"Musician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by a most delightful and unpretentious gift of story-telling. Her work suggests a twilight musician; she has a certain dainty humor ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Power grows by using, or, in other words, using brings a continually increasing power. This is governed by law the same as are all things in our lives, and all things in the universe about us. Every act and advancement made by the musician is in full accordance with law. No one commencing the study of music can, for example, sit down to the piano and play the piece of a master at the first effort. He must not conclude, however, nor does he conclude, that the piece of the master ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... eliminated from his life. He was to be no errant musician, improvising according to his mood; the score he was to play was before him, and he must play it note for note, paying strict attention to rests, keys, andantes, fortissimos, pianissimos. He had been born to this, had ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... across to me as one Tahuku to another, or, crossing the cockpit, study for a while my shapeless scrawl and encourage me with a heartfelt "mitai!—good!" So might a deaf painter sympathise far off with a musician, as the slave and master of some uncomprehended and yet kindred art. A silly trade he doubtless considered it; but a man must make an allowance for barbarians, chaque pays a ses coutumes—and he felt the principle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were in varied disguises, one, perhaps, coming up to us as a petty chief with a mounted escort, another as a merchant with a bullock cart to draw his packages of goods and a servant in attendance, yet another as a juggler or a musician, we could instantly recognize them as belonging to our brotherhood of Bowani by the secret signals with which they ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... Foolish Jules! and yet, after all, why foolish? He may—probably will—fail egregiously; but if there should arise a new painter, will it not be in some 55 such way, by a poet now, or a musician (spirits who have conceived and perfected an Ideal through some other channel), transferring it to this, and escaping our conventional roads by pure ignorance of them; eh, Ugo? If you have no appetite, talk ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the opinion that the payment of God's Penny was a symbolical act, and this opinion is supported by the fact that there were in mediaeval England hand-clasp bargains. Marbeck, a musician and theologian of the sixteenth century, remarks: "As ye see: after all bargaines there is a signe thereof made, eyther clapping of hands or giving earnest." Among the provisions of the Grimsby charter of 1259 is one to the effect that only buyers of the said town might ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... a kind of guitar, formed from the calabash, which they call kilara. Some of these are of an enormous size, and the musician performs upon it by placing himself on the ground, and putting the kilara between his thighs; he performs on it with both his hands, in a manner similar to the playing on the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... should be preparing yourself for locomotion at the moment when the house-party at the Manor is also severed indistinguishably. There is no one there now, so my imparted information relates, with the exception of her ladyship Wicketts, a Miss Fosby and a hired musician from the cells of the professional caterer, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Keziah Cricket, who just came in here, is quite a musician, and her old father plays the violin beautifully;—by the way, we might engage ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he, addressing the musician, "take the Prince and show him what is most worthy to be seen in this neighbourhood. Lead him to the waterfalls, the fountains, the rocks and vales, for I perceive our guest is one ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... by his teacher? He makes him- self a musician by practising what he was taught. The conscientious are successful. They follow faithfully; [20] through evil or through good report, they work on to the achievement of good; by patience, they inherit the prom- ise. Be active, and, however slow, thy success is sure: toil is triumph; and—thou hast ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... change, too, about the ceremonies. When you have seen one you have seen all; and when you have seen them once, you can understand how to the Romans themselves these sights have become stale and dull, till they look upon them much as I fancy the musician in the orchestra of the old Princess's must have looked upon one of Kean's Shaksperian revivals when the season was ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Thirsty John, Sent for the gosling, took the swan, In haste his throat to cut, And put him in the pot. The bird's complaint resounded In glorious melody; Whereat the cook, astounded His sad mistake to see, Cried, 'What! make soup of a musician! Please God, I'll never set such dish on. No, no; I'll never cut a throat That sings so sweet ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... yore the musician used to play in softest, sweetest strain, and then take an airing amongst the dolphins: "inter delphinas Arion." But nowadays our tars have quite capsized the custom, and instead of riding ashore on the dolphin, they invite the dolphin aboard. While he is darting and playing around the vessel ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... too much of flaws and occasional overstatements. Some persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propositions, is all that conversation admits. This is precisely as if a musician should insist on having nothing but perfect chords and simple melodies,—no diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on any account. Now it is fair to say, that, just as music must have all these, so conversation must have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and suicides on her account and what sensational adventures! How old was this seductive woman now? Sixty, seventy, seventy-five! Julie Romain here, in this house! The woman who had been adored by the greatest musician and the most exquisite poet of our land! I still remember the sensation (I was then twelve years of age) which her flight to Sicily with the latter, after her rupture with the former, caused ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... road. The horse he drove had belonged to LEONARD JEROME—he was out of "Cash" by "Thunder," and he had sold him to the livery-man here. He was called a "two-forty," but when he began to go, Mr. P. was of the opinion that a musician would have considered his style entirely too forte. They had not ridden more than half way to BARHYTE'S, before Mr. P. began to feel his arm bones coming out. But the "Princess of the Platform" ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... melodious humming and a light leisurely step at the entrance of the hall. They continued on in an easy harmony and unaffected as the passage of a bird. Both were pleasant and both familiar to the editor. They belonged to Jack Hamlin, by vocation a gambler, by taste a musician, on his way from his apartments on the upper floor, where he had just risen, to drop into his friend's editorial room and glance over the exchanges, as was his habit ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... in vol. I. p. 160, of his Zoological Mythology, says, "The drum or kettle-drum thunder is a familiar image in Hindu poetry, and the gandharvas, the musician warriors of the Hindu Olympus, have no other instrument than the thunder." "The magic flute is a variation of the same celestial ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... Provincial in Spain or Britain, of a German town in the woods by the river. Let us see in imagination as well as in knowledge an English settlement on the Welsh border, an Italian mediaeval town when its art was being born, a Jewish village when Christ wandered into its streets, a musician or a painter's life at a time when Greek art was decaying, or when a new impulse like the Renaissance or the French Revolution came upon the world." When that effort of the historians had established itself, and we have seen it from blossoming to fruitage, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... First Consul had sent for him; and the musician had waited to be entreated, acting as if he were much inconvenienced, and at last presented himself with all the importance of a man whose dignity had been offended. The very simple costume of the First Consul, his ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... would come to his hut and listen with manifest pleasure to the tones of his violin, and would repeat the melodies he played with surprising accuracy" (546. 3, 199). The meke-meke, a dance of the Fiji Islanders, "is performed by boys and girls for whom an old musician plays"; at Tahiti the children "are early taught the 'ubus,' songs referring to the legends or achievements of the gods," and "Europeans have at times found pleasure in the pretty, plaintive songs of the children as they sit ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... might completely correspond, the ropes as they were tightened were struck on the right and left alternately until both sides gave out an equal sound. Spendius would mount upon the timbers. He would strike the ropes softly with the extremity of his foot, and strain his ears like a musician tuning a lyre. Then when the beam of the catapult rose, when the pillar of the ballista trembled with the shock of the spring, when the stones were shooting in rays, and the darts pouring in streams, he would incline his whole body and fling his arms into ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... guest was Gruzin, the son of a worthy and learned general; a man of Orlov's age, with long hair, short-sighted eyes, and gold spectacles. I remember his long white fingers, that looked like a pianist's; and, indeed, there was something of a musician, of a virtuoso, about his whole figure. The first violins in orchestras look just like that. He used to cough, suffered from migraine, and seemed invalidish and delicate. Probably at home he was dressed ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Upraise thine eyes, and find the lark, That matutine musician, Who heavenward soars on rapture's wings, Though sought, unseen, who mounts, and ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in motion ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... the brass instruments alone, the strings were to have red and the wind green ink. This extraordinary score I gave for perusal to Heinrich Dorn, who was at that time musical director of the Leipzig theatre. He was very young, and impressed me as being a very clever musician and a witty man of the world, whom the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Professorship, where he easily stood primus inter pares, must be the gauge of the high favor in which he was held by students and Faculty alike. Among the many facets of his genius was a remarkable ability as a musician, and the impetus he gave the musical life of Ann Arbor resulted in the organization of the Musical Society and the naming of the Frieze Memorial Organ in his honor. Andrew D. White tells us, in his "Autobiography," that he found him one of the most charming men he had ever met,—simple, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... Meyer has not put his Amati to bed, I will accompany him," said the musician suggestively, looking across at a man whom Harris had not yet noticed, and who, he now saw, was the very image of a ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... which rose gradually to a varied strain, alluring, spirited, and clear as any bird voice of the wood. Little sparrow ceased his twitter, listened with outstretched neck and eager eye, hopping restlessly from twig to twig, until he hung just over the musician's head, agitated with a small flutter of surprise, delight, and doubt. Gathering a crumb or two into his hand, Warwick held it toward the bird, while softer, sweeter, and more urgent rose the invitation, and nearer and nearer drew the winged guest, fascinated ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... her usual walk in the grounds. Isabel was on the point of ringing to send a question to her room, when this purpose quickly yielded to an unexpected sound—the sound of low music proceeding apparently from the saloon. She knew her aunt never touched the piano, and the musician was therefore probably Ralph, who played for his own amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at the present time indicated apparently that his anxiety about his father had been relieved; ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... rare, in which a single week, a day, an hour sweeps away all vestiges and landmarks of a memorable felicity; in which the ruin travels faster than the flying showers upon the mountain-side, faster 'than a musician scatters sounds;' in which 'it was' and 'it is not' are words of the self-same tongue, in the self-same minute; in which the sun that at noon beheld all sound and prosperous, long before its setting hour looks out upon a total wreck, and sometimes upon the total ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... appreciate them you must have a touch of their sensibility. A critic who is apt to be sensible was complaining the other day that Matisse had only one instrument in his orchestra. There are orchestras in which fifty instruments sound as one. Only it takes a musician to appreciate them. Also, one hears the others talking about "the pretty, tinkley stuff" of Mozart. Those who call the art of Matisse slight must either be insensitive or know little of it. Certainly ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... long column of fours, to the tune of jingling accoutrements, the squadron swung. Prescott wheeled about and rode forward at a walk. In the same instant, the bugler, a musician belonging to the Regular Army, trotted forward, then slowed down to a walk close to the young squadron commander. From that time on, all the commands were to ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... care to learn How many tinkling cups were served in turn,— Add all together, you will find them ten,— Our young MUSICIAN joined us now and then. Our bright DELILAH you must needs recall, The comely handmaid, youngest of us all; Need I remind you how the little maid Came at a pinch to our Professor's aid,— Trimmed his long locks with unrelenting shears And eased ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that she was tall and handsome, and very generous and sweet-tempered toward me when I was in her company. She was her husband's superior in birth, as in everything else; was a great reader of books in all languages; and possessed such admirable talents as a musician, that her wonderful playing on the organ is remembered and talked of to this day among the old people in our country houses about here. All her friends, as I have heard, were disappointed when she married ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... experience, something we were able to accept readily and with a certain ease because it had been accepted and assimilated by an entire world, and become part of the human organism. Its power was already slightly diminished. For instance, Wagner the musician was no longer able to make either Wagner the poet or Wagner the philosopher exist for us as they existed for the men of the earlier generation. Only Houston Stewart Chamberlain still persisted in ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... when it feels that it is being stared at, but can scarcely see anything itself out of its large yellow eyes, blinking between sleep and fear. An ancient and inexorable misery had fixed its ineffaceable stamp on the poor musician, and had wrenched and distorted his figure—one which, even without that, would have had but little to recommend it; but in spite of all that, something good and honest, something out of the common run, revealed itself in that half-ruined being, to any one who was able to get over ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... a dance proceeding in front of the dooty's house. It was a feast day. Informed that a white man was in the place, the performers stopped their dance and came to the spot where I was, walking in order, two by two, following the musician, who played on a curious sort of flute. Then they danced and sang till midnight, crowds surrounding me where I sat. The next day, our landlord, proud of the honour of entertaining a white man, insisted on my staying with him and his friends ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... and thinking of nothing at all, for a pleasant stroll along the Sacred Way (Sat. I, ix).[1] A man whom he hardly knew accosts him, ignores a stiff response, clings to him, refuses to be shaken off, sings his own praises as poet, musician, dancer, presses impertinent questions as to the household and habits of Maecenas. Horace's friend Fuscus meets them; the poet nods and winks, imploring him to interpose a rescue. Cruel Fuscus sees it all, mischievously ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... situation of Miss Violet Grey, but, as it happened, he was able, by the time his play had been three weeks in rehearsal, to supply information on such points. She was a charming, exemplary person, educated, cultivated, with highly modern tastes, an excellent musician. She had lost her parents and was very much alone in the world, her only two relations being a sister, who was married to a civil servant (in a highly responsible post) in India, and a dear little old-fashioned aunt (really a great-aunt) with whom she ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... A musician belonging to the Fourth Ohio, when six miles out of Beverly, on his way to Phillippi, was fired upon and instantly killed. So goes what little there is of war ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... the Tamburini put in. "Her father is a musician—and authentically marquis," she added, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... But for all that, pianos have an existence quite apart from sounds, and the auditory consciousness of our speculative piano would be dependent, in the first place, on the existence of a "substance" of brass, wood, and iron, and, in the second, on that of a musician. But of neither of these conditions of the existence of his consciousness would the phenomena of that consciousness afford him the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 Hogarth's enraged musician." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... a patriotic ballad Dick knew and liked. He was not much of a musician, but his taste was good. The song rang true; it was poetry and not warlike jingle, but he had not heard it sung so well before. Clare's voice had been carefully trained and she used it well, but he knew that she had grasped the spirit of the song. One or two of the men who had been sitting ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... said the Count. "You know that I am an exquisite player on the violin, though I did not bring one with me; for I might have been mistaken, had I done so, for an itinerant musician. The idea that has occurred to me is that I will purchase one, so that I may be able to accompany the fair Vrouws when they play the piano. They are sure to be delighted, and I shall be raised still higher ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... under an umbrella for an hour trying to keep the trunk dry. As I sat in the rain a little tree-frog, about half an inch long, leaped on to a grassy leaf, and began a tune as loud as that of many birds, and very sweet; it was surprising to hear so much music out of so small a musician. I drank some rain-water as I felt faint—in the paths it is now calf deep. I crossed a hundred yards of slush waist deep in mid channel, and full of holes made by elephants' feet, the path hedged in by reedy ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... a third girl who had supported her little sisters since she was fourteen, eagerly used her fine voice for earning money at entertainments held late after her day's work, until exposure and fatigue ruined her health as well as a musician's future; a young man whose music-loving family gave him every possible opportunity, and who produced some charming and even joyous songs during the long struggle with tuberculosis which preceded his death, had made a brave ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... o'clock the husky young pilot and his date strolled into the yacht club lounge. Lester Morris was nowhere in sight, so they sat down to wait. Twenty minutes later the musician still ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... up a few moral crackers, to be let off as occasion served—Tom Pinch began to practice. Tom could run down to the church and do so whenever he had time to spare; for it was a simple little organ, provided with wind by the action of the musician's feet; and he was independent, even of a bellows-blower. Though if Tom had wanted one at any time, there was not a man or boy in all the village, and away to the turnpike (tollman included), but would have blown away for him till he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... to ask: On this strongly marked temperament, so delicately imaginative and so keenly logical, so receptive and so retentive, a type alike of the philosopher and the poet, the scholar and the musician—on such a contemplative genius, what were the effects of so great and so constant indulgence in a drug noted for its power of heightening and extending, for a season, the whole ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... among those to whom the case of Lippo Lippi and many another presents a distinct difficulty. "Many another," for the principle ought to extend to every branch of fine art; and we should be prepared to maintain that there never has been, or could have been, a truly great musician, or sculptor, or poet, who was not also a truly good man. In a way the position is defensible enough; for one can, in every contrary instance, patch up the artist's character or else pick holes in his work. Who is to settle what is a truly great work or a truly good man. But a position ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... spectacle and its decorations. The operas, or lyric tragedies, which, from the number of times they have been performed, appear to have obtained the greatest success, are those of GLUCK. The originality, the energy, the force and truth of declamation of this great musician were likely to render him successful, especially among the French, who applauded the two last-mentioned qualities on their other ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... a musician. I tried the trombone, but lacked the patience. I am satisfied to admire. And so you liked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... body, we for its mind. But their work is more showy than ours and attracts more attention; and to attract attention is the aim and object of most of us. But for Bohemians to worry among themselves which is the greatest, is utterly without reason. The story-teller, the musician, the artist, the clown, we are members of a sharing troupe; one, with the ambition of the fat boy in Pickwick, makes the people's flesh creep; another makes them hold their sides with laughter. The tragedian, soliloquising ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... he was observed to listen very attentively while Miss Thrale played on the harpsichord, and with eagerness he called to her, "Why don't you dash away like Burney?" Dr. Burney upon this said to him, "I believe, Sir, we shall make a musician of you at last." Johnson with candid complacency replied, "Sir, I shall be glad to have a new ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Herschel, who discovered Uranus, and who first conceived the generally-accepted theory as to the cause of sun-spots, was brought up by his father to be a musician. In spite of his predilection for astronomy, he continued to earn his bread by playing the oboe, until he was promoted from being a performer in the Pump Room at Bath to the position of ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... some of the old families of Europe sometimes seem fairly recent. I remember in the Orient running across a family where the father had been a Shinto priest, father and son successively, through forty-five generations; and another where the father of the family has been successively a court-musician for thirty-eight generations. I thought maybe I had run into some really ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... started, spectacle after spectacle is produced; for your host is determined that you shall see all he has to show. You suffer the torments of the damned. You see nothing of what is going forward: some favourite singer or musician is performing—you hear him not; and while you force out some complimentary phrase, you are praying that an earthquake may swallow up all, or that the news of a fire ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... still believes in education, in teaching people the "grammar of art." Education should be confined to clerks, and it drives even them to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve of the artistic instinct. Art flees before the art school... "correct drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... remains guilty of two mean and contemptible acts. On the one hand he produces nothing whatever to increase the wealth or happiness of the world, and, on the other hand, whatever he gains is a matter of direct loss and sorrow to others without any tangible equivalent. It is not so with the orator or the musician. Though their products are not indeed tangible they are distinctly real and valuable. During the hour of action the orator charms the ear, eye, and intellect. So does the musician. When the hour is past the heart is gladdened ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... subject of game, I've something to say that will ease the professor's mind on a point that he seemed anxious about. I am no musician; but I'll just show you how a man that understands one art understands every art. I made out from the gentleman's remarks that there is a man in the musical line named Wagner, who is what you might call a game sort of composer; and that the musical ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... most advantageous, if not the sole legitimate field for the exercise of the poetic sentiment, was to be found in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus it happened that he became neither musician nor poet; if we use this latter term in its every—day acceptation. Or it might have been that he became neither the one nor the other, in pursuance of an idea of his which I have already mentioned—the idea, that in the contempt of ambition lay one of the essential principles ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... publication of a book that in every way widely differed from the spirit and feelings of the English, and therefore it could not be depended upon for exciting their interest. Mrs. Austin, by her gracious mind to comply with my wishes, proposed to publish some fragments of it, but as no musician ever likes to have only those passages of his composition executed that blandish the ear, I likewise refused my assent to the maiming of a work, that not by my own merit, but by chance and nature became a work of art, that only in the untouched development ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... in performing an idea is likewise much the same as that taken up in performing a muscular motion. A musician can press the keys of an harpsichord with his fingers in the order of a tune he has been accustomed to play, in as little time as he can run over those notes in his mind. So we many times in an hour cover our eye-balls with our eye-lids without perceiving ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sound of its notes the old man sprung to his feet and began capering to the reel—partly in delight with the music, but far more in delight with the musician, while, ever and anon, with feeble yell, he uttered the unspellable Hoogh of the Highlander, and jumped, as he thought, high in the air, though his failing limbs, alas! lifted his feet scarce an inch from ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... likewise to perceive the most hidden interstices of the soul as something concrete and to lend it a visible body. This constitutes the nature of the dithyrambic dramatist, if the meaning given to the term includes also the actor, the poet, and the musician; a conception necessarily borrowed from schylus and the contemporary Greek artists—the only perfect examples of the dithyrambic dramatist before Wagner. If attempts have been made to trace the most wonderful ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a girl in struggling through 'The Harmonious Blacksmith,' and I never remember hearing that we had any musical genius in the family. Of course, the natives here would find an easy answer and say that you had been a great musician in another incarnation." ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... excel in the art of the musician seem to be inferior to the southern in the arts of the painter and of the sculptor,—more particularly in the latter. The supreme sculptors are apparently two or three: Phidias and Michelangelo, beyond all question, and with them probably ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... entered a plea of objection to that mode of proceeding on the ground of "waste of water;" that in Edinburgh, where she had served for seven years, they wouldn't think of such waste; and that, if the young master would only leave the matter in her hands, she would drown the musician in a chorus, the like of which was not to be heard outside the boundaries of bonnie Scotland. To this proposition on the part of Betty the young gentleman gave a hearty assent; adding, at the same time, a ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... was filled with bitterness against the rich visitors at a hotel who refused to give alms to a wandering musician. He took the man to his table and offered wine for his refreshment. The indignation of the other guests made him dwell still more fiercely upon {219} the callousness of those who neglect their poorer neighbours. Yet the quixotic ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Whenever this merry musician played all alone like that Buster Bumblebee stayed close by him in order to hear better. And so it was that Buster at last met with a surprise. He was bobbing about with a great deal of pleasure to the strains of a lively tune when he heard something that made him settle quickly ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... these practical labors the record of his most ingenious and original investigations of the circulation in the singular case of M. Groux, which had puzzled so many European experts, and to which, with the tact of a musician, he applied the electro-magnetic telegraphic apparatus so as to change the rapid consecutive motions of different parts of the heart, which puzzled the eye, into successive sounds of a character which the ear could recognize in their order. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... primary education as this, and with no more than is to be obtained by building strictly upon its lines, a man of ability may become a great writer or speaker, a statesman, a lawyer, a man of science, painter, sculptor, architect, or musician. That even development of all a man's faculties, which is what properly constitutes culture, may be effected by such an education, while it opens the way for the indefinite strengthening of any special capabilities with which he ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... strident and insistent, but for a long time no response came. At last, however, as the strains of "Loch Lomond" ceased, a lady appeared on the balcony of a drawing-room, and, leaning over a little forest of flowers and plants, threw a half-crown to the sorry street-musician. She watched the grotesque thing trundle away, then entering the house again, took a 'cello from the corner of the room and tuned the instrument tenderly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... different from the way in which he would read prose. Most poets aim rather at giving the musical effect, and the atmosphere, the vocal atmosphere, of the poem, than at emphasising individual meanings. They give, in the musician's sense, a "reading" of the poem, an interpretation of the poem as a composition. Mr. Yeats thinks that this kind of reading can be stereotyped, so to speak, the pitch noted down in musical notes, and reproduced with the help of a simple stringed instrument. By way of proof, Miss ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... not a musician, so if I speak as a barbarian I must ask you and several gentlemen on the platform here to forgive me. From the lowest point of view a few drums and fifes in the battalion mean at least five extra miles in a route march, quite ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Egyptians who should neglect to fill the beaks of the callow fledglings? Yet this is precisely what France is doing. She does her utmost to produce artists by the artificial heat of competitive examination; but, the sculptor, painter, engraver, or musician once turned out by this mechanical process, she no more troubles herself about them and their fate than the dandy cares for yesterday's flower in his buttonhole. And so it happens that the really great man is a Greuze, a Watteau, a Felicien David, a Pagnesi, a Gericault, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and had eleven holes, four of which had keys, giving a compass of twelve notes from F to C. [Notation: F4 to C6.] This number of holes was not invariable. After Mersenne's time, Jean Hotteterre (d. 1678), a court musician, belonging to the band known as the Musique de la Grande Ecurie,[19] in which he played the dessus de hautbois, introduced certain improvements in the drones of the musette.[20] His son Martin Hotteterre ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... tone linger with me long after he has gone, as a cadence of music may vibrate through the soul when both musician and instrument are mute. ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... than visible red cheek and yellow curl; possession and bereavement are strangely mingled in the exquisite maternal mood, the one heightening the other. All great joys are serious; and emotion must be measured by its complexity and the deepness of its reach. A musician may draw pretty notes enough from a single key, but the richest music is that in which the whole force of the instrument is employed, in the production of which every key is vibrating; and, although full of solemn touches and majestic ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the women of distinction in her nation, Vaninka was a good musician, and spoke French, Italian, German, and English ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... I repeated. "I would give one-fourth of the residue of my life to be a good singer and musician. As it is, I'm not much of a player, and still less of a vocalist; but I'll give you a song if you like. How sweetly everything sounds ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... an accomplished musician and sang verses composed by himself. He eagerly sought the plaudits of the multitude by reciting his compositions in public. Historians are divided in opinion as to whether Nero was the cause of the burning of Rome. During the conflagration, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... been within her fellowship. The author is more than convinced that any attempt to claim and reclaim must, to be successful on a large scale, commence in a renaissance of Gospel preaching. With the preacher, more than with the ecclesiastic or the musician or the theologian, not to mention the Biblical critic and the religio-social worker, rests the task of solving the great problem of twentieth century Christianity. This problem is neither a critical nor a theological one, but simply that of the age-long campaign:—How ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Dethroned.—A young lady who had received every advantage which could be given her by indulgent parents, and who naturally possessed most excellent talents, being a fine musician, and naturally so bright and witty as to be the life of every company in which she moved, suddenly began to show strange symptoms of mental unsoundness. She would sometimes be seized with fits of violence during which it was with great difficulty ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... well enough to carry it on," said young Mr. Siker, after a moment's hesitation. "And, besides, I can't be bothered. It interferes, with my other profession—I'm a musician." ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... an ovation. Guido Savelli had been purposely placed last on the programme. "No one will care for anything else after he plays. The audience will have the memory of his music to take away with them," Grace had said wisely. Knowing the musician's horror of being lionized, Grace had confided the secret to no one except Miriam, Anne, Mabel Ashe and Elfreda, who, in company with her and Eleanor, had met him at the train and dined with him at the "Tourraine." It had been arranged that at half-past ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... power to give. Carefully, knowing something of what to expect, he probed the shield which was no true shield but an uproar of faulty coordination comparable to the disruptions coming from a badly tuned radio. Wincing, as a musician winces when harsh, grating dissonance strikes his ear, he gingerly probed deeper and deeper, exploring this strange and fascinating structure that was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was an extraordinary complexity that spread before him—a ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... flirt. She worked in the government tobacco factory at Seville until a clever writer and a musician rescued her. Went on the stage. Has appeared in most of the cities throughout the world, made love to several singers, and then been killed by a bull fighter after singing her ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... physical strength, yet he was as gentle as a lamb. He was the greatest thinker of all time, but there was no room in his brain for an impure thought. Notwithstanding he was still a young man, being but fifty years of age, nevertheless he had attained distinct success and fame as a musician, composer, scientist, inventor, architect, and athlete. He endeavored to unravel all the mysteries of nature which attracted his attention. One of the many occult forces he experimented with was human magnetism. It was his belief that man could preserve himself indefinitely, either in a state ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... musician admires his great predecessors and strives to emulate them; if the painter in the presence of the Sistine Madonna feels lifted and touched, so that he never can be content with poor work again; if the sculptor is ready to bend his knees in the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... was a musician wha play'd a good stick, He had a sweet wife an' a fiddle, An' in his profession he had right good luck At bridals his elbow ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... have in this conception as perfect an instance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with another which ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... the latter half of the eighteenth century. She was very well educated and refined, thanks to living with the two sisters, Mlles. Verrieres, who were accustomed to the best society. She was a good musician and sang delightfully. When she married Dupin de Francueil, her husband was sixty-two, just double her age. But, as she used to say to her granddaughter, "no one was ever old in those days. It was the Revolution that brought ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... frieze coat, striped waistcoat, corduroy breeches, and stout brogues; beside him sat a comely, youthful, but somewhat prim female, dressed as a plain peasant girl. The moment the floor became vacant, the little frieze-coated fellow got to his legs, accompanied by the female, and addressed the musician ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... at the door, and obtaining no response, this gentleman sat down on a bench in the little porch to wait. A certain skilful action of his fingers as he hummed some bars, and beat time on the seat beside him, seemed to denote the musician; and the extraordinary satisfaction he derived from humming something very slow and long, which had no recognisable tune, seemed to denote that ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... amateur musician with a thorough knowledge of orchestral and band instruments, harmony, theory, and orchestration but during the last few years none but intimate frequenters of his home had the privilege of hearing him, although until within the last two or three ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... drinking stiffly a cup of wine. You see upon the wall near by, with sympathy, a patient being plied by a naked and evidently an unyielding physician with medicine from a jar that might have been visited by Morgiana, a musician playing upon an instrument like a huge and stringless harp. But it is the happy tomb of Thi that lingers in your memory. In that tomb one sees proclaimed with a marvellous ingenuity and expressiveness the joy ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... of peace flourished, and you multiplied yourself in divers ways. You were priest and singer and dancer and musician. You expressed your fancies in colours and metals and marbles. You wrote epics and lyrics—ay, as you to-day write lyrics, Dane Kempton. And I multiplied myself. I kept hunger afar off, and fire and sword from ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... twenty-three, who had an extra long vaginal canal, probably accounting for the absence of pregnancy. She made injections of semen, and was finally delivered of a child. He also reports the case of a distinguished musician who, by reason of hypospadias, had never impregnated his wife, and had resorted to injections of semen with a favorable result. This latter case seems hardly warranted when we consider that men afflicted with hypospadias and epispadias have become fathers. Percy gives the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... stationary. In Europe, erudition, research, and collections of rules have not been wanting. Much has been accomplished, but an exhaustive work, based upon the simple laws of nature, has (so far as the writer can learn) never yet appeared. The profoundly learned and truly great Bohemian musician, W. J. Tomaschek, who died in 1849, taught a system of musical science founded upon a series of beautiful and easily comprehended natural laws. His logical training and wide general cultivation gave him advantages enjoyed by few of his profession. The result of his researches has unfortunately ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... grind,' that seemed to grind out all the soul of the divine art and leave nothing but horrid technicalities about consecutive fifths and suspensions on the dominant? I dare say most people still think of the musician as a being who lives in an enchanted world of sound, rather than as a person greatly occupied with tedious feats of penmanship; just as I myself still think of a prima ballerina not as a hard-working gymnast but as a fairy, whose ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... yourself. Salt junk is the mainstay; a low island, except for cocoanuts, is just the same as a ship at sea: brackish water, no supplies, and very little shelter. The king is a great character - a thorough tyrant, very much of a gentleman, a poet, a musician, a historian, or perhaps rather more a genealogist - it is strange to see him lying in his house among a lot of wives (nominal wives) writing the History of Apemama in an account-book; his description of one of his own songs, which he sang to me himself, as 'about sweethearts, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... danger again of being taken for persons of quality. "Fine dress," says he, "may be necessary to the Senor and his daughter for their court dances, and they are heartily welcome to them for the pleasure they have given us, but for you and the musician who plays but indifferent well, meaner garb is more suitable; and so you will be good enough to step upstairs, the pair of you, and change your clothing for such as we can furnish from ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... enjoy her friendship. She is a clever artist and musician, you know. Edith says she lives a sort of Bohemian life in Toronto. Her rooms are littered with music ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... ago, a boy was born in Italy who grew up to be one of the most accomplished artists of his own or any other age. Besides excelling as a sculptor, modeller, and medallist, he was a musician, an author, and an admirable swordsman; and popes, kings, and other great princes eagerly employed him, and vied with each other to secure his services. His ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... come and tell some funny anecdotes. He ain't a regular doctor—he just took it up; a guy with long black curls and a big moustache and a big hat and diamond pin, that goes round selling Indian Snake Oil off a wagon. Doc said he'd have his musician, Ed Bemis, come, too. He said Ed was known far and wide as the world's challenge cornetist. I says all right, if he'll play something neutral; and Doc says he'll play "Listen to the Mocking Bird," with variations, and play it so swell you'll think you're ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a gifted musician; and for several years was the organist for one of the most prominent churches in her native city. On the morning of September 19, 1889, she was married to Bishop Charles Calvin Pettey, A. M., D. D. Immediately after her marriage she became the private secretary of her husband; and with ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... on Georgia's doubly gifted son, Sidney Lanier, poet and musician, are given through the kind permission of Professor Edwin Mims and of Doubleday, Page & Company, publishers of Mrs. Clay's "A ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... The musician now put down his flute, uttered a few coarse words in a rough, hoarse voice, greedily swallowed the brandy which was handed to him by the by-standers, and, beating time with his feet, began playing a vulgar ballad, which the ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... answer to all three, Laihova turned round the corner of a stall, when the party reached a spot which was devoted to the sale of native rum, or "toaka"—a coarse fiery spirit made from sugar-cane, and sold at a very low price. Here a native musician was discovered twanging a native guitar, either as an accompaniment to the cackling of hundreds of fowls and the gobbling of innumerable turkeys, or as a desperate effort to beat these creatures at their ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... there was little more to be obtained. So she took her last stand in front of a fine old house in Kensington Square, in whose windows lights were still burning. It was the home of Barech, the great musician. As the tones of Nell's voice broke on the stillness of the night, he paused in the work he was doing, and after a moment rose and threw open the window. With amazement he saw the little childish figure standing in the light of the street lamp, and while his artist's ear drank ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... once in the possession of Louis XI; and from there to Spain, for Philip the Handsome presented it to Joanna on her wedding day. Columbus took it to America, but fortunately brought it back again; Peter the Great threw it at an indifferent musician; on one of its later visits to England Pope wrote a couplet to it. And the most astonishing thing in its whole history was that now for more than a hundred years it had vanished completely. To turn up again in a little Devonshire cottage! Verily, ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... and then looked longingly at the captain's mustache, as the only thing left in which a "Turk's head" could be tied. Music enlivened the hours for a time; but the fiddler was soon voted a bore, and silenced by some one pouring a pint of molasses into the f-holes of his instrument. The enraged musician completed the job by breaking it over the head of the joker. After several weeks, they put into Cape Town. Here the practical joker of the crew made himself famous by utterly routing an inquisitive old lady, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... music, he was observed to listen very attentively while Miss Thrale played on the harpsichord; and with eagerness he called to her, 'Why don't you dash away like Burney?' Dr. Burney upon this said to him, 'I believe, Sir, we shall make a musician of you at last.' Johnson with candid complacency replied, 'Sir, I shall be glad to have a ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... a musician; to others it suggests that enthusiasm and good spirits will carry them through ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent |
