"Crescendo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Moses stops it, and takes the subject of the blessings and curses into his own hands. Hence the abrupt commencement of this oration.—As elements of oratorical beauty note (1) the interweaving and parallelism of sentences, (2) the terrific crescendo and climax of denunciation. The oration must be spoken to ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... overpowering directness of unexpected arguments, in the multiplicity of literary achievements, in the execution of those passages of bravura, portraits, descriptions, comparisons, creations, wherein, as in a musical crescendo, the same idea, varied by a series of yet more animated expressions, attains to or surpasses, at the last note, all that is possible of energy and of brilliancy. Finally, he has that which is wanting in La Bruyere; his passages are linked together; he is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... advice. But it was of no use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he felt keenly the contrariness of life; and all the labour which those around him were expending on the cult of hand and voice and car, seemed of a ludicrous vanity ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... justifying Taine's satiric remark that "these phrases should be accompanied by a mandolin." The moral tag is infallibly supplied, as in all Richardson's tales—though perhaps here with an effect of crescendo. We are still long years from that conception of art which holds that a beautiful thing may be allowed to speak for itself and need not be moraled down our throats like a physician's prescription. Yet Fielding had already, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... a novel with 'body,' with a large and timely idea back of it, with sound principles under it, and with a good crescendo of dramatic thrills."—Chicago Record-Herald. ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... all pleasure, contains a spur. Vice is like an Autocrat, and let a single harsh fold in a rose-leaf irritate it, it forgets a thousand charming bygone flatteries. With Vice a man's course must always be crescendo!—and forever. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... hazel eyes and great temerity of speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for if we should have rain I would rather be in ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... yellow-bellied flycatchers. Black-poll and Nashville warblers were especially numerous, as they are also upon Mount Washington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains generally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular affair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was perhaps halfway ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... and sure enough there it was, that gargling crescendo of a whistle followed by a mighty crash, ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... not go to the devil?' rejoined Lottchen, with a comic crescendo; to which the other ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... This is the favorite aria of all who have heard it,—of myself, as well,—and is written right into the voice of Adamberger. One can see the reeling and trembling, one can see the heaving breast which is illustrated by a crescendo; one hears the lispings and sighs expressed by the muted violins with flute in unison. The Janizary chorus is, as such, all that could be asked, short and jolly, written to suit ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something else exploded dully. But he should be far ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... magnify, redouble; aggravate, exaggerate; exasperate, exacerbate; add fuel to the flame, oleum addere camino [Lat.], superadd &c (add) 37; spread &c (disperse) 73. Adj. increased &c v.; on the increase, undiminished; additional &c (added) 37. Adv. crescendo. Phr. vires acquirit ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... coloured beads a-row, They knocked together and parted, And started to dance, Skipping, tripping, each one slipping Under and over the others so That the polychrome fire streamed like a lance Or a comet's tail, Behind them. Then a wail arose—crescendo— And dropped from off the end of the bow, And the dancing stopped. A scent of lilies filled the room, Long and slow. Each large white bloom Breathed a sound which was holy perfume from a blessed censer, And the hum of an organ ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... continued in a vertiginous crescendo. Spaniardism culminated in Bourbonism, and this, again, reached its climax in the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the conditions of south Italy baffled description. I have already (p. 212) given the formidable number of its ecclesiastics; the number of saints was commensurate, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... whole, I can only say that the work of translation has made me feel even more strongly than before the extraordinary grip and reality of the dialogue, the deftness of the construction, and, except perhaps for a slight drop in the Creon scene, the unbroken crescendo of tragedy from ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... the refusal of sleep and the refusal of food. In both it is possible to detect the influence of this pronounced force of opposition. As the child lies sobbing or screaming in bed, every new approach to him, every fresh attempt at pacification, renews the force of his opposition in a crescendo of sound. But it is in his refusal of food that the child is apt to find his chief opportunity. Meal-times degenerate into a struggle. There at least he can show his complete mastery of the situation. No ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... of woods for a hundred rods the other evening, and heard the katydids by myriads—very curious for once; but I like better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more about the song of the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching a point of great energy and significance, and then quickly and gracefully dropping ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... long hair piled up on their heads in feminine fashion. Gradually, as we advanced farther up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous chirp of the cicalas swelled out like an orchestral crescendo. Above us, against the luminous sky, sharply delineated between the mountains, a kind of hawk hovered, screaming out, with a deep, human voice, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" its melancholy call prolonged ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... wonderful resources as a metrist were exhibited to the utmost in the invention of the most bizarre, eccentric, and original verse forms. An example of this is the poem entitled "The Djinns" included in "Les Orientales" (1829). The coming and going of the flying cohort of spirits is indicated by the crescendo effect of the verse, beginning with a stanza in lines of two syllables, rising gradually to the middle stanza of the poem in lines of ten syllables, and then dying away by exactly graded diminutions to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... The lights in the windows go out, one by one; the sharp blast of a whistle cuts the air, the clang of a bell peals out, the rumble of a wagon is heard, and the street cars begin their clatter and clang. All this comes floating up to you on the still morning air, until an ever-increasing crescendo of sounds is borne in upon you, telling that the town has awakened from its nap, stretched itself like a drowsy giant, and is ready once more to grapple with ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... as ever! Why should I go on earning money, money, money? Yes, I know! They come to hear me, they crowd the house, they pay, they clap their hands when I sing the mad scene in Lucia, or Juliet's waltz song, or the crescendo trills in the Huguenots! But I am old, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... up to it, heart and soul; my whole being thrilled with the passionate outpourings of a spirit freed. My voice trembled in the upper bars of a feline love-song, quavered, descended, swelling again into an intimation that I brooked no rival, and ended with a magnificent crescendo. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... slave; the man has ruined himself for la Vittoria; but I respect the impersonation of art," he said under his breath to the ladies as they stood at the door; "hark!" The piano was touched, and the voice of Irma di Karski broke out in a shrill crescendo. Rocco Ricci within gave tongue to the vehement damnatory dance of Pericles outside. Rocco struck his piano again encouragingly for a second attempt, but Irma was sobbing. She was heard to say: "This is the fifteenth time you have pulled me down in one morning. You ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... commence their screeching and chattering and soon after the owls and other night birds take their turn, making the now dense darkness more terrible with their harsh, sinister cries. Little by little as the night deepens, bellows, roars and howls resound upon every part in a slow crescendo until they are fused into a general and appalling uproar which could not be more awful if the gates of Hell were to be ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... Domini thought, were filled with a sense of climax. She felt as if the room, all the inanimate objects, and all the animate figures in it, were instruments of an orchestra, and as if each individual instrument was contributing to a slow and great, and irresistible crescendo. The stranger took his part with the rest, but against his will, and as ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the great crescendo of the man's storm of grief had passed that Nan bethought herself of the need in which he stood. Nor was that need apparent until his whole note had changed to a moody bitterness with which he regarded the future. Then she understood the demon that ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... believe, seven kinds; but I have become familiar with only four. The first to be heard in my trees is the natsuzemi, or summer semi: it makes a sound like the Japanese monosyllable ji, beginning wheezily, slowly swelling into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in another wheeze. This j-i-i-iiiiiiiiii is so deafening that when two or three natsuzemi come close to the window I am obliged to make them go away. Happily the natsuzemi is soon succeeded by the minminzemi, a much finer musician, whose ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... absence of bird voices,—so silent the fields and groves and orchards were, compared with what she had been used to at home. The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere was the shrill, brassy crescendo of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a lot of silly high heels all along the passage waitin' for a polish, and a lot of spoons to clean that's been in the mouths of gapin' fools that looks through me as if I was a dirty window hadn't been cleaned for years.... (Throwing his stub into the fire in a sudden crescendo of fury) Orders, orders, orders; go here, do this, don't do that, you idiot, open the door for me, get a move on—I was never meant to take orders, never!... Down in the tea- place there's an old white beard wigglin'. "Waiter, ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... sudden crescendo the music stopped. Involuntarily we broke into handclapping. The old boy looked a bit startled at this, but we explained to him, and he seemed very pleased. We then accepted formally the heap of presents, by touching them-and in turn passed over a blanket, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... his sister was capable of making, not one, but half a dozen scenes with a well defined tragic crescendo at the close of each. The situation was fast becoming unbearable. With a gesture of despair he turned to leave the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... for a moment; they would drive me mad,' returned Phoebe, in the hollow tones that seemed natural to her. 'Flowers are better; but what have I to do with flowers? Doctor,' her voice rising into a shrill crescendo, 'you must give me something to send me to sleep, or I shall go mad. I think, think, think, until my head is in a craze with pain ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... elusive nature of the music gave it more than half its magic. It would die away as the wind declined, or come in passionate crescendo. For long it seemed to Montaiglon—and yet it was too short—the night was rich with these incongruous but delightful strains. Now the player breathed some soft, slow, melancholy measure of the manner Count Victor had often heard the Scottish ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully down ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... "Was they a string around his neck, Dan'l?" Then he went back into his shop and returned with a long stick with a bent nail in the end and began to fish absorbedly into the culvert. Presently a wild crescendo of shrieks announced his catch. I shut my eyes and covered my ears and when I looked again he was hauling out a quivering lump of baby dog. He felt him all over with grimy, gentle fingers and "allowed they warn't nothin' broke ... ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the thunder roared, Sudden and jagged the lightning played, Faster and faster the raindrops poured, Sobbing and surging the tree-crests swayed, Cracking and crashing above, below. Crescendo! ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... that stretched rapidly and steadily all across the heavens until it formed an arch that stood there stationary. And from that motionless arch, the only motionless manifestation that whole night, there came a gradual superb crescendo of light that lit the wide, white river basin from mountain top to mountain top and threw the shadows of the dogs and the sled sharper and blacker upon the snow,—and in the very moment of its climax was gone again ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... began; then broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the passion of the music mounted up and up. And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... yipp, yipp, yipp arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and sat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did not ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... the end, this passion for new laws, and the interpreter, though he had too just an instinct to take so high a key, followed him with an able crescendo. Weedie thought he had his audience in hand, though it was the interpreter who really had it, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... is called "The Inheritance Divine," and it is much the best thing Shelley has done. It begins with a long, slow crescendo on the word "Jerusalem," which is very forceful. Shelley responds to an imaginary encore, however, and the word becomes little more than ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... he gave them hell at Belmont and at Graspan, and they say they are fighting again to-day at Modder River. Major Erasmus is very down-hearted about it. But the ordinary burghers hear nothing but lies; all lies, I tell you. (Crescendo) Look at the lies that have been told about us! Barbarians! savages! every name your papers have called us, but you know better than that now; you know how well we have treated you since you have been a prisoner; and look at the way your people have treated ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... was satisfied. She had brought out the air; she had made it sing above the confusion of the bass and treble that evidently had had no clear understanding when they started; as for the bad bits, the tremendous crescendo chords that your hands must take at a flying leap or miss altogether, Rowcliffe had already assured her that they were impracticable anyhow; ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... of his sentence was lost in a crescendo bellow of sound. Seaton, still at the controls, shut off the noise, studied his meters carefully, and turned around to ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... a great crescendo of sound as the party turned the corner, and a flare of light shone under the gate; then the sound of loud talking, a silence of the hoofs; and a sudden ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... even of breathless nights, the quaggy soil trembles to a sound like thunder of breakers on a coast: the storm-roar of billions of reptile voices chanting in cadence,—rhythmically surging in stupendous crescendo and diminuendo,—a monstrous and appalling ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... those words as you should," he cried, "until you know and feel the glory of that wondrous cross. Never, never, never." His voice rose in a passionate crescendo. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... now increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of the wreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushing through the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rain was coming, and against that tropical ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing along the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the enemy shell fire for a few minutes before zero was particularly heavy. Meanwhile the British artillery maintained a silence in which the gunners were able to prepare for the impending barrage. Zero was at 5-40 a.m., and at that time suddenly there opened an enormous crescendo of fire from the British guns, together with a machine gun barrage, which latter some attributed erroneously to the enemy. At this time it was fairly light, and one could see from a hundred and fifty to two hundred yards, quite light ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... Thracian bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna, Orfeo's song receives adequate expression. It is closely imitated from the corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano's own. Addressing Pluto, Orfeo discovers ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... "that it can't hold a man across a few thousand miles. You lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, my young friend; but it's practical patriotism now for you and me, and with no lies to help it. You talked as if everything always went right with us all over the world, in a triumphant crescendo culminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjure with, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad enough that a gang of infernal ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... completely devoid of the dramatic sense. It is only possible to write good plays without the power of character-drawing, upon one condition—that of possessing the power of creating dramatic situations. The Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, for instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of persons. One of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by Voltaire himself. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... start a young voice should be taught to begin in the middle and work both ways—that is, up and down. A tone should never be forced. Begin piano, make a long crescendo and return to piano. Another exercise employs two connecting half tones, using one or two vowels. During practice stand before a mirror, that one may see what one is doing. Practice about one hour daily. Better that amount each day than ten hours one day and none the ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... into a positive crescendo of conviction—"I know by somethin' that tells me, an' it's somethin' that can't lie. The prophets knew that God had picked 'em out because He told 'em so in visions. I haven't just heard voices in dreams I've had the voice in me and I know—know I tell you—that, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... to his ears through the forest behind. It began like the gentle, mellow lowing of a cow at evening, swelled into a quavering, appealing crescendo cadence, and gradually died away. Almost as the last note ceased another commenced at the same low pitch, with only the rest of a heart-beat between the two, and surged forth into a plaintive yet tempestuous call, which sank as before. It was followed by ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... in the yelling dissonance descending crescendo from floor to floor. Then an avalanche of children and dogs poured down the hall-stairs in pursuit of a rumpled and bored cat, tumbling with yelps and cheers and thuds among the thick rugs ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... wishes. While the general applause was sounding, Klesmer gave a more valued testimony, audible to her only—"Good, good—the crescendo better than before." But her chief anxiety was to know that she had satisfied Mr. Deronda: any failure on her part this evening would have pained her as an especial injury to him. Of course all her prospects were due to what he had done for her; still, this occasion ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... him over in their haste, their feet scratching up a shower of snow which caused the glowing coals of the little fire to sizzle and smoke. The cry of the wolves had floated—but this new cry seemed to hurl itself through the night—a terrifying crescendo of noise that sounded at once a challenge and wail. For a full minute after the sound ceased the boy sat tense and motionless, staring wide-eyed beyond the fire, while behind him, in the farthest corner of the tent the malamutes huddled and whined. Then he ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... day. I hear it in the dry and parched August when most birds are silent, sometimes delivered on the wing and sometimes from the perch. Indeed, with me its song is as much a midsummer sound as is the brassy crescendo of the cicada. The memory of its note calls to mind the flame-like quiver of the heated atmosphere and the bright glare of the meridian sun. Its color is much more intense than that of the common bluebird, as summer skies are deeper than those of April, but ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... gigantic insects of the dawn, began to howl and the trains on the elevated railway thundered by. The city's voice, which never ceases, but which had sunk to a sleepy murmur, suddenly awoke, and with clattering, snarling crescendo roar announced the coming of the tides of toilers. "I am facing the day," he said to himself, "and the papers containing the contemptuous judgments of my critics are being delivered in millions to my fellow-citizens. This thing I have ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... with words and even whole sentences of good English, less strange but even more surprising. The voice swore and cursed violently; it riddled the solemn peace of the bay by a volley of abuse. It began by calling me Pig, and from that went crescendo into unmentionable adjectives—in English. The man up there raged aloud in two languages, and with a sincerity in his fury that almost convinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the harmony of the universe. I could hardly see him, but began to think ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... end enters ff. after a strong crescendo, and at this point the sustained A is taken over from the violins by the trumpets and given forth with piercing distinctness above the tutti of the orchestra, the effect being one of extraordinary brilliancy. Now comes the point with which we are ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... have said that a crowd had woken up; a London policeman, that a crowd was turning nasty, as the sharp note went crescendo right along, until it took the definite tone of thousands of human voices upraised in ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... and went to the door. As she shut it behind her she could hear Mrs. Wladek's voice, rising to a crescendo of threats and abuse, and Mr. Fredericksohn's calm, scholarly attempts to stem the ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... It passed slowly along by the highroad and presently we heard a chorus of young voices singing hymns—the girls and boys of the village: the music was soft and illusive in the distance, developing a sweet crescendo as they turned into the pasture, fairly plowing their way through a sea of daisies. Behind them came two little acolytes, fair as angels, swinging their golden incense lamps; then followed six choir boys, chanting the Mass, like veritable ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... insistent siren blared a crescendo and diminuendo blast of sound, and two minutes remained. In every stateroom and in every lounge and saloon ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... in window wailing Stirred by fitful gales from sea: Shrieking up in mad crescendo— Dying down ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... not passed away of the hearty unison with which prayer-meeting and camp-meeting assemblies used to "crescendo" ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... with but four minutes left before the companies must rise and quit the hall, Harris was coming—the new-made first captain, adjutant and quartermaster escorting—the commandants of table all over the hall springing to their feet, and the wild rumble of hollow iron beginning the crescendo of swift-coming, stupendous thunder, and Willett stood and swung his hat, and classmates half-way down the slope turned back to see, and understood without seeing, that there was something back ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... is truly rather rich and very intelligent; so much so that some would even say that he was the friend of Madame Le Maitre." Her voice had a crescendo of vehemence ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated man), "if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that have been properly given to building up these illusions, that—er—in fact, they're what you might call—er—the outcome of the world's crescendo," he rushed his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it—"why do you want ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... her face hidden. The sound continued, seeming to come nearer—the sound of a man's voice shrieking horribly for help, in piercing accents of terror that might have come from a torture-chamber. Suddenly the yells became articulate, resolved into words: "Anne! Anne! Anne!" in terrible crescendo. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... much for him; he had been keeping time with his tail to this declamatory crescendo. With the last effort he cocked it a shade too high, lost his balance, and landed, considerably ruffled, some four feet beneath his own reserved and particular twig. His eye was on me, and I felt it too serious a matter for laughter. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... work up to a climax and make that the loudest note, as most pianists do, but rather the soft note of the phrase; this applies to lyric playing. I will show you what I mean. Here is a fragment of two measures, containing a soulful melody. I build up the crescendo, as you see, and at the highest point, which you might expect to be the loudest, you find instead that it is soft: the sharpness has been taken out of it, the thing you did not expect has happened; and so there are constant surprises, tonal ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... indispensable foodstuffs in neutral countries. Her paper currency, which at the end of 1918 amounted to twenty-two milliard marks, not excessive as compared with that of other countries, immediately increased with a growing crescendo till it reached, in a very short time, the figure of eighty-eight milliards, thus rendering from the very first the payment of indemnities in gold ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... of bougainvillaea. A grave, elderly, bearded Spaniard, on horseback, passed them at a smooth shuffling little trot, and gave them a sonorous buenas dias, The road mounted rapidly. Once when Keith had reined in to breathe the horse, they heard the droning crescendo hum of a new ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... deafening and complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble—as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for him ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... off, startled. He sat up with a jump. A great gust of wind broke down upon the vessel. It came with a shriek that rose in a fierce crescendo. His startled eyes were riveted upon a new development in the sky. An inky cloud bank was sweeping down upon them out of the north-east, and the wind seemed to roar its way out of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... gymnastics to limber up his fingers perhaps, and perhaps to show how limber they are; runs and trills, brilliant execution, one hand after the other in mad pursuit, crossing over, back again, up and down in the vain endeavour to come up with the other hand; crescendo, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... face, and much grace of manner. One might be content never to hear a better prima donna if one were secured against never hearing a worse. In her was first remarked here, among vocalists of distinction, that trembling of the voice when it is pressed in a crescendo, which has since become so common as greatly to mar our enjoyment of vocal music. This great fault, unknown before the appearance of Verdi, is attributed by some musical critics to the influence of his vociferous and strident style. It may ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... aerial was at such a height as to give hope that long-distance messages might be despatched. There was a certain amount of suppressed excitement on the evening of that day when the engine started and gradually got up speed in the dynamo. The sharp note of the spark rose in accompanying crescendo and, when it had reached its highest pitch, Hannam struck off a message to the world at large. No response came after several nights of signalling, and, since sledging had usurped every other interest, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... moment the sky was lit up by all manner of S.O.S. lights and the innumerable flashes from our guns, which were now showing their maximum strength for the first time. They belched forth concentrated death, the roar reached such a deafening crescendo that conversation was entirely out of the question—indeed it was impossible to hear one's own voice. However, the scene was truly impressive, and the grandeur was beyond ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... swelled to a crescendo climax. Then there came another sound, a single resonant note like that given when a string of a bass viol is violently plucked—and the tinkling melody abruptly died. Immediately following the resonant twang some object was ejected from the ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... behind him to be looked after. (Takes up a heavy letter in a long blue envelope.) Here's a whacking letter from the family solicitor. (He pulls out the enclosures and glances over them.) Great Heavens! Seventy! Two hundred! (In a crescendo of dismay.) Four hundred! Four thousand!! Nine thousand six hundred!!! What on earth shall ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... of greeting they were lost in the crescendo growl of a fat bull-dog lying in supple ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... reading that Report of his; green Vengeance, in the shape of Robespierre, watching nigh. Behold, however, Saint-Just has read but few sentences, when interruption rises, rapid crescendo; when Tallien starts to his feet, and Billaud, and this man starts and that,—and Tallien, a second time, with his: "Citoyens, at the Jacobins last night, I trembled for the Republic. I said to myself, if the Convention dare not ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Carnival time, and the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo movement up to the last minutes of its existence. And there now remained but an hour before midnight on the Tuesday preceding the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday—Dies Cinerum!—that sad and sober morrow ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight; A girl's laugh rings like a silver bell. But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears More in his secret heart than in his ears,— A hammer's steady crescendo, like a knell. He hears the snarl of pineboards under the plane, The rhythmic saw, and then the hammer again,— Playing with delicate strokes that sombre scale . . . And the fountain dwindles, the sunlight seems ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... war. One of the most redoubtable of our chiefs stepped forward, and explained the reason of his people's visit in comparatively calm tones. An opposing chief replied to him, and gradually a heated altercation arose, the abuse rising on a crescendo scale for ten or fifteen minutes. These two then retired, and another couple of champion abusers stepped forward to "discuss" the matter. This kind of thing went on for a considerable time, the abuse being of the most appalling description, and directed mainly against the organs of the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... wheels, the reverberations from the blast walls, a crescendo of sound, and they were free of earth. An accelerating, effortless flight, a faint tremor as they passed the sonic barrier, then no sensory ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... briskly up and down beside the track until a speck of blinking light rose out of the white wilderness. It grew rapidly larger, until they could make out a trail of smoke behind it, and the roar of wheels rose in a long crescendo. Then a bell commenced to toll, and the blaze of a big lamp beat into their faces as the great locomotive came clanking into ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... "The crescendo of quarrel is most skilfully and drolly arranged;—a scene on classic lines boldly challenging and, what is more, maintaining comparison with Sheridan." Mr. A. ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... pursued by the sound of musketry fire. After a time the hot, dangerous flashes of the rifles were visible. Smoke clouds went slowly and insolently across the fields like observant phantoms. The din became crescendo, like the roar ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... additional protection. Thus entrenched, we had stood an hour, watching a pair of lighted bow-windows with vague shadows flitting continually across the blinds, and listening to the drawing of corks, the clink of glasses, and a gradual crescendo of coarse voices within. Our luck seemed to have deserted us: the owner of the purple diamonds was dining at home and dining at undue length. I thought it was a dinner-party. Raffles differed; in the end he proved right. Wheels grated ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... was not quite thirty-two—his life was cut short in a crescendo of all its nobler elements. Exquisite as was already his susceptibility to beauty and his mastership of the rarest poetic material, we cannot doubt that Chenier was preparing for still higher flights of lyric passion and poetic intensity. Nothing that he had yet done could be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... louder, ended in a shrieking crescendo. Disheartened, there seemed no alternative for the players save to turn back and surrender unconditionally. Barnes breathed a deep sigh; so much for a tippet!—their dash for freedom had been but a sorry attempt!—now ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... so well till then! The South spoke as a master, and the North humbly bowed its head before its imperious commands. Its exactions increased from day to day, and it was not difficult to see to what abysses it was leading the entire American Union. Shall we give our readers an idea of this crescendo of pretensions? ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... her, smoothing back her hair. But she continued to sob on in a gradual crescendo of despair, till the vehemence of her weeping began to frighten him, and he drew her to her feet and tried to persuade her to let herself be led upstairs. She yielded to his arm, sobbing in short exhausted gasps, and leaning ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... bottle of coffee sitting somewhere. He'd done that once, and the stuff had boiled out all over everywhere when he pulled the air out of the little room. Nope, no coffee. No obstacles to turning on the pump. He thumbed the button, and the pumps started to whine. The whine built up to a crescendo, then began to die away until finally it could only be felt through the walls or floor. The ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... the gloom of the upper turn where the flying figure was lost in the deep shade of the trees. One shadow detached itself from the others and appeared at the head of the straightaway. The muffled thud of hoofs became audible, rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt bay horse with a tiny negro boy crouched motionless in the saddle. A rush, a flurry, a spatter of clods, a low-flying drift of yellow dust and the vision passed, but the Bald-faced Kid had ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... led by old Jasper. It was reckless, riding that way right into death; but the old man believed young Jasper's life at stake, and the men behind asked no questions when old Jasper led them. The horses' hoofs beat the dirt street like the crescendo of thunder. The fierce old man's hat was gone, and his mane-like hair was shaking in the wind. Louder-and still the Stetsons were quiet-quiet too long. The wily old man saw the trap, and, with a yell, whirled the column up an alley, each man flattening over his saddle. From every ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... "just-as-good" curriculum of the college founded for her. In the last sixty or seventy years tens of thousands of women have been students in American universities, colleges, and technical schools, taking there the same training as men. In the last twenty years the annual crescendo of numbers has been amazing; over ten thousand at the beginning of the period, over fifty-two thousand at the end. Over eight thousand degrees were given to women in 1910, nearly half as many as were given to men. Fully four fifths ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... but have happened to a merry earth-spirit, living alternately among the denizens of the wilderness and in the midst of a stream of people from all the four quarters of the globe. When he tells these tales he generally adopts the crescendo method, being spurred on by the applause of his hearers to larger and larger ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... had risen suddenly to a fierce crescendo, breaking out afresh from another quarter. Here, however, was silence—the absolute, deadly silence in which all the weasel tribe hunt. But they were there, though he could not see them. He knew that, invisible even in the sunlight—they ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... times over that great overthrow, and half a dozen crimson flying-machines danced for a moment like great midges in the sunlight before they swept on after their fellows. The rest of the fight had already gone over the island, a wild crescendo of shots and yells and smashing uproar. It was hidden from Bert now by the trees of the island, and forgotten by him in the nearer spectacle of the huge advance of the defeated German airship. Something fell with ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... I never did take any notice of Esmeralda, but she was right this time, it appears, and I was wrong. Imagine it! Pixie began bemoaning that she was not pretty, and it was not herself she was grieving for, or you, or Me!"—Bridgie's voice sounded a crescendo of amazement over that last pronoun—"but whom do you suppose? You'll never ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... tapping the pavement with his malacca. The sneaking figure of the informer was swallowed up in the fog. But not a dozen paces had the Chief Inspector gone when he was arrested by a frenzied scream, rising, hollowly, in a dreadful, muffled crescendo. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... the Musical Association ("Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik-Verein"), over which I have the honor of presiding, the orchestral works of Rimsky-Korsakoff and Borodine have figured on the programmes. Their success is making a crescendo, in spite of the sort of contumacy that is established against Russian music. It is not in the least any desire of being peculiar that leads me to spread it, but a simple feeling of justice, based ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... muffled, distant, he thought in the voice of Alden. It was stifled, cut off ere it had come to full crescendo, in a very significant manner. Silence, then, fell about him, the chill silence of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... Earth. But it is not in the power of reward or punishment to bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your Highness? When I am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never, never,' in steadv CRESCENDO tone:—so that his Highness is glad to escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the left hand: and this Serene ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... There is presented in each case a single curve; the dactyl moves continuously away from an initial accent in an unbroken decrescendo, the anapaest moves continuously toward a final accent in an unbroken crescendo. But in the anapaestic form as well as in the dactylic there is a clear duality in the arrangement of elements within the group, since the two unaccented beats fall, as before, into one natural group, while the accented element is ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... was to work slowly up to a grand crescendo effect; and the crescendo was the Ryks Museum. We had two days of Amsterdam (the second was mostly spent at the diamond cutters') before I ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... buzz of conversation rose from the court. Presently the light began to fade, and the buzz faded with it; then some lights were turned on, and there was a crescendo of voices. It was possible to see more clearly the multitude of faces, all of them hot, nearly all of them excited and expressive. A great many people were standing, packed closely together and looking ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... with a crescendo intensity. A forcible tug by the other player resulted in the abrupt loss of his kite. It headed toward me, dancing in the wind. My helpful assistant, the cactus plant, again secured the kite string in the necessary loop by which I could grasp ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... first days of October I found the summer still in almost unmenaced possession, and ever since, till within a day or two, the weight of its hand has been sensible. Properly enough, as the city of flowers, Florence mingles the elements most artfully in the spring—during the divine crescendo of March and April, the weeks when six months of steady shiver have still not shaken New York and Boston free of the long Polar reach. But the very quality of the decline of the year as we at present here feel it suits peculiarly the mood in which an undiscourageable gatherer of the sense of things, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... There—making himself one with them in hardship, danger and wounds for the sake of their immortal souls, now impels him to the writing of this Book. "The Greater Love" is a religious message which teaches that as man needed God in war—with a crescendo of need reaching full tide in the front trench—even so he needs him in Peace. The message is clothed in the narrative of adventure—personal experiences of the Author—and every page an epic of absorbing interest. No one ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... days, being absent, on in average, forty days per man in the four months. In Moscow passenger-station on this line, 22 workmen missed in November 106 days, in December 273, in January 338, and in February 380; in an appalling crescendo further illustrated by the wagon department, where 28 workmen missed in November 104 days and in February 500. In November workmen absented themselves for single days. In February the same workmen were absent for the greater part of the month. The invariable ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... moment's thought you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind. What becomes of all your reading, all your observation, your experience, study, investigations, discussions—in a rushing crescendo—if you have no memory?" ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... boy!" said Mrs. Dinks, with a crescendo affection and triumph. While she was yet embracing him, his father, the unemployed statesman, the Honorable ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... instead of its being a smash that opened a way to better things, it might have been a smash without a recovery. It is part of my business to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before Holsten was just a hundred years' crescendo of waste. Only the extreme individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up material—insanely. They had got through ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... with something even in their first crescendo wails that bespoke the good heritage of a father's ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... persistence of constables during a London police-court hearing, carrying refreshments and little charcoal stoves. The signal for the next act is a deafening clicking noise made by one of the stage hands on two sticks, which gradually rises to a shattering crescendo as the curtain is drawn aside. It must be understood that the theatre that I am describing was set apart for national drama. In others there are topical farces and laughter is continuous; but I did not visit any. On board ship, however, we had a series ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... all proportion to his size. Just after sundown the Chief Frog made a loud noise like stones rattling in a can, apparently calling the tribe to attention. For a moment there was deep silence. Then the chorus burst forth, rose to a hideous crescendo and descended to a monotonous rattle; and this was the motif of the song. Frogs must have very powerful lungs, for these never seemed to draw breath; theirs was, as it were, a continuous performance and a most infernal din withal. We became accustomed if not reconciled to the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... if ears could be thirsty as a drunkard's throat, he drank his fill of the 'cello's deep, full-membered chord. The air was heavy with the resonance of marching feet, ghostly feet marching and marching down upon him in slow, inexorable crescendo as the tides ebbed later among the sedges on the marsh and the moon grew big. And above the pulse of the march he seemed to hear ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... You are nice—" Rosemary's voice rose in a crescendo of pure pleasure. "But I'm not a good example—you won't say that when you know me. I get as ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... It was so absolutely demoralizing that to relieve himself Bud gave the squaw a shake. This tickled the baby so much that the chuckle burst into a rollicking laugh, with a catch of the breath after each crescendo tone that made it absolutely individual ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... you have done it unto one of the least of these His Brethern, you have done it unto Him! (The ANGEL stands with one hand uplifted, as the music rises in a great crescendo of triumph. HOLGER, quite overcome, drops his face in his hands and as the climax of the singing is reached, the whole tableau is held for a moment, then blotted out ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... dwelt for him on the most remote borderland of unattainable dreams. Now her heart was throbbing against his own and he knew exultantly that whatever her mind might say in protest, her heart was at home there. In his brain pealed a crescendo of passion that drowned out whispers of remonstrance as pounding surf drowns the cry of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... had supported him to a chair she could do nothing but stare at him, with her hands clasped and her eyes goggling, and cry, "Aaron, Aaron, dear!" in crescendo. His sole replies to her were hollow sounds in his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... showed the super-Simba. The dispute might in the ordinary course of events have come to shooting; but only after hours of excited wrangling, and as a climax worked up to in a crescendo of emotion. This expeditious nipping in the bud was a ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... was telling them that. The sound went on, and on, wild and lone and constant, ascending to the confines of the room, transcending the confines of reason. It was crescendo incarnate; it was purpose gone rife; it was human and more than human, with all the fears and hopes and hates, as it attained a high-pitched scream with wailing overtones such as even Arnold had never heard. There was sentience in it, there was awareness in it, there was fury in it and ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse |
