"Allegro" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Handel's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were performed at Birmingham, the passage most ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... and spirits, Horace insisted I should write the "L'Allegro" to this "Il Penseroso" effusion. So, finding the jade had recovered her wonted buoyancy, I prayed her mount on gayest wing, and having spread her pinions to the sun, produced ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... disgraced by unbridled sensuality coupled with sordid avarice. This explains in a measure Paganini's inferior rank as a composer. Famous are his variations on the tune "God Save the King," his "Studies," his twenty variations on "Il Carnevale di Venezia," and the concert allegro "Perpetual Motion." The celebrated twenty-four violin capricci, written early in Paganini's career, have been rendered familiar by their transcriptions to the pianoforte by Schumann and Liszt. Paganini died from the results of dissipation. He left his famous Guarnero fiddle ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... widows, sir, Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt To put strange misconstruction on your words, As aiming at a Turkish liberty, Where the free husband hath his several mates, His Penseroso, his Allegro wife, To suit his sober or his ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... in his "Comus," which, upon the strongest presumptions, is ascribed to this period of his life. In the same neighborhood, and within the same five years, it is believed that he produced also the "Arcades," and the "Lycidas," together with "L'Allegro," and "Il Penseroso." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... complement not unfrequent among the old poets. The lode star is the leading or guiding star, that is, the pole-star. The magnet is, for the same reason, called the lode-stone, either became it leads iron, or because it guides the sailor. Milton has the same thought in L'Allegro: ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... impossible for anyone devoted to the study of "Paradise Lost," of "Comus," even of "Sampson Agonistes," and especially of "Il Pensoroso" and "L'Allegro," to doubt that their writer was carried away at times by the oestrum, or divine afflatus, although Dr Johnson discredits "these bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention."—See Lives of the Poets, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... decoration has its effect on us; oriental decoration quite differently to Swedish, savage, or ancient Greek. It is not for nothing that there is a general custom of describing samples of decoration as gay, serious, sad, etc., as music is described as Allegro, Serioso, etc., according to the nature ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... southward, toward the Thames, Horton, the cradle of Milton. A marble in its ivy-grown church is inscribed to the memory of his mother, ob. 1637. At Horton were composed, or inspired, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus and others of his nominally minor but really sweetest and most enjoyable poems. In this retirement the Muse paid him her earliest visits, before he had thrown himself away on politics or Canaanitish mythology. Peeping in upon his handsome young face in its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... word well known from Milton's exquisite "L'Allegro." Sir John Hawkins (vol. ii. page 86) traces it to the Moorish Rebeb; and believes he finds this old three-stringed fiddle in the hands of Chaucer's Absolon, the parish-clerk, who could "plaie songs on ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... least in it for Donal the attraction of a certain grotesque yet homely poetic element. He remembered too the honour such a type of creature had had in being lapt around for ever in the airy folds of L'Allegro. And to think that Mistress Jean, for whom everybody had such a respect, should speak of the creature in such a tone!—it sent a thrill of horrific wonder and delight through the whole frame of ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Trumtwang, and Muggledrone: harmony we must not call it; for, though they had agreed to a partnership in point of tune, each, like a true painstaking man, seemed determined to have his time to himself: Muggledrone played allegretto, Trumtwang allegro, Whistlerap presto, and Scrapesqueak prestissimo. There was a kind of mathematical proportion in their discrepancy: while Muggledrone played the tune four times, Trumtwang played it five, Whistlerap six, and Scrapesqueak ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... interesting chapter on this subject in Dr. Feilberg's "Jul."{27} I may mention just one familiar figure of the Scandinavian Yule, Tomte Gubbe, a sort of genius of the house corresponding very much to the "drudging goblin" of Milton's "L'Allegro," for whom the cream-bowl must be duly set. He may perhaps be the spirit of the founder of the family. At all events on Christmas Eve Yule porridge and new milk are set out for him, sometimes with other things, such as a suit of small ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... or even like Hamlet himself—always soliloquising, tearing a passion to rags. And what mean these outbursts and objurgations of his, you will ask; these suggestions, fugitive, rhapsodical, mystical; this furibund allegro about Money, Mediums, and Bohemia; these sobs and tears and asseverations, in which our Lady of the Studio and Shakib are both expunged with great billahs;—the force and significance of these subliminal uprushes, dear Reader, we confess we are, like yourself, unable to understand, without the aid ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the great Civil War wrote pamphlets against the Royalists; was made Latin Secretary to the new Commonwealth 1649; became totally blind 1652. Until his third marriage in 1663, his domestic life had been rendered unhappy by the undutifulness of his three daughters. Among his works are "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Comus," "Lycidas," "Paradise Lost," "Paradise Regained," and "Samson ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... need not detain us long. Many groupings had been tried; but it seems natural to open with an allegro—preceded or not preceded by a few bars of slow introduction—to follow this with a slow movement of some sort; then to insert or not to insert a movement of medium rapidity as a change from the bustle of the ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... find an equal aptitude to be affected in a soft and delicate manner; and how far sweet or beautiful sounds agree with our descriptions of beauty in other senses, the experience of every one must decide. Milton has described this species of music in one of his juvenile poems. (L'Allegro.) I need not say that Milton was perfectly well versed in that art; and that no man had a finer ear, with a happier manner of expressing the affections of one sense by metaphors taken from another. The description is as follows:— —"And ever against eating cares, Lap me in SOFT Lydian ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... evidence of the fact that, with some exceptions, the Germans did not understand his compositions. At his first concert in Vienna, he writes, "The first allegro in the F minor concerto (not intelligible to all) was indeed rewarded with 'Bravo!' but I believe this was rather because the audience wished to show that they appreciated serious music than because ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... where Gray wrote "The Elegy," is quite worth while. It is a land of lazy woods, and winding streams and hedgerows melodious with birds. One treads on storied ground, and if you wish you can recline beneath gnarled old oaks where Milton mused and scribbled, and wrote the first draft of "L' Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... drone, morceau^, terzetto^. composer &c 413; musician &c 416. V. compose, perform &c 416; attune. Adj. musical; instrumental, vocal, choral, lyric, operatic; harmonious &c 413; Wagnerian. Adv. adagio; largo, larghetto, andante, andantino^; alla capella [It]; maestoso^, moderato; allegro, allegretto; spiritoso^, vivace^, veloce^; presto, prestissimo^; con brio; capriccioso^; scherzo, scherzando^; legato, staccato, crescendo, diminuendo, rallentando^, affettuoso^; obbligato; pizzicato; desto^. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... an expert to tell, after reading this, whence Milton drew the suggestion of 'L'Allegro' and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... orchestra say the same. He is very fond of me. He has a daughter who plays the piano very nicely, and in order to make him still more friendly towards me I am working just now at a sonata for her, which is finished all but the Rondo. When I had completed the first allegro and andante, I took it to him myself and played it over; you can't think what applause this sonata receives. There chanced to be some of the musicians there at the moment—young Danner, Lang, who plays the French horn, and the hautboy-player, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... wonderful grace and elegance, they fell into a group or tableau, their silken scarfs, of transparent texture and bright and varied colours, floating in the air like rainbows, behind which glanced the houri-like forms of the women. Presently the music glided from the adagio into the allegro; the steps of the dancers became quicker, their gestures more animated, the play of their limbs more voluptuous. With the exception of one couple, every glance and movement of the performers seemed directed or aimed at the Caliph. This couple consisted of the most sylph-like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... compilation of poems that we love best; the ones that we turn to again and again. There will be in the volume the six odes of Keats, Shelley's 'Adonais'; Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Immortality'; Milton's 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso'; William Rose Benet's 'Man ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... of poetry, too, as well as of Nature. I wonder if it ever happened to him, in his prison-hours at Carisbrooke, to come upon Milton's "L'Allegro," (first printed in the very year of the Battle of Naseby,) ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Republican convention in 1912, when he kidded the standpat crowd out of every Republican state in the union but two at the election. Possibly you don't like that word kid. But it's in the dictionary, and there's no other word to describe Henry's talent. He is always jamming the allegro into the adagio. And that night in the encircling gloom on the boat as we started on our martial adventures he began kidding the ocean. His idea was that he would get Wichita to vote bonds for one that would bring ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell. When only forty-six, he became totally blind, yet his greatest work was done after this misfortune overtook him. As a poet he stands second only to Shakespeare. His early poems, "Comus," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and "Lycidas," are very beautiful, and his "Paradise Lost" is the finest epic poem in the English language. He ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... of its melodies with a distinctness which proved that a clear musical idea was there, too clearly embodied to be lost even in that vast space. We liked the first half of the composition best; it had the dark shading and wild vigor and pathos of Von Weber; the allegro which set in upon it was more in the light popular manner of Auber and the French. Yet Mr. Benedict has proved his mastery in this work, which the vast audience acknowledged with ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... startle it with her beauty and her voice; last night, silent and stately, she had slipped through the evening like a dream; now she stood before him a dazzling creature of the morning: yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was Allegro; what would she be to-morrow? How sparkling, as one day followed another, her gayety was! and yet with no shallow sparkle: there was always the shadow of still depths just beyond—seasons of silence, moments of half sadness, times when he had to wonder whither her thoughts had led ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... e il vero oro potabile, Che mandar suole in esilio Ogni male inrimediabile: Egli e d* Elena il Nepente, Che fa stare il mondo allegro, Dai pensieri Foschi e neri Sempre sciolto, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the dominant note of Australian scenery? That which is the dominant note of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry—Weird Melancholy. A poem like "L'Allegro" could never be written by an Australian. It is too airy, too sweet, too freshly happy. The Australian mountain forests are funereal, secret, stern. Their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair. No tender sentiment is nourished ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... is a ruffian, without excuse for his crime. We have suddenly a beautiful woman running distracted about the stage to a symphony—and a very noisy symphony—of violins, and butchered before our eyes to an allegro movement.—Foreign Review. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... you were here to smoke a pipe with me. I play of evenings some of Handel's great choruses which are the bravest music after all. I am getting to the true John Bull style of music. I delight in Handel's Allegro and Penseroso. Do you know the fine pompous joyous chorus of 'These pleasures, Mirth, if thou canst give, etc.'? Handel certainly does in music what old Bacon desires in his Essay on Masques, 'Let the songs be loud and cheerful, not puling, etc.' One might ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... definitely iambic, the other eight are doubtful, but apparently trochaic. If it is read as iambic, eleven of the hundred feet in the long lines will be 'irregular'; if it is read as trochaic, eleven likewise will be 'irregular.' Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso contain lines ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... fluently as English or French (for she had lived much in Italy), and I had to translate the "Gierusalemme Liberata" into both those latter languages—a task which has remained unfinished—and to render the "Allegro" and the "Penseroso" into Miltonian French prose, and "Le Cid" into Corneillian English. Then there were Pinnock's histories of Greece and Rome to master, and, of course, the Bible; and, every Sunday, the Collect, the Gospel, and the Epistle ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Solemn Music. We both agree we would rather go without L'Allegro and Il Penseroso than these; for the reason that these are not so well known to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gnarled and rough than, perhaps, that of any other tree; and this, with its hoary appearance, and its fragrance, renders it a favourite tree with pastoral and rustic poets, and with those to whom they address their songs. Milton, in his L'Allegro, has not forgotten this favourite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... of industry and gravity had been put into the preparation, and he feared the sunshine would not be properly made without the smiles, jokes, and laughter spoken of in the receipt. "How do those lines of Milton run, Ellen, in L'Allegro? my favorite piece—before the old fellow got to be so very sublime, as he is in ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... ALLEGRO (an Italian word, meaning "cheerful,'' as in Milton's poem), a term in music to indicate quick or lively time, coming between andante and presto; it is frequently modified by the addition of qualifying words. It is also used ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... adagio, with a yielding theme Through which the violas flow soft as in a dream, While horns and mild bassoons are heard In tender tune, that seems to float Like an enchanted boat Upon the downward-gliding stream, Toward the allegro's wide, bright sea Of dancing, glittering, blending tone, Where every instrument is sounding free, And harps like wedding-chimes are rung, and trumpets blown Around the barque of love That sweeps, with smiling skies above, A royal galley, many-oared, Into the happy ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... apt, from some points of view, to move something of laughter as well as tears. The strangest thing is that, if some demon of mischief tempts us, a hurly-burly begins again of laughter and mockery among that ancient brotherhood of hills, like Handel's chorus in 'l'Allegro' of 'laughter ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... gradito Fu il volto allegro, e'l non bigiardo amore. E benchefosse pouero il conuito, Non fu la ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... of Wakefield fed Bryda's romance, and Milton fired her enthusiasm by his lofty strain. With the book on her knee, and some fine lace of Mrs Lambert's in her hand, which she was supposed to be darning, Bryda committed to heart 'Lycidas,' and 'L'Allegro,' while the faithful Abdiel in the larger poem became a living ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... to be a widow. Well, if you won't come, I shall go alone and read my 'L'Allegro' under the boughs, with breezes blowing between the lines. I can show you some little field-mice like unfledged birds, and a nest that protrudes now and then glittering eyes and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... just observation, "that the description of the external beauties of nature, is usually the first effort of a young genius, before he hath studied nature and passions. Some of Milton's most early, as well as mos't exquisite pieces, are his Lycidas, l'Allegro, and il Penseroso, if we may except his ode on the Nativity of Christ, which is, indeed, prior in order of time, and in which a penetrating critick might have observed the seeds of that boundless imagination, which was, one day, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Greyfriar's Church, the original miniatures and pictures wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth in this one work—wherein likewise by long perusal and deep love of 'Paradise Lost,' the 'Comus,' the 'Lycidas,' and 'L'Allegro,' the sculptor had succeeded even better than he knew in spiritualizing his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And this was a great thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones and dust of Milton were like those of ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Flora Millar, the lady who had caused the disturbance, has actually been arrested. It appears that she was formerly a danseuse at the Allegro, and that she has known the bridegroom for some years. There are no further particulars, and the whole case is in your hands now—so far as it has been set forth in the ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in Grey Friars Church, the original miniatures and pictures, wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth in this one work; wherein, likewise, by long perusal and deep love of the Paradise Lost, the Comus, the Lycidas, and L'Allegro, the sculptor had succeeded, even better than he knew, in spiritualizing his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And this was a great thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones and dust of Milton were like those of any other ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more lovable, too. Fairies or brownies (since no mortals do it) keep the whole country like a vast private park. In crossing from Savoie into Dauphine one seemed to hear the allegro movement ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... for his use, departed from the family in displeasure. Robin Goodfellow, on the contrary, must have both his food and his rest, as Milton informs us, amid his other notices of country superstitions, in the poem of L'Allegro. And it is to be noticed that he represents these tales of the fairies, told round the cottage hearth, as of a cheerful rather than a serious cast; which illustrates what I have said concerning the milder character of the southern superstitions, as compared with those of the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... I, most aptly appropriating the words of L'Allegro, "'to thee I sue! Mirth, admit ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 1762, says: "Sonatas are pieces in three or four movements, marked merely Allegro, Adagio, Presto, etc., although in character they may be really an Allemande, Courante, and Gigue." Corelli, as will be mentioned later on, gave dance titles in addition to Allegro, Adagio, etc. Marpurg also states that "when the middle movement is in slow time it is not always in the key of the first and last movements." This, again, shows intercrossing. The genuine suite consisted of several dance movements (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue) all in ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... friends and relations the conduct of the Professor during this eventful week had betrayed no unwonted discomposure or disturbance of mind. His evenings had been spent either at the house of friends, or at his own, playing whist, or reading Milton's "Allegro" and "Penseroso" to his wife and daughters. On Friday evening, about eight o'clock, as the Professor was saying good-bye to a friend on the steps of his house at Cambridge, the three police officers drove up to the door and asked him to accompany them to the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Marshal, was by him placed in the hands of his two trusty aides de camp, Trois Eschelles and Petit Andre, to be dispatched without loss of time. One on either side of him, and followed by a few guards and a multitude of rabble—this playing the Allegro, that the Penseroso, [the mirthful and the serious. Cf. Milton's poems by these names.]—he was marched off (to use a modern comparison, like Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy) to the neighbouring forest; where, to save all farther trouble and ceremonial of a gibbet, and so forth, the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... our most pleasing euphonic words, especially in the realm of music, have been given to us directly from the Italian. Of these are piano, violin, orchestra, canto, allegro, piazza, gazette, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... said that Goethe, on being asked the definition of a poet, replied: 'One who preserves to old age the feelings of youth.' Such was a leading feature in Mr. Irving's spirit, which, notwithstanding his shadowed hours, was so buoyant and cheerful. His countenance was penseroso when in repose, and allegro in action, and these graces clung to him even in life's winter, like the flower at the base of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various |
