"Pianist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the leg has not been contented to stop there. He has worked for years upon the construction of an artificial arm, and has at length succeeded in arranging a mechanism, which, if it cannot serve a pianist or violinist, is yet equal to holding the reins in driving, receiving fees for professional services, and similar easy labors. Where Mr. Palmer means to stop in supplying bodily losses it would be premature to say. We suppose the accidents ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... piano in his younger days this might not have happened. But if he had been a pianist the president would probably have wiped him out—and very rightly. There can be no ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... 5. While pianist plays last half of song slowly, children take hold of corners of skirts, and with waltz step dance from side to side, still with sleepy look ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... water outside change the blood within? Rubinstein was our Court pianist and was decorated by the Tsar. And you, the Tsar's servant, dare to say you could not meet ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... community sat in carved wooden stalls round the altar, the pupils assisted from the galleries above, and hidden under the gallery was the small but very perfect choir of nuns and children. The hymns of Pere Hermann, a famous pianist and composer, a pupil of Liszt, a convert from Judaism, and afterward a Carmelite friar, are very popular in France, and of these the music chiefly consisted. At the communion the superioress stepped forward, wearing the white woolen mantle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... note that the only disappointing answer was received from Signor Crinuto, the famous pianist, who replied, "I have never had a close shave, and never intend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... long does it not take each note to find its way from the eyes to the fingers of one who is beginning to learn the pianoforte; and, on the other hand, what an astonishing performance is the playing of the professional pianist. The sight of each note occasions the corresponding movement of the fingers with the speed of thought—a hurried glance at the page of music before him suffices to give rise to a whole series of harmonies; nay, when a melody has been long practised, it can be played even while the player's ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... devoting all of her curiosity, all of her youth, to a widowed mother of small pleasantries, a small income, and a shabby security. Thirty comes, and thirty-five. The daughter ages steadily. At forty she is as old as her unwithering mother. Sweet she is, and pathetically hopeful of being a pianist or a nurse; never quite reconciled to spinsterhood, though she often laughs about it; often, by her insistence that she is an "old maid," she makes the thought of her barren age embarrassing to others. The mother is sweet, too, and "wants to keep ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... divine sorrow of Chopin ... I have played better.... He was a pianist then, and surely a great one. Olive remembered the slender brown hands that had seemed to her so supple and so strong. But the name of Avenel was strange to her, and she was sure she had never seen it on posters, or in the papers and magazines that ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... Frederick Francis Chopin's birth, which have been discovered since the publication of the second edition of this work. According to the baptismal entry in the register of the Brochow parish church, he who became the great pianist and immortal composer was born on February 22, 1810. This date has been generally accepted in Poland, and is to be found on the medal struck on the occasion of the semi-centenary celebration of the master's ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... am sure it is very good—so far as it goes. I give my pianist ten pounds a night—and his washing. (That a good pianist could be hired for a small sum in England was a matter of amusement to Artemus. More especially when he found a gentleman obliging enough to play anything he desired, such as break-downs ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... disagreements finally led to a separation. A tutor employed for Herbart at this period developed in him a speculative tendency and taught him the power of forcible expression. Herbart learned to play on several musical instruments, and at the age of eleven displayed considerable talent as a pianist. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... down in front of the toilet-table. 'We must talk business at once,' she continued, suddenly speaking with the utmost calm. 'The appointment is at my house, at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, Schreiermeyer. Miss Donne will sing for us. Bring a pianist and the Minister of Fine Arts if ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... both these occasions I had been in the company of people who spent at least as much in a week as I did in a year. Why was I, a penniless and unknown young man, admitted there? Simply because, though I was an execrable pianist, and never improved until the happy invention of the pianola made a Paderewski of me, I could play a simple accompaniment at sight more congenially to a singer than most amateurs. It is true that the musical side of London society, with its streak of Bohemianism, and its necessary toleration ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... both as excellent pianist and composer of no ordinary talent. The Dresden theatre has been one of the first to put the new opera upon its boards and with regard to the music, the expectations entertained have ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... In the "Connoisseurs" by Fortuny we have the second form, and in the "Huntsman and Hounds" the third. A most original and commendable arrangement of three figures by W. L. Hollinger appears in "The Pose in Portraiture," the members of a trio, violin, cello and piano. The pianist is designated by the suggestion of her action which is completed out of the picture. In her position however she accomplishes the balancing of ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... sweetly and looks very nice and pretty. Then we had a little rosebud of a Chelsea girl who sang, and a pianist. I read 'Minister's Housekeeper' and Topsy, and the audience was very jolly and appreciative. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... with all her heart that Portia had not made a tragic mistake in this matter of her marriage. She couldn't herself quite see how a sensible girl like Portia could have done anything so reckless as to marry a romantic young Italian pianist, ten years at least her junior. It couldn't be denied that the experiment seemed to have worked well so far. Portia certainly seemed happy enough last night; contented. There was a sort of glow about her there never was before. But the question was how long would ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... edited, and they illustrate, most vividly, Beethoven's method of composing: slow, cautious, but invincible in its final effect; an idea frequently being altered as many as twenty times. At the age of twenty-two he was chiefly known as a pianist with wonderful facility in improvisation; his compositions had been insignificant. The next eight years—up to 1800, when Beethoven was thirty—were spent in acquainting himself with the Viennese aristocracy and in building up a public clientele. Then follows the marvellous ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... move the chairs. A piano, it ought to be pointed out, is not absolutely necessary. Any form of music will do; or if there is no instrument some one may sing, or read aloud. But a piano is best, and the pianist ought now and then to pretend to stop, because this makes it more ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... lump over his neck, all down his naked body to the soles of his enormous feet. Each time he came in front of that individual Coutlass paused and executed special finger movements, like the trills of a super-pianist, ending invariably in a punctuation point that made the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... own in conjunction with his friend, Marvin Eddy, who tells of a comedy Field wrote in which the heroines were impersonated by Field himself to the heroes of the only other acting member of the cast—Mr. Eddy. A Madame Saunders was the orchestra, or rather the pianist, and Monsieur Saunders painted the posters which announced the coming of the "great and only" entertainment. Rehearsals were held in the hotel dining-rooms. While a darky carried a placard of announcement, the result of Saunders's artistic handiwork, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... middle of a note, that he is too high, and comes down with a jerk. You don't bother about time. You don't mind a man being two bars in front of the accompaniment, and easing up in the middle of a line to argue it out with the pianist, and then starting the verse afresh. But you do ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... habit, painting out a mass of associations, which he had felt in ceasing to believe in a religion, or, more acutely, after quarrelling with a friend. He knew that was absurd. The picture came to him of encountering the Jew, or Diringer, or old Wolf, or little Streckmann, the pianist, in a raid on the East Coast, or on the Continent, slashing at them in a stagey, dimly-imagined battle. Ridiculous. He vaguely imagined a series of heroic feats, vast enterprise, and the applause ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... his favorite operas, and while he does not care for Falstaff, he is very fond of "I Medici," and greatly admires Leon Cavallo. He possesses a very correct ear, and a most pleasing voice, and many of his evenings are passed in trying new songs, his wife, who is an excellent pianist, playing ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... of them to continue. She declared that it was la grace et la beaute, etc. The merriment did not cease until half-past six. Some of the company then left, and some few were detained for dinner. A new pianist and fresh officers arrived about nine o'clock, and dancing was continued until one or two in the morning. To yawning subalterns the house in Mount Street seemed at first like a little paradise. The incessant dancing was considered fatiguing, but there were interludes in which claret was drunk, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... House of Congress at Washington developed a unanimous sentiment, that a good cook is more cultured than a pianist, and that girls should not be allowed piano lessons until they learn how to cook good biscuits. We have read of girls "whose heads were stuffed with useless knowledge, but not one in twenty knew the things ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... time, if we may believe the turnkey at the Marshalsea prison, William Dorrit had been a pianist, a fact which raised him ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... spite of her wheedling he remained dumb and stiff. He despised her for having broken her promise. His idea of princes suffered considerably from this disloyalty. He was so angry about it that he did not hear anything that was said, or that the Prince had appointed him laughingly his pianist in ordinary, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... "After he [the pianist] had retired, there was a general hush of expectation to see the entrance of the vocalist of the evening; and presently there appeared a lady of a decidedly dark color, rather inclined to an embonpoint, and with African formation of face. She advanced calmly to the front of the platform, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... should Donna so often appear with a single white rose pinned to her dress or take to playing the same tunes on the piano that the Professor played on his violin, particularly when she was an exceedingly poor pianist? ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... The pianist paused to thumb his nose casually at the entire audience, and then amid shouts and hisses sat down at the piano and began to play ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... As the pianist, a boatman dressed in red with a huge straw hat, began a waltz, Yvette grasped her companion and they danced so long and madly that everybody looked at them. The guests, standing on the tables, kept time with their feet; others threw glasses, and the musician, seeming ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... etiquette of the ball-room is also the etiquette for the evening party. It is best for the hostess to provide a pianist, if she does not herself preside at the piano, as it is excessively ill-bred to expect part of the guests to play for the remainder to dance. Many good-natured people find themselves thus victimized—invited "because they are always so willing to play for ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Pont was gone, he asked Mabel, who he knew was an excellent pianist, to favor him with one of her very best pieces—"something lively and new which will wake us ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... proper concern of his wife, they are even less serious than they are to her. She may persuade herself that she takes them quite seriously, but he pretends to do so only out of politeness, and as he would pretend to take her clothes seriously. For him the type of the artist is still the pianist who gives locks of his over-abundant hair to ladies. Even if the artist is a painter and cuts his hair and dresses like a man, he still belongs to the feminine world and excites himself about matters that do not concern men. Men can afford him, and so they tolerate him; but he is one of ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... countless lamps'—a scrubby-looking, yellow-faced foreigner, with cleaned gloves, is warbling inaudibly in a corner, to the accompaniment of another. 'The Great Cacafogo,' Mrs. Botibol whispers, as she passes you by. 'A great creature, Thumpenstrumpff, is at the instrument—the Hetman Platoff's pianist, you know.' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... friend of mine—a musician—was with me. Muffles's garden was filled with visitors: some celebration or holiday had called the people out. Muffles, in expectation, had had the piano tuned and had sent to town for an orchestra of three. The cornet and bass-viol had put in an appearance, but the pianist had been lost in ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he sorriest to part from? Lady Adela, who was always so bright and talkative and cheerful, so charming a hostess, so considerate and gentle a friend? Or the mystic-eyed Lady Sybil, who many an evening had led him away into the wonder-land of Chopin, for she was an accomplished pianist, if her own compositions were but feeble echoes of the masters? Or the more quick-spirited Lady Rosamund, the imperious and petulant beauty, who, in a way most unwonted with her, had bestowed upon him exceptional favor? Or that atrocious ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... glow in the towering talent of a 12-year-old, Tyrone Ford. A child prodigy of gospel music, he has surmounted personal adversity to become an accomplished pianist and singer. He also directs the choirs of three churches and has performed at the Kennedy Center. With God as your composer, Tyrone, your music will be ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... many essays were sent in, for some reason the prize was never awarded, and we had our trouble for nothing. On my way to Chicago I stayed at a mining town to lecture on effective voting. I found the hostess of the tiny hotel a brilliant pianist and a perfect linguist, and she quoted poetry—her own and other people's—by the yard. A lady I journeyed with told me that she had been travelling for seven years with her husband and "Chambers's Encyclopedia." I thought they used the encyclopaedia as a guide book until, in a sort ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... 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 character ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... for they were all accomplished musicians. While a mere child, David could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this talent attracted the notice of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in America, who procured for him the professorship of music in the College of Bardstown, Kentucky. Mr. Hughes entered upon his academical career at Bardstown in 1850, when he was nineteen years of age. Although very fond of music and endowered by Nature with exceptional ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... at the sight, and MacDonald went over and joined the three at the bar. With the advent of Burning Daylight the whole place became suddenly brighter and cheerier. The barkeepers were active. Voices were raised. Somebody laughed. And when the fiddler, peering into the front room, remarked to the pianist, "It's Burning Daylight," the waltz-time perceptibly quickened, and the dancers, catching the contagion, began to whirl about as if they really enjoyed it. It was known to them of old time that nothing languished when Burning Daylight ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... came into George Sand's life, Chopin, the composer and virtuoso, was the favourite of Parisian salons, the pianist in vogue. He was born in 1810, so that he was then twenty-seven years of age. His success was due, in the first place, to his merits as an artist, and nowhere is an artist's success so great as in Paris. Chopin's delicate style was admirably ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... operate, will finally produce the most elaborate forms of organized life on Lamarckian lines without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection at all. If you can turn a pedestrian into a cyclist, and a cyclist into a pianist or violinist, without the intervention of Circumstantial Selection, you can turn an amoeba into a man, or a man into a superman, without it. All of which is rank heresy to the Neo-Darwinian, who imagines that if you stop Circumstantial Selection, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... a gifted and fashionable lady (the Countess of Agoult), herself an accomplished authoress, concerning whom and Georges Sand a curious story is told. They were great friends, and the celebrated pianist Liszt was the admirer of both. Things went on smoothly for some time, all couleur de rose, when one fine day Lizst and Georges Sand disappeared suddenly from Paris, having taken it into their heads to make the tour of Switzerland for the summer together. Great was the indignation ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... off this rare sombre mood, and awoke to the full consciousness that Friedland was fled. Well, better so. The stupid fool would come back soon enough, and to-day, with Prince Puckler-Muskau, Baron Korff, General de Pfuel, and von Buelow the pianist, coming to lunch, and perhaps Wagner, if he could finish his rehearsal of "Lohengrin" in time, he was not sorry to see his table relieved of the dull pomposity and brilliant watch-chain of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... he found that Dolly's wish had been gratified. Dancing was the main attraction, and in the principal room were the usual iron-fisted pianist and red-faced cornet-player, who should be such profound moralists with all their nightly experiences; and dainty little girls were whirling round with the fortunate boys who had elder sisters at home ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... eight o'clock came Mr. Scheidemantel, a genuine lover of music and a fine pianist, to take me to the Maennerchor, which meets every Wednesday night for practice. Quickly we came to a hall, one end of which was occupied by a minute stage with appurtenances, and a piano; and in the middle thereof a long table, at which each singer sat down as he came ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... hills, with his painting-kit over his shoulders and his camp-stool under his arm. Later, Elsa began to understand that he was a true scholar, not merely an educated man. He was besides a linguist of amazing facility, a pianist who invariably preferred as his audience his own two ears. Arthur would have been a great dramatist or a great poet, if . . . If what? If what? Ah, that had been the crux of it all, of her doubt, of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... time, as the pianist was moved, he played snatches of the same music as that which we had heard at the Futurist, and between us and Harris and Ike the Dropper several couples were one-stepping, each in their own sweet way. As the music became more lively their dancing came more ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... "you don't reckon you could be a star pianist, do you? Fifteen hundred dollars a concert, and so on?" And, as she was sitting next to him, he ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to charm his ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well. Won't you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand can spare you? There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our accompaniment. Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play Chopin! He is charming, poor young man! an exile, and in poverty; but he is cared for by those ladies, who take him everywhere. ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... subject matter of the volume falls into three main divisions. Chapters II and III are based on the fact that we must all use words in combination—must fling the words out by the handfuls, even as the accomplished pianist must strike his notes. Chapters IV and V are based on the fact that we must become thoroughly acquainted with individual words—that no one who scorns to study the separate elements of speech can command powerful and ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... feel you're rather big, anyhow. Then I went on to Park Lane to hear a new pianist and some ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... a scale of your whole nervous system and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semi-tones, touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... to know the reach of your arm is to sprain it. I sprained mine, and it wasn't until the ligaments began to pull that I had the courage to face the fact that I was made out of bookkeeper instead of concert-pianist stuff." ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... or occupation in which the highest executive ability is required, we shall see that we give insufficient opportunity for the painter's hand to acquire the subtle skill we find in the successful violinist or pianist, and which is due to the early and incessant practice in the manual operations of his art. The fact is recognized, that the education of a violinist must begin in the early years, when the will and hand ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Indo-European Telegraphs. A burly, jolly Dutchman stood drinks all round to members of the Russian and English Banks alike, and a French sage-femme just arrived discussed her prospects with the hotel proprietress. The Shah's A.D.C. and favourite music-composer and pianist came frequently to enliven the evenings with some really magnificent playing, and by way of diversion some wild Belgian employees of the derelict sugar-factory used almost nightly to cover with insults a notable "Chevalier d'industrie" whose ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... pictures there was to be music—the Brownlie girls played the violin beautifully, and Dorothy was an acknowledged pianist; then Agnes Sinclair was to entertain with monologues, and the boys were to have a ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... plastic outlines of the theme with rare emotional skill and mastery of technique," "purest lyricism lifted to heights of poignancy,"—all that sort of stuff, you know. Next time a writer, or, better still, a fiddler or a pianist comes to your town, look in your home paper the morning after, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the way; he was ever too reluctant to dispossess a girl of a nearly won prize to be a success at the game. But he took up a position beside the pianist and watched with amused interest. It was really just as good ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... a platform, which was now and then used as a stage; and there was a pianist from Gnesen, not at all a bad player, who was supported by a violin and a double-bass. The musicians played with a good deal of rhythm, a fiery rhythm that carried the dancers away. People danced well in Gradewitz. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... like a Derby Day crowd," panted Amy Loring, as an unseen pianist began to play and they were squeezed into the embrasure of a window. "I've not had time to see who's here yet. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... hulas, Paula sang alone to her own accompaniment. She sang several German love-songs in succession, although it was merely for the group about her and not for the room; and Evan Graham, almost to his delight, decided that at last he had found a weakness in her. She might be a magnificent pianist, horsewoman, diver, and swimmer, but it was patent, despite her singing throat, that she was not a magnificent singer. This conclusion he was quickly compelled to modify. A singer she was, a consummate singer. Weakness was only comparative after all. She lacked ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... shiver, as he stopped a moment to listen, while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture and its arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to be hung—the pianist, too! Don't they know what horrid discord they are making? It brings that heat back. I believe, upon my soul, I shall have to bathe my ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... youth, my mother had been a concert pianist; now she had such large arthritic knobs on all of her knuckles that her hands had become claws. Though there was still that very same fine upright in the cabin that I had learned to play as a child, she had long since ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... Street, was a romantic discovery. Though it had "popular prices"—plain omelet, fifteen cents—it had red and green bracket lights, mission-style tables, and music played by a sparrowlike pianist and a violinist. Mr. Wrenn never really heard the music, but while it was quavering he had a happier appreciation of the Silk-Hat-Harry humorous pictures in the Journal, which he always propped up against an oil-cruet. [That never ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... his cafe-museum, for the striding, it seemed, was only part of the regular performance. He should at the same time have been singing the songs we had come to hear, and he could not without the pianist who accompanied him, and the pianist had chosen this night of all others to be late. The scowl deepened, I felt something like a stir of uneasiness through the room, and I did not wonder, for Bruant looked as ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the front quite clearly when I was about to rehearse a symphony by a very amiable elderly contrapuntist, Mr. Potter, [Footnote: Cipriani Potter, 1792-1871, pianist and composer, author of "Recollections of Beethoven." etc.] if I mistake not. The composer approached me in a pleasant way, and asked me to take the Andante rather quickly as he feared it might prove tedious. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... when she spoke of her husband's talent. But she saw at once that he was concentrated on Sennier. She felt at once that he did not at the moment want to "go mad" over any other composer. If Claude had been a singer, a pianist, or a fiddler, things would have been different. Max Elliot had taken charge of the Frenchman's financial affairs, solely out of friendship, and was investing the American and other gains in various ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... backing out, for young Gould had bragged about his friend's voice, which was indeed a good one though untrained. But he only sang Tubal Cain, Simon the Cellarer, and one or two others of that sort, of which the music was not forthcoming. At last, however, Julia Gould, who was the pianist, found John Peel, which he knew, and he found himself standing by that young lady, confused and shamefaced, trying to make his voice master a great lump there seemed to be in his throat. To make it worse the hubbub of voices ceased at the first notes, though it had swelled the louder ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's habit ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... a piano in her room, and we have sometimes had music in the evening. One of The Teacups, to whom I have slightly referred, is an accomplished pianist, and the two Annexes sing very sweetly together,—the American girl having a clear soprano voice, the English girl a mellow contralto. They had sung several tunes, when the Mistress rang for Avis,—for that is our Delilah's ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Florence and known Browning and his wife. He was, I believe, uncle of Miss Kate Field. He introduced me to Colonel Colt, the celebrated inventor or re-discoverer of the revolver; to Alf. Jaell, a very great pianist; and Edward Marshall, a brother of Humphrey Marshall. Sanford, Colt, Marshall, and I patronised the pistol-gallery every day, nor did we abstain from mint-juleps. I found that, in shooting, Colonel Colt could beat me ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... have a live organist, pianist or orchestra to lead the music. A director to lead the singing, ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... the people giggled, and some groaned a little. The showman couldn't say a word; he looked at the pianist sharp, but he was all lovely and serene—he didn't know there was anything ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from her knees, dried her little scarlet claws in her apron, and stood to attention. Having opened the debate by calling fervently upon her God to witness that she knew nothing of the matter, she proceeded, like a solo pianist, to run her fingers, as it were, lightly over the keys. Passing swiftly from her own birth, upbringing, invincible respectability, and remoteness from all neighbours, or knowledge of neighbours, she coruscated in a cadenza ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... operatic conductor knows that the chord in the orchestra must be played "after the voice," as the technical phrase has it. But not every pianist or organist is familiar with this usage, and the effect would be very disagreeable if given as written. It should be ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... demands super-cleanliness and a tolerably rigid self-denial. Girth is no measure of artistic ability. But the body, sound or otherwise, is the instrument through which we play life's little tune, just as the pianist plays through his pianoforte. But when we have closed the pianoforte nobody supposes that we have extinguished the artist, or annihilated the music: we have merely put an end to its expression for the time. So ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... and quality of the music does not matter here, we may quote: "Hearing a Barbary organ in the street, I picture the instrument to myself. I see the man turning the crank. If military music sounds from afar, I see a regiment marching." An excellent pianist plays for a friend Beethoven's sonata in C sharp minor, putting into its execution all the pathos of which he is capable. The other sees in it "the tumult and excitement of a fair." Here the musical rendering is misinterpreted through misapprehension. I have several ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... than a pale phosphorescence of an outraged wille zur macht. Setting aside half a dozen—perhaps a dozen—great masters of a moribund craft, who will say that the average mechanical piano is not as competent as the average pianist? ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... are there, or are momentarily expected to appear. We begin after an overture with, say, an air from the Puritani, by a lovely tenor; another, from the Somnambula, by a charming soprano; a fantasia by a legerdemain pianist, with long hair, and who comes down on the key-board as though it was his enemy; the famous song from Figaro—encored; the madrigal, 'Down in a Flowery Vale'—the latter always a sure card; a duet from Semiramide, by two young ladies—rather shaky; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... profound perception of color, and an exact, unconscious memory. This last is not imagination nor imaginative memory, but an automatic power, if I may so say, of the retina—as unconscious as is the pianist's memory of his notes, and as unerring. It is not the power to fix in the mind by conscious effort the objects before one, and to recall them deliberately, inch by inch, at any time, but the power, when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Brennan, of Pottsville, Penna., were candidates for the divisional foot ball team that played at Souilly with a number of other divisional elevens. Philip J. Cusick, of Parsons, Penna., the battery's favorite pianist, was selected to make a tour with the regimental minstrel show that was put on to tour the circuit of A. E. F. playhouses. Cusick was recalled to the battery the latter part of February when he received notice of his early discharge ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... tops of their voices and in a quite unintelligible manner a string of presumably obscene songs, accompanied on the piano with frantic gestures and astonishing musical skill by a man whom I had always regarded as a respectable Fabian Researcher, but who now turned out to be a Demon Pianist out-Heroding (my secretary put in two rs, and explains that she was thinking of Harrods) Svengali. A horribly sacrilegious character was given to the proceedings by the fact that the tune they were singing when I entered was Luther's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... it did not err on the side of reticence. Presently, having described a kind of amorous circle, he came again to: "O Love!" But this time his voice cracked: which made him angry, with a stern and controlled anger. Still singing, he turned slowly to the pianist, and fiercely glared at the pianist's unconscious back. The obvious inference was that if his voice had cracked the fault was the pianist's. The pianist, poor thing, utterly unaware of the castigation she was receiving, stuck to her business. Less than a minute later, Emanuel's voice cracked again. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... come bothering for?" came the sound of a woman's voice from behind the door, and again the rhapsody rattled on and stopped, and the sound of a chair pushed back was heard. It was plain the irritated pianist meant to rebuke the tiresome visitor, who had come at an untimely hour. "Papa is not in," a pale girl with crimped hair said, crossly, coming out into the ante-room, but, seeing a young man in a good coat, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Whistling Dan entered Elkhead. He rose in the stirrups, on his toes, stretching the muscles of his legs. He was sensing his strength. So the pianist before he plays runs his fingers up and down the keys and sees that all is in ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking, are actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know whether to offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in milk, or what! We had a pianist here about a year ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... 1817, to Marie Pachler-Koschak, a pianist whom Beethoven regarded very highly. "You will play the sonatas in F major and C minor, for ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... "Yes, or as a pianist," responded the man, rather enviously. "His looks would crowd St. James's Hall even if he couldn't play a note. I never can understand how Cresswell manages to have such a complexion in London. He must take precious ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the greatest boy pianist received such awe as Claire gave to this contemptuous young god, with grease on his peachy cheeks. She did come on. But she rather hoped that she was in great danger. It was humiliating to telephone to a garage for nothing. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... only a foot high and let go the chop-stick, making it change ends, and catching the bowl, they were ready for a general applause. In striking the bowl and thus manipulating his chop-sticks, his hands moved almost as rapidly as those of an expert pianist. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... possessed a fine voice, willingly sang whenever a musical program was arranged for an evening, while his lovely young wife, who was an accomplished pianist, played his accompaniments, or rendered solos, thus generously adding to the ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... knew what. Some one was singing Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet. Her shoulder touched his arm and lingered there. "Oh, my dear!" she was saying to herself. The pianist banged; the vocalist bawled, while Mr. Heatherbloom sat ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... dumpy little woman with merry eyes, soon joined her husband, pushing before her two little girls; one, the smaller of the two, was two years younger than Amedee; the other was ten years old, and already had a wise little air. She was the pianist who practised one hour a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Empress desired that we would come to the Tuileries next Monday, and expressed the wish that I should bring some music. I wrote to Delle Sedie and begged him to advise me what I should sing; he answered that he would come himself and talk it over with me, and Monsieur Plante, a young, budding pianist, who was ordered from the Tuileries to accompany my songs, was sent for, and Delle Sedie came at ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... the keys, humming under his breath. A chorus quickly gathered round. A battered Naval Song Book was propped up on the music-rest—more from habit than necessity, since the Indiarubber Man could not read a note of music and everybody knew the words of the time-honoured chanties. The pianist's repertoire was limited: half a dozen ding-dong chords did duty as accompaniment to "Bantry Bay," "John Peel," and "The Chinese Bumboatman" alike; but a dozen lusty voices supplied melody enough, the singers packed like herrings ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of the waiters, who thought he was dead.[17] Meanwhile, he was told slanderous gossip about Henrietta, which he readily believed. Then he despised her, and dishonoured her publicly in his Symphonie fantastique, paying homage in his bitter resentment to Camille Moke, a pianist, to whom he lost his heart ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... a game, at least not as Mark Hambourg, the pianist and composer, plays it. Hambourg, though born in South Russia in 1879, the eldest son of the late Professor Michel Hambourg, has for years been a naturalised Englishman. In fact, he married in 1907 the Honourable Dorothea Mackenzie, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... smiles and merry eyes one could see that they were transported by the sounds which Notti knew how to call from the drum. Notti was also listened to in deep silence, with an admiration like that with which in a large room we listen to a distinguished pianist. I saw in the tent no other musical ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... countryman of Chopin, and filled with the same earnest patriotism which distinguished him; as an impassioned and perfect Pianist, capable, of reproducing his difficult compositions in all the subtle tenderness, fire, energy, melancholy, despair, caprice, hope, delicacy and startling vigor which they imperiously exact; as thorough master of the complicated instrument to which he devoted his ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... small black silk handkerchief pinned about his lively face, stumped heavily into the room, fell in a heap on the floor against the opposite wall, and in a magnificent bass growled out the resentment of Ortrud, while a rising but not yet prosilient pianist, with a long blonde wig from Miss Dwight's property chest, threw his head back, shook his hands, adjusted a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and banged out the prelude to Lohengrin with amazing variations. Elsa, with her profile against the wall and her hands folded across ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pianist, now inhabits a castle in the Tyrol (Schloss Itter), where she has just received the Abbe Liszt, who passed several days there, getting up at 4 o'clock A. M., to work, attending mass at 7.30, and then continuing work until midday. The Abbe, who was received with ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... As indicated by their title, which signifies a compound of appropriate expression and just disposition of the members, they were designed to cultivate the elements of musical taste, as well as freedom and equality of the fingers. His "Well Tempered Clavichord" has been called the pianist's Sacred Book. Its Preludes and Fugues illustrate every shade of human feeling, and were especially designed to exemplify the mode of tuning known as equal temperament, introduced into general use by Bach, and still employed by your piano tuner ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... tell you that, I wonder? Rudolf Maesterling, the dramatist, stands behind her there in the corner. He is talking to the wonderful Cleo, whom all the world knows. Monsieur Guyer there, he is manager, I believe, of the Alhambra; and talking to him is Marborg, the great pianist. One of the ladies talking to my brother is Esther Braithwaite, whom, of course, you know by sight; she is leading lady, is she not, at the Hilarity? The other is Miss Ransome; they tell me that she is your ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which was consumptive like himself. Two persons shouted "Bravo!" Then a fat gentleman in spectacles, very sedate and even grim of aspect, recited in a bass voice a sketch by Shtchedrin;[57] the audience applauded the sketch, not him.—Then the pianist, who was already known to Aratoff, presented himself, and pounded out the same Liszt fantasia; the pianist was favoured with a recall. He bowed, with his hand resting on the back of a chair, and after each bow he tossed back his hair exactly like Liszt! ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... all she had written ... writing slowly, polishing a paragraph with passionate care, salvaging perhaps a page, perhaps a sentence out of the morning's toil. Then she hooded her machine, lunched, and gave herself up to an afternoon of vivid living,—a Russian pianist, or an exhibition of vehemently modern pictures screaming their message from quiet walls in a Fifth Avenue Gallery, an hour at Hope House Settlement with Emma Ellis or Michael Daragh, tea and dancing with Rodney Harrison, or dinner and a play with ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... his appearance he was, we can ascribe it only to the force of his character that he should have the friendship of such people. He had done nothing as yet to lead people to believe that he would ever become a great composer. As has been stated, however, he was a pianist of great originality, with a remarkable talent for improvising, which, no doubt, had much to do in making him a ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... only surprising that there should be so few inaccuracies either in dress or deportment. There were some very pretty women, and almost all were dressed with simplicity and good taste. The island does not afford a band, but a pianist and violinist played most perseveringly, and the amusements were kept up with untiring spirit till four ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... gradations of volume. Yet the whole system, elaborate as it is, offers but a poor substitute for the marvellous range of individuality that may be expressed on the notes of the piano by instantaneous changes in the values ascribed to single notes. By the same action of his finger the pianist not only makes the note, but also gives its value; while the method of the organist is to neglect the element of finger-pressure and to rely upon other methods for imparting emphasis or ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... one straightened her shoulders and leaned eagerly forward, fairly holding her breath in anticipation, for Azzie's fame as a pianist was far-reaching. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... of the eighteenth century John Field of Dublin was a distinguished pianist. He subsequently (1814) invented the nocturne, developed by Chopin. Sir John Stevenson (the arranger of the Irish Melodies), Tom Cooke, William Southwell (inventor of the damper action for pianofortes), Henry Mountain, Andrew ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox |
