"Crescendo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came closer, she saw that he walked with his chin on his breast; when he reached the gate at the end of the avenue, he did not see it and bumped into it. "Dios mio!" she heard him mutter. "Dios! Dios! Dios!" The last word ended in tragic crescendo; he leaned on the gate, and there, in the white silence, the last of the Farrels stood gazing up the avenue as if he feared ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... pleadings and procedures in the Reichs Diet no reader would permit me to speak, were I inclined. Enough to understand that they went on in the usual voluminous dull-droning way, crescendo always; and deserve, what at present they are sure of, oblivion from all creatures. The important thing was, not those pleadings in the Reichs Diet, nor the Austrian proposals there or elsewhere; but the brandishing of arms in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... man who did not take his work in serious earnest. The faults of his first style still linger, but they are chastened. He has the defect of his quality. In each of his books he strives for an increasing stress of passion, a sustained crescendo; a full and steady breeze for the beginning, and then a gale, a tempest, a tornado. The story is always constructed with this view towards emotional growth and culmination. Sometimes he lets us see the effort this prodigious task imposes upon him, but in his later work more and ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... The thing raised its head and looked about until its eyes rested upon us; then it gave vent to a most appalling hiss that rose to the crescendo of a terrific shriek and came ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Aunt Victoria say it!" cried Sylvia with conviction. Father came out on the veranda, saying to Mother, "Isn't that crescendo superb?" To Sylvia he said, as though sure of her comprehension, "Didn't you like the ending, dear—where it sounded like the Argonauts all striking the oars into the water ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Surely he would have had time to reach camp by now. The storm neither increased nor decreased; only played its mournful melodies in the forest. The song of the rain was despairing,—low mournful notes rising to a sharp crescendo as the fiercer gusts swept it into the tree tops. The limbs murmured unhappily as they smote together; and a tall tree, swaying in the wind, creaked with a maddening regularity. She was never so lonely before, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... 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 ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... gradually ran up the scale till it reached a crescendo shout and then died out in a soft sound like a woman's wail. Heard anywhere the sound would have been alarming enough, but coming as it did in the midst of these unknown, mysterious Mountains of the Moon it struck a chill ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... under the big tree by the track fence, and the click of Blister's stop-watch, with his varied comments on what those clicks recorded, drifted out of my consciousness much as had the dust-clouds. Even the thr-rump, thr-rump, thr-rump of flying hoofs—crescendo, ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... 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
... humbly bowed its head before its imperious commands. Its exactions increased from day to day, and it was not difficult to see to what abysses it was leading the entire American Union. Shall we give our readers an idea of this crescendo of pretensions? ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... began to grunt; continued in crescendo until the whole body throbbed and grunted to the rhythm of the drums. Yet ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... 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 understood ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the passion of the music mounted up and up. And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ran ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... of food. In both it is possible to detect the influence of this pronounced force of opposition. As the child lies sobbing or screaming in bed, every new approach to him, every fresh attempt at pacification, renews the force of his opposition in a crescendo of sound. But it is in his refusal of food that the child is apt to find his chief opportunity. Meal-times degenerate into a struggle. There at least he can show his complete mastery of the situation. No one can swallow his food ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... pavement—whirled back and circled two or three times over that great overthrow, and half a dozen crimson flying-machines danced for a moment like great midges in the sunlight before they swept on after their fellows. The rest of the fight had already gone over the island, a wild crescendo of shots and yells and smashing uproar. It was hidden from Bert now by the trees of the island, and forgotten by him in the nearer spectacle of the huge advance of the defeated German airship. Something fell with a mighty smashing and splintering of ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... playing, when I color a phrase, I do not work up to a climax and make that the loudest note, as most pianists do, but rather the soft note of the phrase; this applies to lyric playing. I will show you what I mean. Here is a fragment of two measures, containing a soulful melody. I build up the crescendo, as you see, and at the highest point, which you might expect to be the loudest, you find instead that it is soft: the sharpness has been taken out of it, the thing you did not expect has happened; and so there are constant surprises, tonal ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... was to work slowly up to a grand crescendo effect; and the crescendo was the Ryks Museum. We had two days of Amsterdam (the second was mostly spent at the diamond cutters') before I ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... devoid of the dramatic sense. It is only possible 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 ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... 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
... eventful evening, therefore, the dinner-party, stimulated by her art and by potent wines (gazing with long-necked dignity at the autocratic whisky-decanter), rapidly assumed a crescendo and an accelerando—the two things ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... 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 splendid ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... prey. (The gates are still always closed as before.) Somebody must have told them that they could do as they liked with Christians and Europeans; for, mad with rage, they began shouting and roaring in chorus two single words, "Sha-shao," kill and burn, in an ever-increasing crescendo. I have heard a very big mass of Russian soldiery give a roar of welcome to the Czar some years ago, a roar which rose in a very extraordinary manner to the empyrean; but never have I heard such a blood-curdling volume of sound, such a vast bellowing as began then and there, and went ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... gradually assumed a rather deafening and complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble—as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for him ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... spoon) ' ... 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 ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... another spell o' the shallers," put in Mrs. Lem as the old man's chuckles threatened a crescendo. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... 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 and beauty and charming girlhood ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... 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
... 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
... silence!" cried Galen Albret, in a crescendo outburst. "Silence! I will not be gainsaid! You have made your choice! You are no longer ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... word "nip" would come a crescendo, swelling to a sharp little monosyllabic quaver, and then the whole thing would die ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... developments, in the terseness of impressive summaries, in the overpowering directness of unexpected arguments, in the multiplicity of literary achievements, in the execution of those passages of bravura, portraits, descriptions, comparisons, creations, wherein, as in a musical crescendo, the same idea, varied by a series of yet more animated expressions, attains to or surpasses, at the last note, all that is possible of energy and of brilliancy. Finally, he has that which is wanting in La Bruyere; his passages are linked together; he is not a writer ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Furneaux's Land have a sweetness of note unknown here," i.e., at Port Jackson. He would not, in February, have heard the song-lark, that unshamed rival of an English cousin famed in poetry, and the sharp crescendo of the coach-whip bird would scarcely be classed as "sweet." "The tinkle of the bell-bird in the ranges may have gratified his ear; but the likelihood is that the birds which pleased him were the harmonious thrush and the mellow songster so opprobiously named the thickhead, for no better reason ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... on expression 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 feeling of the fundamental rhythm, is always latent, and ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the Huguenots almost ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... bright hazel eyes and great temerity of speculation; for be it 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, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... as the gunners drew the levers home. There were four sharp reports, four flashes of flame and smoke, the crescendo moan of tons of flying steel—and the church tower, the bells, and the German officers ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... latter's presence in Seville be made irksome by a few adroitly spread innuendoes against his character. How a calumny, ingeniously published, may grow from a whispered zephyr to a crashing, detonating tempest, Basilio describes in the buffo air "La calunnia"—a marvellous example of the device of crescendo which in this form is one of Rossini's inventions. Bartolo prefers his own plan of compelling his ward to marry him at once. He goes with Basilio to draw up a marriage agreement, and Figaro, who has overheard their talk, acquaints Rosina with ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... it, 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
... made at 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 which I have removed is from a part too near the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... of their members of which this should be revealed? Would he be regarded as a fit incumbent of the office he holds? Wouldn't he be dismissed, kicked out as incompetent—as unscrupulous, I mean," Henry amended quickly. His voice had risen in a shrill and trembling crescendo of dislike. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... swinging round on her music-stool. "That's a jolly crescendo, isn't it? But they're the silliest words, don't you think? As if love ever came home to stay if he could help it. He might put up a few things in a portmanteau, and run down from Saturday to Monday, perhaps, and—the lady was ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... on, now answering questions, now telling bits of the story in her own way, Mr. Butt, the great advocate, taking care that it should all be consecutive and clear with a due crescendo of interest. In October, 1862, it appeared Lady Wilde was not in the house at Merrion Square, but was away at Bray, as one of the children had not been well, and she thought the sea air would benefit him. Dr. Wilde was alone in the house. Miss Travers called ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... they a string around his neck, Dan'l?" Then he went back into his shop and returned with a long stick with a bent nail in the end and began to fish absorbedly into the culvert. Presently a wild crescendo of shrieks announced his catch. I shut my eyes and covered my ears and when I looked again he was hauling out a quivering lump of baby dog. He felt him all over with grimy, gentle fingers and "allowed they warn't ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... walked briskly up and down beside the track until a speck of blinking light rose out of the white wilderness. It grew rapidly larger, until they could make out a trail of smoke behind it, and the roar of wheels rose in a long crescendo. Then a bell commenced to toll, and the blaze of a big lamp beat into their faces as the great locomotive came clanking into ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... thrillingly terrible as the dying scream of a mangled horse, and yet this was far more awful. Only the throat of a human being could emit that chilling cry. It rose in shrill crescendo, to die away in a sobbing wail that lifted the hair on the listener's head. Again and again it came—a moan born of the frightful torture of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... wheels, the reverberations from the blast walls, a crescendo of sound, and they were free of earth. An accelerating, effortless flight, a faint tremor as they passed the sonic barrier, then no sensory impressions ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... feet scratching up a shower of snow which caused the glowing coals of the little fire to sizzle and smoke. The cry of the wolves had floated—but this new cry seemed to hurl itself through the night—a terrifying crescendo of noise that sounded at once a challenge and wail. For a full minute after the sound ceased the boy sat tense and motionless, staring wide-eyed beyond the fire, while behind him, in the farthest corner of the tent the malamutes huddled and whined. Then he shook himself and ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... a crescendo intensity. A forcible tug by the other player resulted in the abrupt loss of his kite. It headed toward me, dancing in the wind. My helpful assistant, the cactus plant, again secured the kite string in the necessary ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... street by the outriders. Before Benton's eyes the whole mass of humanity swam in a blur of confusion and vertigo. The passing files of blue and red soldiery seemed wavering figures mounted on reeling horses. The King's carriage swung into view and a crescendo of cheering went ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... did not mention it, but in all those ten days a sort of crescendo of emotion was going on in her. At first she began to think of it as soon as bed-time approached; then she felt it intruding on her thoughts at the dinner table; then she was unable to sleep for an hour or two after the fifteen minutes had passed, and, finally, one ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... Olga's voice rose in a sharp crescendo of amazement. "Surely"—bending forward to peer into Diana's face—"surely you are not going to keep Max waiting ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... 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 heard the Scottish exiles croon with tears at ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... away into the wilds of argument to which no one listened, began to tell stories which had no auditors, and repeatedly asked questions to which no answer was made. Only the loud voice of wassail could be heard, a voice made up of a hundred confused clamors, which rose and grew like a crescendo of Rossini's. Insidious toasts, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... those three violoncellos sketch the first scene of soft, cool sunset on the unruffled lake; the mellow Corno Anglaise, male partner to the oboe, sweetly woke the flute-like mountain echoes; the low moan and whistle of the storm rose life like in the crescendo of the violins, and as it died away the startling quick-step of liberty leaped strong and simultaneous from such a tutti as we have hardly heard from any orchestra. We can believe that Mr. Benedict was quite sincere ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... intensity. Thus the ability to augment 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 ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... primroses and larks and light-hearted passers-by whom I would never see again. In the distance a barrel organ became more and more distinct and as I drew nearer and the noise grew louder, I wanted to dance and sing. It was in tune with my mood. A symbol of the crescendo of living. ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... Gradually the two prows came abreast, and then Deacon, not stopping at the call of ten, but fairly carrying the crew along with him, swung on with undiminished ferocity, while Seagraves' voice rose into a shrill crescendo of triumph as Baliol forged to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... never do it; this will never do!" and began angrily to tear up one of the music sheets, when suddenly he stopped and raised his head and listened intently. Such a lovely melody, so soft and clear, rising and falling in the sweetest cadences, now growing louder and louder in a wild, passionate crescendo, and then ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... and his ways, and detected the coming storm from afar. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for her, there was little variety in the sequence of his ideas. She was accustomed to his beginning at the grumbling stage before dinner, and proceeding by a crescendo movement to the pitch of rage, which was rarely reached until he had finished his meal, when he generally seized his hat and dragged Gianbattista away with him, declaring loudly that women were not fit for human ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the kind of moonlight they have in Germany," she laughed when she found it. After hammering out a few discords of her own she started recklessly into the incomprehensible "presto," thundering away at every crescendo as if to break her fingers. "Isn't it fine, Daddy?" she cried, gazing over ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... 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
... the singer to have a clear mental conception of the effects to be obtained, and to listen attentively to the voice. With each repetition of an exercise, whether on sustained tones, scale passages, crescendo and diminuendo, or whatever else, the voice responds more smoothly and accurately to the mental demand. Each time the student practises the exercise he listens to the tones and notes how they differ from the desired ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... as though the girl's horror was somehow communicated to him. The scream reverberated through his brain, rising in an intolerable crescendo, blotting out other sensory perception. He fought to regain control of his fading senses, but the castle court blurred and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. He started sliding down an endless, dark chute, ending in ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... 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. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... marked the divisions of time on the job by the shrill note of the little whistle on the hoisting engine boiler, and there was not a man but started at the screaming crescendo of the big siren on top of the power house. Men in the streets, in the straggling boarding houses over across the flats, on the wharves along the river, men who had been forbidden to come to the elevator till they were needed ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... "TEACHER TEACHER. TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!" as Mr. Burroughs has interpreted the notes that go off in pairs like a series of little explosions, softly at first, then louder and louder and more shrill until the bird that you at first thought far away seems to be shrieking his penetrating crescendo into your very ears. But you may look until you are tired before you find him in the high, dry ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... 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 ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... What a crescendo of life! What a quickening of the flow! What a gathering intensity! "Whatever else we may think of the West," I said to the young French artist, "it is, at any rate, the centre of life." "Yes," he replied, "but the curious thing is that that Life produces only Death. Dead things, and ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... and the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo movement up to the last minutes of its existence. And there now remained but an hour before midnight on the Tuesday preceding the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday—Dies Cinerum!—that sad and sober morrow which has brought with it "sermons and soda-water" ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... give hope that long-distance messages might be despatched. There was a certain amount of suppressed excitement on the evening of that day when the engine started and gradually got up speed in the dynamo. The sharp note of the spark rose in accompanying crescendo and, when it had reached its highest pitch, Hannam struck off a message to the world at large. No response came after several nights of signalling, and, since sledging had usurped every other interest, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Kitty's voice rose in a crescendo of incredulity. "But he was crazy about her! Has been, all through the war. Why, I thought there was ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... follow the "just-as-good" curriculum of the college founded for her. In the last sixty or seventy years tens of thousands of women have been students in American universities, colleges, and technical schools, taking there the same training as men. In the last twenty years the annual crescendo of numbers has been amazing; over ten thousand at the beginning of the period, over fifty-two thousand at the end. Over eight thousand degrees were given to women in 1910, nearly half as many as were given to men. Fully ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... called "The 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 ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the house all the morning; ate her lunch in solitude. Outside, the fierce wind, rising in a crescendo shriek, howled around the eaves. The day darkened, but no rain fell. At last Carroll resolved to take her husband's advice. She stopped for Mina Heinzman, and the two walked around to the stable, where the men harnessed ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... you satisfied?" The cruel desire to hurt gave this added thrust. "No? Then let me tell you that I have never loved you, never! I've always loved Philip Danvers—always—always—always!" Her voice rose in crescendo. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... hard as ever! Why should I go on earning money, money, money? Yes, I know! They come to hear me, they crowd the house, they pay, they clap their hands when I sing the mad scene in Lucia, or Juliet's waltz song, or the crescendo trills in the Huguenots! But ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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
... smoke, 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 was the hillside and there ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... service man, and we went back to his machine and sat on it and talked music—music that seemed to be the only reality there in the midst of death, and the spirit that was moving men in the moonlight to forget death for something more real than death. And so it came about that the crescendo of ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... was only old women calling out "rags" ('cenci')—he was tempted from his airy flights to throw himself for once into the portrayal of reality. There was no need now to dip "his pen in earthquake and eclipse"; clothed in plain and natural language, the action unfolded itself in a crescendo of horror; but from the ease with which he wrote—it cost him relatively the least time and pains of all his works—it would be rash to infer that he could have constructed an equally good tragedy on any other subject than the injured Beatrice and the combination, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... drove 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 thoughtless Konig, strong in his opinion about the infinitely little, appealed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... or will you not go to the devil?" rejoined Lottchen, with a comic crescendo; to which the other replied ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... certain point when Moses stops it, and takes the subject of the blessings and curses into his own hands. Hence the abrupt commencement of this oration.—As elements of oratorical beauty note (1) the interweaving and parallelism of sentences, (2) the terrific crescendo and climax of denunciation. The oration must be spoken to get the ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... hair piled up in womanlike fashion on their heads. Gradually, as we advanced further up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous chirp of the cicalas swelled out like an orchestral crescendo. Above us, on the luminous sky, sharply delineated between the mountains, a species of hawk hovered about, screaming out with a deep human voice, "Han! Han! Han!" its melancholy call lengthened out by ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... They lay like coloured beads a-row, They knocked together and parted, And started to dance, Skipping, tripping, each one slipping Under and over the others so That the polychrome fire streamed like a lance Or a comet's tail, Behind them. Then a wail arose—crescendo— And dropped from off the end of the bow, And the dancing stopped. A scent of lilies filled the room, Long and slow. Each large white bloom Breathed a sound which was holy perfume from a blessed censer, And the hum of an organ tone, And they ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... for almost every month during the whole warm season. There are, I believe, seven kinds; but I have become familiar with only four. The first to be heard in my trees is the natsuzemi, or summer semi: it makes a sound like the Japanese monosyllable ji, beginning wheezily, slowly swelling into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in another wheeze. This j-i-i-iiiiiiiiii is so deafening that when two or three natsuzemi come close to the window I am obliged to make them go away. Happily the natsuzemi is soon ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... leccio si vede evidentissimamente, che la prima e principale intenzione della natura e formare dentro di quelle un animale volante; vedendosi nel centro della gallozzola un uovo, che col crescere e col maturarsi di essa gallozzola va crescendo e maturando anch' egli, e cresce altresi a suo tempo quel verme, che nell' uovo si racchiude; il qual verme, quando la gallozzola e finita di maturare e che e venuto il termine destinato al suo nascimento, diventa, di verme che era, una mosca.... Io vi confesso ingenuamente, che ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... hall, Harris was coming—the new-made first captain, adjutant and quartermaster escorting—the commandants of table all over the hall springing to their feet, and the wild rumble of hollow iron beginning the crescendo of swift-coming, stupendous thunder, and Willett stood and swung his hat, and classmates half-way down the slope turned back to see, and understood without seeing, that there was something back of it besides Willett. And then a tornado burst forth, as Harris, pale to the lips, halted at ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 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)
... with the persistence of constables during a London police-court 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 ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... profound 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 indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... 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 out-world night were beyond compare in their terror. The radiance ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... minute, Sarka was conscious of a trembling of all the laboratory, and the eyes of Jaska were wide with fear. Swiftly the trembling grew, until sound now was added to the vast, awesome tremor—a vast, roaring crescendo of sound that mounted and mounted as the speed of the cube-army increased. The vanguard of the cube-army struck the dwelling of the Gens southward of that of Dalis, and a mighty, rocketing roar sounded in the Master Beryl, was audible ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... that the victim made no attempt 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 ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... never sing those words as you should," he cried, "until you know and feel the glory of that wondrous cross. Never, never, never." His voice rose in a passionate crescendo. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... and, as if ears could be thirsty as a drunkard's throat, he drank his fill of the 'cello's deep, full-membered chord. The air was heavy with the resonance of marching feet, ghostly feet marching and marching down upon him in slow, inexorable crescendo as the tides ebbed later among the sedges on the marsh and the moon grew big. And above the pulse of the march he seemed to hear another cadence, a ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Something in the crescendo accents of his voice, something weird and ominous, caused my heart to press against my ribs, so that when he stopped, in my eagerness ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... a voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully down ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... A crescendo of enjoyment secured by means of wine is apt to lack restraint and presently, as the fun grew, it began to verge on the riotous. The officers pressed about the girls until the two were separated, and Janice found ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... door, left ajar, there came, like a lightning-flash, a streak of light with an accompaniment of the crescendo of the orgy and the fragrance of a banquet of the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... pedal; great to pedal; choir to pedal. Mechanical accessories: swell tremulant, choir tremulant, bellows signal; wind indicator. Pedal movements: three affecting great and pedal stops, three affecting swell and pedal stops; great to pedal reversing pedal; crescendo and full organ pedal; balanced great and choir ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... Miss Ross?' she cried in a subdued crescendo. 'Whatever will father say when he knows it is you? There's a deal happened, Miss Ross, and I am in a shake still when I think of the turn he gave me only the other night. I heard the knock, and opened the door, as it might be to you, and when I saw ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... believe that any one could cross that fire-swept area alive, but before many moments we heard the staccato of bursting bombs and hand grenades which meant that some of the enemy, at least, were within striking distance. There was a sharp crescendo of deafening sound, then, gradually, the firing ceased, and word came down the line, "Counter-attack against the —— Guards; and jolly well beaten off too." Another was attempted before daybreak, and again the same torrent of lead, the same hideous uproar, the same ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... the invention 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
... at them, hour after hour, in Carnegie Hall? One could only wonder what had happened, sit 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 become almost a religious rite of itself. Vistas ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a suggestion of the beating 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 suit ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 graces in an absolutely wasteful profusion. Her greatest ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... together," but nothing decidedly 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 to a head, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... heard talking begin, first one voice, then a crescendo, as if two or three clamored together; then one voice again. (It was impossible, so far, to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... the opening scene a little too slow," he said. "I shall call the director's attention to that. But that crescendo is well done; yes, that is most effective. The shawl—observe the beautiful lines into which the shawl falls as she waves it. That is wonderful—a very impressive entry. Ah, but they should not cross the stage yet; it ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... sent with 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 battle ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... where the lyrist has to be displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that recalls the passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the boughs alone. To this true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of pleading. That the violin melody of his incomparable song is lost, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... evening, and heard the katydids by myriads—very curious for once; but I like better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more about the song of the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching a point of great energy and significance, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... in Lent) sin, like 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. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something else exploded dully. But he should be far ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... In an insensible crescendo the thought grew in him: Why should he never attain anything of that which he most longed for—intimate and cordial intercourse and friendliness which should answer to the warmth pent up within him? Why should every one smile to Alphonse with out-stretched ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... 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 ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... 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 villa had ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the class expressed its appreciation in a prolonged and uproarious laugh. It was a stupendous laugh. It had fine crescendo and diminuendo passages, and only died hard, after a chain of intermittent "Ha-ha's." Then it had a glorious resurrection, but faded at last into the distance, a few stray "Ha-ha's" from Pennybet ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... and louder, ended in a shrieking crescendo. Disheartened, there seemed no alternative for the players save to turn back and surrender unconditionally. Barnes breathed a deep sigh; so much for a tippet!—their dash for freedom had been but a sorry attempt!—now he saw visions of prison bars, and uttered a groan, when the soldier who was ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... last suicidal push did not avail. With screams as of a thousand devils and deafening rending roars, the whole side of the Glacier seemed to lean over and fall in a great earth-shattering crescendo ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... oh!" Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful crescendo. There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the ear. Was it after all a joke that he should be serious about anything? He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and protests and ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... 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
... laid himself out to be amusing. In one respect only he had deteriorated. Jevons's strong language was no longer strong. It came, if it came at all, in brief spurts, never with the passionate rush, the gorgeous colour, the sustained crescendo of his first runnings. It was a thing of feeble cliches that might ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... yipp, yipp, 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
... everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came into the studio with the announcement that a ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Dan's shoulder and the stallion. A snarl of incredible ferocity made Satan turn, but without the slightest dread, apparently. For an instant the two stood nose to nose, Black Bart a picture of snarling danger and Satan with curiously pricking ears and bright eyes. The growling rose towards a crescendo, a terrible sound; then a lean hand shot out with that speed which Joan could never comprehend—and which always made her think, rather breathlessly, of the strike of a snake. The fingers settled ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... tremulous 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 which ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... chair beneath the gallery of cartoons. He began calmly enough when I entered, speaking in a low, almost gentle tone, helping himself to snuff between sentences, but gradually working up into a quite artistic crescendo. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... playing; but the second variety can be secured in the case of an organ with swell box, the human voice, and in both string and wind orchestral instruments. Since some of the most beautiful musical effects may be produced by the use of this second type of crescendo, it should be employed very much more than it is in choral and orchestral music. The English conductor Coward takes the ground that the swell (a combination of crescendo and diminuendo) is the most ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... north again appeared one clear belt of light that stretched rapidly and steadily all across the heavens until it formed an arch that stood there stationary. And from that motionless arch, the only motionless manifestation that whole night, there came a gradual superb crescendo of light that lit the wide, white river basin from mountain top to mountain top and threw the shadows of the dogs and the sled sharper and blacker upon the snow,—and in the very moment of its ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... 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 ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying foliage. The sky beyond had darkened, charged to the brim with mystery. The atmosphere became moist and cold; the valley lay beneath—empty, boundless, a ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... undulating, rippling movements, the gloss of its beautiful flanks, the vivid, palpitating scarlet of the glistening tongue which hung from the jet-black muzzle. And all the time that deep, threatening growl was rising and rising in an unbroken crescendo. I knew that the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... violently, and all things, Domini thought, were filled with a sense of climax. She felt as if the room, all the inanimate objects, and all the animate figures in it, were instruments of an orchestra, and as if each individual instrument was contributing to a slow and great, and irresistible crescendo. The stranger took his part with the rest, but against his will, and as if under ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... window wailing Stirred by fitful gales from sea: Shrieking up in mad crescendo— ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... first stanza, he was magnificent on the second. He climbed grandly up the heights of its crescendo:— ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... creating a draught right through the apartment from end to end. He desired to clean it both of a physical and a moral atmosphere which were displeasing to him. And, in so doing, he let in, not only the roar of London, borne in a fierce crescendo on the breath of the wind, but a strange multitudinous rustling from the sombre foliage and stiff branches of the lonely cedar tree. Two limbs, crossing, sawed upon one another as the wind took them, uttering at intervals a long-drawn complaint—not weakly, but rather with virility, as of a strong ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet |
