"Semitone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... motive of all, the one which pervades the drama from beginning to end, is the love-motive. Its fundamental form is that in which it appears in the second bar of the Prelude in the oboe (No. 1).[35] Variants of it occur without the characteristic semitone suspension (1a) or with a falling seventh (1b). The cello motive of the opening phrase of the Prelude may also be considered as derived from the ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... "It's difficult to say what it was about. Really, the Professor had hardly said anything at all, and the Dragon said she thought he was forgetting the servants. Fossett wasn't even in the room. And then the Dragon said, 'Yes, shut it,' to Athene. Fancy saying 'Yes, shut it,' in a confidential semitone! Really, I can't see that it was so very wrong of Egerton, although he is a booby, to say there was no fun in having a row before breakfast. He didn't mean them to think he ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... reached an age when fireworks give me no more pleasure than I can cheerfully forgo or take for granted. I had, having coming thus far on my homeward way, already more than half a mind to pursue it, when the band started to render the 'Merry Duchess' waltz, with reed instruments a semitone below the brass. This decided me, and I reached my door ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cried out, "Let the noble family of Eglinton pass," and then added the line which followed the one he had just given out rather mal-apropos—"Nor stand in sinners' way." One peculiarity I remember, which was, closing the strain sometimes by an interval less than a semitone; instead of the half-note preceding the close or key-note, they used to take the quarter-note, the effect of which had a peculiar gurgling sound, but I never heard it elsewhere. It may be said these Scottish tunes were unscientific, and their performance rude. It ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... morning gave them both a freshness and innocence above human. They seemed to Clara made of morning air and clear lake water. Crossjay's voice ran up and down a diatonic scale with here and there a query in semitone and a laugh on a ringing note. She wondered what he could have to talk of so incessantly, and imagined all the dialogue. He prattled of his yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, which did not imply past and future, but his vivid present. She felt like one vainly trying to fly in hearing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
