"Bassoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that's Gus Langless' boat," said one of the watchmen. "She's lying at the end of Bassoon's wharf, over yonder." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... blows a puff of spray from his nostrils, shakes the water out of his ears, puts his enormous snout up straight and yawns, sounding a loud alarm to the rest of the herd, with notes as of a monster bassoon. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... commences with a sinister theme, Lento misterioso, con tristezza, given out by bassoon and celli, accompanied by a soft drum roll. This motive is the main one of the work, and may be regarded as that of Lamia. After some impassioned development, the music leads quietly into an Allegro ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... May Night Fantasy" is a moonlit revel of elves caught by a musical reporter, a surreptitious "chiel amang 'em takin' notes." A single hobgoblin bassoon croaks ludicrously away, the pixies darkle and flirt and dance their hearts ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the evocations of a loud bassoon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and spat acridly upon the pave. "Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... day, Till over the mast at noon— The wedding-guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... was born, on the 21st October 1801, at Treves, of parents in the middle rank of life. When quite a child, the predominating taste of his life was so strongly developed, that in spite of harsh masters he learned to play on the piano, violin, bassoon, and several wind-instruments; and at the age of twelve could read at sight the most difficult music, and even attempted composition. Music, however, was not intended to be his profession, and was only carried on as a relaxation from the severer studies to which Mainzer devoted himself at the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... of leather, acted as the staccato, pizzicato, or pianissimo. The Germans further displayed that ingenuity in fancy stops Mersenne had attributed to them in harpsichords more than a hundred and fifty years before, by a bassoon pedal, a card which by a rotatory half-cylinder just impinging upon the strings produced a reedy twang; also by pedals for triangle, cymbals, bells, and tambourine, the last drumming on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... distressing floundering and shuffling that we see at home. A dirty priest or two, and a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to the proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest (it is always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But there is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than under like circumstances here. The ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... are the flute, oboe, bassoon, and clarinet. It is as well to say at once that their particular qualities of tone do not absolutely depend upon the materials of which they are made. The form is the most important factor in determining ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... not only relieved and sustained the voice, but were full of original effects, novel to his time. He was the author, too, of important improvements in instrumental composition. He introduced the viola, clarinet, and bassoon into the orchestra of the Italian opera. Though, voluminous both in serious and comic opera, it was in the latter that he won his chief laurels. His "Pazza per Amore" was one of the great Pasta's favorites, and Catalani added largely to her reputation in the part of La Frascatana. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... experiments," and enjoyed extremely. As an example I may mention that finding the cotyledons of Biophytum to be highly sensitive to vibrations of the table, he fancied that they might perceive the vibrations of sound, and therefore made me play my bassoon close to a plant. (This is not so much an example of superabundant theorising from a small cause, but only of his wish to test the most ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... high The tuneful village choir, With flute, bassoon, and clarionet, Their notes rose high ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... now the day is closing cool, The woods are dim before us, The white fog of the wayside pool Is creeping slowly o'er us. The cricket to the frog's bassoon His shrillest time is keeping; The sickle of yon setting moon The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... wry bassoon The blind man plays, the porch beneath. His poodle whimpers low the tune, And holds the cup between ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... the Huntsmen and a Pack of Hounds, a Sham Doctor, an old Woman, the Bells, the Flute, the Double Curtell (or bassoon) and the Organ,—all with his own Natural Voice, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... upon the steps of the entrance cast a strange glare upon the glittering windows and deep into the garden; the assembled servants were to serenade their master. In the midst of them stood the gorgeous Porter, like a minister of state, before a music-stand, working away busily at a bassoon. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... her with a sum of money which she had demanded, decamped from the lodgings which he had taken for her, carrying with her all the presents which at various times he had bestowed upon her, and had put herself under the protection of a gentleman who played the bassoon at the Italian Opera, at which place it appeared that her sister had lately been engaged as a danseuse. My friend informed me that at first he had experienced great agony at the ingratitude of Annette, but at last had made up his mind to forget her, and in order ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 'still lagoon' Passed the golden afternoon, The preposterous bassoon, Growling deep, Saved the King and knelled the day As the crimson changed to grey And the little valley ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... Meredith is a little too deep or too subtle for Strauss—unless it be granted that cynicism is more a part of comedy than a part of refined-insult. Let us also remember that Mr. Disston, not Mr. Strauss, put the funny notes in the bassoon. A symphony written only to amuse and entertain is likely to amuse only the writer—and him not long ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... grace and decorum. Her mother from afar saw the danger at this crisis, and came to her relief. The danger in Mrs. Falconer's opinion was, that the young lady's want of temper should be seen by Count Altenberg; she therefore carried him off to a distant part of the room, to show him, as she said, "a bassoon player, who was the exact image of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... the simplicity of outdoor rural life; that a melody for English horn has somehow become connected with mournful thoughts; the sound of trumpets, with martial ideas; and the grunting of the lower register of the bassoon, with comic effects. It is well known, also, that the skilful violinist can cause his instrument to sound an infinite variety of shades of color. But these means of expression are almost wholly under the control of the individual players ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... practising, I wish you'd practise that," said a large jocose-looking man, an excellent wheelwright in his week-day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of the company, who were known officially as the "bassoon" and the "key-bugle", in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the musical ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... the second group (the wood-wind) are found the flute, piccolo, oboe, bassoon, English horn, double-bassoon, clarinet, and bass clarinet. The English horn, double-bassoon, bass clarinet, and piccolo are not called for in the older compositions, hence are not always present in ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... room; and the three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it for tired, healthy children. In the room below, her father and the eldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooring she could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned, self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperienced bassoon trying to imitate it. Wakefulness was a novel state for Pansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as full of wild vitality as one of her young guineas in the summer wheat; ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... must be well acquainted with the characters of Mr Fiery and Mr Stiff, and Mrs Dashington, and her niece Miss Squeaker, and Colonel Blare who played the cornet, and Lieutenant Limp who sang tenor, and Dr Bassoon who roared bass, and Mrs Silky, who was all things to all men, besides being everything by turns and nothing long; and Lady Tower and Miss Gentle, and Mr Blurt ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... the rows of warmth and light The Christmas waits, with cornet and bassoon, Carolled "While shepherds watched their flocks by night." The bells pealed to ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... The celebrated Doctor Bertier asserts that the sound of a drum gives him the colic. Certain medical men state that the notes of the trumpet quicken the pulse and induce slight perspiration. The sound of the bassoon is cold; the notes of the French horn at a distance, and of the harp, are voluptuous. The flute played softly in the middle register calms the nerves. The low notes of the piano frighten children. I once had a dog who would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... is of course acquainted with the vigorous and bracing pages of Sir John (2 vols.: London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown). Sir John, who plays but a tooth-comb in the orchestra of this historical romance, blows in his own book the big bassoon. His character is there drawn at large; and the sympathy of Landor has countersigned the admiration of the public. One point, however, calls for explanation; the chapter on Gruenewald was torn by the hand of the author in the palace gardens; how comes it, then, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bathing-houses stand by scores and fifties along the shore, and likewise on the banks of the Ribble, a mile seaward; the hotels have their billiard-rooms; there is a theatre every evening; from morning till night comes a succession of organ-grinders, playing interminably under your window; and a man with a bassoon and a monkey, who takes your pennies and pulls off his cap in acknowledgment; and wandering minstrels, with guitar and voice; and a Highland bagpipe, squealing out a tangled skein of discord, together with a Highland ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the house, where his reverence was entertaining his friends, and which, as often as they were heard by the doctor seemed to produce in him sensations not unlike those that afflicted the "wedding guest" in the "Ancient Mariner," when he heard the "loud bassoon," and as certainly imparted an equally longing desire to be a partaker in the mirth. We arranged every thing satisfactorily for Mr. Beamish's comfort, and with a large basin of vinegar and water, to keep his knee cool, and a strong tumbler ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... BASSOON or Contrabassoon (Fr. contrebasson; Ger. Kontrafagott), a wood-wind instrument of the double reed family, which it completes as grand bass, the other members being the oboe, cor anglais, and bassoon. The contrafagotto ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... timber, which is graced by the appearance of two or three rags of old tapestry. It is on this chicken coop that the music is perched: two clarinets, a hurdy-gurdy, a cracked trumpet, and a grumbling bassoon—five instruments whose harmonious movements are regulated by the crutch of Monsieur Double-Croche, a lame dwarf, who is called the leader of the orchestra. Here all is in harmony—the faces, costumes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... produce various shades of tone on his instrument, yet every instrument has a well-defined characteristic timbre, which justifies us in speaking, for instance, of the majestic, solemn trombone, the serene flute, the amorous violoncello, the lugubrious bassoon, and so on. The human voice, on the other hand, is much less limited in its powers of tonal and emotional coloring. It is not dependent for its resonance on a rigid tube, like the flute, or an unchangeable ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... tune so well because their natures had unblunted edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural food. To gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol, ravishingly; or blows into the mellow bassoon; or rouses the heroic ardours of the trumpet; or, it may be, commands the whole Orchestra for them. And they are pleased. He is still the cunning musician. They languish, and taste ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an earthly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... radius. He had sung with these men often; they knew every trick of his voice, and he could count upon them not to break into a galloping rhythm in the midst of a minor andante. His face lighted, and his tongue fell into his beloved German idioms, as he went up the stairs with a bass viol and a bassoon on either hand. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... the choir, composed of village lads and maidens, with a few stalwart basses and tenors. It was often a curious performance. Everybody sang as loud as he could bawl; cheeks and elbows were at their utmost efforts, the bassoon vying with the clarionet, the goose-stop of the clarionet with the bassoon—it was Babel with the addition of the beasts. And they were all so proud of their performance. It was the only part of the service during which no one could ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... feelings about life; what changes the years had wrought in his body, his mind, his feelings, his companionships, his reputation. It was for me a kind of unison between two instruments, both playing that old familiar air, "Life,"—one a bassoon, if you will, and the other an oaten pipe, if you care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace with each other until the players both grew old and gray. At last the thinner thread of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... cry—Newport! The sleepers started to their feet. I started to mine, but I discreetly and quietly sat down again. Was it Newport, at last? Not at all. The harbor lights were gleaming from afar; and the cry was of the bandmaster shouting to his emissaries, arousing fiddle and flute and bassoon to their deceitful duty. They had played us out of port—they would play us in again. They had promised us that all should go merry as a marriage-bell, and—I would not be understood to complain, but ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... come in? What have I to do with your love affairs? Leave me in peace! Go on squeezing money out of the poor in your gentlemanly way. Make a display of humane ideas, play (the doctor looked sideways at the violoncello case) play the bassoon and the trombone, grow as fat as capons, but don't dare to insult personal dignity! If you cannot respect it, you might at least spare ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... again. Their discordant symphonies roused me to desperation. I seized a bucket of slops, and; opening the window, dashed the contents in the direction of the music; the full force of the deluge striking a fat, froggy-looking little Dutchman, who was puffing and blowing at a bassoon infinitely larger than himself. He was just launching out into a prodigious strain, but it expired while yet in the bloom of youth. He remained for a short time in the famous posture of the Colossus of Rhodes, vainly endeavoring to shake off the cigar-stumps and other ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... correspondence to the notes given out at Soissons for a Kaiser and his Pragmatic Sanction. Poor Prussian Household, poor back, and heart, of Crown-Prince; what a concert it is in this world, Smoking Parliament for souffleur! Let the big Diplomatist Bassoon of the Universe go this way, there are caresses for a young Soldier and his behavior in the giant regiment; let the same Bassoon sound that way, bangs and knocks descend on him; the two keep time together,—so busy is the Smoking Parliament with ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reflected upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say "Let's go to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, it doesn't rain!" Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes a time when the joke ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... persons of the like turn, scattered through the neighbouring hamlets, used occasionally to meet at his house; where they exercised themselves in singing, from the works of Croft, Green, Boyce, Purcell, Handel, and such authors as they possessed. One of them played the bassoon, another the flute, and a third the violin, I had a quick ear, was attracted by their harmony, and began to join in their concerts. A treble voice was a great acquisition; I was apt and they encouraged me, by frequent praise and admiration. My uncle gave me Arnold's Psalmody, in which ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... floor like a petard. Gerard looked down, and there was the dwarf, slit and fanged from ear to ear at his expense, and laughing like a lion. Nature, relenting at having made Giles so small, had given him as a set-off the biggest voice on record. His very whisper was a bassoon. He was like those stunted wide-mouthed pieces of ordnance we see on fortifications; more like a flower-pot than a cannon; but ods tympana ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Doctors! O to hear The Doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants Imbibing! once or twice I thought to roar, To break my chain, to shake my mane: but thou, Modulate me, Soul of mincing mimicry! Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat; Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek, Where they like swallows coming out of time Will wonder why ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... really open now. Guests stroll about and listen to the music, or sit on the balcony chairs and watch the dancing. By and by there are some soft melodious waves with no especial meaning, then the French horns pipe a delicious thrill, "viol, flute and bassoon" burst into beguiling bloom of the Zamora, and hands steal out to other hands, arms cling to arms, and ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the silver shimmering of flutes; A bassoon grunted, and an oboe wailed; The 'celli pizzicato-ed like great lutes, And mutterings of double basses trailed Away to silence, while loud harp-strings hailed Their thin, bright colours down in such a scatter They lost themselves amid ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... fat-armed girl in a blue kerseymere gown served out to scullion after scullion; the open windows from which a little knave was casting bride-pennies to some screaming beggars and women in the street; the blind hornman whose unseeing eyes glanced along the reed of his bassoon that he played before the open door; the two saucy maids striving to wrest the bride's stockings one from the other—all these things appeared friendly and jovial in his eyes. So that, when one of the maids, wresting the stocking, fell hard against him, he clasped her in his arms and ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... which the Titanola Company are constructing for Mr. Boomer, the famous War lecturer, is approaching completion. This remarkable instrument, which roughly resembles a double-bassoon, stands about 45 feet high, and has a compass of 500 octaves, from the low B flat in profundissimo to the high G on the Doncaster St. Leger line. The use that Mr. Boomer makes of the Bombastophone is very original and effective. Whenever he sees ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... A notable bassoon player was Mr. Bagnet, who had a voice somewhat resembling his instrument. The ex-artilleryman kept a little music shop in a street near the Elephant and Castle. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... an acquaintance who always rides to music, and asserts that it is as easy as dancing; that the music "fairly lifts you out of the saddle," and that the pleasure of equestrian exercise is doubled when it is done to the sound of the flute, violin, and bassoon, or whatever may be the ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... McGillicuddy, in a voice like a bassoon in a rage, "as the Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue trusted their innocent lamb, and when they are peacefully watchin' the show you take this pore baby out of his warm bed and brings him out here to catch his death of cold, and Patrick McGillicuddy, ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... which another Indian blew with his nose, a song which was no doubt anacreontic. It was a charming scene, worthy of the pencil of Boucher. Four natives came with great confidence to sup and sleep on board. We had the flute, bassoon, and violin played for them, and treated them to fireworks composed of rockets and serpents. This display excited ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the 'cellist bent over his instrument with an air of quiet devotion. The burly form of the player of the double-bassoon, behind his rare and awkward instrument, waiting for his time to come in, had the look of a man who could not be surprised or troubled by anything. One of the bass-violinists had the rough-hewn figure and the divinely chiseled, ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... the French organist of Queen Catherine performed on Harris's. The contest continued, with varying success, for nearly a twelvemonth. At length Harris challenged his redoubtable rival to make certain additional reed stops, vox humana, cremona, double bassoon and other stops, within a given time. The controversy was at last terminated by Lord Chief Justice Jefferies—the cruel and debauched Jefferies, who was himself an accomplished musician—deciding in favour of Father Smith. Part of Harris's rejected ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... The orchestrelle added to the Island something he needed soulfully. Experimenting with the rolls, the stops and the power, he found there was nothing he could not do in time. Music answered—trombone, clarionet, horn, bassoon, hautboy, flute, 'cello answered. Volume and tempo were mere lever matters. On the rolls themselves were suggestions. Reaching this point, his exaltation knew no bounds. He looked upon the great array of rolls—symphonies, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... usual complaisance, and made a very eloquent acknowledgment of the honour and satisfaction he received from the visit of the representative, and the hospitality of his constituents. The captain's peculiarities were not confined to his external appearance; for his voice resembled the sound of a bassoon, or the aggregate hum of a whole bee-hive, and his discourse was almost nothing else than a series of quotations from the English poets, interlarded with French phrases, which he retained for their significance, on the recommendation ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... hotel shone. The veranda was gay with Chinese lanterns. The muffled girls were arriving. The musicians tuned up. There were three little fiddles, one big one, a flageolet, and a bassoon. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... for the night follows; and the deep and stertorous breathing of the encampment is well given by the bassoon, while the sufferings and trials of an unhappy father with an unpleasant infant are touchingly set forth ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... hands. Next came a double file of priests in their surplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other, chanting the funeral dirge at intervals—now pausing, and then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind of bassoon, with a dismal and wailing sound. Then followed various symbols of the church, and the bier borne on the shoulders of four men. The coffin was covered with a velvet pall, and a chaplet of white flowers lay upon it, indicating that the deceased was unmarried. A few of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... what a sight was there! The very fiddlers in the orchestra, albeit unused to the melting mood, blubbered like hungry children crying for their bread and butter; and when the bell rang for music between the acts, the tears fell from the bassoon player's eyes in such plentiful showers that they choked the finger stops; and making a spout of that instrument, poured in such torrents on the first fiddler's book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band actually played in one flat. But ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... notice of by the persons officiating. He was well pleased with the singing of a youth and the accompaniment of a gentleman in a cock'd hat; for although he could not discover that he actually produced words, he produced sounds in many instances bearing a strong similarity to those of a bassoon. The venerable appearance and devotion of the High Priest, who was habited in a robe of white, also attracted his attention; while the frequent bursts of the congregation, joining in the exercises of the morning, in some ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was said with a most determined air, and in a voice which might have been taken for an imitation of anything; it was quite as much like a guinea-pig as a bassoon. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... while the roses heard the flute, violin, bassoon, none in all the gay company had been gayer than Sharlee. Past many heads in the dining-room, West had watched her, laughing, radiant, sparkling as the wine itself, a pretty little lady of a joyous ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ears, as one man began to cut and slash out notes from the trombone in the key of G; while another practised difficult runs in E flat upon the clarionet, another ran through a strain in F upon the cornet, and the hautbois-performer, the bassoon, the contra-bass, and the keyed-trumpet toiled away in major, minor, flat, sharp, or in whatever key ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... gay company had entirely dispersed, the lights in the Castle were extinguished one by one, and silence reigned where, only half an hour before, light feet beat time to the soft music of viol and bassoon, and the echoes of merry ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... means of enjoyment or of subsistence. His point of view being so different from that of the others, it is not surprising that he was always at odds with them. Trifles often annoyed him more than gross derelictions. At one of the rehearsals the third bassoon player was absent and Beethoven was enraged. That anything short of illness or disaster should keep this man from his post was a piece of insolence, an insult to the art. Prince Lobkowitz was present, and in the effort to pacify him, made light of the affair; ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... out—that, before she caught on, the procession arrived. The catechumen was seated upon an empty beer-barrel, placed upon a sort of float dragged by the boys. They had with them a big drum, that terrible bassoon of Uncle Jake's, and a cornet; the noise was something terrific. Well, Miss Birdie's a good plucked one! She stood on the steps and rebuked them. That voice of hers silenced the band. Before she was through talking you might have heard a pin drop. She rated ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... nothing but cats who were her servants. They leapt nimbly upstairs and downstairs, and were merry and happy. In the evening when they sat down to dinner, three of them had to make music. One played the bassoon, the other the fiddle, and the third put the trumpet to his lips, and blew out his cheeks as much as he possibly could. When they had dined, the table was carried away, and the cat said, "Now, Hans, come and dance ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... martial character which bursts triumphantly into C major. There is an orchestral touch of great beauty and originality in the first and second variations (beginning in measures 49 and 98 respectively), where a solo clarinet—later a flute, oboe and bassoon—prolongs a single tone which seems to float above the melody like a guiding star.[156] A passage of special significance is that in measures 123-146, where Beethoven indulges in a touching soliloquy upon his main theme. It ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... is less reedy in the bass clarinet than in the higher instruments. It resembles the bourdon stop on the organ, and in the lowest register, more especially, the tone is somewhat hollow and wanting in power although mellower than that of the bassoon. In the lowest octave the instrument speaks slowly and is chiefly used for sustained bass or melody notes; rapid passages ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Harris created a diversion by challenging Father Smith to make additional reed-stops within a given time. The challenge was accepted; and forthwith the Father went to work and made Vox Humana, Cremorne, Double Courtel, or Double Bassoon, and other stops. A day was appointed for the renewal of the contest; but party feeling ran so high, that during the night preceding the appointed day a party of hot-headed Harrissians broke into the Temple ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... tinkling of a guitar twanged by a Watteau shepherd; gold brocade, sumptuous as organ tones swelling through the jewelled twilight of a nave; scarves and trains of midnight-blue profound as the harmonic snoring of a bassoon; golden daffodils violent as the sound of a cornet; bouquets of pink roses and daisies, charmful and pure as the notes of a flute; white faille, soft draperies of tulle, garlands of white lilac, sprays of white heather, delicate and resonant as the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the sound of the bassoon and the key-bugles burst forth; the evening hymn, which always opened the service, had begun, and every one must now enter ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... delight in fantasias rather than concertos, and who play such tricks with the keyboards, that the performances have much more of the character of legerdemain than of art, arrive by scores; violinists, violoncellists, professors of the trombone, of the ophicleide, of the bassoon, of every unwieldy and unmanageable instrument in fact, are particularly abundant; and perhaps the most popular of all are the particularly clever gentlemen who, by dint of a dozen years' or so unremitting practice, have succeeded in making one instrument sound ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... the top would do his patients harm. Of course, Frederick tried to make fun of everything and everyone—for instance, of the wretched wind-band, which consisted of about a dozen "caricatures," among whom a lean bassoon-player with a snuffy hook-nose was the most notable. To the manners of the country, which in some respects seem to have displeased him, he got ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... each one that would disturb The fairy architects, or curb The wild creations of their mirth, All that would wake the soul to earth. Choose ye the softly-breathing-flute, The mellow horn, the loving lute; The viol you must not forget, And take the sprightly flageolet And grave bassoon; choose too the fife, Whose warblings in the tuneful strife, Mingling in mystery with the words, May seem ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... about on the dressing-table, missed the matches but found a half-crown. "Take that and trot!" I snarled, hurling it at them with all my strength. The coin hit the trombone a glancing blow on the snout, ricochetted off the bassoon and bounded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... day passed without a shock. Ursula sat playing on her piano till very late; and went to bed easier in mind and very sleepy. About midnight she was awakened by the music of a band composed of a clarinet, hautboy, flute, cornet a piston, trombone, bassoon, flageolet, and triangle. All the neighbours were at their windows. The poor girl, already frightened at seeing the people in the street, received a dreadful shock as she heard the coarse, rough voice of a man proclaiming in loud tones: "For the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... trace of either carelessness or haste in his compositions, and he was most insistent in having the latter performed in exact accordance with his plans. One night, when his great work 'Leonore' was to be rehearsed, the third bassoon failed to put in an appearance, and Beethoven stamped about in a fury, heaping execrations upon the head of the absent player. Prince Lobkowitz, who was present, and who was one of Beethoven's chief patrons, laughed heartily at the composer's outburst, and then tried to calm him by saying: ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... I once found George Bassoon weeping profusely over a dish of artichokes. I was a little surprised, for there was a bottle close at hand and he had a book in his hand. I took the book. It was not Boccaccio; it was not Rabelais; it was not even Swinburne. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... and famous in that quarter of Germany. It languished a little when the present Duke in his youth insisted upon having his own operas played there, and it is said one day, in a fury, from his place in the orchestra, when he attended a rehearsal, broke a bassoon on the head of the Chapel Master, who was conducting, and led too slow; and during which time the Duchess Sophia wrote domestic comedies, which must have been very dreary to witness. But the Prince executes his music ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... therefore both in the physical and spiritual sense a cooled red. It is consequently rather sad and ailing. It is worn by old women, and in China as a sign of mourning. In music it is an English horn, or the deep notes of wood instruments (e.g. a bassoon). ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... salt-box, and a really curious jew's-harp. Two or three men intend to persuade you that they play on a broomstick, which is drolly brought in, carefully shrouded in a case, so as to be mistaken for a bassoon or bass-viol; but they succeed in nothing but the action. The last fellow imitates * * * * * curtseying to a French horn. There are twenty medley overtures, and a man who speaks a prologue and an ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... occupied together with Kaulbach, E. Forster, Liebig, Carriere, and others. The scenery and dresses are brilliant, but probably you would not like them particularly, and I, for my part, think them mannered and pretentious. In the orchestra the wind (especially flutes, clarinets, and bassoon) is excellent. The violins and double basses (six in number) are a little hazy, and lack the necessary energy, both in bowing, which is short and easy-going, and in rhythm. The PIANOS and CRESCENDOS are insufficient, and for the same reason there is no fulness in the FORTES. "Lachner" has, no ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... body of the church, as if in a pew, visible to the naked eye of all; while two cantors in copes clapped pieces of wood together as a signal for the congregation to kneel or rise. Most quaint of all were the surpliced instrumentalists with their braying bassoon and ophicleide: not to forget the double-bass player who 'sawed' away for the bare life of him. The ever visible organist voluntarized ravishingly and in really fine style. I should like to have heard him at his own proper instrument, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... own artless way, paying no heed to what I have foolishly written about his shortcomings. As for the thrasher's smile-provoking gutturals, I recall that even in the symphonies of the greatest of masters there are here and there quaint bassoon phrases, which have, and doubtless were intended to have, a somewhat whimsical effect; and remembering this, I am ready to own that I was less wise than I thought myself when I found so much fault with the thrush's performance. I have sins enough to answer for: may this never be ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... plaint of French-horn, violin, and bassoon, rose a silvery confusion of voices and laughter and the sound of a hundred footfalls in unison, while, from the open windows there issued a warm breath, heavily laden with the smell of scented fans, of rich fabrics, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... it fought its way up against the pull of Earth's gravity and through the Earth's magnetic field, using the fabric of space itself as the fulcrum against which it applied its power, was like the vibration of a note struck somewhere near the bottom of a piano keyboard, or the rumble of a contra bassoon. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... are crickets shrilling Beyond the deep bassoon of frogs. They cease for a moment As the rattling clangor Of the trolley Bumps by. I hear footsteps Hollow on the pavement Now deserted And blank of sound. They die. The crickets now are sleeping; Even ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... six-stringed bass; the shepherd who had charmed us in the field was there with his German flute, a venerable looking man, who is their steward, played on the violincello, a lame youth on the French horn, another, who seemed very near blind, on the bassoon, and two on the fiddle. My cousin had no share in the performance except singing agreeably, wherein she was joined by some of the ladies, and where the music could bear it, by ten of the young girls, with two or three others whom we had not seen, and whose voices and manner were equally pleasing. ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... appalling way, and their eyes to start from their sockets, while their sufferings seemed to produce wails, shrieks, and cries for help or mercy, mingled with groans, as the men worked hard with a perfect battery of old-fashioned key-bugles, supported by ophicleide and bassoon. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... original. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is the greatest work of the kind that has ever been produced[740].' BOSWELL. 'The truth is, it is impossible perfectly to translate poetry[741]. In a different language it may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flagelet.' HARRIS. 'I think Heroick poetry is best in blank verse; yet it appears that rhyme is essential to English poetry, from our deficiency in metrical quantities. In my opinion, the chief excellence of our language is ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... is the lonely wood, But lo! the faeries light their firefly lamps, Elusive foxfire flames from marish damps; Hastes to the morris-dance an elfin brood; A far bell chimes, the cricket cheerly shrills, The droning beetle sounds his hoarse bassoon And hylas trill; eftsoon the rising moon The ambient air ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... or Contrabassoon (Fr. contrebasson; Ger. Kontrafagott), a wood-wind instrument of the double reed family, which it completes as grand bass, the other members being the oboe, cor anglais, and bassoon. The contrafagotto corresponds to the double bass in strings, to the contrabass tuba in the brass wind, and to the pedal clarinet in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... cheeks puffing, with all their efforts, at a French horn. Some that are grown old and Amazonian, who have abandoned their fiddles and their lovers, take vigorously to the kettledrum; and one poor limping lady, who had been crossed in love, now makes an admirable figure on the bassoon. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... meridian of a warm summer's day, when from the inn of old Gaspar Varni, underneath the heights of Sorento, might have been heard the sound of viols, and the deep notes of the bassoon ringing clear from amidst the clash of merry voices. Music and careless mirth, the never failing concomitants of an Italian holiday, were here in full ascendency; for the birthday of the portly host happening to fall on the anniversary of St. Geronimo, the yearly festival ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... all! what a sight was there! The fiddlers in the orchestra, 'albeit unused to the melting mood!' blubbered like hungry children crying for their bread and butter; and when the bell rang for music between the acts, the tears ran from the bassoon player's eyes in such plentiful showers, that they choked the finger-stops, and, making a spout of the instrument, poured in such torrents on the first fiddler's book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... was a cacophony of smells, ranging from the heavily oppressive odour of the Dutch cheeses and the Gruyeres to the alkaline pungency of the Olivets. From the Cantal, the Cheshire, and the goats' milk cheeses there seemed to come a deep breath like the sound of a bassoon, amidst which the sharp, sudden whiffs of the Neufchatels, the Troyes, and the Mont d'Ors contributed short, detached notes. And then the different odours appeared to mingle one with another, the reek of the Limbourgs, the Port Saluts, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... wind instruments betrayed a tendency to hasten the movements, and it was necessary to hold them back with a firm hand, for they would otherwise outstrip the stringed instruments; which, from a musical point of view, would have been disastrous. The bassoon himself, the son of Josse Lietrinck the apothecary, a well-bred young man, seemed ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... hand organ; accordion, seraphina^, concertina; humming top. flute, fife, piccolo, flageolet; clarinet, claronet^; basset horn, corno di bassetto [It], oboe, hautboy, cor Anglais [Fr.], corno Inglese^, bassoon, double bassoon, contrafagotto^, serpent, bass clarinet; bagpipes, union pipes; musette, ocarina, Pandean pipes; reed instrument; sirene^, pipe, pitch-pipe; sourdet^; whistle, catcall; doodlesack^, harmoniphone^. horn, bugle, cornet, cornet-a-pistons, cornopean^, clarion, trumpet, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... instrumentalists and vocalists for the services, and that made them support the chapels and choir-schools that have served for musical education in default of schools. We who represent art in the cathedrals are as much despised as were the minstrels in the old chapels, players of the clarion and bassoon. For the canons, all that sleeps in the musical archives is so much Greek, and we, the artistic priests, form a race apart, and are only just a step above the sacristans. The Chapel-master, the organist, the tenor, contralto, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Gnawing his gloveless thumb, and pacing slow. Bright eyes might gaze on him, compassionate, But that yon rosy maiden, early afoot, Is o'er her shoulder watching, with wild fear, A horned host that rushes by amain, Bellowing bassoon-like music. Angry shouts Of drovers, horrid menace, and dire curse, Shrill scream of imitative boy, and crack Of cruel whip, the tread of clumsy feet Are hurrying on:—but now, with instinct sure, Madly those doomed ones bolt from the dread road That leads to Brighton and to death. ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... Liddy's said he'd ha' moor too, or else he'd sing no moor at that shop. He're noan beawn to be snape't wi' a tootlin' whipper-snapper like Joss,—a bit of a bow-legged whelp, twenty year yunger nor his-sel. Then there wur a crack coom i' Billy Tootle bassoon; an' Billy stuck to't that some o'th lot had done it for spite. An' there were sich fratchin an' cabals among 'em as never wur known. An' they natter't, and brawl't, an' back-bote; and played one another o' maks o' ill-contrive't tricks. Well, yo' ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... colored glass, and all more or less out of the perpendicular; a worm-eaten oak-screen separating the chancel and a solemn enclosure, erst a chapel, now the Fairfax pew; a loft where the choir sat in front for divine service, with fiddle and bassoon, and the school-children sat behind, all under the eye of the parson and his clerk, who ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to be sung, lest the sonorous announcement of the clerk should still leave the bucolic mind in doubt on that head. Then followed the migration of the clerk to the gallery, where, in company with a bassoon, two key-bugles, a carpenter understood to have an amazing power of singing 'counter', and two lesser musical stars, he formed the complement of a choir regarded in Shepperton as one of distinguished ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... band of music played; but it was all wind instruments. Mr. Lejeune, the first bassoon, is a most capital ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... whose monotonous note wearies the ear, and from hornets and bees of every description that keep up an incessant hum as they suck Juices from the plants or dive their antennae into the ripe fruit or perhaps into some carrion lying near. The bassoon-like sound never ceases a single instant and tells the listener how innumerable are the populations of insects which live and generate their sort under the shade of their jungle retreat. Other inexplicable noises—far off crashes, mysterious sounds that chill one's veins, howls ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... to violins or flutes can be assigned to other instruments without doing the composition utter damage. But in the works of Berlioz music and instruments are inseparable. One cannot at all rearrange his orchestration. Though the phrases that he has written for bassoon or clarinet might imaginably be executed by other instruments, the music would perish utterly in the substitution. What instrument but the viola could appreciate the famous "Harold" theme? For just as in a painting of Cezanne's the form is inseparable from ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... sat a clarionet, a double bass, a bassoon, and a flute: also a tenor voice which "set the tune". The carpenter, to whom the tenor voice belonged, had a tuning-fork which he struck on his desk and applied to his ear. He then hummed the tuning-fork note, and the octave ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... the paper to take with them, bidding them enter the first apothecary's shop they could find, and there write what was needful: "Rinconete, and Cortadillo," namely, "comrades; novitiate, none; Rinconete, a florist; Cortadillo, a bassoon-player."[48] To this was to be added the year, month, and day, but not ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... no sympathy for his sufferings, but ecstatically proclaims her love for Fidelio as the reason why she must needs say nay. And this she does, not amiably or sympathetically, but pettishly and with an impatient reiteration of "No, no, no, no!" in which the bassoon drolly supports her. A second knocking at the door, then a third, and finally she is relieved of her tormentor by Rocco, who calls him out into the garden. Left alone, Marcellina sings her longing for Fidelio and pictures ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I cannot be a bellettrist. No doubt I must recognize, as even the Ancient Mariner did, that I must tell my story entertainingly if I am to hold the wedding guest spellbound in spite of the siren sounds of the loud bassoon. But "for art's sake" alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence. I know that there are men who, having nothing to say and nothing to write, are nevertheless so in love with oratory and with literature that they ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... his bassoon, and you're respectable civilians one and all," says Mr. George. "Family people. Children growing up. Mat's old mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else, corresponded with, and helped a little, and—well, well! To be ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... stipendiary curate to the good Dr. Bailey in his over-crowded church. [Footnote: St. James', according to my present recollection.] With an albatross perched on his shoulder, and who might be introduced to the congregation as the immediate organ of his conversion, and supported by the droning of a bassoon, she represented the mariner lecturing to advantage in English; the doctor overhead in the pulpit enforcing it in Hebrew. Angry I was, though forced to laugh. But of what use is anger or argument in a duel with female criticism? Our ponderous masculine ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... prayers, hymns and addresses left no impression on my memory, but my attention was suddenly stung into life by a remark. An elderly man, fat and greasy, with a voice like a bassoon, and an imperturbable assurance, was denouncing the spread of infidelity, and the lukewarmness of professing Christians, who refrained from battling with the wickedness at their doors. They were like the Laodiceans, whom the angel of the Apocalypse spewed out of his ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the name of Goodall, who belonged to the orchestra of the Theatre Royal, Richmond, in 1767, was fonder of his, or any other man's, bottle than his own bassoon. The natural consequence was, that he frequently failed in his attendances at the theatre. Upon one occasion, after an absence of a week, he returned in the middle of the performances for the evening. A piece was being acted called the "Intriguing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... Mathematics and geography and statistics and Italian book-keeping, ha-ha ha-ha! and music! You doubt it, my dear sir?'—he pounced suddenly upon me—'ask Alexander Daviditch if I'm not first-rate on the bassoon. I should be a poor sort of Bohemian—Czech, I should say—if I weren't! Yes, sir, I'm a Czech, and my native place is ancient Prague! By the way, Alexander Daviditch, why haven't we seen you for so long! We ought to have a little duet... ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... for the boom of the fairy bassoon, And the oboes and horns as they strike up a tune, And the twang of the harps and the sigh of the lutes, And the clash of the cymbals, the purl of the flutes; And the fiddles sail in To the musical din, While the chief all on fire, ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... south, east, or west we're bound for, captain?" asked Quin, with a voice like that of a conciliatory bassoon. ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... in fact interrupted by a blatant noise which rose behind them, in which the voice of the preacher emitted, in unison with that of the old woman, tones like the grumble of a bassoon combined with the screaking of a cracked fiddle. At first, the aged pair of sufferers had been contented to condole with each other in smothered expressions of complaint and indignation; but the sense of their injuries became more pungently aggravated ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... aesthetic gravity, taking its "philosophy" and its "art" with such portentous self-respect, that it is extremely pleasant when a reckless young Alcibiades of a Byron breaks into the enchanted circle and clears the air with a few resounding blasts from his profane bassoon. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Beneath a cloudless moon; You hear a sound, that seems to wear The semblance of a tune, As if a broken fife should strive To drown a cracked bassoon. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Miss DOROTHY RICHARDSON dictate to the sound of trumpets, garbed in crimson trouserloons? Does Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT cantillate his "copy" into the horn of a graphophone or use a motor-stylus? Does Mr. SIEGRIED SASSOON beat his breast with one hand while he plays the loud bassoon with the other? Does Mr. ALEC WAUGH use sermon-paper or foolscap? Does Mr. ALDOUS HUXLEY keep a tame gorilla? These are the really illuminating details that we hunger for. Without them it is impossible to appreciate the artistry of our young Masters. Mr. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various |
