"Chopin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and her mother was the daughter of a Frankfort banker. She was married in 1827 to the comte Charles d'Agoult. In Paris she gathered round her a brilliant society which included Alfred de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Ingres, Chopin, Meyerbeer, Heine and others. She was separated from her husband, and became the mistress of Franz Liszt. During her frequent travels in Switzerland, France and Italy she made the acquaintance of George Sand, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Swiss Boy" or the "Rocks of St. Malo." The result was she had been requested to go on with lessons that had had such a favorable beginning, and my musical education was entrusted to her until it came time for me to play the music of Chopin and Liszt. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... this. She plays the little piece delightfully, and has promised me to let it exercise its charms upon you. I shall, therefore, ere long send you a copy of the new version of the "Berceuse" addressed "to the Princess Marcelline Czartoryska, Klostergasse 4." [A pupil of Chopin's] Wend yourway thither—and, in case you do not find the Princess at home, leave the manuscript with your card. I have already told her of your contemplated visit, and have spoken of you as my heart's kinsman and friend. You will find the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... committee, and then the secretary wrote me a note. It was a nice enough note, of course, but I knew what it meant. I see now well enough that my fingers were rather stiffer than I realized, and that my 'Twinkling Sprays' and 'Fluttering Zephyrs' were not quite up to date. They wanted Grieg and Lassen and Chopin. 'Very well,' said I, 'just wait.' Now, I never knuckle under. I never give up. So I sent right out for a teacher. I practised scales an hour a day for weeks and months. Granger thought I was going crazy. I tackled ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the piano and began mechanically to play scales, but the somnolent monotony of the tones only added to her nervousness. Later she played some of Chopin's Nocturnes, lingered over those mysterious tones that seemed like strains from another world, full of tears, pain, cries of anguish, and bleak despair; the radiance of cold moonlight nights, moans like the whisper of departing ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... the Paris Opera House. The success of this masterpiece so disheartened Rossini that he resolved to write no more operas, and withdrew to Bologna. Charles Francois Gounod, on the other hand, now began his musical career by entering the Paris Conservatory. Frederick Chopin, the Polish composer, at this time was at the height of his vogue as the most recherche pianist of Paris. He was the favorite of a circle of friends consisting of Meyerbeer, Bellini, Berlioz, Liszt, Balzac, and Heine. It was during this year that Liszt introduced Chopin to Madame Dudevant, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... And Chopin's harmonic feeling as well as Berlioz's orchestral wizardry played a role in Wagner's artistic education. But for all his incalculable indebtednesses, Wagner is the great initiator, the compeller of the modern period. It is not only because he summarized the old. It is because he ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... with pomegranate, glowing with orange, silvered with lemon blossoms, came the tinkling music of contadini bells, the bleating of kids, the twittering of happy birds, the distant chime of an Angelus; all the subtle harmony, the fragmentary melody that flickers through an Impromptu of Chopin or Schubert. She saw the simulacrum of her former self, the proud, happy Beryl of old, singing from the score of the "Messiah", in the organ loft of a marble church; she heard the rich tenor voice of her handsome brother, as he trilled a barcarole one night, crossing the Atlantic; she smelled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... manners and correct, conventional speeches had so charmed and captivated the lady on his right, would, when once in this room, sit astride some chair, a pipe in one hand, a mug of beer in the other. Here he would discuss with Simmons or Jack or Oliver his preference of Chopin over Beethoven, or the difference between Parepa-Rosa and Jenny Lind, or any topic which had risen out of the common talk, and all too with a grotesqueness of speech and manner that would have frozen his hostess of the dinner-table ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... immediately commenced to grimace, putting his hand up to his brim in military fashion, "a right honourable privy frequenter of the local agreeable establishments, Prince Bottlekin, Count Liquorkin, Baron Whoatinkevich-Giddapkovski—Mister Beethoven! Mister Chopin!" he greeted the musicians. "Play me something from the opera The Brave and Charming General Anisimov, or, A Hubbub in the Coolidor. My regards to the little political economist Zociya.[5] A-ha! Then you kiss only at Easter? We shall write ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and his sorrows and his temptations faded from him. He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his fingers moving almost of themselves, his eyes, half closed, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... is Brain, not Crime. Authors, musicians, newspaper men, actors, and artists are the inhabitants of these mansions. A child could control them. They assault and batter nothing but pianos; they steal nothing but ideas; they murder nobody except Chopin and Beethoven. Not through these shall an ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... you to treat her? Unless you are an ingrate infinite you will treat her well. You will treat her better than any one in the universe except your God. Her name will have in it more music than in all that Chopin, or Bach, or Rheinberger composed. Her eyes, swollen with three weeks of night watching over a child with scarlet fever, will be to you beautiful as a May morning. After the last rose petal has dropped out of her cheek, after the last feather ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... herself to discuss Motchalov, and did not confine herself to sighs and interjections only, but uttered a few true observations full of feminine insight in regard to his acting. Mihalevitch spoke about music; she sat down without ceremony to the piano, and very correctly played some of Chopin's mazurkas, which were then just coming into fashion. Dinner-time came; Lavretsky would have gone away, but they made him stay: at dinner the general regaled him with excellent Lafitte, which the general's lackey hurried off in a street-sledge ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... wind wandering, forever grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, sobbing ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... branches, and cloud-shadows flitting over far-off blue mountains, while little birds sing their love-songs, and golden-haired children weave garlands of wild roses; or when in the solemn twilight we listen to wondrous harmonies of Beethoven and Chopin that stir the heart like voices from an unseen world; at such times one feels that the profoundest answer which science can give to our questionings is but a superficial answer after all. At these moments, when the world seems fullest of beauty, one feels ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... will go with your brother, first, to see if Madame Chopin has other lodgers. If so, I will go to the wife of one of my clerks, who also lets a portion of a house; or, if you would not mind poor accommodation, to another of the captains' wives as, in your brother's character of a sailor, ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... from the need of it soon enough," promised the other. She crossed to the piano. "What kind of music do you want? No; don't tell me. I should be able to guess." Half turning on the bench she gazed speculatively at the lax figure on the rug. "Chopin, I think. I've guessed right? Well, I don't think I shall play you Chopin to-day. You don't need ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... privileged servitude after all, and the time was coming when it was to become an unmitigated one. But effaced as a political sovereignty, Poland was to survive as a nationality of genius. Her sons were going to sing their songs in other lands, but Mickiewiz and Sienkiewicz and Chopin ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... evenings were spent by the mother in reading and writing, while the daughter gave herself up to the indulgence of her one great passion, music. Scales and exercises, Schubert and Chopin, and invariably at the end—before retiring for the night—Beethoven, the Master, the King ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... otherwise, that passed through Antwerp made his rooms a favorite resort and house of call. And Barty was introduced into a world as delightful to him as it was new—and to music that ravished his soul with a novel enchantment: Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Schumann—and he found that Schubert had written a few other ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... that you would like me to play something for you, as your musician friend has failed you. I shall be very glad to, if it will help you any. What do you care for? Something serious or something gay? Are you fond of Chopin, or Beethoven, or ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... be chucked out of the window, as Mrs. F.'s AUNT might suggest,—but to be thanked and wondered at as an inchoate OFFENBACH, who might, under other circumstances, have written an American opera-bouffe, or, better still, as a possible CHOPIN, who might have written a second "March Funebre" as hopeless and desolate and fascinating as that of the despairing and poetic Pole. (I am coming to "FRITZ" in a moment, but I won't be hurried by ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... tremendous incident, and to his effort and vain dream I shall revert in the next chapter of this book. Now I must on with the history of the patriarchs. The story of Abraham and his attempted offering of Isaac has been much used as oratorio material, and Joseph Elsner, Chopin's teacher, brought out a Polish opera, "Ofiara ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the piano playing world do without the music of Frederic Chopin? We can hardly think of the piano without thinking of Chopin, since he wrote almost exclusively for the universal instrument. His music touches the heart always rather than the head, the emotional message far outweighs the intellectual meaning. It is vital music—love music, winning ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Thursday, November 27. Bedad, then, 'tis Misther Paddy REWSKI himself that is the broth of a boy entirely at the piano-forte, but, Begorra, he's better at the piano than the forte. He gave us a nice mixture of HANDEL, BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN, LISZT, and then a neat little compo of his own, consisting of a charming theme, with mighty ingenious and beautiful variations, all his own, divil a less. Great success for Paddy REWSKI. The Irish Pole, or Pole-ished ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... the undertaker, and forget that their one duty is to behave as mutes. But we won't talk about them. They are the mere body-snatchers of literature. The dust is given to one, and the ashes to another, and the soul is out of their reach. And now, let me play Chopin to you, or Dvorak? Shall I play you a fantasy by Dvorak? He writes ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... look through and through one. But after she had heard him play she lost her shyness, for in his music she heard the voices she loved. He called her "little one," and told her long stories of Liszt and Chopin and the other masters. "They are the people that ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... clover-blooms, fair, stately heads of men With poets' faces heartsome, dear and pale — Sweet visages of all the souls of time Whose loving service to the world has been In the artist's way expressed and bodied. Oh, In arms' reach, here be Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, And Buddha (sweetest masters! Let me lay These arms this once, this humble once, about Your reverend necks — the most containing clasp, For all in all, this world e'er saw!) and ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... served in the drawing-room, Hood, again dominating the company (much to Deering's disgust), suggested music. Pierrette contributed a flashing, golden Chopin waltz and Pantaloon Schubert's "Serenade," which he played atrociously, whereupon Hood announced that he would sing a Scotch ballad, which he proceeded to do surprisingly well. The evening could not last forever, and Deering chafed at his inability to detach Pierrette ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... triumphs were continued at Weimar, Cassel, and Frankfurt. After winning the approval of Spohr and other competent judges who were above all envy, she proceeded to Paris, where her father had the proud privilege of exhibiting her talents to Chopin. In Weimar, Goethe took a deep interest in the wonderful child, and sent his picture to the "Richly endowed (Kunstreichen) Clara Wieck," as a token of the pleasure her playing ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... spin The web of life for weal or woe, Whilst I above my violin Shall sit and watch the vale below All crimson in the afterglow; And when the patient stars grow bright I'll draw across the strings my bow Till Chopin ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... know the texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli. In yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden Age. Their poetry was not that of Milton and Byron and Tennyson; of Raphael and Titian; Mozart and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hapless Feodor during an evening call he interned him in the vitals of a tuneless Baby Grand, and for three hours played on him CHOPIN'S polonaise in A flat major, with the loud pedal down. On his release Feodor had lost his reason and rushed to the nearest police-station to ask to be sent to the Front immediately. His object, he explained, was to end the War. The Bulgar authorities thought the plan ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... was bad—and I won't again, truly," promised Billy. But her eyes danced, and the next moment she had whirled about on the piano stool and dashed into a Chopin waltz. The room itself, then, seemed to be full of the ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... friend of mine. He deals always in superlatives. That is so refreshing here in Oxford where we are all so clever that we are deadly afraid of each other, and everybody talks drab. And his music is divine! I hear they talk of him in Paris as another Chopin. He passed his first degree examination the other day magnificently! Come and hear him some evening at my house. Jim Meyrick, too, has told me all about you. His mother is a cousin of mine, and he condescends occasionally to come and see me. He is, I understand, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... glow of the lamps within. And, with a half hour of such glow to cozen them, the two women were soon merry again over their reminiscences, Mrs. Pollard at her embroidery, Mrs. Reeves at the piano, strumming something from Chopin in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cannot paint the baptism of John upon velvet, does not know a word of that accursed French language, breaks down in the "forward and back" of a cotillon, and cannot with spider fingers spin upon the piano the swiftest Tarantelle of Chopin.— 2558 Metronome? We will find something better and braver than all that, my little Alice! Confound your Italianos!—the birds shall be the music-masters of my tiny dame. Moonrise, and sunset, and the autumnal woods shall teach her tint and tone. The flowers are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... aimless wandering to and fro. Margot was no great performer, but what she could play she played by heart, and Nature had provided her with a sweet, thrush-like voice, with that true musical thrill which no teaching can impart. At the first few bars of a Chopin nocturne Mr Macalister's newspaper wavered, and fell to his knee. Margot heard the rustle of it, slid gradually into a simpler melody, and was conscious of a heavy hand waving steadily ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of Germany there occurred to Michael a Chopin prelude, at which he had worked a little during the last two months in London. The notes he knew perfectly; he had believed also that he had found a certain conception of it as a whole, so that he could make something ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... it had never stopped once, so silent had he been. It was that Phillida, with the large dark eyes, and she was playing something that Lettice sometimes played, and very nearly, though naturally not quite, as well. Pocket would have said that it was Mendelssohn, or Chopin, "or something," for his love of music was greater than his knowledge. But it was not exactly the music that detained him; he was thinking more of the musician, who had shown him kindness, after all. It would be only decent to thank her before ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... Marilyn was already at the piano playing softly a bit from the Angel Chorus, a snatch of Handel's Largo, a Chopin Nocturne, one of Mendelssohn's songs without words. The two came in hilariously, the young man pretending to lean heavily on the girl, and finding much occasion to hold her hands, a performance to which ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... critics and a certain public have welcomed them; but is it not "sham antique"? It does not remind one of the really classic. Moreover, the naked foot should be of antique beauty, which in most of these cases it is not. Advertisements tell us that these dance are interpretations of classic music—Chopin, Weber, Brahms, etc.; they are not really interpretations, but distractions! We can hardly imagine that these composers intended their work for actual dancing. One can listen and be entranced; one sees the dancer's "interpretations" or "translations" and the ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... probably had occasion to observe the susceptibility of dogs to music. It may here suffice to give one personal observation. A dog (of mixed breed, partly collie), very well known to me, on hearing a nocturne of Chopin, whined and howled, especially at the more pathetic passages, once or twice catching and drawing out the actual note played; he panted, walked about anxiously, and now and then placed his head on the player's lap. When the player proceeded to a more cheerful ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 1777, to his father. [We have here a suggestion of the tempo rubato as played by Chopin according to the testimony of Mikuli, who said that no matter how free Chopin was either in melody or arabesque with his right hand, the left always adhered strictly to the time. Mozart learned the principle from ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... programs; for I must know every note in them, both for voice and piano. I make it a point to know the accompaniments, for in case I am ever left without an accompanist, I can play for myself, and it has a great effect on audiences. They may not know or care whether you can play Beethoven or Chopin, but the fact that you can play while you sing, ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... humming-bird's throat. Over such spots one sits in his boat spell-bound, color-entranced, and the ears of his soul listen to color music as thrilling, as enchanting as melodies by Foster and Balfe, minuets by Mozart and Haydn, arias by Handel, nocturnes and serenades by Chopin and Schumann, overtures by Rossini, massive choruses and chorals by Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn, fugues by Bach, and concertos ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... his marked as "Opus 33"? Which is higher as a work of art,—that in its sadness unparalleled song of Shakespeare, "Blow, blow, thou Winter wind," or his "Othello"? Or again; which is a higher work of art, a nocturne by Chopin, or a sonata by Beethoven; an Essay by Macaulay, or a "Decline and Fall" by Gibbon? Lastly, which is higher as a work of art,—the wonderfully accurate spiritedness of Schreyer's painting of a horse, or the indescribable power of Wagner's Race in a Roman Circus? ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... across the hall, and entered the room with her. Sir Allan, with his back to them, was seated at the piano, softly playing an air of Chopin's to himself. At the sound of the opening ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... better than you did a month after your illness, Mrs. Fullerton," said Joseph Fleming, who was to take a hand, while Hadria played Grieg or Chopin, or Scottish melodies to please the old people. The whist-players ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Stendhal, Conrad can write in the midst of war's alarums about the hair's-breadth 'scapes of his characters. But, then, the Polish is the most remarkable race in Europe; from leading forlorn hopes to playing Chopin the Poles are unequalled. Mr. Conrad has returned to his old habitat in fiction. An ingenious map shows the reader precisely where his tragic tale is enacted. It may not be his most artistic, but it is an engrossing story. Compared with Chance, it seems a cast-back to primitive souls; ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... dried fruit. Schnitz, schnitzen,(Ger.) - To chop, chip, snip. Schönheitsidéal,(Ger.) - The ideal of beauty. Schopenhauer - A celebrated German "philosophical physiologist." Schoppen,(Ger.) - A liquid measure, chopin, pint. Schrocken(Erschrocken) - Frightened. Schwaben - Suabia. Schwan,(Ger.) - Swan. Schweinblatt - (Swine) Dirty paper. Schweitzer kase,(Ger.) - Swiss cheese. Schwer,(Ger.) - Heavy. Schwig, Swig, verb. - To drink by large draughts. ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... tone-color there is in all this harmonic re-enforcement, and who would now say that the pedals should never be used? By their proper use, the student's ear is educated to a refined sense of distinction of consonance and dissonance, and the intention and beauty of Chopin's ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... the occupations and pleasures of the summer Jacques kept as near as he could to Serena. If he learned a new tune, by listening to the piano—some simple, artful air of Mozart, some melancholy echo of a nocturne of Chopin, some tender, passionate love-song of Schubert—it was to her that he would play it first. If he could persuade her to a boat-ride with him on the lake, Sunday evening, the week was complete. He even learned to know the more shy and delicate ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... towers at the corners. "Heaven help the poor cholera-stricken wretches whose fate it is to be boxed up in that prison! It helps to show, however, what a rabid hatred the Mallorcans have of all manner of disease. Read George Sand's book about the island if you want to understand that. She brought Chopin here long ago, and wintered with him at the Valledemosa Convent, hoping to save him from consumption. The people in the village there are as hospitable as any in the world as a general thing, but they ostracized these two because ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... with "Ah! non giunge," from "La Sonnambula," the bolero from "The Sicilian Vespers," "O luce di quest anima," from "Linda," or the vocalized waltz by Strauss, the applause always was riotous, and so remained until she sat down to the pianoforte and sang Chopin's "Maiden's Wish," in Polish, to her own accompaniment. As for Mme. Melba, not to be set in the shade simply because Mme. Sembrich is almost as good a pianist as she is a singer, she supplements Arditi's waltz or Massenet's ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... public rooms or on the terrace overlooking the hotel gardens. In the salon a young Englishman, an accomplished musician, had been playing for some time on the piano, when suddenly and unexpectedly he plunged into the strains of Chopin's Marche Funebre, which had the immediate effect of scattering his audience, since many of his listeners, not caring for so melancholy a piece of music, deserted the room for the garden. Lucky indeed were those ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... quivering and the consequent irritation that followed came upon the kindly German, and, after his wont, he was caught up and borne above the world. On one sublime theme after another he executed variations, putting into them sometimes Chopin's sorrow, Chopin's Raphael-like perfection; sometimes the stormy Dante's grandeur of Liszt—the two musicians who most nearly approach Paganini's temperament. When execution reaches this supreme degree, the executant stands beside ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and some of the writing is formal and old-fashioned, and, at times, too thin to attract the sympathy or to excite the interest of pianists of the present day, who enjoy the richer inheritance of Beethoven, the romantic tone-pictures of Schumann and Brahms, the fascinating miniatures of Chopin, and the clever glitter of Liszt. Still it does not deserve utter oblivion. Hear what Fr. Rochlitz says of it in the Allg. Mus. Zeit.: "It (the sonata) is indeed a tragic scene, one so clearly thought out and so definitely expressed, that it is by no means difficult—not only in each ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... their strength and agility, raising her eyes to heaven like Saint Cecilia, played the "Prayer of Moses in Egypt," which her son had bought for her and which she had learned by heart in a few hours. Godefroid recognized in her playing the same quality as in Chopin's. The soul was satisfied by divine sounds of which the dominant note was that of tender melancholy. Monsieur Bernard had received Godefroid with a look that was long a stranger to his eyes. If tears were not forever dried at their ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... and her smile in the moonlight reminded him of a rippling passage of Chopin. Prosaic enough, however, was what she went on to tell him of her struggle for life by day and for learning by night. 'Of course, I could only attend the night medical school. I lived by lining cloaks with fur; ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... so charming as her father," replied Lady Laura, with whom that favourite adjective served for everything in the way of praise. To her the Pyramids and Niagara, a tropical thunderstorm, a mazourka by Chopin, and a Parisian bonnet, were all alike charming. "I suppose solidity isn't so nice in a girl," she went on, laughing; "but certainly Sophia Granger is not such a favourite with me as her father is. I suppose she will make a brilliant marriage, however, sooner or later, unattractive ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... like this!" cried Bixiou, ruffling his locks till they stood on end. Gifted with the same talent for mimicking absurdities which Chopin the pianist possesses to so high a degree, he proceeded forthwith to represent the ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... Stanton's dolls' cabinet in the corner of the room opposite the piano. He observed the Beethoven Concerto for pianoforte which had Helene Stanton's name on it, also the C Minor and F Minor concertos of Chopin, besides other compositions for pianoforte of an exceedingly difficult character; all this music was marked with ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... divines étoiles." I know not what instrument to compare with his verse. I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to me more like a marvellously toned piano. His hands pass over the keys and he produces Chopin-like fluidities. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... close of 1831 that Liszt met Chopin in Paris. From the first, these two men, so different, became fast friends. Chopin's delicate, retiring soul found a singular delight in Liszt's strong and imposing personality. Liszt's exquisite perception enabled him perfectly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... elegant French originally, and relate to the social position of artists and the state of the art of music in certain cities or even an entire country. A part of his works is devoted to the music of gypsies, and to a true and honest history of the life of his friend Chopin. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... of music delighted in the exercise of this talent, although it is now rarely attempted in public, Chopin having been one of the last to exercise it. Bach excelled in it, sometimes developing themes in the form of a fugue at a public performance. No preparation would be possible under these circumstances, as in many cases the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... a Ranch is listed here to illustrate how titles often have nothing to do with subject. It is without either story or ranch; it is about some dilettanteish people who go out to a Kansas sheep farm, talk Chopin, and wash their fingers in ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, Waldteufel, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... a Polonaise of Chopin's on a cottage piano. She played fairly well, but not remarkably. She had been trained by a competent master and had a good deal of execution. But her playing lacked that grip and definite intention which are the blood and bone of a performance. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... my hasty remark—you speak but truth." And then he played Chopin's "Funeral March," a dirge not only to the great men of Poland ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... hysterical Niobe. There were perfume-bottles enough to start a coiffeur in business, and woolly lambs enough for a dozen pastoral poems or as many bucolic butchers. But the piano was piled high with Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's delicious dream-music, while a deluge of French novels had evidently surged over that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... want to leave Paris.... Of course I was playing Chopin bits, with an ache in my heart to match, that I couldn't bear and was enjoying to the utmost. What do girls play now? Then all of us had attacks of Chopin. Madame used to laugh and say, 'I hear the harbour bar still moaning,' and order that particular girl's favourite dessert. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the piano. She played really well. Otherwise she would not have played to him, or to any one. She was specially at home in the music of Chopin, and had studied minutely many of the "Etudes." Now she began to play the Etude in E flat. As she played she felt that the intense nervous irritation which had possessed her was diminishing slightly, was becoming more bearable. She played several of the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... terrors to fictitious means. We was a man whose huge stature, thews, sinews, and bulk in proportion, would have enabled him to enact Colbrand, Ascapart, or any other giant of romance, without raising himself nearer to heaven even by the altitude of a chopin. The legs and knees of this son of Anak were bare, as were his arms from a span below the shoulder; but his feet were defended with sandals, fastened with cross straps of scarlet leather studded with brazen knobs. A close jerkin ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sat playing the "Revolutionary Etude" of Chopin. The room was magnificent in its proportions, its furnishings were massive, its paneled oak walls were hung with portraits of men and women in the costumes of a bygone day. Through the lofty windows, the casements of which were open to the evening sky there was a vista of forest ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... probably the greatest of all pianists of today, Ignace Jan Paderewski. For years he has traveled from country to country and from city to city, playing the piano in a manner no other has been able to imitate, although Chopin's playing, it is said, had much the same effect upon the audiences. In Paderewski's playing as in his composition there is always an undercurrent deeply sad and weird. No one but a genius from the martyred land of Poland, or from some other that had equally ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... of Chopin Preludes and a Brahms Rhapsodie Hongroise brought the first half of the concert to a close, and Gregory watched with amusement, during the ensuing scene, the vagaries of the intoxicated crowd. People rose to their feet, clapping, shouting, bellowing, screaming. He saw on the platform the face of ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... emanated from the varnish, and which was caused by the heat. Nevertheless, he played finely, and as a result was invited to breakfast the next morning by the Duke of Montebello, Marshal Ney's son. This brought him into contact with Chopin, and shortly afterwards he gave his first concert under the duke's patronage, and with the assistance of Ernst, Chopin, ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... family, is being dragged to prison because he has cut down one of a hundred thousand pine-trees that grow in the forest that is called mine. And we here, washed and clothed, having left the slops in our bedrooms to be cleaned up by slaves, eat and drink and discuss Schumann and Chopin and which of them moves us most or best cures our ennui? That is what I was thinking when I passed you, so I have spoken. Consider, is it possible to go on living in ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... classical stuff may do for those who like it well enough to stand it, but the domestic article suits me. I like the kind of beer that this man Bach turned out in the spring of the year, but I don't seem to be able to care much for his music. And so far as Chopin is concerned, I hope you'll all do your ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... While Chopin probably did not time his "Minute Waltz" to exactly sixty seconds, some auditors insist that it lives up to its name. Mme. Theodora Surkow-Ryder on one of her tours played the "Minute Waltz" as an encore, first telling her audience what it was. Thereupon a huge ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... but a year older than F., and yet played with the most astonishing perfection. Among other things the little fellow performed a morceau of his own composition, which was full of pathos, and gave tokens of uncommon ability. His father gave us sonatas of Mozart, Chopin, &c., and a polonaise. The Princess Czartoryski accompanied on ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of Chopin; and he rose and stood at the fireplace, with his hands folded behind his back. As she turned and looked at him, he ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... down-stairs in a bad temper—after you gentlemen have left," remarked Miss Georgie, significantly; and then she prattled away in this careful undertone. "What horrid stuff that fantasia is; don't you think so? A mixture of Wagner, and Chopin, and 'Home, Sweet Home.' Lady Adela has put you in her novel. Oh, yes, she has; she showed me the last pages this morning. You remember the young married English lady who is a great poetess?—well, she is rescued from drowning in the Bay of Syracuse ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... models for wax-flowers; and, in one corner, half thrust under the edge of the silken cushion, was an unfinished wreath of waxen convolvulus and a cluster of gentians. There, too, open at the page that narrated the death-struggle, lay Liszt's "Life of Chopin," pressed face downwards, with two purple pansies crushed and staining the leaves; and a small gold thimble peeping out of a crevice in the damask tattled of the careless feminine fingers that had left these traces ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... went into the living-room where our new piano is, and he played for us—Hungarian things, I think. Then he drifted into Chopin, and Alicia stood by and turned his ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... piano, then perhaps a new sensation is in store for the artistic world, and we shall see babies executing replicas of the old masters, and the Infant Slapdash painter painting the portraits of Society beauties. As a welcome relief to Chopin's Nocturne in D flat, played by Baby Hegner at St. James's Hall, we shall step across to Bond Street and behold "Le Petit Americain" dashing off his "Nocturne" on canvas. I sometimes wonder if I might have been made such an infant ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... surrounded by the influences that are at work in Europe today, he retained his individuality to the end, developing his style, however, and evincing new ideas in each succeeding work. His untimely death at the age of thirty-seven, a short life—like those of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Hugo Wolf—has robbed the world of one of its noblest singers, one of those few men of modern times who found expression in the language of musical song, a lyricist ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... only study which ever conquered her indolence. Here it happened that a famous musician, who settled in Cambridge for a time, came across her gift and took notice of it. And to please him she worked with industry, even with doggedness. Brahms, Chopin, Wagner—these great romantics possessed her in music as Shelley or Rossetti did in poetry. "You little demon, Laura! How do you come to play like that?" a girl friend—her only intimate friend—said to her once in despair. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for four English concertinas by Julius Baker. Mr. Julius Baker; Master Julius Abt Baker; Miss Lisette Baker (aged 8); and Miss Totty Baker (aged 6-1/2)'. Good Lord! 'Song: Rose softly blooming: Spohr. Miss Marian Lind.' I wonder whether she can sing! 'Polonaise in A flat major: Chopin'—what rot! As if working people cared about Chopin! Miss Elinor McQuinch is a fool, I see. 'Song: The Valley: Gounod.' Of course: I knew you would try that. Oho! Here's something sensible at last. 'Nigger melody. Uncle Ned. Mr. Marmaduke Lind, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... stood watch, the three others rolling up in their blankets among the luggage. It occurred to me for the first time that we had a phonograph under the cargo. I went down after it. At random I chose a record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin Nocturne played on a 'cello—a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a brushing of sick wings across the gates of heavens never to be entered; and then the finale—an insistent, feverish repetition of the human ache, ceasing ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... fountainheads of this literature in the works of a few great masters who have set the pace and established the limits for all the rest. In the line of purely instrumental music this has been done by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. The latter, who exercised a vast influence upon the manner of developing a musical thought and in the selection of the orchestral colors in which it can be expressed advantageously, powerfully stimulated all composers later than himself, nevertheless ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... was nothing to do but put them into the attache case in which I carry my music and try to believe that, wonderful man as he is, even my Professor wouldn't be able to see inside it when it was shut, in fact that it only rested with me to be quite sure that in his presence I only took out Chopin and not the gentleman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... the "vital spark," the "life element," it comes very close to a true definition of magnetism, for success without this precious Promethean force is inconceivable. It may be only a smouldering ember in the soul of a dying Chopin, but if it is there it is irresistible until it becomes extinct. Facial beauty and physical prowess all made way for the kind of magnetism that Socrates, George Sand, Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Paganini, Emerson, Dean ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... his friends. He is always ill, and as frail as a snow-drop, but an exquisite genius. He played to me, and I liked his talking scarcely less. Madame S. loved Liszt before him; she has thus been intimate with the two opposite sides of the musical world. Mickiewicz says, "Chopin talks with spirit, and gives us the Ariel view of the universe. Liszt is the eloquent tribune to the world of men, a little vulgar and showy certainly, but I like the tribune best." It is said here, that Madame S. has long had only a friendship for ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... But I mean other music, the hard things that papa likes. There is one of the Chopin nocturnes that Mrs. Duncan plays, oh, it is so beautiful! I wish you and ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... is to me anathema as a rule, there are none of MacDowell's works that I like better than his writings in this form. They are to me far the best since Beethoven, not excepting even Chopin's (pace his greatest prophet, Huneker). They seem to me to be of such stuff as Beethoven would have woven had he known in fact the modern ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... listeners, the same absorbed attention, the same spell. The superficial attributed these largely to his appearance and manner; the more thoughtful looked deeper. Here was a player who was a thoroughly trained master in technic and interpretation; one who knew his Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. These things of themselves would not hold an audience spellbound, for there were other artists equally well equipped. In a final analysis it was doubtless Paderewski's wonderful piano ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... control her mirth, hastily beat a retreat, followed more leisurely by Mr. Steell, and taking refuge at the far end of the room sat down at the piano, and began to play softly a Chopin nocturne. ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... looked at me keenly, and when his scrutiny was completed he fell to whistling a bar of Chopin's Marche Funebre. Then he turned to ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... The opening movement of Chopin's Marche Funebre affects me very disagreeably. The music is, to me, absolutely repugnant. The beautiful melody in the second movement is, however, to me exceedingly agreeable and affords me intense pleasure and gratification. The lower animals are likewise agreeably or disagreeably ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... barter. Love, youth, beauty, a British mother reckons them up on her fingers, and tells you to a fraction their value in the market. And the pale sentimental being at her side, after flooring one big fellow with a bit of Chopin, and another with a highly unintelligible verse of Robert Browning, poses herself shyly and asks through appealing eyes, "Am I ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... hers before going to bed, not so much because of her enthusiasm for music, but because she did not want to retire to rest too early. On such occasions she played, for the most part, the few pieces which she still knew by heart—mazurkas by Chopin, some passages from one of Beethoven's sonatas, or the Kreisleriana. Sometimes she improvised as well, but never pursued the theme beyond a succession of chords, which, indeed, ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... somewhat heartlessly, good-natured, and (not merely at the times mentioned, but to the end of her life) an affectionate mother, a delightful hostess, and a very satisfactory friend. No imaginary Stenio or Karol, no actual Sandeau or Musset or Chopin could have caused her at any time of her life the misery which the Prince caused Lucrezia, because she would simply have "sent him walking," as the vigorous French idiom has it. But it pleased her to graft upon her actual nature ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... appeared in his twelfth year, and soon his songs and two and four hand piano-pieces began to attract the attention of musicians. In 1840 Villoing took him to Paris and placed him in the Conservatory, where he attracted the attention of Liszt, Chopin, and Thalberg. He remained in that city eighteen months, devoting himself to unremitting study, and then made some professional tours, in which he met with extraordinary success, particularly in England. From that country he went to Holland and Sweden, everywhere meeting with ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... was mistaken about "those others." Her playing had aroused a fever of enthusiasm. "What passion!" "What an artist!" "I have always said no one could play Chopin like Mademoiselle Reisz!" "That last prelude! Bon Dieu! It shakes ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Emerson is neither a classic or romantic but both—and both not only at different times in one essay, but at the same time in one sentence—in one word. And must we admit it, so is everyone. If you don't believe it, there must be some true definition you haven't seen. Chopin shows a few things that Bach forgot—but he is not eclectic, they say. Brahms shows many things that Bach did remember, so he is an eclectic, they say. Leoncavallo writes pretty verses and Palestrina is a priest, and Confucius inspires Scriabin. A choice is freedom. Natural selection ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... to clear up my head while I'm working. He is—how one would always like to work. Sometimes Chopin and those others, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... is because of this latter fact that the amateur must study these matters indefatigably. The advent of a more elastic rhythm and tempo has undoubtedly made all musical performance infinitely more pleasurable to the listener than it formerly was; but unfortunately (especially since the advent of Chopin's music) there has been a great deal of misunderstanding as to the use and meaning of this valuable new ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Haydn that autumn, and to Sylvia the cheerful, obvious tap-tap-tap of the hearty old master seemed to typify the bald, unsubtle obtuseness of the home attitude towards life. She herself took to playing the less difficult of the Chopin nocturnes with a languorous over-accentuation of their softness which she was careful to keep from the ears of old Reinhardt. But one evening he came in, unheard, listened to her performance of the B-flat minor ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... moments, and you will be gone. I am waiting for some one. You may talk till that person comes." Her voice was now in its natural tone; and he was convinced that if her face were half as sweet, she must possess rare beauty. "Hush!" as the band began to breathe forth Chopin's polonaise. They ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... of one of these convents of the Devil will seat herself at the piano, and then some revery of Chopin will rise, melancholy, through the air, while the tears will appear in the eyes of ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... Grieg concerto, gratefully, because it was brilliant and thunderous. Papillon would have broken him down; anything tender would have sapped his will; and like as not he would have left the stool and rushed into the night. He played for an hour—Grieg, Chopin, Rubenstein, Liszt, crashing music. The action steadied him; and there was a phase of irony, too, that helped. He had been for months without music of the character he loved—and he dared not play ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... cried excitedly. "It's something of Chopin's, a nocturne, I think. Girls, I know where I heard that selection played ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... making the Natchez pilgrimage and came unwarned upon "Goat Castle." Lovely strains of music could be heard, coming from an old piano, sometimes improvised, sometimes a bit of Bach, Mozart, Chopin, played with much feeling. As the strangers approached the house they were shocked at the dilapidation—sash missing in the windows, doors off hinges, boards decayed and missing from the house and porch. Embarrassed, they hesitated to enter when to the ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... in Washington's Headquarters in Newburgh, bears the name of "Geo. Astor & Co., Cornhill, London;" while still another in my immediate neighborhood in Washington has the inscription of "Astor and Camp, 79 Cornhill, London." Their octaves were few in number, and a pupil of Chopin would have regarded them with scorn; but upon these little spindle-legged affairs a duet could be performed. My first knowledge of instrumental music was derived from one of these pianos, and among the earliest recollections of my childhood ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... hat, and began to fan herself gently with the brim. Here, in the shade, bees were humming; from the house came faint notes of a piano—Fanny practising a mazurka of Chopin. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Indeed, it was a little harsh and was likened to the taste of a bitter orange. But it was just the voice for a tragedy or an epic, for it was superhuman rather than human. Light things like Spanish songs and Chopin mazurkas, which she used to transpose so that she could sing them, were completely transformed by that voice and became the playthings of an Amazon or of a giantess. She lent an incomparable grandeur to tragic parts and to the ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... incidental reference is made to the symphonies of Beethoven, the sonatas of Schubert, the mazurkas of Chopin, and other pianoforte compositions of Mendelssohn, ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... the clouds. He plays truant from earth, slips through the wicket of fancy into heaven's meadow, and goes gathering stars. Here we have that absolute virgin-gold of song which is the scarcest among human products, and for which we can go to but three poets—Coleridge, Shelley, Chopin, {8} and perhaps we should add Keats. Christabel and Kubla-Khan; The Skylark, The Cloud, and The Sensitive Plant (in its first two parts). The Eve of Saint Agnes and The Nightingale; certain of the Nocturnes;—these things make very quintessentialised ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... pointed black shape against the white columns behind. But for this melancholy monument the stage was now empty. Thick clouds of black smoke arose from braziers on either side and obscured the steps and the platform. Through the smoke came the distant sound of Chopin's Marche Funebre, and as the air became clearer white figures could be dimly seen moving around the black pall in a solemn dance of mourning. Behind them the columns shone ghostly and unreal against the glimmering mauve rays of ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... played, with a queer lingering touch which had something of hesitation in it, and which reduced all music to a succession of soft chords, The Maid of Dundee and Annie Laurie, The Banks of Banna and The Last Rose of Summer, then one of the simpler nocturnes of Chopin, and, following these, a quaint, slow melody which was like all of the others and yet ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... salting a wild tract of land with them; organizing a band of miners, whom he led as if with keen scent to the right spot and rediscovered his nuggets, everything being done mysteriously and as a tribal secret. Loti had a new feeling for the haunting music of Chopin, which he had been taught to play but had not been interested in; his mind was inflamed, by a home visit of an elder brother, with the idea of going to the South Sea Islands, and this became a long obsession which finally led him to enlist in the navy, dropping, with a beating heart, the momentous ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... composers revere their art? We are told of Chopin that art was for him a high and holy vocation.[8] Do you wonder? Let me read you a few words about his devotion: "In order to become a skilful and able master he studied, without dreaming of the ... fame he would obtain." "Nothing could be purer, more ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... possessed him to see how she would carry herself now. He caught up the book he had come for, and went downstairs to the piazza. Sylvia had vanished. Disappointed, he went back into the house. Straying to the piano, he sat down and began to play a Chopin prelude. It was John's one and only instrumental achievement, learned by ear, and dug out of the ivories, as one might say, by long hours of laborious search for ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... stiff and my touch was wooden—so it was small wonder my poor lord and master tried to bury himself in his four-day-old newspaper. Then I tried Schubert's Rosamonde, though that wasn't much of a success. So I wandered on through Liszt to Chopin. And even Chopin struck me as too soft and sugary and far-away for a homesteader's wife, so ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Duke and his court usually being present. It was not until this time, however, that Chase felt that he could sit through a concert without being bored to extinction. He loved music, but not the kind that the royal orchestra rendered; Wagner, Chopin, Mozart were all the same to him—he hated them fervently and he was not yet given to stratagems and spoils. He sat at a table with the French attache just below the box occupied by the Princess and her party. In spite of the fact that he was a ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... the odours of the flowers in the tall silver vases on the piano—her piano!—the spirit of desire which had so long possessed him, waking and sleeping, returned,—returned to torture him now with greater skill amidst these her possessions; her volume of Chopin on the rack, bound in red leather and stamped with her initials, which compelled his glance as he passed, and brought vivid to his memory the night he had stood in the snow and heard her playing. So, he told ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but more often executioner, and nearly always unwittingly so! The other evening I was at Dargenty's, the musician. There were but a few guests, and he was asked to play. Hardly had he begun one off those pretty mazurkas with a Polish rhythm, which make him the successor of Chopin, when his wife began to talk, quite low at first, then a little louder. By degrees the fire of conversation spread. At the end of a minute I was the only listener. Then he shut the piano, and said to me with a heart-rent smile: "It is always like this here—my wife does not care for music." ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... Rakemann. He was very glad to see me, and I him. His fine face lighted with enthusiasm as we spoke of music, of Germany and its poets. He played magnificently, among others "Adelaide," translated for the piano by Liszt, a beautiful andante of Chopin, some of Henselt, etc., until it was quite twilight. Then I went away. He promised to come and see me, nor shall I fail to see him as often as I think he will endure, though his days are so busy with teaching that I do not hope to ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Modern Music. Second Series. Chopin, Dvorak, Brahms. With an Essay on Musical Form. With Four Portraits. Crown ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... significant that the rhythmic pulses | | which come most naturally to us are in twos and threes and | | their multiples; while even to beat time in fives requires a | | special effort. In music 5/8 or 5/4 time is extremely rare. | | There is an example of the latter in Chopin's Sonata I (the | | ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... about the home life of a great man whatever branch of activity he may adorn. If he is an archbishop, it is interesting to know what he looks like when he has exchanged his leggings for a human dress; if he is a pork millionaire, we like to see whether he enjoys Chopin; if he is a great writer, the interest of his home life is intensified. For the tens of thousands who know an author by his books, the number who know him at home may quite well be measured ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Michael Angelo or Raphael was addicted to formulating instructive matter as to the accomplishment of paintings and frescoes; that Thackeray or Dickens or Meredith or George Sand were known to have answered inquiries as to 'How to write a Novel'; or that Beethoven or Wagner or Chopin or Mendelsohn paused in the midst of their careers in order to tell newspaper men what they considered the true method of composing music. These fortunate people—as well as others of their time—could so easily be silent and thus avoid disclosing the fact that they ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... salon, the mimic court of every Frenchwoman of distinction,—nor were the worldly wits of fashion her vain and supercilious satellites. But De Lamennais climbed to her mansarde, and unfolded therein his theories of saintly and visionary philosophy. Liszt and Chopin bound her in the enchantment of their wonderful melodies. De Balzac feasted her in his fantastic lodgings, and lighted her across the square with a silver-gilt flambeau, himself attired in a flounced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... joy of a little pleasure, or a little scarcely perceptible advance in her position or her work. Indeed, if one month she could only earn five francs more than in the last, or if she could at length manage to play a certain passage of Chopin which she had been struggling with for weeks,—she would be quite happy. Her work, which was not excessive, exactly fitted her aptitude for it, and gave her a healthy satisfaction. Playing, singing, giving lessons ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... was swimming back, staring at her eyes, it came over me that there had been hyacinths on the piano, almost overpowering in the dusk of the room that will always be nearest to me—I hope I may lie there, dead. I was playing Chopin, and life looked so rich: the boy was not born yet. I said, "If he should die"—but of course I couldn't believe that he would. And then—and then it was as if he had not died, after all, and I saw that this had been a mistake, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... novelty by the fact that advantage could be taken of much new material given to the public for the first time (with one exception) in the last few months, notably: a revelation of the exact identity of Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved;" the letters of Liszt to his princess; letters of Chopin long supposed to have been burned, as well as diaries and letters gathered by an intimate friend for a biography whose completion was prevented by death; the publication of a vast amount of Wagneriana; the appearance of a full life of Tschaikovski by his brother, with complete ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Mme. Sembrich sang an aria; then came upon the stage and played a violin obbligato to Mme. Nilsson's performance of the familiar Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria"; again she appeared and this time played a Chopin Mazourka on the pianoforte. In every instance she was the complete artist, and the public, who had been charmed by her witcheries as Mozart's Zerlina and melted by the pathos of her singing in the last act of "La Traviata," were at a loss to say if she had shown ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the snide Bungalow, and it was now a Queen Anne Chateau dripping with Dew-dads of Scroll Work and congested with Black Walnut. The Goddess took her Mocha in the Feathers, and a Music Teacher came twice each week to bridge the awful chasm between Dorothy and Chopin. Dinner had been moved up to Milking Time. Sweetbreads and Artichokes came into the Lives of the Trio ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... at once famous for his studies of Louisiana life in Old Creole Days, and his pictures of this life have given him a permanent place in American literature. His stories should be read in connection with those of Kate Chopin and of Grace ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... playing; and of how they came out again, the eyes of the Countess streaming with tears, and of her saying, as they drove away, "Never, never forget, my child, as long as you live, that you have heard Chopin play." It was in one of the lubberly houses of the Place Vendome that the poet of the keyboard died a few days later. Just around the corner, in the Rue du Mont Thabor, died Alfred de Musset. A brass plate ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... crimson and blue windows. Then the functionaries began to form an aisle among the spectators, and emotion grew tenser. The organ was silent for a moment, and when it recommenced its song the song was the supreme expression of human grief, the dirge of Chopin, wrapping the whole cathedral in heavy folds of sorrow. And as that appeal expired in the pulsating air, the fresh voices of little boys, sweeter even than grief, rose ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... great artist. As an interpreter of Chopin she had no rival among women, and only one man was her equal. She had fire, tenderness, passion, strength; she had beyond all these, soul, which is worth more in true expression than the most marvelous technique. She had chosen Chopin for his ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... unnecessary grimaces, who does not insist on acting when the difficult thing is not to act. In "Tartuffe" Coquelin stands motionless for five minutes at a time, without change of expression, and yet nothing can be more expressive than his face at those moments. In Chopin's G Minor Nocturne, Op. 15, there is an F held for three bars, and when Rubinstein played the Nocturne, says Mr. Huneker in his instructive and delightful book on Chopin, he prolonged the tone, "by some miraculous means," so that "it swelled and diminished, and went singing into D, as if ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... "Chopin, my friend," said the lady who had attached herself to Harkless. She tapped Tom's shoulder with her fan ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the genius of the man were vain—he had elements in his character that made him akin to Keats, Shelley, Burns, Byron, Chopin and Stephen Crane. With these his name will in brotherhood be forever linked. He was one made to suffer, sin and die—a few short summers, and autumn came with yellow leaves and he was gone. And the principal legacy he left ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... along, they came to a group of half-starved, perambulating performers, who were giving an entertainment to a crowd of bystanders. It was not a good programme. First a young woman in rags, played on an old piano, with decent precision, some extremely difficult variations of CHOPIN's Funeral March. She was followed by a man who painted a portrait of a leading statesman indifferently well. Then another man jumped into the river, and made his way in the cold water with the ease of a fifth-rate professional swimmer. Then a second young woman recited something ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... together under the sway of a common emotion more effectively than concert or opera? It is a fixed and permanent expression, for we can renew it so long as men preserve the score where it is written; and, finally, it is free—who can find any practical or moral or scientific purpose in an etude of Chopin or a symphony of Mozart? Music is the most signal example of a mode of expression that has attained to a complete and pure aesthetic character, an unmixed beauty. Yet this was not true of music in its earlier forms, and a long ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Gertrude's share; then Georgie sat down to practise, and Candace settled herself in a deep cushioned chair in the library with Motley's "Dutch Republic," which she was reading for the first time. It was the chapter on the siege of Leyden; and the wild, fantastic nocturne by Chopin which Georgie was playing, seemed to blend and mix itself with the tragic narrative. Candace did not know how long the reading and the music had been going on, each complementing the other. She was so absorbed in her book as not to heed the sound of the bell or Frederic's noiseless tread ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... as decided and dictatorial as ever," she laughed; "but this time you shall have your way. What will you have—a bit of Chopin or Grieg? Here is plenty of music ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke |
