"Crescendo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to escape, uttered no cry for help. Suddenly she felt something whirling and buzzing in her brain, while a wild fluttering filled both her ears; then the swirling, fluttering torment rose in a swift and awful crescendo which seemed to involve all creation in its vortex; then a pang like a lightning-thrust and a crash like the thunder that goes with it, and she saw a tall man striding rapidly from the window. She was still sure it was no personal concern of hers, yet an idle curiosity noted ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... climax in this book; justifying Taine's satiric remark that "these phrases should be accompanied by a mandolin." The moral tag is infallibly supplied, as in all Richardson's tales—though perhaps here with an effect of crescendo. We are still long years from that conception of art which holds that a beautiful thing may be allowed to speak for itself and need not be moraled down our throats like a physician's prescription. Yet Fielding had already, as we shall see, struck a wholesome note of satiric ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... and diminish the volume of tone was so highly esteemed—indeed, so essential—that singers spent much time in acquiring the messa di voce, that is, the steadily graduated emission of tone from the softest degree to the loudest and again to the softest: p [crescendo symbol] f [decrescendo symbol] p. This exercise invariably formed a part of each day's study, and was practised on several vowels throughout the scale, except the extreme tones, save in rare instances. It was, in fact, indispensable that the singer should be able to colour ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... intermission. It rose and fell, that was all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth. The electric fires rifting the darkness of this ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... muffled, distant, he thought in the voice of Alden. It was stifled, cut off ere it had come to full crescendo, in a very significant manner. Silence, then, fell about him, the chill silence ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... disturbing Miller's peace of mind, but whatever it was moved to his advantage. He clamped tighter, working his heels into another secure position. The big man bellowed with pain. "Take him off! Take him off!" he implored in shrill crescendo. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... quicker and louder, working up gradually but surely into a breathless crescendo that meant the end of the dance. It whirled them dizzily about. The sleepy spell of the dance broke in this final crash of noise, and as it broke a sudden panic ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... disconsolately in her hand, looked for one dreadful instant as if she were about to burst into tears. A few dancers had stopped and gathered sympathetically around us, but the rest were happily whirling on, while the music, after a piercing crescendo, came breathlessly to a pause amid a silence that I felt to be far louder than sound. The perspiration, forced out by inward agony, stood in drops on my forehead, and as I wiped it away, I said ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... to his ears through the forest behind. It began like the gentle, mellow lowing of a cow at evening, swelled into a quavering, appealing crescendo cadence, and gradually died away. Almost as the last note ceased another commenced at the same low pitch, with only the rest of a heart-beat between the two, and surged forth into a plaintive yet tempestuous call, which sank as before. It was followed by a third, terminating ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... once: I button my clothes tightly, so as to afford the Bees the least possible opportunity, and I enter the heart of the swarm. A few blows of the mattock, which arouse a far from reassuring crescendo in the humming of the Anthophorae, soon place me in possession of a lump of earth; and I beat a hasty retreat, greatly astonished to find myself still safe and sound and unpursued. But the lump of earth ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... her an'—an' fer him!" he choked. Whatever he meant to do, his young passion for Salome Madeira and his young affection for Steering, his hero, leaped out on his face whitely. "She loves him, too, Unc' Bernique!" he cried in a final, broken crescendo. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... in the playing of music. "The efforts which feeling makes to hold to...the shape of the first rhythm, the force which it is necessary to use to make it lose its desires and its habits, and to impose others on it, are naturally expressed by an agitation, that is, by a crescendo or greater intensity of sound, by an acceleration in movement." If a purely technical expression may be pardoned here, it could be said that the motor image, that is, the coordinated muscular tensions which make the group ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... up on their heads in feminine fashion. Gradually, as we advanced farther up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous chirp of the cicalas swelled out like an orchestral crescendo. Above us, against the luminous sky, sharply delineated between the mountains, a kind of hawk hovered, screaming out, with a deep, human voice, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" its melancholy call ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... that: the roofs collapsing, like a toy structure of cards. Still the roar of it swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to have nothing to do with the collapse, which went on piecemeal, steadily, like a game. The crescendo was drowned in a sharper roar and a crash close behind her—a crash that seemed the end of all things. . . . The house! She had not thought of the house. Turning, she faced a cloud of dust, and above it saw, before the dust stung her eyes, half-blinding her, that the whole front of the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cliff of man's making; its great buildings at a distance seem like long Chinese banners held up against the sky. From Sandy Hook to the great landing stages and the swirling hooting traffic of the Hudson River there fails nothing in that magnificent crescendo of approach. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the meadows in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. But I find the sound of the mowing- machine and the patent reaper is even more in tune with the voices of Nature at this season. The characteristic sounds of midsummer are the sharp, whirring crescendo of the cicada or harvest fly, and the rasping, stridulous notes of the nocturnal insects. The mowing- machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is like the hum of a locust or the shuffling of a mighty grasshopper. More than that, the grass and the grain at this season ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... instead of its being a smash that opened a way to better things, it might have been a smash without a recovery. It is part of my business to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before Holsten was just a hundred years' crescendo of waste. Only the extreme individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up material—insanely. They had got through three-quarters of all the coal in the planet, they had used up most of the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... of scenes of the sort quoted above, where the apparent monotony and verbal padding could be converted into coin for laughter by the clever comedian. Amph. 551-632 could be worked up poco a poco crescendo e animato; in Poen. 504 ff., Agorastocles and the Advocati bandy extensive rhetoric; in Trin. 276 ff., the action is suspended while Philto proves himself Polonius' ancestor in his long-winded sermonizing ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... the best man I know. You've married, dear lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint—a Bayard." He flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the crescendo of his thought. "A preux chevalier, sans peur" said Mr. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Japanese man dlunk, ol no dlunk, all same to me. He no can speak tluth, he no can be honest man. He buy something, nevel pay. Japanese belong bad, bad, bad man. He always speak lie, lie, lie, lie," and he emphasised his words with a crescendo as he curled up what he possessed in the shape of a nose—for it was so flat that it hardly deserved the name; indeed, to give strength to his speech, he spat with violence on the ground, as if to clear his mouth, as it were, of the unclean sound of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... protection. Thus entrenched, we had stood an hour, watching a pair of lighted bow-windows with vague shadows flitting continually across the blinds, and listening to the drawing of corks, the clink of glasses, and a gradual crescendo of coarse voices within. Our luck seemed to have deserted us: the owner of the purple diamonds was dining at home and dining at undue length. I thought it was a dinner-party. Raffles differed; in the end he proved right. Wheels grated ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... rolling the thunder roared, Sudden and jagged the lightning played, Faster and faster the raindrops poured, Sobbing and surging the tree-crests swayed, Cracking and crashing above, below. Crescendo! ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... 286. How should the longer sung notes be taught? Here the rule should be enforced that every radical note should be accompanied with a swelling of the tone where it is intended to sing the following ones in crescendo, and on the other hand, the strength of tone diminishes when these notes are to be sung decrescendo. If there is a pause, a messa di voce should ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... remembered the days of the theories of woman's equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for if we should have rain I ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the insulated hull was what Hanlon knew to be a tremendous crescendo roar of sound, and he was pushed deep into the resilient spring-cushions of his chair. A constricting band seemed to be clamped on his chest, while at the same time there was a curious feeling that he should weigh less but didn't. That was the peculiar sensation the combination of anti-gravity ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... the yellow dust rises in thick clouds and buries the picture in a glaring fog. This moving, struggling mass, that fights for the right of way along the road, is within easy distance of the shells. Those from their own guns pass over them with a shrill crescendo, those from the enemy burst among them at rare intervals, or sink impotently in the soft soil. And a dozen Tommies rush to dig them out as keepsakes. Up at the front, brown and yellow regiments are lying crouched behind brown and yellow rocks and stones. As far as you can see, the hills are sown ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... an angle of forty-five degrees, he began to quiver and to breathe audibly in rhythm to the rhythm of her singing. With a quick jerk, cataleptically, his nose pointed to the zenith, his mouth opened, and a flood of sound poured forth, running swiftly upward in crescendo and slowly falling as it ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... She had brought out the air; she had made it sing above the confusion of the bass and treble that evidently had had no clear understanding when they started; as for the bad bits, the tremendous crescendo chords that your hands must take at a flying leap or miss altogether, Rowcliffe had already assured her that they were ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... raised his baton and the celli began to sigh the mournful phrase which ushers in the symphony. Milton leaned back luxuriously as the woodwind commenced the next phrase; and then, while the introduction ended with a sweeping crescendo and the tempo suddenly increased, Elkan sat up and his eyes became fixed on the ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... somewhere. He'd done that once, and the stuff had boiled out all over everywhere when he pulled the air out of the little room. Nope, no coffee. No obstacles to turning on the pump. He thumbed the button, and the pumps started to whine. The whine built up to a crescendo, then began to die away until finally it could only be felt through the walls or ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... of newspaper, now high, now low; small, creeping sounds that rose to a crescendo; rushing, ripping, shrieking sounds of agitated newspaper, lacerating Laura's nerves, and murderous to the rhythm of ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... exclaimed. "Ah-a-ah!" in a crescendo of astonishment at our duplicity. "Then I 'ave made one mistake. Francois! Those first floor rooms they are already taken. But on the third floor are two good beautiful rooms. There is also the lift—you can use ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... heart,—the violins in octaves. This is the favorite aria of all who have heard it,—of myself, as well,—and is written right into the voice of Adamberger. One can see the reeling and trembling, one can see the heaving breast which is illustrated by a crescendo; one hears the lispings and sighs expressed by the muted violins with flute in unison. The Janizary chorus is, as such, all that could be asked, short and jolly, written to ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... heart and soul; my whole being thrilled with the passionate outpourings of a spirit freed. My voice trembled in the upper bars of a feline love-song, quavered, descended, swelling again into an intimation that I brooked no rival, and ended with a magnificent crescendo. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... this, I say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio: Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to 'feel the truth and Stir of Day'; till Beethoven's pompous March should begin, and the Chorus, with 'Arthur is come, etc.'; the chief Voices raising the words aloft (as they do in Fidelio), ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... He sat up with a jump. A great gust of wind broke down upon the vessel. It came with a shriek that rose in a fierce crescendo. His startled eyes were riveted upon a new development in the sky. An inky cloud bank was sweeping down upon them out of the north-east, and the wind seemed to roar its way out ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the story. It is truly wonderful how differently the same words can be trimmed up and handed out, and I like the crescendoes and diminuendoes and shades of feeling which give emphasis and expression, as my music teacher says I must be careful of when playing. There is never going to be any crescendo or diminuendo business about Billy's love-making, and I might as well make up my mind to that in the beginning. It's going to be pure staccato with him—short and quick and soon over. But it will last forever, Billy's will. He isn't ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... to write good plays without the power of character-drawing, upon one condition—that of possessing the power of creating dramatic situations. The Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, for instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of persons. One of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by Voltaire himself. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... it was; and every voice a stranger! For a week or more I was puzzled by a song which I heard without fail whenever I went into the woods, but the author of which I could never set eyes on,—a song so exceptionally loud and shrill, and marked by such a vehement crescendo, that, even to my new-found ears, it stood out from the general medley a thing by itself. Many times I struck into the woods in the direction whence it came, but without getting so much as a flying glimpse of the musician. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... began to make me uneasy—there was no place to stop. A failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... now increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of the wreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushing through the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rain was coming, and against that tropical squall ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... a small escort towards the river and hospitals. An officer was despatched with the news to the Sirdar, and on the instant both cannonade and fusillade broke out again behind the ridge, and grew in a crashing crescendo until the whole landscape seemed to vibrate with the sound of explosions. The second phase of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... are nice—" Rosemary's voice rose in a crescendo of pure pleasure. "But I'm not a good example—you won't say that when you know me. I get as mad, ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... all spoon!' At this moment, from merely designating single objects by names learnt through imitation, the child's consciousness had awakened to connective thinking. That this achievement was a cause of inner satisfaction could be heard in the joyful crescendo with which these ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... after the owls and other night birds take their turn, making the now dense darkness more terrible with their harsh, sinister cries. Little by little as the night deepens, bellows, roars and howls resound upon every part in a slow crescendo until they are fused into a general and appalling uproar which could not be more awful if the gates of Hell were to be ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... further mental deduction equally justified by the facts; the long snore and wheeze of the bellows filled the silence, and the dirty walls flushed and glowed with the steady crescendo and diminuendo ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... musical glasses to be magnified in volume to the same gradation of power." She could ascend at will—though she was ignorant of the rules of art—from the smallest perceptible sound to the loudest and most magnificent crescendo, exactly as she pleased. One of her favorite caprices of ornament was to imitate the swell and fall of a bell, making her tones sweep through the air with the most delicious undulation, and, using her voice at pleasure, she would shower her ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... increases the effect. This is sometimes strikingly seen at the rehearsal of a play: a passage which has fallen flat upon the ear is suddenly brightened into effectiveness by the removal of a superfluous phrase, which, by its retarding influence, had thwarted the declamatory crescendo. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... rose from the court. Presently the light began to fade, and the buzz faded with it; then some lights were turned on, and there was a crescendo of voices. It was possible to see more clearly the multitude of faces, all of them hot, nearly all of them excited and expressive. A great many people were standing, packed closely together and looking obstinate ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... elusive nature of the music gave it more than half its magic. It would die away as the wind declined, or come in passionate crescendo. For long it seemed to Montaiglon—and yet it was too short—the night was rich with these incongruous but delightful strains. Now the player breathed some soft, slow, melancholy measure of the manner Count Victor had often ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... not until the great crescendo of the man's storm of grief had passed that Nan bethought herself of the need in which he stood. Nor was that need apparent until his whole note had changed to a moody bitterness with which he regarded the future. Then she ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... did take any notice of Esmeralda, but she was right this time, it appears, and I was wrong. Imagine it! Pixie began bemoaning that she was not pretty, and it was not herself she was grieving for, or you, or Me!"—Bridgie's voice sounded a crescendo of amazement over that last pronoun—"but whom do you suppose? You'll never ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... spot of light to prove to our senses the existence of any opening at the other end. The sound echoed from the walls and roof has a tremendous quality, and resolves itself into a grand sort of Wagnerian rhythm, making a vast crescendo, till with a rush we clear the tunnel, and are once more under the open sky. The pace is increasing, the steady beat of the engine tells more distinctly on the ear than in the daytime; the foot-plate is lit up by the glare ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... of the absence of bird voices,—so silent the fields and groves and orchards were, compared with what she had been used to at home. The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere was the shrill, brassy crescendo of the locust. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame's sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur's impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stephanie, she kept on saying "Oui, Monsieur" and "Non, Monsieur," in a crescendo of maddening demureness. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... love! don't forget it's your own mother who gives all to her dear boy. Make it last as long as possible. Frig my cunt, Mary—put in two fingers. Now go on, but not too fast at first—gentle strokes bring the greatest pleasure, till at length we go crescendo. Oh, you do it so nicely, my love, my own boy! Isn't he a darling, Mary? He shall fuck you, my love, as often as he likes; only I must have my ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... all pleasure, contains a spur. Vice is like an Autocrat, and let a single harsh fold in a rose-leaf irritate it, it forgets a thousand charming bygone flatteries. With Vice a man's course must always be crescendo!—and forever. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... the walls and down from the roof spurted scores of quivering ribbons of blinding green flame. Swiftly the radiant tendrils rushed in upon the shrinking three from every side, while the infra-bass thundered in mighty crescendo. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... hitherward to the Honsbruck Lawsuit by way of Paris, in Autumn last, there had fallen out some dispute, about the monads, the VIS VIVA, the infinitely little, between Madame and Konig; dispute which rose CRESCENDO in disharmonious duet, and "ended," testifies M. de Voltaire, "in a scene TRESDESAGREABLE." Madame, with an effort, forgave the thoughtless fellow, who is still rather young, and is without malice. But ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... throb, the great black belts sagged and fell inert, the wheels whirred listlessly, clocks all over the great city began to toll for one more long day ended and gone, while the voices of the girl toilers rose superbly and filled the gathering stillness with the soft crescendo refrain: ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... came the soft crescendo of a hyena's howl some place off in the night. It was answered by another, miles away; then another, far off in a still different direction. The scent of the bait was spreading to the far horizon and the keen-scented carrion-eaters ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... you want that you should be keeping my stenographer from working?" Zalnitch's voice rose in a shrill crescendo. "Get out of here! You have no business ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... (Bar line) [<] Crescendo hairpin [x] small cross [] 45 degree downstroke [/] 45 degree upstroke [/] large circumflex shape [O|] a circle bisected by a vertical line protruding both ways [Gamma] The Greek capital gamma [mid-dot] ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... is his of the facts of the universe, giving his reader the truths of the scientist touched with an idealism such as is only known to the poet's soul! A friend, writing me of "The Summit of the Years," spoke of "its splendid ascent by a rapid crescendo from the personal to the cosmic," and of how gratifying it is to see our author putting forth such fine work in his advancing years. Another friend called it "a beautiful record of a beautiful life." I recall the September ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... but there came a long crescendo hoot, rising into a shrill wail. The shell hummed over the soldiers like a great bee, and sloshed into soft earth behind them. Then another—and yet another—and yet another. But there was no time to heed them, for there ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she lay awake that night hearing the gradual diminuendo of the noises of traffic outside, till, when she thought there would be a hush, the crescendo of the work of the coming day began, she felt no doubt as to what this was which absorbed her and kept sleep so far aloof from her eyelids. It had started from as small a beginning as a fire that devastates a city, reducing it to desolation and blackened ash. A careless passenger has ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... continued mamma, in a crescendo sweep, "that all but undid my lifework for the family's position, and that may yet cost your father his presidency at ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... stillness had passed, and I could just make out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the mountains, ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! a long wailing crescendo beginning softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... under misfortune is not an attribute of either hen-folk or womenkind, and while Mrs. Saunders declaimed over her onion bed such portions of the slang dictionary as are permitted by the Nonconformist conscience to be said or sung, the Vasco da Gama fowl was waking the echoes of Toad-Water with crescendo bursts of throat music which compelled attention to her griefs. Mrs. Crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a short temper, and when some of her ubiquitous offspring had informed her, with the authority of eye-witnesses, ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... purpose, this long while, in Heaven and on Earth. But it is not in the power of reward or punishment to bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your Highness? When I am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never, never,' in steadv CRESCENDO tone:—so that his Highness is glad to escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the left hand: and this Serene Lady stands like a fateful ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... he tried to free himself from the clutch of the white, bloodless hand, but she clung to him desperately, despairingly, while her voice rose in an agonized crescendo. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... unpleasant occurred until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... voice dropped its softness, and took on a shrill crescendo of excitement as he flashed ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... something in a girl irresistibly attractive to a girl herself. Mere words being unsufficient to express the emotion caused by this charm, a girl makes use of a large force of ejaculations, utters her indescribable "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" in every variety of crescendo and diminuendo, and emphasizes her pitch with gestures that point her meaning, till not the slightest doubt exists that she has been impressed by something wonderful. She does not know, indeed, just what it is that makes Sallie Henderson so delightful; but "Oh, she ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... was lost in a crescendo bellow of sound. Seaton, still at the controls, shut off the noise, studied his meters carefully, and turned around to Crane with ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... yipp arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and sat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... would have said that a crowd had woken up; a London policeman, that a crowd was turning nasty, as the sharp note went crescendo right along, until it took the definite tone of thousands of human voices upraised in ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... hearing, carrying refreshments and little charcoal stoves. The signal for the next act is a deafening clicking noise made by one of the stage hands on two sticks, which gradually rises to a shattering crescendo as the curtain is drawn aside. It must be understood that the theatre that I am describing was set apart for national drama. In others there are topical farces and laughter is continuous; but I did not visit any. On board ship, however, we had a series of performances ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... of the most bizarre, eccentric, and original verse forms. An example of this is the poem entitled "The Djinns" included in "Les Orientales" (1829). The coming and going of the flying cohort of spirits is indicated by the crescendo effect of the verse, beginning with a stanza in lines of two syllables, rising gradually to the middle stanza of the poem in lines of ten syllables, and then dying away by exactly graded diminutions to ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... my clothes and buckled my gold belt around my waist. The fire was humming away in a steady crescendo, punctuated by confused shouts of many men. Light flickered redly through the cracks of the loosely constructed hotel building. I found Johnny awaiting me ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he felt keenly the contrariness of life; and all the labour which those around him were expending on the cult of hand and voice and car, seemed of a ludicrous vanity compared ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... was his career—he was not quite thirty-two—his life was cut short in a crescendo of all its nobler elements. Exquisite as was already his susceptibility to beauty and his mastership of the rarest poetic material, we cannot doubt that Chenier was preparing for still higher flights ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... went, and whenever they were strong enough to wake up the black water the murmur alongside ran through my very heart in a delicate crescendo of delight and died away swiftly. I was bitterly tired. The very stars seemed weary of waiting for daybreak. It came at last with a mother-of-pearl sheen at the zenith, such as I had never seen before ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... he assured her, smoothing back her hair. But she continued to sob on in a gradual crescendo of despair, till the vehemence of her weeping began to frighten him, and he drew her to her feet and tried to persuade her to let herself be led upstairs. She yielded to his arm, sobbing in short exhausted gasps, and leaning her whole weight ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... broke the camel's back, if it is proper so to speak of a middle-aged, delicate-featured lady, delightfully gowned and coiffed and manicured. Mrs. Gower's grief waxed crescendo. Whereupon her husband, with no manifest change of expression beyond an unpleasant narrowing of his eyes, heaved his short, flesh-burdened body out of the chair ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... DEAR boy!" said Mrs. Dinks, with a crescendo affection and triumph. While she was yet embracing him, his father, the unemployed statesman, the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... funniest little squint to its nose that Bud had ever seen. It was so absolutely demoralizing that to relieve himself Bud gave the squaw a shake. This tickled the baby so much that the chuckle burst into a rollicking laugh, with a catch of the breath after each crescendo tone that made it absolutely individual and ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... itself—save for the mystical questioning that runs through it in the sustained sevenths—a theme which Captain Morton said always reminded him of a meadow lark's evening song, but which repeats itself over and over plaintively and sadly as the stately music swells to its crescendo and dies with that unanswered cry of heartbreak echoing in the last faint notes of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... found the exit doors mysteriously locked and what few guards were in the pit proved to be helpless against the outraged horde from above. The priests and the guards were being torn to pieces as though by the fangs of maddened dogs. The screams of terror and agony were a crescendo drowning the ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... even in their first crescendo wails that bespoke the good heritage of a father's love-of-life and a ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Inheritance Divine," and it is much the best thing Shelley has done. It begins with a long, slow crescendo on the word "Jerusalem," which is very forceful. Shelley responds to an imaginary encore, however, and the word becomes little more than ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... It was reckless, riding that way right into death; but the old man believed young Jasper's life at stake, and the men behind asked no questions when old Jasper led them. The horses' hoofs beat the dirt street like the crescendo of thunder. The fierce old man's hat was gone, and his mane-like hair was shaking in the wind. Louder-and still the Stetsons were quiet-quiet too long. The wily old man saw the trap, and, with a yell, whirled the column up an alley, each man flattening over his saddle. From every window, ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... and its surrounding ocean of life—ah, that is beyond me! but the sun will dry up, too, and its ocean of life no doubt be drawn to other greater suns. For everything seems to go on more or less in the same way, only crescendo, everywhere and forever. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... home they looked at each other in dismay, then, bred as they were to mask emotion, they joined hands and trudged silently back up the bank with filling eyes and chins a-quiver until they gained the rear of the house. Here they sat down all forlorn, and began to weep bitterly and in an ascending crescendo. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... style of the comic in its unadulterated state, and in both I received the same impression. The first time, the clowns came and went, collided, fell and jumped up again in a uniformly accelerated rhythm, visibly intent upon affecting a CRESCENDO. And it was more and more to the jumping up again, the REBOUND, that the attention of the public was attracted. Gradually, one lost sight of the fact that they were men of flesh and blood like ourselves; one began to think ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... and doctors began to grunt; continued in crescendo until the whole body throbbed and grunted to the rhythm of the drums. Yet immobile ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... cried Galen Albret, in a crescendo outburst. "Silence! I will not be gainsaid! You have made your choice! You are no ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... a minister," he kept repeating crescendo, till he shouted to the villagers, "But I ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... said Wisdom. scorning me— I clasped my true Love's tender hand and answered frank and free-ee "If this be Vanity who'd be wise? If this be Vanity who'd be wise? If this be Vanity who'd be wi-ise (Crescendo.) Vanity ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... provides the devices for accelerating or retarding the time and for making the tone loud or soft, but when to whip up the time or to slow down, when to use the sustaining or the soft lever or when to swell through a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo—all that is left to your own taste, judgment and discretion. There is, indeed, among the improvements introduced in the pianola a contrivance, of which more hereafter, by which complete directions are given for the interpretation of the roll of music that ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Christmas Eve, 1916. Two long, haggard years of the war had dragged by, to a wailing crescendo of misery, famine, disease, and madness. We had been hurled up and down an invisible line of death, bending and pressing it back and forth like a horde of ants at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... by helplessly, watch the crowd—thousands of headlong human beings lunging their souls and their bodies through the music, weeping, gasping, huzzaing, and clapping to one another. After every crash of new crescendo, after every precipice of silence, they seemed to be crying, "This is Soul! Oh, this is Soul!" The feeling of a vast audience holding its breath, no matter why it does it or whether it ought to do it or not, seems to have ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a whistle cuts the air, the clang of a bell peals out, the rumble of a wagon is heard, and the street cars begin their clatter and clang. All this comes floating up to you on the still morning air, until an ever-increasing crescendo of sounds is borne in upon you, telling that the town has awakened from its nap, stretched itself like a drowsy giant, and is ready once more to grapple with ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... rolling up the rugs for the spring cleaning. There is a sour rhythm in the fellow and he will beat a pretty syncopation on them if the hurdy-gurdy will but stick to marching time. It is said that he once broke the fabric of a Kermanshah in his zeal at some crescendo of the Robert E. Lee. But he was lost upon the valse and struck languidly and out ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... expected in the natural perturbation of his sense of the perfect solubility of that of his cousin; for the correspondent of the Interviewer prompted mirth in him, and he had long since decided that the crescendo of mirth should be the flower of his declining days. Henrietta, on her side, failed a little to justify Isabel's declaration with regard to her indifference to masculine opinion; for poor Ralph appeared to have presented himself to her as an ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... then broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the passion of the music mounted up and up. And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... certainly produced instruments with the most pliant touch possible—and therefore regarded the use of the thumb in the ascending scale on two white keys in succession—the semitones EF and BC—as practicable. On the grand piano of the present day we regard it as irreconcilable with conditions of crescendo legato." This Chopin fingering in reality derives directly from Hummel. See ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... The sky lightened for a moment and they saw the shape of leaves and tree fronds far above them like a pattern on a carpet—a pattern which changed with elflike witchery, for a wind had blown up and sounded about them with the roar of a distant sea, rising now and then in a mighty crescendo, like the boom of a nearer wave upon the shore. The tree tops swayed and joined in the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... expanded (stringendo and crescendo) into a series of exciting climaxes fff leads, after some modulatory phrases derived from the transitional theme, to the Development which begins in B-flat major. Throughout this is a fine piece of work—with real thematic growth, bold modulations and no ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... "The crescendo of quarrel is most skilfully and drolly arranged;—a scene on classic lines boldly challenging and, what is more, maintaining comparison with Sheridan." Mr. A. B. Walkley—The ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... considerate for the master's privacy. "He is my slave; the man has ruined himself for la Vittoria; but I respect the impersonation of art," he said under his breath to the ladies as they stood at the door; "hark!" The piano was touched, and the voice of Irma di Karski broke out in a shrill crescendo. Rocco Ricci within gave tongue to the vehement damnatory dance of Pericles outside. Rocco struck his piano again encouragingly for a second attempt, but Irma was sobbing. She was heard to say: "This is the fifteenth time you have pulled me down in one morning. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... insects of the dawn, began to howl and the trains on the elevated railway thundered by. The city's voice, which never ceases, but which had sunk to a sleepy murmur, suddenly awoke, and with clattering, snarling crescendo roar announced the coming of the tides of toilers. "I am facing the day," he said to himself, "and the papers containing the contemptuous judgments of my critics are being delivered in millions to my fellow-citizens. This thing I have gained—I ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... palpitating documents which I have quoted, and all the perspectives of emotion-inspiring institution and belief that my previous lectures have opened, the dry analysis to which I now advance may appear to many of you like an anti-climax, a tapering-off and flattening out of the subject, instead of a crescendo of interest and result. I said awhile ago that the religious attitude of Protestants appears poverty-stricken to the Catholic imagination. Still more poverty-stricken, I fear, may my final summing up of the subject appear at first to some of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... same moment the sky was lit up by all manner of S.O.S. lights and the innumerable flashes from our guns, which were now showing their maximum strength for the first time. They belched forth concentrated death, the roar reached such a deafening crescendo that conversation was entirely out of the question—indeed it was impossible to hear one's own voice. However, the scene was truly impressive, and the grandeur ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... but he gave them hell at Belmont and at Graspan, and they say they are fighting again to-day at Modder River. Major Erasmus is very down-hearted about it. But the ordinary burghers hear nothing but lies; all lies, I tell you. (Crescendo) Look at the lies that have been told about us! Barbarians! savages! every name your papers have called us, but you know better than that now; you know how well we have treated you since you have been a prisoner; and look at the way ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... would do it. One more note—no more, no less—at the end of the crescendo could tie the symphony together and end it. But which one? I've tried them all, and ...
— I Like Martian Music • Charles E. Fritch
... notes he voiced the beautiful plea for aid in the hour of man's supreme need, which finds expression in the first two lines. Then, with his bow gripping the strings in a great sweeping crescendo, he poured forth in full strong chords the triumphant faith with ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... away of the hearty unison with which prayer-meeting and camp-meeting assemblies used to "crescendo" ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... and crescendo tremble, ending in an all-drowning roar, as the big door was pushed open for a moment, and Shiloh, quaking, but brave, was pulled in, giving the tiny spark of her little life to add to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... looked at the dazzling girl in white as if they expected an entirely different person. The murmur of pleasure, the indefinable stir of human emotion, the solemn mystical words at the altar that were making two one, the triumphant peal of music when they ceased, and the quick crescendo of rising congratulation—all these things were present then, as now. And then, as now, all these things failed to conceal from sensitive minds that odour of human sacrifice, not to be disguised with the scent of bridal flowers—that immolation of youth ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... of the shot reverberated back from the mountains, it was followed by a perfect crescendo ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... be content never to hear a better prima donna if one were secured against never hearing a worse. In her was first remarked here, among vocalists of distinction, that trembling of the voice when it is pressed in a crescendo, which has since become so common as greatly to mar our enjoyment of vocal music. This great fault, unknown before the appearance of Verdi, is attributed by some musical critics to the influence ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... me has always seemed the high-water mark of Hugo's lyrical achievement as well as the most human of his utterances, one might pass on to masterpieces of another inspiration: to the luxurious and charming graces of Sara la Baigneuse; to the superb crescendo and diminuendo of les Djinns; to 'Si vous n'avez rien a me dire,' that daintiest of songlets; to the ringing rhymes and gallant spirit of the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... murmur ran through Hell, A fearful whisper, scarcely breathing, "Hope!" Then louder, as when storms begin to blow, Gusty and fitful, and the word was "Hope!" Then, rising like a tempest, swelling high In vast crescendo, swept the human cry, And all ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... a great crescendo of sound as the party turned the corner, and a flare of light shone under the gate; then the sound of loud talking, a silence of the hoofs; and a sudden jangle on ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson |
