"Mendelssohn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... machine-made music, the day is coming the sooner when we shall behold, as neighbors in the ordinary bookcase, such pairs of counterparts as Milton and Bach, Beethoven and Shakespeare, Loeffler and Maeterlinck, Byron and Tschaikowsky, Mendelssohn and Longfellow, Nietzsche and Richard Strauss. Browning will stand up cheek by jowl with his one true affinity, Brahms. And the owner will sit by the quiet hearth reading to himself with equal fluency and ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to the breakfast. The truth is, theyre wild with curiosity to know how it all happened. The organist held on until the organ was nigh worn out, and himself worse than the organ. He asked me particularly to tell you, my lord, that he held back Mendelssohn till the very last; but when that was gone he thought he might as well go too. So he played God Save The King and cleared out the church. He's coming to the ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... began with a Quartett by Mendelssohn. The hall was already nearly full, the audience consisting, for the most part, of foreign ladies—fair-haired women very quietly and simply dressed, grave of attitude, religiously silent, as in some sacred ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... self-collected, self-tested, and abounded in extensive information concerning hotels and pensions, apartments and restaurants, families offering German home life with the language, instructors, and courses of lectures, doctors, dentists, dressmakers, milliners, the most direct way to Mendelssohn's grave in the Alte Dreifaltigkeits-Kirchhof, how to find lodgings in Baireuth during the Wagner festival, where to stay in Oberammergau, if it happened to be the year of the Passion Play, and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Mendelssohn was a popular idol. On his death the mournful news was placarded all over Leipsic, where he had made his home, and there was an immense funeral procession. When the church service was over, a woman in deep mourning was led to the bier, and sinking down beside ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... forty years. Here are the yellow and bepenciled Bach Preludes and Fugues, the precious 'forty-eight'; here are the Beethoven Sonatas, every bar of which is familiar; here are—yes, the Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann Sonatas [you notice that I am beginning to bracket the batches]; here are Mendelssohn's works, highly glazed as to technical surface, pretty as to sentiment, Bach seen through the lorgnette of a refined, thin, narrow nature. And here are the Chopin compositions." The murder is out—I have jumped from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin without a twinge ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Cowper, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning would catch the divine afflatus; from its statesmanship Burke, Romilly, and Bright would learn how to create and redeem institutions; from its melodies Handel, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven would write oratorios, masses, and symphonies; from its declaration of divine sympathy Wilberforce, Howard, and Florence Nightingale were to emancipate slaves, reform prisons, and mitigate the cruelties of war; from ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... that time, was not very encouraging. On the stage Rossini yet reigned, and on the piano Herz and Huenten excluded all others. And yet how few years had passed since Beethoven, Weber, and Schubert lived among us! True, Mendelssohn's star was ascending, and there were wonderful whispers of a certain Pole, Chopin; but it was later that these gained their lasting influence. One day the idea took possession of our young and hot heads,—Let us not idly look on; take hold, and reform it; take hold, and the Poetry of Art ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the exposition, etc. The short development section of the Sonata in G (Collection No. 6) offers examples of the three methods of development just mentioned. Bach, like Scarlatti, was a master of his instrument, and even when—as was said of Mendelssohn—he had nothing particular to say, he always managed to say that little well. E. Bach has already much to suffer in the inevitable comparison with Beethoven; and the fact that we have the full message of the one, but not of the other, no doubt ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... of "Way down upon the Swanee River"—"played in ragtime"—for a musical punch in "Alexander's Ragtime Band," was not the first free use of a theme of an old favorite for a punch, but it was one of the first honestly frank uses. The way he took Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" and worked it into as daring a "rag" as he could achieve, is perhaps the most delightfully impudent, "here-see-what-I-can-do," spontaneously and honestly successful "lift" ever perpetrated. Berlin has "ragged" some ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Mendelssohn again about this same Tribune on which Mr Pontifex felt so safe in staking his reputation as a man of taste and culture. He feels no less safe and writes, "I then went to the Tribune. This room is so delightfully ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... and spirited, but our repertoire was limited. I recall many evenings of blameless hilarity on the benches under the trees in front of East College. For more ambitious musical performance we had our "Mendelssohn Society," whose concerts were not probably so classical as we then esteemed them, but whose rehearsals gave us not a little pleasure. Athletics had hardly a name to live. Now and then a football was mysteriously dropped into ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... women speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and Sir Philip Sidney. Catherine and Robert Boyle. Caroline and William Herschel. Letitia and John Aikin. Cornelia and Goethe. Lena and Jacobi. Lucile and Chateaubriand. Charlotte and Schleiermacher. Dorothy and Wordsworth. Augusta and Byron. Mary and Charles Lamb. Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Whittier and his Sister. Eugenie and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Mendelssohn is said to have so much admired this song, that he composed for it what Chambers pronounces an ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Silence was commanded. A handsome young fellow, slim and dark, clearly a Jew, ascended the platform, and sat down at the piano; the bashful Hempel, still blushing and laughing, was induced to follow; together they sung, amidst comparative silence, a duet of Mendelssohn's, set for tenor and barytone, and sung it very well indeed. There was great applause, but Hempel insisted on retiring. Left to himself, the young man with the handsome profile and the finely-set head played a few bars of prelude, and then, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... composition master, Lesueur, he would have broken down from sheer lack of any influence which could command the respect of an excitable youth starving in the pursuit of a fine art against the violent opposition of his family. Only when Mendelssohn, at the age of seventeen, visited Paris in 1825, did Cherubini startle every one by praising a young ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... rages, exceedingly sweet when it is made up. Keturah attends a perfectly grave and unimpeachable lecture,—the Restorer pouts and goes off in a huff for twenty-four hours. Keturah undertakes at seven o'clock a concert,— announced as Mendelssohn Quintette, proving to be Gilmore's Brassiest,—and nothing hears she of My Lady till two o'clock, A. M. Keturah spends an hour at a prayer-meeting, on a pine bench that may have heard of cushions, but certainly has never seen one face to face; and comes home at eight o'clock ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... myself that she had a noble and artistic presence, full of simplicity and quite free of any affectation. On all faces there was the concentrated attention of people who have no understanding of art, but like to pass for connoisseurs and judges. She played Mendelssohn's concerto, which I know by heart,—but whether it was the thought that much was expected from her, or that the unusually enthusiastic reception had moved her, she played worse than I had ever heard her. I was sorry for it and looked at her with ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... should ha' kep' single one for another. Here's a bit of a treeho, lads, as I bought in Brummagem the day afore yesterday. It's by that new chap as wrote 'Elijah' for the festival. Let's see. What's his name again? Mendelssohn. Shall us have a try ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... music on the rack before her, played the "Miserere" from "Il Trovatore," a Hungarian "Czardas," Mendelssohn's "Fruehlingslied" and the overture from "William Tell." She followed these with the "Intermezzo" and the "Pizzicato" from "Sylvia," and then with "Narcissus" and "Sans Souci." And at the end of this, she paused again; ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... all other pianists, was a German. A German, like the eminent Liszt and the great Mendelssohn, and Steibelt, and Dussek, and Meyer, and Mozart, and Doelher, and Thalberg, and Dreschok, and Hiller, and Leopold Hertz, Woertz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck —and all Germans, generally speaking. Schmucke was a great musical composer doomed to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... with him "in his bachellor abode," the other guests being Arnould, Domett, and Bryan Proctor; later, at a musicale given by Chorley, Browning met Charlotte Cushman and Adelaide Kemble. Chorley drew around him the best musicians of the time: Mendelssohn, Moscheles, Liszt, David, and other great composers were often rendered in his chambers. Proctor was then living in Harley Street, and his house was a center for the literary ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... his distinguished countryman in introducing into his Grande Fantaisie sur des airs polonais, Op. 13, a theme of Kurpinski's. Two younger men, both born in 1800, must yet be mentioned to compete the picture. One of them, Moritz Ernemann, a pupil of Mendelssohn's pianoforte-master, L. Berger, played with success in Poland and Germany, and has been described by contemporaries as a finished and expressive, but not brilliant, pianist. His pleasing compositions are of an instructive and mildly-entertaining character. The other of the two was Joseph ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the gay girl bounded to the piano and vigorously began playing Mendelssohn's wedding ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... charming art. One "little thing" succeeded another; his selections were all very happy. His guests sat scattered in the red firelight, listening, silent, in comfortable attitudes; there was a faint fragrance from the burning logs, which mingled with the perfume of Schubert and Mendelssohn; the covered lamps made a glow here and there, and the cabinets and brackets produced brown shadows, out of which some precious object gleamed—some ivory carving or cinque-cento cup. It was given to Olive, under these circumstances, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... opened into her sitting-room, and, with the door open, it was the same as if they were still together. The promise of thanks was well kept as the exquisite notes of Mendelssohn's "Hope" and "Consolation" filled the rooms with music that is as simple and enduring as the genuine feeling of a ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... operatic compositions of his attracted attention to him in musical circles in Meiningen, the near-by ducal residence. He was granted a scholarship amply sufficient to permit him to perfect his musical education at Leipzig under Mendelssohn, then the renowned director of the famous Gewandhaus concerts. But the large city only deterred the shy recluse, Mendelssohn showed little appreciation for Ludwig's efforts to cultivate a realistically characteristic style of musical expression, and finally ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... a particularly leaden touch," agreed Dorothy Arkwright. "The way you hammer out Mendelssohn is enough to try my nerves, so I'm sure it must be an offence ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... was embraced by the Queen. Princess Frederick William would have kissed her father-in- law's hand, but was prevented by his kissing her cheek. The bride and bridegroom left the chapel hand-in-hand to the sound of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March." The register was signed in the Throne-room first by the young couple, then by their parents, and afterwards by all the princes and princesses—including the Maharajah Duleep ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... study of the score and from hearing, the performance at Portland, that Mr. Paine's oratorio has fairly earned for itself the right to be judged by the same high standard which we apply to these noble works of Mendelssohn and Handel. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Lavender, "I don't know many of the boys who sail boats in the Serpentine: you will have to make their acquaintance yourself. But I know one boy whom I must bring to the house. He is a German-Jew boy, who is going to be another Mendelssohn, his friends say. He is a pretty boy, with ruddy-brown hair, big black eyes and a fine forehead; and he really sings and plays delightfully. But you know, Sheila, you must not treat him as a boy, for he is over fourteen, I should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... knows more tomboys and enormous fat women named 'Grace' and 'Lily,' and sweet little mouse-like ladies staggering along under a sonorous 'Jerusha Theodosia' or 'Zenobia Jane'; and that if he should name the boys 'Franz' and 'Felix' after Schubert and Mendelssohn as Marie wants to, they'd as likely as not turn out to be men who hated the sound of music and doted on ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... of Handel, no important oratorio was heard in England until Haydn's "Creation," in 1798. Then, in the present century, Spohr followed with his "Crucifixion," "Last Judgment," and "Fall of Babylon;" and then Mendelssohn, that greatest disciple of Bach, whose "Elijah" and "St. Paul" quite revived the taste for oratorio, and gave an impetus to it, which extends ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... "Oberon." Weber continued to reside in Sir George Smart's house during the whole of his stay in London, and died there soon after the production of his "Oberon." Sir George Smart was the first person who presented Mendelssohn to me. I had been acting Juliet one night, and at the end of the play was raised from the stage by my kind old friend, who had been in the orchestra during the performance, with the great composer, then ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... to the severely classical, but we disinterred from the heap a few lighter works of an old-fashioned kind, including a volume of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, and with one of these Miss Bellingham made trial of her skill, playing it with excellent taste and quite adequate execution. That, at least, was her father's verdict; for, as to me, I found ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... impressions. 'Neither of them, though both were literary and musical, could endure German literature and music, had got beyond the stale sarcasms of the Anti-Jacobin, or could admit that there is glory for such men as Weber, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, as well as for Cimarosa and Paisiello.... Her familiar conversation was a series of brilliant, egotistic, shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... have alluded above to his powers upon the violin. These were very remarkable, but as eccentric as all his other accomplishments. That he could play pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn's Lieder, and other favourites. When left to himself, however, he would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognized air. Leaning back in his arm-chair of an evening, he would close his eyes and scrape carelessly ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... among the nearer ridges, but softer and with a rare sweetness as pure and clear as a thrush's vesper bell. Again a short pause and we heard them higher, fainter, sweeter, until they died away among the hills; too fine for our mortal ears to catch. It seemed as if some sylvan deity, some Mendelssohn or Chopin of this vast forest solitude heard those harsh notes and putting a golden cornet to his lips, sent back the melodies the bugler meant to make. As the last reverberations died away among the hills we thought of those ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... in the American church. Dr. Nevin urged me so much that I did not like to refuse. I chose Mendelssohn's ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... overflowing, expanding, hence unshackled art of the panorama? Methinks you can best answer this question yourselves by asking another. Which is higher as a work of art, that tender song without words by Mendelssohn, called "Regret," or that indescribably affecting capriccio of his marked as "Opus 33"? Which is higher as a work of art,—that in its sadness unparalleled song of Shakespeare, "Blow, blow, thou Winter wind," or his "Othello"? Or again; which is a higher ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... notice the criticism on music itself, but added in a soft, disapproving way: "That man has no music in him. Do you know that was one of Mendelssohn's delicious dreams. This is how it should have been rendered," and he went impulsively to the piano and then the sweet monotonous cadences and melodious reveries slipped from his long white fingers till the whole room was permeated with a delicious sense ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... As Mendelssohn composed songs without words, so may the schoolmaster give lessons of the most powerful import without a word being spoken. A beautiful interior in a schoolroom is a silent lesson in order and good taste. Beauty and order have a most valuable influence on the emotions and the character. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... was delicious, I longed to hear the organ. Especially when the ceremony was finished I hoped that we should hear Mendelssohn's March. But there was no organ ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... just at the close of this wonderful music, which the programme said was Mendelssohn's "Spring Song," when Elizabeth looked up to meet the eyes of some one who stood near in the aisle watching her, and there beside her stood ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... go," Von Barwig said briefly; and without another word they walked out of the Gewandhaus. They passed the statue of Mendelssohn erected in front of the building, walking down the August Platz as far as the University. Poons noticed that unusual things were happening that morning. First, his friend was walking rapidly, so rapidly that he himself almost had to trot ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... piano. It was a poor piano, and he was a poor player who smoked his old pipe while he painstakingly fingered Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" or the score of "The Geisha." ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... sentimental, by no means always amiable, and, as a rule, subject to sudden fancies. Ten years of his sentimental education had been sown with adventures that had begun well, caprices that had no satisfactory endings. He had fallen in love with the girl who played Chopin on the piano, the girl who played Mendelssohn on the violin, the girl who played Goltermann on the violoncello. Then followed girls who painted, poetized, botanized, and hammered metal. Once—an exception—he had succumbed to the charms of an actress who essayed characters in the dumps—Ibsen ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... composer who had sung the song he played, his love of his sweet daughter for whose sake he played—his love of her and fear for her if he should fail to win the favor of his burly listener. The great "Spring Song" of Mendelssohn has never been played on a flute as Kreutzer played it, in the grey light of that morning in the cheerless, bare beer-garden. When he had finished there was silence in the crowd behind him. Not a man among the applicants for the position was a real musician, but all knew, instinctively, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries practised their elaborate artifices upon it. The supreme genius of Sebastian Bach made it the subject of study.7 And in our own times it has been used with conspicuous effect in Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony, in an overture by Raff, in the nobleFestouverture of Nicolai, and in Wagner's Kaisermarsch; and is introduced with recurring emphasis in ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... often been conscious of visiting at desire a realm of music that led through the world of tone, through the spheres of matchless harmony in which the great masters of music abide,—Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and to the divine realm ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... noticed the party comin' in. They come in a 'ired carriage. No, they're orphans or widders or somethin'. There's always a lot of orphans an' widders about this 'All, partic'lar on a Sunday afternoon when they're doin' 'Andel's Messiar. And the Elijiar, too! You know! Mendelssohn's bit! Reg'lar fascination for orphans an' widders that 'as. I call it depressin' meself, but some 'ow it seems to fit ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... more was given by Don and Dorry at the house-picnic to eager listeners who wished to get up exactly such a picture-gallery at their own homes some evening. But while they were talking about it somebody at the piano struck up a march—"Mendelssohn's Wedding March"—and almost before they knew it the guests found themselves marching to the music two by two in a procession across the great square hall, now lighted by a bright blaze in ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... "Oh, we play Mendelssohn," said Phoebe, with much show of innocence; and then she added, "You ought to feel the compliment if I play ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... their place of ages: he did not stir them as much as the morning and evening breezes among the leaves, or the streams trickling down among the great rocks and wearing their way over precipices. But he moved men and women, of all natures and feelings. He could translate Bach and Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart,—all the great poet-musicians that are silent now, and must be listened to through an interpreter. All the great people and all the little people came to hear him. A princess fell in love with him. She would have married him. She did everything but ask him to marry her. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Bibliothek der schnen Wissenschaften, a magazine conducted by Nicolai and Mendelssohn. 3: Caroline Neuber was a famous actress, who between 1727 and 1748 coperated with Gottsched for the improvement of the Leipzig stage. 4: The 'Swiss critic' is Bodmer. 'Darius,' the 'Oysters,' etc., are the titles of plays included in Gottsched's Deutsche Schaubhne ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... author was a well-known high-church divine, Father Rowton. To him, then, Henry Chichester betook himself for comfort. The piano stood open. On it was music. Malling looked and saw, "Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove!" by Mendelssohn. The little room seemed full of pious orthodoxy. Surely its atmosphere was utterly changed since Malling last was in it. The melody of "Oh, for the wings!" went through his brain. That the Henry Chichester he had recently known, that cruel searcher ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... vigorously renewed. The creator of the history of the figurative arts saw in the divine indifference and more than human elevation of the works of Greek sculpture a beauty which had descended from the seventh heaven and become incarnate in them. Mendelssohn, the follower of Baumgarten, had denied beauty to God: Winckelmann, the Neoplatonician, gave it back to Him. He holds that perfect beauty is to be found only in God. "The conception of human beauty becomes the more perfect in proportion as it can be thought ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... wrote home that people could "gabble and gossip quite as much as in Zwickau." His sojourn there had one important result in his discovery of Schubert's beautiful C major Symphony, which he sent to Mendelssohn for performance at ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... adjusted himself to this when an old gentleman entered the room, and with only the most casual glance at the two pilgrims walked to the grand piano, shook back his cuffs, and began playing Mendelssohn's "Spring Song," as though that particular melody were the one great passion of his life. When he had concluded he rose and shook ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... some bits of Handel that have great power over the girl; she listens to them, I might almost say, devoutly, and is never weary. Madge is delighted with Rossini; but Lois gives her adherence to the German classics, and when I play Haydn or Mozart or Mendelssohn, stands rapt in her delighted listening, and looking like—well, I will not tantalize you by trying to describe to you what I see every day. I marvel only where the girl got these tastes and susceptibilities; it must be blood; ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... familiar in the room. Many articles from our old play-room in the castle were old friends, but the others were new, especially the pictures, and yet they were the same as those in my University room—the same portraits of Beethoven, Handel and Mendelssohn, as I had selected—hung over the grand piano. In one corner I saw the Venus di Milo, which I always regarded as the masterpiece of antiquity. On the table were volumes of Dante, Shakspeare, Tauler's Sermons, the "German ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... once for all not to be done away with, and it is ignored only at the expense of feasibility. Some later Romanticists, therefore, such as Spohr and Mendelssohn, came back immediately to the comfortable middle register as the real vocal register of song. The thirst for shrill sounds had made men entirely forget that a song must be easy to sing just because it must always be sung suggestively and never be delivered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... suppressing excitement. The inspector had noted that when Trent had picked up a strong scent he whistled faintly a certain melodious passage; though the inspector could not have told you that it was in fact the opening movement of Mendelssohn's Lied ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... which the mind of a man of letters is unhinged; when the intellectual faculties lose all their elasticity, and when nothing but the simplest actions are adapted to their enfeebled state. At such hours it is recorded of the Jewish Socrates, Moses Mendelssohn, that he would stand at his window, and count the tiles of his neighbour's house. An anonymous writer has told of Bayle, that he would frequently wrap himself in his cloak, and hasten to places where mountebanks resorted; and that this was one of his chief amusements. He is surprised that so great ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... supreme symbol of spiritual infinity in art, was now about to be developed; and the specific touch of Tasso, the musician-poet, upon portraiture and feeling, called forth this quality of vagueness, a vagueness that demanded melody to give what it refused from language to accept. Mendelssohn when some one asked him what is meant by music, replied that it had meanings for his mind more unmistakable than those which words convey; but what these meanings were, he did not or he could not make clear. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... distributing of fees as never was seen in Castle Lane church before. And Mrs. Dimsdale, as one of the witnesses, would insist upon writing her name in the space reserved for the bride, on which there were many small jokes passed and much laughter. Then the wheezy old organ struck up Mendelssohn's wedding march, and the major puffed out his chest and stumped down the aisle with his bride, while Tom followed with his, looking round with proud and happy eyes. The carriages rolled up, there was a slamming of doors and a cracking of whips, and two more couples ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fortuitous event has stamped the Birmingham "music meeting" with a glory and prestige all its own. I refer to the production of Mendelssohn's "Elijah" in 1846. This was, indeed, a piece of great good fortune, for Mendelssohn's oratorio aroused an interest and enthusiasm throughout the musical world that has not yet died down. The occasion certainly gave the Birmingham Festivals ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... pretty, mediaeval chapel scene, with illuminated stained-glass windows, and trim acolytes holding lighted candles, and the great green curtain slowly descending to the first few bars of the Wedding March of Mendelssohn. ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... that young Palm Beach millionaire—or is it billionaire?—waiting to greet you and some day crown that fair brow of thine with fragrant orange blooms. Methinks I can already smell their fragrance and hear the strains of the justly celebrated wedding march of Mendelssohn." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... Raphael's, a portrait by Titian, a Domenichino, etc., etc., all these within the circumference of a small semi-circle no larger than one of your own rooms. This is a spot where a man feels his own insignificance and may well learn to be humble." The Tribune is a slippery place for people like Mendelssohn to study humility in. They generally take two steps away from it for one they take towards it. I wonder how many chalks Mendelssohn gave himself for having sat two hours on that chair. I wonder how often he looked at his watch to see if his two hours were up. I wonder ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... leaning out of the window, then opening her piano, for the first time since her father's death, she sat down and played a nocturne by Mendelssohn. The music seemed a natural expression of her feelings,—suited to the heart "steeped in golden languors," in the "tranced summer calm." The tones rang through the silent rooms, pervading all the charmed air, so that the ear tingled in listening,—as the lips find a sharpness with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... hair. He is about forty years of age, in the noon of his fame and the full maturity of his genius. Already as a boy of fourteen he composed an opera, which was played with much success at Berlin; he is now the first living composer of Germany. Moses Mendelssohn, the celebrated Jewish philosopher, was his grandfather; and his father, now living, is accustomed to say that in his youth he was spoken of as the son of the great Mendelssohn; now he is known as the father ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... instrument represents a character to him. Ah! that remark of his about clarionets: "They typify beloved women." Ah! it has always made a shiver run down my back. And Chopin, so dandified in his Byronism; the dreamy poet of those who suffer from neurosis! And Mendelssohn, that faultless chiseller! a Shakespeare in dancing pumps, whose "songs without words" are gems for women of intellect! And after that—after that—a man should go down on ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... touching, sweet yet strong, Hath risen Goethe's, Wordsworth's song; Yet even I (and none will bow Deeper to these) must needs allow, They yield us not, to soothe our pains, Such multitude of heavenly strains As from the kings of sound are blown, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn." ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... victim is being chosen. I have a vision of the spirits of composers small and great—standing up like suspects awaiting identification, while her eye ranges over them. Chopin tries to edge behind Wagner, a difficult and forbidding person, and Gounod seeks eclipse of Mendelssohn, who suddenly drops and crawls on all fours between Gounod's legs; Sullivan cowers, and even Piccolomini's iron-framed nerves desert him. She extends her hand. There is a frantic rush to escape. Have you ever seen a little boy picking dormice out ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... enemy of Germany. He remembered—none better—the debt we owe to her learning and her art; to Bach and Beethoven, to Handel, the "dear Saxon" who adopted our citizenship; to Mendelssohn, who regarded England as his second home; to her fairy tales and folk-lore; to the Brothers Grimm and the Struwwelpeter; to the old kindly Germany which has been driven mad by War Lords and Pan-Germans. If Mr. Punch's awakening was gradual he at least recognised the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... immediately, and strains of Mendelssohn and Handel were soon filling the church. Clare was wandering dreamily round listening and enjoying it, when suddenly a harsh voice ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... spoken; and the husband, stooping proudly to the not-averted face of his blushing wife, gave her the first kiss. And at the same instant a little band of musicians, with chosen instruments, secretly stationed in the library, of which the door was now thrown open, struck up Mendelssohn's divine Wedding March. As its jubilant notes floated through the house, the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... sayings, hallowed by long usage, which throng the mind through a whole summer's day, and seem in harmony with its emotions—some portions of the Psalms or lines of greatest poets, inarticulate hymns of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, waifs and strays not always apposite, but linked by strong and subtle chains of feeling with the grandeur of the mountains. This reverential feeling for the Alps is connected with the Pantheistic form of our religious sentiments to which I have before alluded. It is a trite remark, that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... verdict which will finally be passed on "Genevieve" every one must be curious who has at all followed the journals of Young Germany in the recent crusades which they nave made, not so much to establish Schumann as a great composer, as to prove him greater than Mendelssohn. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... boys, school-children,—Tom was nearly as well worth a quarter as the negro-minstrels; here and there a pair of reserved, homesick eyes, a peculiar, reticent face, some whey-skinned ward-teacher's, perhaps, or some German cobbler's, but hints of a hungry soul, to whom Beethoven and Mendelssohn knew how to preach an unerring gospel. The stage was broad, planked, with a drop-curtain behind,—the Doge marrying the sea, I believe; in front, a piano ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... choir, and then the people settled themselves comfortably in their pews with expectant faces and ears slightly turned to catch every strain from the well-trained voices in the gallery behind. This time the selection was from Mendelssohn and a ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... the conventional black and the lovely bride arrayed in a charming creation of white satin consummated their sacred nuptial vows amid banks of fragrant lilies and beautiful, blushing roses to the melodious strains of Mendelssohn's entrancing ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... the exact spot where the ceremony was to take place was carefully measured by Colonel Lamont and myself, in order that the music might be timed to the precise number of steps the wedding party would have to take; and the climax of the Mendelssohn "Wedding March" was played by the band just as the bride ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa
... Switzerland,' I inferred, 'has travelled in the East—the complete works of Canon Farrar—that big bust with whiskers is Mendelssohn, no doubt. Good heavens! a stuffed cat! And that Moorish plaque is rather awful. Still, some of the nicest people ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... her; had greatly feared such a catastrophe. Her words, coming as they did so soon after her appearance in a certain offensive hat, with an ungraceful feather, and after some rather bourgeois expressions of admiration for that poor, tiresome devil Mendelssohn, had saved him a jamais. The two sparred gaily for some time, and, in spite of his poisoned tonsils, Carlino was in such high spirits that Noemi congratulated him on the subject of his novel. "It must be ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... "classical," it suggest heaviness, lack of tunefulness, the kind of thing that "may be all right for some people," but never, you think, would suit you. At last, however, you yield. You inquire for something of the kind and are advised to try Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." Much to your surprise you don't find it heavy at all. In fact you recall once having heard it played between the acts in a theatre and having thought it rather pretty. Its rhythm isn't as persistently emphatic ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... be forgotten Frederick Schlegel, the avowed champion of the new school. The critic was not without connecting links and antecedents; he had made himself son-in-law of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and stepfather of the painter Philip Veit; and he further qualified himself for his critical duties by joining the Roman Catholic Church. Overbeck and this rhapsodist on Christian Art were naturally close allies; each was of use to the other, and gave and received in turns. The ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... have already learned that thought from the heart, expressed in tones, is good music. On the other hand, a thought with the heart not in it, expressed in tone, makes poor or common music. Mendelssohn wrote in one of his letters: "When I have composed a piece just as it springs from my heart, then I have done my duty toward it."[28] But in writing thoughts, whether in words or in tones, there is a very important thing to add to the bidding of the heart. It is the training of the mind. ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... when a boy, been well flogged; but that he had been spoilt by the facility with which he produced. Men who feel their strength within them need not fear to encounter adverse opinions; they have far greater reason to fear undue praise and too friendly criticism. When Mendelssohn was about to enter the orchestra at Birmingham, on the first performance of his 'Elijah,' he said laughingly to one of his friends and critics, "Stick your claws into me! Don't tell me what you like, but what you ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... stirred restlessly. Glancing round the room, his eyes fell on his violin, lying upon the table with the bow beside it just as he had laid it down that morning after he had been improvising, in a fit of mad spirits, some variations on the theme of Mendelssohn's Wedding March. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... near him both with his talk and his sympathetic lie. A true man will not move a finger or lisp a syllable to echo what he does not apprehend and approve. A true man never assents anywise to what is error to him. In the delicious letters of Mendelssohn we read of an application by a distinguished lady made to him to write a piece of music to accompany the somewhat famous lines known as "Napoleon's Midnight Review." The great artist, feeling the untruth to his genius of any such attempt at description in sound, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... as versatile and fascinating as a young Ulysses on a sufficient acquaintance—one whom nature seemed to have first made generously and then to have added music as a dominant power using all the abundant rest, and, as in Mendelssohn, finding expression for itself not only in the highest finish of execution, but in that fervor of creative work and theoretic belief which pierces devoted purpose. His foibles of arrogance and vanity did not exceed such as may be found in the best English families; and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... two hours of Schumann and Mendelssohn at high pressure is too much for one man. But I say, Marechal, what do you think of Mademoiselle Herzog's being at Cayrol's soiree. It is a little ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... my acquaintance, which runs through field and dell to join the Till, I have hearkened to again and again for hours, unable to break away from the spell of its ever-varying, yet constant music—a sort of wilder, sweeter version of Mendelssohn's Duetto, with the voices of Knight and Lady alternating and intermingling amidst a rippling current of clear ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... century, a fact of great significance is the relationship of the arts of literature and of music. Numerous examples might be cited of men who were almost equally gifted in expressing themselves in either words or musical sounds—notably von Weber, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Spohr, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, this dual activity reaching a remarkable climax in Richard Wagner, who was both a great dramatic poet and an equally supreme musician. The same tendency is manifested by leaders of thought in other nations. Thus the French Berlioz and St. Saens are equally noted as composers and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... about Handel are pretty correct; but we find that Weber wrote Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman, Der Ring der Nibulengon. His dates are 1813-1883. Mendelssohn was born 1770, died 1827 (Beethoven's dates), studied under Hadyn (sic), and that he composed many operas. Gounod is said to be 'a rather modern musician'; he wrote Othello, Three Holy Children, besides Faust and other works. Among the names given as ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... Robert Schumann, while looking over a heap of dusty manuscripts at Vienna, found this wonderful symphony, until then unknown. He was so much charmed with it that he sent it to Mendelssohn at Leipzig. It was there produced at the Gewandhaus concerts, won the admiration it deserved, and thence found its way to all the orchestras of the world. The youthful composer had been dead nearly twenty years when ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... bombastic and feeble; there is neither a logical nor a chronological progress to his narrative; moreover, he is not always trustworthy, even in matters personal to himself;—at all events, a very interesting account of a meeting between him and Mendelssohn, at the house of Moscheles in London,—apropos of nothing,—has called—out a letter from the latter in a Leipzig musical journal, in which the whole story is declared to be without foundation. In our references to Lenz, we shall consider his "Catalogue" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is, the chief function of the conductor was that of "time beater." With the advent of the conductor in the role of interpreter, such directing became obsolete, and from the early nineteenth century, and particularly as the result of the impetus given the art by the conducting of Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, the conductor has become an exceedingly important functionary, in these modern days even ranking with the prima donna in operatic performances! It is now the conductor's aim not merely to see that a composition is played ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... never have come merely from profound skill in workmanship, but is due chiefly to the manly sincerity and emotional depth which are found therein. The revival of his works, for which the world owes to Mendelssohn such a debt, has been the single strongest factor in the development of music during the 19th century; and their influence[42] is by no means yet at an end, as may be seen from the glowing tributes paid to him by such modern composers ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... swept the bridal procession to the strains of Mendelssohn's wedding march played by the orchestra, stationed in a palm-screened corner of the wide hall. It was the same old orchestra which had become so closely identified with the good times of the Eight Originals during their high school days. Jessica had declared laughingly that it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... revealed Frohman's utterly uncommercialized attitude toward the theater. He was greatly taken with the miracle play "Everyman," and brought over Edith Wynne Mathison and Charles Rann Kennedy to do it. He was unable to get a theater, so he put them in Mendelssohn Hall. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... of the most exquisite and popular treasures of German lyric poetry, by the Austrian poet Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806-1849) with music by Mendelssohn-Bartholdi. The second ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... for Kambira and his men to listen to the sounds that floated up from the valley,—sweeter far than the sweetest strains of Mozart or Mendelssohn,—the singing of the workers in the fields and gardens, mellowed by distance into a soft humming tone; and the hearty laughter that burst occasionally from men seated at work on bows, arrows, fishing-nets, and such-like gear, on a flat green spot under the shade of a ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... liked, in an order of succession so dexterously arranged as never to provoke satiety, were Mrs. Tempest's cardinal duties. In the intervals of her life she read modern poetry, unobjectionable French novels, and reviews. She did a little high-art needle-work, played Mendelssohn's Lieder, sang three French chansons which her husband liked, slept, and drank orange pekoe. In the consumption of this last article Mrs. Tempest was as bad as a dram-drinker. She declared her inability to support life without that gentle stimulant, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... Father Payne, "of poor, commonplace, merely popular work, but of work which was acclaimed as great by the best critics of the time, and which will probably return to pre-eminence," He instanced, I remember, Mendelssohn and Tennyson. "Of course," he said, "they both wrote a great deal—perhaps too much—and some kind of sorting is necessary. I don't mind the Idylls of the King, or the Elijah, being relegated to oblivion, because they ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... there for half a year, and during that time he secured the material for his notable work, "Histoire Secrete de la Cour de Berlin." Among other writings which he produced about this time were his "Moses Mendelssohn, ou la Reforme politique des Juifs," and his pamphlet "Denonciation de l'Agiotage," aimed against the policy of Calonne. Again he was in danger of the lettre de cachet, and so he repaired to Brunswick, where ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... 'When she can play Mendelssohn well enough to satisfy Mr. Bevan. I wonder Lady Price does keep her on here, but in the meantime we can only make the best ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... music and of the uses to which it might be put in the drama, and more advanced notions than he has generally been credited with as to how music and the drama ought to be consorted. Like all composers, he longed to write an opera, and it is not at all unlikely that, like Mendelssohn after him, he was deterred by the general tendency of the opera books of his day. Certain it is that though he received a commission for an opera early in the year 1803, it was not until an opera on the story which is also that of "Fidelio" had been ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel |
