startling ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... very smart individual, in striking contrast to the down at-heel air of the hotel—a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will ces dames desire a salon—there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... interest until it turned this sharp corner, (for she seems rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of which she had been cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that swept ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... from singing school—she warbled like a bird. A sweeter voice than hers for song or speech I never heard. She was soprano in the choir, and I a solemn bass, And when we unisoned our voices filled that holy place; The tenor and the alto never had the slightest chance, For Mary's upper register made every heart-string dance; And, as for me, I shall not brag, and yet I'd have you ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... consider these two monarchs in whose presence he is soon to appear, and upon whose decision hangs some part of the world's destiny. Isabella first; for in that strange duet of government it is her womanly soprano that rings most clearly down the corridors of Time. We discern in her a very busy woman, living a difficult life with much tact and judgment, and exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for "doing good" that marks the virtuous lady of station ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... their voices this time," said Pete Murphy. "Beautiful, all of them. Soprano, high and clear. They've got a language, all right, too. What did ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... different volume and quality, as a voice and a bell may sound in unison. Tones sounded at the interval of an octave are also said to be in unison, altho this is not literally exact; this usage arises from the fact that bass and tenor voices in attempting to sound the same note as the soprano and alto will in fact sound a note an octave below. Music may denote the simplest melody or the most complex and perfect harmony. A symphony (apart from its technical orchestral sense) is any pleasing consonance of musical sounds, vocal or instrumental, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of Warblers, Thrushes, Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all, a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit. That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... noise, they heard a cracked soprano voice singing with some unauthorized flatting ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... found himself continually murmuring whole phrases of a chant which he had heard once upon a time when he was staying in an old town in France, It was the Litany of the Blessed Virgin sung at Benediction by some unseen singer with a wonderfully sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice. The Tenor had gone again and again to hear her in this chant, the music of which suited her as well as it did the theme. The words of adoration, "Sancta Maria, Sancta Dei Genetrix, Sancta Virgo virginum," were uttered ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Heaven, that tiresome trouble is over, and I am free to return to music and poetry'—was rendered into nonsense, and the attention of the audience lost. Nor were matters set straight until a high soprano ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... and panting for breath. Then he raised his head, got up on his feet, and opened his mouth like a gash cut in a steer by a cow catcher of an engine, and he yawned, and I guess he got the lockjaw, 'cause he kept his mouth open all the afternoon to get the air, like a soprano singer in a choir, who has been fed a cayenne pepper lozenger by the tenor, just before she gets up to sing: "A Charge ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... voice singing was clear and soft, yet strong—a mezzo-soprano without any culture save that of practice and native taste. It had a singular charm—a sweet, fantastic sincerity. He stood still and fastened his eyes on the house, a few rods away. It stood on a knoll ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... spoke to you of Vesque's new opera "Der lustige Rath." Various local circumstances have delayed the performance at Vienna of this really pretty, nicely worked out opera. The mise-en-scene does not require any special efforts; the piece only requires a somewhat piquant and not unskillful soprano singer. Altogether the opera appears to me to be written in a charming style, not too superficially conservative, and to be one of the best among the new operas mezzo-carattere. In case you still have time and are not indisposed to give the opera in Frankfort, I can ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... the unromantic night, out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard, genuinely astonished, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the son of that Joseph Grabowski, the Warsaw merchant who married the soprano singer, Constantia Gladowska, in 1832," said the father, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... silence again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these intervals in ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... singing-teachers whom we usually find, even in large cities and in musical institutions, I exempt from any special criticism, for they would not be able to understand my views. They permit soprano voices to sing scales in all the five vowels at once; begin with c instead of f; allow a long holding of the notes, "in order to bring out the voice," until the poor victim rolls her eyes and grows dizzy. They talk only of ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... first, second, seving (seven), and eleving verses with the Doxology." Then, pulling out his pitch-pipe from the dusty cushions of his seat, he would strut pompously down the church, ascend the stairs leading to the west gallery, blow his pipe, and give the basses, tenors, and soprano voices their notes, which they hung on to in a low tone until the clerk returned to his place in the lowest tier of the "three-decker" and started the choir-folk vigorously. Those Doxologies at the end! ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... set he gave a remarkable proof of his detachment. Just as the Princess was preparing to serve one of her juiciest undercut strokes, the tones of a soprano practising her scales rang out from a neighbouring flat. "Rather sharp, I think," said Mr. BALFOUR, and the Princess, overcome by the ready wit of the ex-PREMIER, served four faults in quick succession. At the conclusion of the game Mr. BALFOUR wiped his face twice with his handkerchief ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... the Gospel which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over the gold grating ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... approaching with the new Spanish soprano, Mme. Bartolas, who was all black velvet and long black feathers, with a lace veil over her rich pallour and even a little black patch on her chin. I beckoned them. "Tell me, Cressida, isn't Ruzenka ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... human boy, and features which were definitely not grotesque showed through the clear plastic of his helmet. His pressure suit was, engineering-wise, a very clean job. His whole appearance was prepossessing. When he spoke, very clear and quite high sounds—soprano sounds—came from a small ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... after his duties at the theatre were over the old Italian called us round his piano, and we feasted on what we all three loved. And then the opera company took steamer to fulfil an engagement at Valencia. Haigh was for accompanying them. Amongst other reasons he had a bit of a penchant for the soprano's understudy. But I said "No," reminding him of the other business we had in hand, and pointing out how much time had been ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... register, and then gradually to extend the compass of the voice upward. "Every student can for himself with perfect ease recognize the difference between these two separate registers. It will suffice therefore to commence by singing the scale, for example, if a soprano, from G to d;[10] let him take care that these five notes are sonorous, and say them with force and clearness, and without effort." For uniting the registers, "the most certain means is to hold back the tones of the chest and to sing the transition ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Somewhere ie. Son filo. Son-in-law bofilo. Sonata sonato. Song kanto. Songster kantisto. Sonnet soneto. Sonorous sonora. Soon baldaux. Soon (early) frue. Soot fulgo. Soothe kvietigi. Sop trempajxo. Sophism sofismo. Soprano soprano. Sorb sorpo. Sorcerer sorcxisto. Sorcery sorcxarto. Sordid malpurega. Sore ulcereto. Sorrel okzalo. Sorrow malgxojo. Sorry malgxoja—eta. Sort speco. Sort dece kunmeti, disspecigi. Sot drinkulo. Soul animo. Sound (try depth) sondi. Sound (noise) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that new development of feminine consciousness, which the vulgar have named, in derision, a movement for woman's rights. She will seek to be more truly woman, to assert her special power and privilege, to approach from her own side the common ideal, offering a pure soprano to match the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... stages, rehearsing was just like being back at school. She could remember her first school-mistress, whom the musical director somewhat resembled in manner and appearance, hammering out hymns on a piano and leading in a weak soprano an eager, baying pack of children, each anxious from motives of pride to ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... my Shepherd.' At the opening chords of that quaint and simple hymn, Cicely Bourne glanced at Miss Eden and Susie Prescott with a little suggestive smile, and caught their appealing glances,—then, as the quavering chorus of boys and girls began, she raised her voice as the 'leading soprano,' and like a thread of gold it twined round all the notes and tied them together ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... standard is taken for granted. We do not, for example, expect to hear male sopranos at the opera. The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe admired this artificial form of voice almost to the exclusion of all others. His favourite singer, indeed, Pacchierotti, was a male soprano. But other breaks have been made with tradition, breaks which are not yet taken for granted. When you find that all but one or two of the singers in every opera house in the world are ignoring the rules in some respect or other you may ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... voice, perfect as it may be in tone, is yet always very deficient in compass, as is obvious from the fact that the bass voice, the barytone, the contralto, and the soprano have all different registers, and are all required to produce a complete vocal harmony. If we could make organ-pipes with movable, self-regulating lips, with self-shortening and self-lengthening tubes, so that each tube ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... and behind the summer-house I happened upon a bear asleep and retreated hurriedly. But on going towards the house I heard a well-known voice. "That is Augusta Holmes singing her opera," I said; "she sings all the different parts—soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass." At this time we were all talking about her, and I stood by the window listening until suddenly a well-known smell interrupted her. It was Ninon's cat that had misconducted ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To the present writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, and that she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as it were, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in high soprano, and Mr. Yeats in ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... he will ever be. So I introduced him to Nettie and asked if he had this here song on a phonograph record. He had. He had it on two records. 'One by a barytone gentleman, and one by a mezzo-soprano,' says Wilbur. I set myself back for both. He also had it with variations on one of these punched rolls. He played that for us. It took him three minutes to get set right at the piano and to dust his fingers with a white silk handkerchief ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Father celebrates mass two or three times in the Sala Ducale, which is then turned into a chapel. During these masses motetts are sung by the famous Sixtine choir, under the direction of the old Maestro Mustafa, once the greatest soprano of the century, but at the same time so accomplished a musician as to have earned the common name of 'Palestrina redivivus.' It is to be regretted that he has never allowed any of his beautiful compositions ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... bring out the melody on the Choir Clarinet; to play on the Choir and bring out the melody on the Swell Vox Humana or Cornopean; or to play a fugue with the full power of the Great organ (except the Trumpet) and bring out the subject of the fugue every time it enters, whether in the soprano voice, the alto, ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... addition to the works already named, about thirty symphonies six string trios, a few divertimenti in five parts, a piece for four violins and two 'celli, entitled "Echo," twelve minuets for orchestra, concertos, trios, sonatas and variations for clavier, and, in vocal music, a "Salve Regina" for soprano and alto, two violins and organ. It would serve no useful purpose to deal with these works in detail. The symphonies are, of course, the most important feature in the list, but of these we shall speak generally when treating of Haydn as the father ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... outcome of practices. Our human triangle formed part of the company. All three were musical, and two of them more than usually talented both in singing and acting—Violet and Bernard. The former especially—endowed with a beautiful soprano voice, which had been well cultivated, added to what is styled by the initiated "a good stage presence"—was much in request on all such occasions. She had filled more than one title-role in popular operas presented by their little company, and no one would dream of casting ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... rare accomplishment of a perfect knowledge of how to wait, and to wait—if necessary—long. When the first golden down had shown itself on his cheek and lip she had not noticed it too much and when his golden soprano voice began to change to a deeper note and annoyed him with its uncertainties she had spared him awkwardness by making him feel the transition a casual natural thing, instead of a personal and characteristic weakness. She had loved every stage of innocence and ignorance and adorable ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... me a quick glance; but my face (which is blond and said to be singularly youthful for a man of twenty-nine) was, I flatter myself, as innocent as that of a choir-boy who has just delivered himself of a high soprano note. Nevertheless, the end was coming. I felt it in the electric tingle of ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... ever remind me of the 22nd Psalm (according to the usual Protestant numbering the 23rd) which, in reality, I composed for a tenor, whereas the 137th is meant for a mezzo- soprano (Fraulein Genast, now married to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... get on minus an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, that amatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known it thrummed to the praises of a middle-aged Duchess—quite a beauty still, even by daylight, with her three veils on, and an Operatic soprano, with a mascot cockatoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of the kind that exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could play nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... that they could both sing. There was hardly an opera in vogue that one or other did not know sufficiently well to be able to recall the chief musical numbers. Iris had a sweet and sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice, Jenks an excellent baritone, and, to the secret amazement of the girl, he rendered one or two well-known Anglo-Indian barrack-room ditties with ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... look stole over her mother's face. "I can be terrible, too, sometimes — " she said in her little, clear, high soprano voice; and she gazed musingly at the edge of a letter, which just appeared above the table, and then sank out of sight ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... in which to reach the station, three blocks away. An instant later he saw a shapely figure in soft furs suddenly describe a forward movement and drop in a heap to the sidewalk, ten feet in front of him. A melodious light soprano scream arose from the heap. A divinely turned ankle in a quite human black stocking was momentarily visible. He was by the side of the mass of furs ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... it has reached a point where all good Baptists dread death on account of his lugubrious profundo. Perhaps we should take this tragedy to heart, but we know that the Methodists are having the same trouble with their soprano, who "flats"—and has flatted for ten years, and is too proud to quit the choir "under fire" as she calls it; and we remember what a time the Congregationalists had getting rid of their tenor. So that choir troubles are to us ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Oh, how they had eaten! He told him how nice all the Passover dishes were, and how sweet the wine. Fedoka listened attentively, and cast his eyes on Feitel's blouse. He was still thinking of "matzo." Suddenly there was a scream, and a cry in a high-pitched soprano: ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... abandoned his violin concerto, and had worked on a setting of the Belle Dame Sans Merci for soprano, chorus, and orchestra. But before it was finished—and during the season his time for work was limited, owing to the numerous social engagements in which Charmian and Alston Lake involved him—an event took place which had led ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... are in the human voice depends partly on the person who is speaking. You know that the fundamental of a bass voice is lower than that of a soprano. Besides the fundamental, however, there are a lot of higher notes always present. This is particularly true when the spoken sound is a consonant, like "s" or "f" or "v." The particular notes, which are present and are important, depend upon what ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... hoods, which completely disguised them; but at the end of the service one of them pushed hers back, and I recognized the golden hair of Alathea, as she joined a group rather formally collected on one side of the grave. She looked round as if to see that all were ready, and then in such a soprano voice as one seldom hears, she "started" the funeral hymn. It was the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien. Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in its singing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... performers—low, tremulous, and Aeolian in character, wandering over the entire room, as if walls and ceiling were honey-combed with sensitive musical cells, answering to the deeper vibrations. These floating aerial sounds also answered to the higher notes of some of the female singers, resembling soprano voices, brightened and spiritualized in a wonderful degree; and then the wide room would be filled with a mist, as it were, of this floating, formless melody, which seemed to come from invisible harpers hovering in ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Own" at the Central Hall. Mr. William Cross of Hanwell represented England; Mr. T. Owens, F.C.I.S., represented Wales; Mr. S. S. A. Cambridge, a black barrister, represented his homeland, British Guiana; Miss Ruth Bucknall, the celebrated lyric soprano, who artistically contributed the solos, represented Australia; while Scotland and the Emerald Isle were also represented in the orchestra and elsewhere in the hall; Mr. and Mrs. Lionel Boote, of Auckland, New ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... ballads and tender, touching melodies from old masters simplified, for such as she. Michael sometimes lingered a half hour before hurrying away to the alley, and joined his rich natural tenor with her light pretty soprano. Sometimes Will French, a young fellow who was in the same law office and also boarded at Mrs. Semple's, stayed awhile and sang bass. It was very pleasant and made it seem more as if he ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... Peter's with a triumphal march of the Pope carried on a platform amid feather fans, at which Josephina was not present. At other times the good Father made the mysterious announcement that on the next day Pallestri, the famous male soprano of the papal chapel, was going to sing; the Spanish lady got up early, leaving her husband still in bed, to hear the sweet voice of the pontifical eunuch whose beardless face appeared in shop windows among the portraits ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... anthem by the choir, and then the people settled themselves comfortably in their pews with expectant faces and ears slightly turned to catch every strain from the well-trained voices in the gallery behind. This time the selection was from Mendelssohn and a soprano voice ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... the steps had a clear soprano voice, cultured and commanding. The gray Medical uniform seemed molded to her shapely figure and her red hair glistened in the lights of the street. Her snub nose and determined mouth weren't the current fashion, but nobody stopped to think ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... and sang in a thin but trained soprano. The song was a ballad with a quaint air full of sadness and heartbreak. To Raphael, who had never heard the psalmic wails of "The Sons of the Covenant" or the Polish ditties of Fanny Belcovitch, it seemed also full of originality. He wished to lose himself in the sweet melancholy, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
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