"Concerto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friends, had not yet made his appearance in public, but about the time that his opus 1 appeared, he played at a concert given in aid of the Widow's Fund of the Artists' Society. He composed for this occasion a Grand Concerto (opus 15) in C major for piano and orchestra, taking the piano part himself. It was finished on the day preceding that on which the concert was held, the copyists waiting in another room for their parts. At the rehearsal, the piano being one-half note out of tune, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... he would flash out a dozen contradictory opinions. Of his sincerity I have no doubt; but he was one of those natures that are sincere only for the moment. He might fume at Schumann and call him a vanishing star, and then he would go to the piano and play the first few pages of the glorious A minor concerto most admirably. How did he play? Not in an extraordinary manner. Solidly schooled, his technical attainments were only of a respectable order; but when excited he revealed traces of a higher virtuosity than was to have been expected. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... look of a copy, and we know that Mozart was never obliged to make any. The writing is so like the man's adorable personality, the little pattern of notes so like his music. The sight of it moved me, flooding my mind with divine things, that Concerto for Flute and Harp, for instance, which dear Mme. H—— had recently been playing for me. And during that dull, rainy day of waiting for trains at Montauban, it made me live over again another day of rainy travel, but with the "Zauberfloete" at ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... of the Mendelssohn E-minor concerto, singing, winding from tonal to tonal climax, and out of the slow movement, which is like a tourniquet twisting the heart into the spirited allegro molto vivace, it was as if beneath Leon Kantor's fingers the strings were living vein-cords, youth, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the pleasure to hear Herr Franzl (whose wife is a sister of Madame Cannabich) play a concerto on the violin. He pleases me greatly. You know that I am no great lover of difficulties. He plays difficult things, but one does not recognize that they are difficult, but imagines that one could do the same thing at once; that is true ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Leipzig, and everybody was full of expectation and excitement. His concert had been advertised long before his arrival. It was to consist of an Overture of Weber's; a Cavatina from Robert le Diable, sung by Madame Schlegel; a Concerto of Weber's, to be played by Liszt, the same which I had shortly before heard played by Madame Pleyel; Beethoven's Overture to Prometheus; Fantasia on La Juive; Schubert's Ave Maria and Serenade, as arranged by Liszt. I was the more delighted because I had myself ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... works of the famous German were merely so many paraphrased plagiarisms from the compositions of other men. He possessed a phenomenal memory. He seemed to remember every note in every opera, symphony, oratorio, or concerto that anybody ever mentioned, and there was not a piece of music by a celebrated man but he was ready to "prove" that it had been stolen ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... drawings, and their present possession by the Marquis Dalla Valle; instruments made for the Duke of Natalona, the Duke of Savoy, and the Duke of Modena; the "Long Strad"; instruments for the Spanish Court; letter from the Marquis Ariberti; a "Chest of Viols;" a "Concerto;" Stradivari's "golden period," 1700; description of his instruments of this date; the "Betts Strad;" guiding principles as to differences of construction and quality of material; the "Dolphin Strad," its exquisite ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... a half years old I could play from memory such pieces as the B flat minor Scherzo, the A flat major Polonaise, and most of the Valses and Etudes of Chopin. I also played the Sixth Rhapsody of Liszt and the C minor Concerto of Beethoven. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... hundred miles down into Yorkshire.—all which put together, must have prepared the reader's imagination for the entrance of Dr. Slop upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... and I would much rather be polishing a speculum. Last Friday I was at the king's concert to hear GEORGE play. The king spoke to me as soon as he saw me, and kept me in conversation for half an hour. He asked GEORGE to play a solo-concerto on purpose that I might hear him; and GEORGE plays extremely well, is very much improved, and the king likes him very much. These two last nights I have been star-gazing at Greenwich with Dr. MASKELYNE and Mr. AUBERT. We have compared ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... a strange ringing in his ears; he was conscious of his whole being soaring far away, a floating, palpitating spirit amid great spaces of mystery and dream. A universal music was swelling around him, a mighty concerto bursting full upon him from the stillness of infinite distances—the sobbing of violins, the blare of brazen instruments, an orchestral clash ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... 'I should often go on Saturdays to the Crystal Palace, if it were not so far for me. I want to get there, if possible, on Saturday week, to hear Sterndale Bennett's new concerto.' ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... right about it, too. But what can a body do when folks plant themselves right beneath your window to pull off their little Romeo concerto. We can't smother on nights like these. 'Aw, ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... laws must govern the sensations of both. In this circumstance, therefore, consists the sisterhood of Music and Painting; and hence they claim a right to borrow metaphors from each other; musicians to speak of the brilliancy of sounds, and the light and shade of a concerto; and painters of the harmony of colours, and the tone of a picture. Thus it was not quite so absurd, as was imagined, when the blind man asked if the colour scarlet was like the sound of a trumpet. As the coincidence or opposition of these ocular spectra, (or colours which ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... compensate him for this unlooked-for deficiency of game, he will find himself beset with "varmints" innumerable. The wolves will entertain him with a concerto at night, and skulk around him by day, just beyond rifle shot; his horse will step into badger-holes; from every marsh and mud puddle will arise the bellowing, croaking, and trilling of legions of frogs, infinitely various in color, shape and dimensions. A profusion of snakes ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Symphony. In the structure of music Mozart made slight changes; the forms were still fresh—having just been established by Haydn—and Mozart with his genius filled them to overflowing. His one important contribution to the development of instrumental form was the Pianoforte Concerto; but, as a consideration of this would lead us too far afield, the student is referred to the life of Mozart in Grove's Dictionary and to the Oxford History, Vol. V. The literature[123] about Mozart ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of affection and austerity, of confidence and suspicion. It abounds, too, in that brusque yet seldom coarse humor which leaps up in the Finale of the Seventh Symphony, in the Eighth Symphony's waggery, the last movement of the Concerto in E flat. They offer likewise verbal admissions of such depression of heart as we recognize in the sternest episodes of the later Sonatas and of the Galitzin Quartets, and in the awful Allegretto of the Symphony in A. They hint ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a miser could fix: I don't pretend with horns of mine, Like some in the advertising line, To 'magnify sounds' on such marvellous scales, That the sounds of a cod seem as big as a whale's; But popular rumors, right or wrong,— Charity sermons, short or long,— Lecture, speech, concerto, or song, All noises and voices, feeble or strong, From the hum of a gnat to the clash of a gong, This tube will deliver distinct and clear; Or, supposing by chance You wish to dance, Why, it's putting a Horn-pipe into your ear! Try it—buy it! Buy it—try it! The last ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the second quartet concert. It stirred me much more than the first; the music chosen was loftier and stronger. It was the quartet in D minor of Mozart, and the quartet in C major of Beethoven, separated by a Spohr concerto. This last, vivid, and brilliant as a whole, has fire in the allegro, feeling in the adagio, and elegance in the finale, but it is the product of one fine gift in a mediocre personality. With the two others you are at once in ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by the singular appearance of his visitor that he remained fixed without uttering a word, until the old gentleman, having performed another and a more energetic concerto on the knocker, turned round to look after his flyaway cloak. In so doing he caught sight of Gluck's little yellow head jammed in the window, with its mouth and ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... and composer many times afterwards. The first performance of the work in its entirety took place at Vienna, April 5, 1803, at the Theater an der Wien, upon which occasion the programme also included the Symphony in D (second) and the Piano Concerto in C minor, the latter executed by himself. The oratorio was received with enthusiasm, and was repeated three times ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... "Scena with Aria" may be; a "declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck—afterwards Schumann—played a piano-concerto by Piscio. Reinecke's malicious idiocy need rouse no bitterness now; but I may repeat that under his directorship these concerts earned the contempt of musical Europe as thoroughly as did our own Philharmonic Society. Until lately, when one mentioned ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... thralldom of the school of Liszt. Our admiration for musical gymnastics and tight-rope balancing is now leaking away so fast through the perforations of the paper rolls that the kind of display-piece known as the concerto is going out of fashion. The only sort of concerto destined to keep our favor is, I imagine, that of the Schumann or Brahms type, which depends for its effect not at all on display, but on sound musicianship ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... and free recitals are given on the great organ twice every week by a capable performer. When the orchestra began its work thirteen years ago, it is doubtful if there were very many persons in Pittsburgh, other than musical students, who knew the difference between a symphony, a suite, a concerto, and a fugue. To-day there are thousands of people in this city who can intelligently describe the shading differences in the Ninth Symphony and give good reasons for their preference as between the two movements of the "Unfinished." The first conductor of the ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... allowed to play waltzes at all. My teacher is very thorough: first, I shall have to dig through all the Gradus ad Parnassum; and then he is going to undertake a concerto of Beethoven's with me, and will write the proper fingering over it. I shall play that in public; and then, as he and my aunt say, "I shall be the ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... escorted to the music-room, and revealed the fact that he was a violin virtuoso. He played what was called "salon music"—music written especially for ladies and gentlemen to listen to after dinner; and also a strange contrivance called a concerto, put together to enable the player to exhibit within a brief space the utmost possible variety of finger gymnastics. To learn to perform these feats one had to devote his whole lifetime to practising them, just like any circus acrobat; and so his mind became ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... (the "Seven Words" written for Cadiz) was performed. This work was given again on June 10, at the benefit concert of the "little" Clement, a boy violinist who grew into the famous artist for whom Beethoven wrote his Violin Concerto. On this occasion Haydn conducted for Clement, and it is interesting to observe that Clement took the first violin at the last concert Haydn ever attended, in ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... W. T. Best, in speaking of this, instanced a well-known organ piece, Rinck's "Flute Concerto," which called for quick changes from the Swell to the Great organ and vice versa, and said that he knew of no instrument in existence on which it could be properly played. An attempt had been made on the Continent to ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... monk, published at Venice his L'Organo suonarino, a work "useful and necessary to organists,"—thus runs the title-page. At the end of the volume there are some pieces, vocal and instrumental (a Concerto for soprano or tenor, with organ, a Fantasia, Ricercata, etc.), among which are to be found two sonatas, the one entitled, "Prima Sonata, doppio soggietto," the other "Seconda Sonata, soggietto triplicato." They are written out in open score of four staves, with mezzo-soprano, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... perto. Esfor[c,]ay, nam desmayeis & andemos, que ali ha todo concerto muy certo: quantas cousas querereis ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... gave a quick sigh of amazement and ecstasy,—such marvellous purity of tone was intoxicating to his senses, and set his nerves quivering for sheer delight in sympathetic tune. He glanced at the programme,—"Concerto— Beethoven"—and swift as a flash there came to his mind some lines he had lately read and learned ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli |
