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More "Soprano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sounds.] Stridor — N. creak &c v.; creaking &c v.; discord, &c 414; stridor; roughness, sharpness, &c adj.; cacophony; cacoepy^. acute note, high note; soprano, treble, tenor, alto, falsetto, penny trumpet, voce di testa [It]. V. creak, grate, jar, burr, pipe, twang, jangle, clank, clink; scream &c (cry) 411; yelp &c (animal sound) 412; buzz &c (hiss) 409. set the teeth on edge, corcher les oreilles [Fr.]; pierce the ears, split the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... kneeling worshippers, smashed him down on a bench in front of the main altar, tearing half a yard of crimson damask and nearly upsetting the priest officiating; and then, while Caper (red in the face, and totally unfit to hear the fine chorus of voices, among which Mustafa's, the soprano, came ringing out) was composing himself to listen, Pepe grabbed him with a 'Music's over; andiamo (let's go). Did you hear Mustafa? Bella voce, tra-la-leeeee! Mustafa's a contadino; I know his pa and ma; they changed him when only five years old. Thought he was a Turk, didn't you? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... long as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys who were yet to make ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... virtue to VIRTU, ever offered such a spectacle before. He that will prefer Dilettantism in this world for his outfit, shall have it; but all the gods will depart from him; and manful veracity, earnestness of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. He can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for hire;—and probably that is ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... a brilliant soprano solo ("Hear ye, Israel"), beginning with a note of warning, and then with trumpet obligato developing into another melody of an impetuous and animated description ("I, I am He that comforteth"). The solo leads to the magnificent chorus, "Be not afraid," in which, after a short pause, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... The boy soprano, clad in white surplice, stood in the organ loft. The light shone full upon his crown of fair hair, and his pale face, with its serious blue eyes, looked paler than usual. Perhaps it was something in the tender ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... The rich and clear soprano voice had attained new power since Sir Oswald had heard it in the moonlit market-place; the execution of the singer improved day by day. The Italian singing-master spoke in raptures of his pupil—never was there a finer organ or more talent. Miss Milford could not fail to create a ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Aldermen all went back, swinging their gold-headed canes, and they had another meeting in the City Hall. Then they decided to send the highest Soprano Singer in the church choir to the Wise Woman; she could sing up to G-sharp just as easy as not. So the high Soprano Singer set out for the Wise Woman's in the Mayor's coach, and the Aldermen marched behind, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... completely disguised them; but at the end of the service one of them pushed hers back, and I recognized the golden hair of Alathea, as she joined a group rather formally collected on one side of the grave. She looked round as if to see that all were ready, and then in such a soprano voice as one seldom hears, she "started" the funeral hymn. It was the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... decisive, for that sound Hushed "Academie" sighed in silent awe; The fiddlers trembled as he looked around, For fear of some false note's detected flaw; The "Prima Donna's" tuneful heart would bound, Dreading the deep damnation of his "Bah!" Soprano, Basso, even the Contra-Alto, Wished him five ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... were missed. Johnny Byrd had an infectious way of making a party go and Maria Angelina's sweet soprano had become so much a part of every gathering that its absence now made ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... that they could both sing. There was hardly an opera in vogue that one or other did not know sufficiently well to be able to recall the chief musical numbers. Iris had a sweet and sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice, Jenks an excellent baritone, and, to the secret amazement of the girl, he rendered one or two well-known Anglo-Indian barrack-room ditties with ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... shoots its long hypotenuse upon the floor. In its drifting oval the entertainer, her shoulders back, her elbows out, her fists clenched and her body twisting into slow patterns, bawls in a terrifying soprano— ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... into his voice. "Leonard, please try to realize that the Terran Federation government doesn't give one shrill soprano hoot on Nifflheim whether it's fair or not, or whose fault what is. The Federation government's been repenting that charter they gave the Company ever since they found out what they'd chartered away. Why, ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... his feet, and opened his mouth like a gash cut in a steer by a cow catcher of an engine, and he yawned, and I guess he got the lockjaw, 'cause he kept his mouth open all the afternoon to get the air, like a soprano singer in a choir, who has been fed a cayenne pepper lozenger by the tenor, just before she gets up to sing: "A Charge to Keep, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... In writing, use soprano, alto and tenor, or alto, tenor and bass; and do not separate upper parts more than an octave. For a chord or two they may (for the sake of better voice-leading) ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... were other sounds which enchained my attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice of suffering ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stable boy, whose hair looked as sleek as the Deacon's horse. For the Deacon has some queer notions about the duties of employers to their servants, and, though the very kindest of men, is generally thought by the neighbors to be "a queer stick." The Deacon's wife, who has a very sweet soprano voice, which, however, she never could be persuaded to use in our choir, was presiding at the piano. The children all had their hymn and tune-books, and they were "singing round"—each member of the family selecting a hymn in ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these intervals ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... repeating audibly the first response, thus encroaching on the province of the choir-boys, who have now united, and form a fine and powerful chorus, less picturesque perhaps than the Druidical chorus in the first act of Norma, but quite as religious in its effect. After which comes a hymn, executed by a soprano, who is really a deserving little girl, and whom I little expected to find doing the leading business in a first-class church, when I first saw her in the chorus at the Stadt Theatre, seven years ago. MARGARET, warned by experience, does not venture to interfere ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... slender twig, and in a moment both are gone. Then, as if by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of Warblers, Thrushes, Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all, a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit. That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the frequency of waves reaching the ear are greater or fewer. Familiar low pitches are the left-hand strings of a piano; the larger ones of stringed instruments generally; bass voices; and large bells. Familiar high pitches are right-hand piano strings; smaller ones of other stringed instruments; soprano voices; small bells; and the voices of ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... beautiful palace, and straightway a rosy bengal light lit up the carvings of the fairy-like facade with a magical effect. The band, lurking melodramatically under the gleaming arches of the barge, struck up a prelude, and presently a soprano voice rose high and strong above the wind and stringed instruments, ringing superbly out across the water. The fantastic impression of the scene was so strong that it seemed as if the visible brilliance of the shining lights had entered into the voice itself, giving it a weird and uncanny splendour. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... Gethsemane in St. Matthew in the Gospel which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over the gold grating ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... comparative perfection attained in the orchestra is through the very consummate manner in which he "raises the wind"; the gentleman who manipulates upon its keys may think he is the primum mobile in the matter; the soprano may fancy she is the life of the whole concern; the heavy bass or the chief tenor may respectively lay claim to the honour; but the fact is, its amongst the lot, so that there may be a general rubbing on the question ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... bobbed her suspiciously yellow head and smiled provocatively. Martin fled to the cloak-rack near the door. Hurriedly he donned top-coat and hat. Until he finally closed the front door behind him, a tinny wail poured out of the little parlor and assailed his ears, a reedy soprano declaiming passionately that she had raised no son of hers ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... all seated, when the choir, with Tremendous K. at their head, came hurrying down the aisle, and took their places in seats beside the pulpit. Joanna Falls was leading soprano, by virtue of a voice of peculiar strength and carrying power, Gavin Grant, who had the best baritone voice in the countryside, led the boys, and Minnie McKenzie, whose father was an elder, and Martha Henderson, Tremendous K.'s sister, ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... the mountain slope in a bell-like soprano. Why should a bell-like soprano call the name of the old Irish king in this remote wilderness? Was there witchery at work? Was the bear merely a part of the phantasmagoria of ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... account Neewa turned tail to the nest and ran. Miki was not a hair behind him. In every square inch of his tender hide he felt the red-hot thrust of a needle. It was Neewa that made the most noise. His voice was one continuous bawl, and to this bass Miki's soprano wailing added the touch which would have convinced any passing Indian that the loup-garou devils ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... Kadijah in contrapuntal treatment. Omar, the father of another maiden who is to be Mahomet's concubine, follows Abubekir's example; he and his daughter join in to form a quintette. The girl Ayesha is first soprano, Hafsa second soprano; Abubekir is ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail of water on her to make her let go, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every eardrum; patting From muffled tympani ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of the clouds, the eastern slopes of the mountains donned their royal purple, the intervening shadows of valleys making the folds of their robes. As they approached the shore the resonant song of the robins blended with the human voices. Burt, however, heard only Amy's girlish soprano, and saw but the pearl of her teeth through her parted lips, the rose in her cheeks, and the snow ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of twelve, securing such musical instruction as she could. In 1834, she made her first appearance in opera and scored a tremendous success. A splendid career seemed opening before her, when suddenly, a few months later, her voice, strained by the soprano parts which had been, assigned ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... decoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral of Terra Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, the soprano for whom Gluck had written Che faru senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... blameworthy. Once in a while, it is true, he takes a perch and sings; but for the most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction; but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... melodies very prettily, went to the piano and gave them "Maryland" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and was heartily applauded. Mary Lou was finally persuaded to sing Tosti's "Farewell to Summer," in a high, sweet, self-conscious soprano. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... earlier in life the castration takes place. A number of secondary sexual characters remain undeveloped. The beard does not grow; in many instances a thick panniculus adiposus is formed; there are changes in the growth of the bones; the voice remains a soprano; and the other reproductive organs are imperfectly developed, the penis and the prostate remaining comparatively small An early castration does not, of course, result in the obliteration of all differences between the male and the female; we must rather say that a part only of the typical ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... got a case; Her voice is such a sweet soprano; Her people come from Northern Thrace; You ought to hear her play piano. If she would like my suicide— If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing, Me for a glass of cyanide, ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... her hands over her ears as if to keep from hearing her own shrill scream. It reached out into pure soprano range. ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... the Innisfield Presbyterian Church one Sunday morning a month later. And Miss Philura Rice—as was afterward remarked—sang the words with such enthusiasm and earnestness that her high soprano soared quite above all the other voices in the choir, and this despite the fact that Miss Electa Pratt was putting forth her nasal contralto with more than ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... their inclination for music is very great, and they make instruments. There are good singers among them, and these have positions, with a fitting salary attached, in all the churches, from the cathedral to the poorest ministry; and thus they are being trained, from the time when they sing soprano. They are fond of verses and representations. They are excellent translators, and can translate a Spanish comedy with elegance into verses of their own language. And thus, although all, both men and women, are fond ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... who were musicians, were anxious to meet the famous dramatic soprano, Lilli Lehmann, who was living quietly in one of the suburbs of the city. Notes were exchanged, and on a certain day we were bidden to come, out of the regular hours for ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... that young person one of my happy discoveries;" said the old gentleman, complacently. "She possesses, I don't hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes electrified me. I said to myself; ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... started. Fra Domenico at the foot of the altar had pattered through the Confiteor, his deep voice responded to by the soprano of the ministering page. The Kyrie was being uttered when the attention of the congregation was attracted by the sound of steps approaching the chapel door to the accompaniment of an ominous clank of steel. The men rose in a body, fearing treachery, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... for equal work. In the highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive. In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice. Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and acrobats, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... the same house. But then Kitty Tynan was as fond of singing as a canary, and relieved her feelings constantly by this virtuous and becoming means, with her good contralto voice. She was indeed a creature of contradictions; for if ever any one should have had a soprano voice it was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... voices are so near the dividing line that it requires wide experience and a fine ear for quality on the part of a teacher to determine in what direction they should be developed to greatest advantage. A fine ear may determine that the seeming mezzo is a true soprano, that the notes of the pupil who comes as a baritone have the tenor quality and that his scale safely can be added to, while the would-be tenor has the baritone timbre which will prevent his notes from ever ringing out with the true tenor quality. Yes, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... stepped to her side. Gratitude for his darling's deliverance filled his heart. Turning to him, she put one arm around his shoulders. His throaty tenor joined the caroling soprano. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the leaders; falsetto notes, high and strident, savage and shrilling, piercing the thrumming diapason of the men; long, droning tones like bagpipes, bubbling sounds like water flowing; and all in perfect time. The clear, fascinating false soprano of the woman leader had a cadence of ecstasy, and I marked her under a lamp. Her head was thrown back, her eyes were closed, and her features set as in a trance. Her throat and mouth moved, and her nostrils quivered, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... It was Bea's best soprano, with several extra trills strewn between the consonants. "Listen to the mocking-bird. Oh, the mocking-bird is singing on the bough. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... after each service of much divided opinion. Opinion was divided because the choir was divided—separated, in fact, into several small, select cliques, each engaged in deadly and bitter feud with the rest. When the moon-eyed soprano arose, with a gentle flutter, and opened her charming mouth in solo, her friends settled themselves in their pews with a general rustle of satisfaction, while the friends of the contralto exchanged civilly significant glances; and on the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... distance apart from them, started the air for their parting hymn. The girl was not thinking of herself and so was unconscious that the others, even while singing, were also listening with surprise and pleasure to the clear, rounded tones of her beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. In reality Esther Clark was thinking only of Betty and the news that Dick Ashton had just told her. Mr. Ashton, his father, had been taken ill in Italy and, though there was no immediate danger, might never be well again. For the present ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... christened as a shadowy ghost, or a royal symbol. The veriest urchin steers her, with a little fat hand on the heavy tiller twelve feet long, and a hunch of good rye-bread in his other fist. Now and then he sings out in a thin soprano, "Fayther, boat's a'ead," and his father, (hidden below), answers deep-toned, from the cabin, "Keep 'er away, lad." From him I asked, "How old is your boy?" and the parent's head popped up to see, but it was the child that smartly answered, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... and raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang "counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the mountains—ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... to a sunny ending. Fancy our own dear Pollyanna, the glad girl, adopted by an aunt in "Crime and Punishment." Even Dostoyevsky must have laid down his doleful pen to give her at last a happy wedding—flower-girls and angel-food, even a shrill soprano behind the hired palms and a ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... of the Ancient Mariner as to the cause of the delay. Much sailing in all weathers in the keen air of the northern lakes had ruined Captain McTavish's voice, which, at best, had never been intended for any part but a high soprano. And now it was almost inaudible with anger. It ill became the dignity of a sea captain to be thus publicly berated in ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... too, pleases my sense of the fitness of things. It cannot soften the woe of the people who are disinclined to the giving away of money, and the cheerful givers need no encouragement. For my part, I like to sit, quite undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate the amount of the collection ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... facial expression. In this time of affliction he found Isabel an ever-increasing comfort to him. Side by side they would sit, and the old man's face would lose its drawn look, and light up, as her clear young soprano pealed out over the din, urging this player to shoot, that to kick some opponent in the face; or describing the referee in no uncertain terms as a reincarnation of ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... from the restfulness of the haven. However that may have been, such intrusion was never resented; my Swedish prima donna, or my qualifications as a basso profondo, or a brass-bandsman, were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... consideration of being educated, and maintained, and paid a certain amount, is bound, legally bound, to devote her services to a master for a given time. The impresario of the 'Fenice' had often heard from travellers of that wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which was captivating all Rome, where the beauty and grace of the singer were extolled not less loudly. The great skill of these astute providers for the world's pleasure is evidenced in nothing more remarkably than the instinctive quickness with which they pounce ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... said of him that he is volatile; that he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a dreamer, looking for guidance to the traditions of mediaeval knighthood; ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... ceiling like the flanges of a fan; now and then a couple of men passing just under her window roused her with their deep voices, or a tired child's voice rose up above the patter of footsteps like a bird's pipe in the night. Cats squalled and snarled, and fled up the street; a soprano voice floated out on the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... home from singing school—she warbled like a bird. A sweeter voice than hers for song or speech I never heard. She was soprano in the choir, and I a solemn bass, And when we unisoned our voices filled that holy place; The tenor and the alto never had the slightest chance, For Mary's upper register made every heart-string dance; And, as for me, I shall not brag, ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... minor trials of her life. She had been thoroughly trained in Paris, under a master who had prophesied great things for her; now her hours at the Rainhams' tinkly piano, playing dreary accompaniments to sentimental songs with Mrs. Rainham's weak soprano wobbling and flattening on the high notes, were hours of real distress, from which she would escape feeling her teeth on edge. Her stepmother, however, had thoroughly enjoyed herself since the discovery that no accompaniment ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... speculations as to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before—the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Columbian Fair in Chicago when the tired passengers were suddenly surprised and charmed by the music of this melody. A young Christian man and woman, husband and wife, had begun to sing "My Jesus, I love Thee." Their voices (a tenor and soprano) were clear and sweet, and every one of the company sat up to listen with a look of mingled admiration and relief. Here was something, after all, to make a long journey less tedious. They sang all the four verses and paused. There was no clapping ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... will ever be. So I introduced him to Nettie and asked if he had this here song on a phonograph record. He had. He had it on two records. 'One by a barytone gentleman, and one by a mezzo-soprano,' says Wilbur. I set myself back for both. He also had it with variations on one of these punched rolls. He played that for us. It took him three minutes to get set right at the piano and to dust his fingers with a white silk handkerchief which he wore up his sleeve. And he ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!" "Amen!" trilled the soprano ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... five-and-twenty he had purchased a Gainsborough, and at thirty he had spent a large sum of money in exhuming some sonatas of Bach from the dust in which they were lying. At three-and-thirty he had wrecked the career of a fashionable soprano by inspiring her with the belief that she might become a great singer, a great artist; at five-and-thirty Bayreuth and its world of musical culture and ideas had interested him in spite of his unconquerable ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... my songs, thus far, has called for one. An obbligato? Never so much honored. No, indeed. Why, to me it would seem almost like singing with an orchestra. Imagine a 'cello. Imagine a flute—still I'm not a soprano going mad. Or imagine a saxophone; ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... together, yes?" She smiled down into Doris' piquant, freckled little face, and just at this moment there came from the living-room, where Helen was dusting, Dinorah's Shadow Song, sung in a clear, girlish soprano. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Olivetan monk, published at Venice his L'Organo suonarino, a work "useful and necessary to organists,"—thus runs the title-page. At the end of the volume there are some pieces, vocal and instrumental (a Concerto for soprano or tenor, with organ, a Fantasia, Ricercata, etc.), among which are to be found two sonatas, the one entitled, "Prima Sonata, doppio soggietto," the other "Seconda Sonata, soggietto triplicato." They are written out in open score of four staves, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... be made to understand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... small, nearly unheard-of, German town. And so personal force, musical genius, business talent, education, and general brain power went to the making of a man who hobnobbed with dukes and kings, who ruled musical England with an iron rule, who threatened to throw distinguished soprano ladies from windows, and was threatened with never an action for battery in return, who went through the world with a regal gait, and was, in a word, the most astonishing lord of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... from the Sea," we have the further step from monochrome to polychrome; we have the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the sky, the blue in the sea, and the red in the figures in the boats,—as in a vocal trio we have the only three possible musical sounds of the human voice, the soprano, the basso, and the falsetto of the child's voice. All these colors are distinctly asserted and perfectly harmonized in a most exquisite play of tints, but it is still no more like Nature than the trio in "I Puritani" is like conversation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... hemispherical kettles of dye-stuffs or soap, swinging from poles over open fires in the yard; they spread out long webs of jeans and linen on the grass to dry or bleach, and all the while they sang—sang the measured rhythm of familiar hymns in the high soprano of white women—sang wild, plaintive lyrics in the liquid contralto of negresses. Men were repairing fences, and doing other Winter work in the fields, and from the woods came the ringing staccato of choppers. She met on the road leisurely-traveling negro women, who louted low ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... unconsciously trained by constant contact with her former owners, were of very creditable quality. She possessed a genuine talent for expressing herself neatly. For example, in describing a concert to which she had been taken, she praised the soprano singer's voice with much discrimination, winding up with, "It was—how shall I say it?— round—as round—as round ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... peerless prima donna, with a voice which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out, by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in fantasias rather ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed at the ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... running feet became audible in the kitchen above, while bass voices were added to the shrill soprano that had sounded the former tocsin. The men had arrived from the stables. The burglar and the ghost regarded each other for a moment of suspended breathing; their mutual danger drew them together. Patty hesitated an instant, while she studied ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Little Kensington into the gardens, and, placing her carefully in the corner of a bench, would retire to a short distance and pretend to be absorbed in a book, while her sharp eyes kept up the watch for a long-haired tenor, or a beautifully dressed soprano, who should suddenly rush out from the bushes and ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... having freed their minds from sectarian prejudices, they recognized beauty and genius wherever found, and did not care what church or creed they had served, so that they found the gift of beauty from the infinite Father to man in them. With one glorious soprano voice and boundless talent, how much of joy was added to the circle! How we revelled in the choice creations of the masters of harmony, and how, slowly but surely, the missing link that was wanting ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... if the tenor always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... as I was able to judge, baritone voices were the most prevalent; in female voices, soprano. Their typical songs were chiefly performed in a chorus by men only, although once or twice I heard solos—which, nevertheless, always had a refrain for the chorus. The Bororos sang in fair harmony more than in unison, keeping regular time, and with occasional ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... not, in the days gone by, been excluded from the social life of the town, such as it was, and she had had her beaus, such as they were. Sometimes she wondered how the choir in the Presbyterian church had progressed since she, once the mezzo-soprano soloist, had resigned to sing lullabys to a nameless child, if Andrew Daney still walked on the tips of his shoes when he passed the collection-plate, and if the mortgage on the church had ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... short pants you speak about. I can't stand bein' laughed at, Mr. Gray. It comes hard to stand up in a class along with a bunch of children and make mistakes and have a little boy in a lace collar and spring heels snap his fingers and sing out in a sweet soprano, 'Oh, tee-cher!' Then have him show you up. They put me in with a lot of nursin' babes. What the hell? I weigh a hundred and ninety ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... her handkerchief like Lady Gusto, as if she expected a miserable cavalier servente to be constantly upon his knees; or giving those odious expressive looks, which quite destroy my nerves whenever I am under the same roof as that horrible Lady Soprano. There is a little too much talk, to be sure, about Roman churches, and newly-discovered mosaics, and Abbate Maii, but still we cannot expect perfection. There are reports going about that Ernest Clay is either ruined or ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, Early Victorian type ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... left. Sometimes, for a joke, I kill Sparrows and take their nest! Or make myself a home in a dove-cote—only I never seem to stay there long, for the Doves tell tales about me. I can sing a little, too; I have a high soprano voice ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, with such a voice as that!" she cried; "you are out of your senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful to keep ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... the Doxology." Then, pulling out his pitch-pipe from the dusty cushions of his seat, he would strut pompously down the church, ascend the stairs leading to the west gallery, blow his pipe, and give the basses, tenors, and soprano voices their notes, which they hung on to in a low tone until the clerk returned to his place in the lowest tier of the "three-decker" and started the choir-folk vigorously. Those Doxologies at the end! What a trouble they were! You could find ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... prisoners of war on the same principle that caponizing is resorted to for our kitchens,—the prisoners were easier to fatten and were more tender when cooked. The Italians allowed their children to be eunuchized for chorister purposes in church services, their soprano voices after this treatment being simply perfect. It was considered that, in the year prior to the papal ordinance of Pope Clement XVI forbidding the practice or the employment of eunuchs in choirs, four thousand boys, mostly in the neighborhood of Rome, were ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien. Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... preacher harangued by the hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... her cloak from the attendant, and in helping her to put it on, touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver. The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's passionate soprano, Ich kann's nicht ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... about five seconds; then a slow, sweet, solemn utterance of the holy name in a tone as of meditative wonder; then another pause; then another wild, rich, passionate warble. Could you see him, you would marvel how so powerful and penetrating a soprano could ripple from so minute a throat; for he is one of the very tiniest of all feathered singers, yet his chant can be heard far across the broad river, and children going to school pause daily on the bridge, a whole cho away, to listen ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and low notes, soft notes and shrill notes, all travel at the same rate. If bass notes traveled faster or slower than soprano notes, or if the delicate tones of the violin traveled faster or slower than the tones of a drum, music would be practically impossible, because at a distance from the source of sound the various tones which should be in unison would be out of time—some ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... attractions as our party ever knew:— The fine hotel, the landlord, and the lordly bill of fare, And the dainty-neat completeness of the pretty waiters there; The touch on the piano in the parlor, and the trill Of the exquisite soprano, in our fancy singing still; Our cozy room, its comfort, and our thousand grateful tho'ts, And at our door the gentle face Of ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... written under inspiration by evangelists and prophets. It has stood the bombardment of ages, but with the result of more and more proof of its being a book divinely written and protected." "Science and Revelation are the bass and soprano of the same tune," he said. He defied the attempts of the loud-mouthed orators to destroy belief in the Bible. "I compare such men as Ingersoll, in their attacks on the Bible, to a grasshopper upon a railway-line with the express coming ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... was a little disconcerting. He found her at the piano, singing in her pathetic mezzo-soprano a song that used to he a favorite of Tyson's. The selection was another freak; it was the first time Louis had heard her sing that song since ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... were greatly ornamented with pictures and gilding, but the most attractive part of the Russian service is the singing, particularly at the Vespers, when the boys taking the soprano parts, accompanied by some most extraordinary deep bass tones of the men, swelling and filling the entire cathedral; all this, with occasional recitations from their sacred books, without any knowledge of their contents, excited in us the most ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... seems when this allotment was made out, There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female, Who (after some discussion and some doubt, If the soprano might be deemed to be male, They placed him o'er the women as a scout) Were linked together, and it happened the male Was Juan,—who, an awkward thing at his age, Paired off with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... admirably fitting doeskin gloves, bowed with great gravity and perfect self-possession. The hisses thereupon suddenly faded into piercing entreaties for a speech, in which a gallery lady with a powerful soprano voice became notorious as the leader. But the Jaeger author was not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu, and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring company. The ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... later by the high notes of a celebrated Metropolitan soprano, who had consented to exchange a few of her liquid notes for Goldwin ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Mrs. Lee as matron rendered my services no longer necessary. Very pleasant memories cluster about the room in the court-house at Ringgold assigned to my special use. I often seem to hear once more the sweet music of "General Blandner's lute," sometimes accompanied by the clear soprano of Mrs. Gamble, sometimes by our blended voices. I remember as distinctly as if it were only yesterday the kindly faces and cheerful voices that smiled upon and greeted me as I ran in from the wards ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... her individual voice. How pretty she was! He sipped his coffee. Then came a zither solo—that abominable instrument of plucked wires, with its quiver of a love-sick clock about to run down; this parody of an aeolian harp always annoyed Krayne, and he was glad when the man finished. A stout soprano in a velvet bodice, her arms bare and brawny, the arms of a lass accustomed to ploughing and digging potatoes, sang something about turtle doves. She was odious. Odious, too, was her companion, in a duo through which they screamed and rumbled—"Verlassen bin i." At last she came out ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... quality was a genuine love for music. He could play any sort of instrument; and had besides a wonderfully sweet high soprano voice, which he was always ready to use for the pleasure of his friends. That promised many a happy night around the camp-fire, when once the Silver Fox Patrol had ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... with the calm self-confidence of a connoisseur. "Tell me, have you composed anything for a woman's voice, for a mezzo-soprano?" ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... that she kept up her singing, for October 28, 1730, he wrote of his family, "They are one and all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can already form a concert, both vocal and instrumental, of my own family, particularly as my present wife sings a very clear soprano and my ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and came forward in response to the light keeper's command. She looked at the chair by the ancient parlor organ and announced: "Yes, indeed, it'll do real well, thank you, Cap'n Jethro." Her voice was a sharp soprano with liquid gurgles in it—"like pourin' pain-killer out of a bottle," this last still another quotation from the book ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... performance was Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment," beautifully sung by members of the regular company. But somehow the spectacle of a fat soprano nearing forty in the role of the twelve-year-old vivandiere, although impressive, was not sublime. A third of the audience were soldiers. In the front row of the top balcony were a number of wounded. Their bandaged heads rested against the rail. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to so mean a subterfuge as that, and to this day that manager believes that the reason SPIFFKINS abused him is because he refused his play! Sometimes SPIFFKINS threw a little light on subjects that were generally misunderstood. For instance, he said that NILSSON was a "charming mezzo-soprano," and declared that "RIP VAN WINKLE" was a more delightful translation from the French than had been seen for many a day. Occasionally SPIFFKINS eked out his salary by writing letters to the provincial press. In this respect he was invaluable, because his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... was new to me, evidently Brewer's sparrow. Its favorite resort was in the low bushes growing on the border of the mesa and along the edge of the cliff. Its song was unique, the opening syllable running low on the alto clef, while the closing notes constituted a very respectable soprano. A few extremely shy sparrows flitted about in the thickets of a hollow as we began our descent, and I have no doubt ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... first introduction to German music," said he, "and that it was grand old Johann Sebastian Bach whom you heard. That is one of the soprano solos in ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... contralto. An unknown solitary woman with a pale face walked through the room. The women followed with keen eyes the faded blue dress which was stretched upon a meagre body. Someone said that she was Madam Glynn, the soprano. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... was a pleasant one for Adelaide, being an earnest of the future for which, if she had not worked hard, she had controlled much. Edgar sang solos to her accompaniment, and put in his rich baritone to her pure if feeble soprano; he played chess with her for an hour, and praised her play, as it deserved: naturally, not thinking it necessary to make love to his sisters, he paid her almost exclusive attention, and looked the admiration he felt. She really was a very pretty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... terrible: SLUKER fired at everybody. MIDDLERIB hit him with the music stool. The soprano was thrown over the railing, and somebody turned ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... over this table was a copy of Camille Roqueplan's picture: "The Lion in Love." In the recess near the window was a piano open, and evidently just abandoned by a woman; the little stool was half-overturned by catching in the dress of some one suddenly rising, and the music open was a soprano air from Puritani:— ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... such thing. She jes likes to hear me sing. You're crazy!" The tramp-boy's young voice had its fashion of breaking and shrilling into a high soprano, like a girl's, for emphasis; he was as red as a beet, and he put his foot back in the stirrup, thrust out his under jaw and looked at the stirrup as though he had to determine how much wood had gone into its making. Again Bruce was ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... unwinking eyes men saw calmly looking out a strong, deep nature, not observed before. He joined his mother and brother in the last hymn. Everybody knew the Ridgeleys could sing. They carried the burden of the grand and simple old tune nearly alone. The fine mezzo-soprano of the mother, the splendid tenor of Morris, and the rich baritone of Bart, in their united effect, had never been equalled in the hearing of that assembly. The melody was a sweet and fitting finale of the day, swelling ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... listened to the first few night sounds of the foothills. The clear piping notes of migrating plover floated softly down to him, punctuated by the rasping cry of a nighthawk. A coyote raised his voice, a perfect tenor note that swept up to a wild soprano, then fell again in a whirl of howls which carried amazing shifts of inflection, tearing up and down the coyote scale. One after another added his voice to the chorus until it seemed that the swelling ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... as if hoping to lighten their labours—lovers of music as these people are—a shrill, musical, woman's voice arose, starting a familiar chorus, which was taken up directly by the young, to rise and fall and swell along the valley, the sweet soprano tones supported by the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... meals, and music could be obtained. Other places were picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers on the stage. The feminine element predominated here, and there was an air of friendliness ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... finished there was the stir which always marks, in a gathering of people, a high pitch of feeling. Then someone sang, clear, soprano notes that drifted through the room and mingled with the spring gladness. The air was fragrant with the sweetness of the blossoms which decked the big room; through the long windows came the freshness of the June world outside. It was a day, an hour, sacred to the rites ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... choir of the Innisfield Presbyterian Church one Sunday morning a month later. And Miss Philura Rice—as was afterward remarked—sang the words with such enthusiasm and earnestness that her high soprano soared quite above all the other voices in the choir, and this despite the fact that Miss Electa Pratt was putting forth her nasal contralto with ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... of real relish for his task, which bespeaks a knowledge of the responsibility belonging to the post of Basso. The ecclesiastic seated next to Titian, wearing the chain with crucifix, is performing on a Soprano Viol. The instruments, in short, are Italian Viols, the Tenors of which were strung with six strings, and the Violono, or Bass, with six or seven. It is this order of Viols to which reference is ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Constantinople; rumours arrive of a peerless prima donna, with a voice which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out, by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... thunder, than hear it sung by any man at present on the concert stage. The poignant sadness cross-shot with humor of another of Schubert's songs, The Hurdy Gurdy, vanishes in the concert room, melts hopelessly into the dulcet tones of the young lady soprano, whose friends titter when she is done, "What a pretty song." But my one-fingered rendering—aided in this song by occasional jabs with three fingers of the left hand—brings to my inward ear the pathos of the barrel-organ, heard over the distant hum of a ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... The famous Neapolitan actor and singer, Cavalier Nicolino Grimaldi, commonly called Nicolini, had made his first appearance in an opera called 'Pyrrhus and Demetrius,' which was the last attempt to combine English with Italian. His voice was a soprano, but afterwards descended into a fine contralto, and he seems to have been the finest actor of his day. Prices of seats at the opera were raised on his coming from 7s. 6d. to 10s. for pit and boxes, and from 10s. 6d. to 15s. for boxes on the stage. When this paper ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he, too, regarded it as medicine, and hoped especially for a favourable effect from the exquisite soprano voice in the motet "Tu ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... voice was the most powerful and voluminous soprano that had been heard on our stage since the time of Farinelli; and his manner of singing was grand and full of taste and dignity. The lovers of music in London were more unanimous in approving his voice and talents, than those of any other singer ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, and as she took some steps of her ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... Clarinet; to play on the Choir and bring out the melody on the Swell Vox Humana or Cornopean; or to play a fugue with the full power of the Great organ (except the Trumpet) and bring out the subject of the fugue every time it enters, whether in the soprano voice, the ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... was followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... the hedge will grow its own way in spite of pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?' The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The oratorios of "Il Penseroso;" and "Alexander's Feast" were performed at the Theatre in King Street; Handel's "Te Deum" and "Jubilate" with the "Messiah," at St. Philip's Church. The principal singers were Mrs. Pinto, first soprano, and Mr. Charles Norris, tenor; the orchestra numbered about 70, the conductor being Mr. Capel Bond of Coventry, with Mr. Pinto as leader of the band. The tickets of admission were 5s. each, the receipts (with donations) amounting to about L800, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... but more on foot. In vain we told them that we would engage no donkeys at all, and no horses till we reached our destination; in vain we bade them allow us to "pursue the even tenor of our way" in peace, and hush their high soprano tones. It was one perpetual babble in praise of their horses, their donkeys, and their capabilities as guides, with the constant repetition of the names of the surrounding peaks, which we already knew perfectly ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Charley resigns her to one of these latter, and she glides through a mazurka. That too ends, and as it grows rather warm, her partner leads her away to a cool music-room, whence proceed melodious sounds. It is Trixy at the piano, informing a select audience in shrill soprano, and in the character of the "Queen of the May," that "She had been wild and wayward, but she was not wayward now." Edith's partner finds her a seat and volunteers to go for an ice. As she sits fanning herself, she sees Charley approaching ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... big male voices were shouting out the Boat Club song, Polly's soprano sweet and clear over the rest, while Frieda smiled encouragement over the edge of the robe in which she was ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... allotment was made out, There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female, Who (after some discussion and some doubt, If the soprano might be deem'd to be male, They placed him o'er the women as a scout) Were link'd together, and it happen'd the male Was Juan,—who, an awkward thing at his age, Pair'd off with a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of the parson, and the soprano's voice from behind the flowers, singing "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me"—Marthy's favorite hymn—brought the tears trickling, but he could not believe that what had happened had happened. He got through the melancholy ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... wife having frequently sung at charity concerts and entertainments for her in Worcester and the neighbourhood, among them a recital by Mr. Brandram of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, when she undertook the soprano solos occurring in the play, at the Worcester Guildhall. Lady Alwyne Compton was very musical, and rehearsals were held in the stone-vaulted crypt beneath the Deanery, a place of splendid acoustic properties, which intensified the sound ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... her childhood, and had given promise of rare talents. She had taken lessons for two years in vocal and instrumental music in the best conservatories in Boston, George paying most of her expenses. For six years May had been the soprano singer in the highest paid quartette in Harrisville. Though she occasionally hoped for a musical education abroad, yet these hopes had all flown away. Her parents could not aid her, and she had resolved ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... Iris Wayne could sing well. Her voice, a clear mezzo-soprano, had been excellently trained, and in its purity and flexibility gave promise of something exceptional when it should have attained its full maturity. She accompanied herself perfectly, in nowise hampered by the lack of any music; and when she had brought ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a case; Her voice is such a sweet soprano; Her people come from Northern Thrace; You ought to hear her play piano. If she would like my suicide— If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing, Me for a glass ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... the tip-toe of expectation until the singers arrived. Fraulein Scheuerlein, the soprano, was fat, fair, and forty, all of them perhaps on the liberal side. As she burst into the room, the first words I heard from the romantic Elsa, whom I had last seen sobbing over her matrimonial difficulties, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... could never be made to understand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... donned their royal purple, the intervening shadows of valleys making the folds of their robes. As they approached the shore the resonant song of the robins blended with the human voices. Burt, however, heard only Amy's girlish soprano, and saw but the pearl of her teeth through her parted lips, the rose in her cheeks, and the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the benefit of those not learned in Sixteenth-Century Music, it may be interesting to hint that the melody is written here for the Second Soprano, and to add, for their encouragement, that the experiment of performing this Madrigal, unaccompanied, with two ladies, and two male voices in the Alto parts, proved perfectly successful, thanks to the science of Mr Fuller-Maitland and the goodwill ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... has even remotely reminded me of her. My sister's voice is not one of the finest I have heard; Miss Paton's is finer, Clara Novello's (the most perfect voice I ever heard) is finer. Adelaide's real voice is a high mezzo-soprano, and in stretching it to a higher pitch—that of the soprano-assoluto—which she has done with infinite pains and practice, in order to sing the music of the parts she plays, I think she has impaired the quality, the perfect intonation, of the notes that form the joint, the hinge, as ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Giangiacomo of Cesena, a musician in the Pope's band, and a very excellent performer, sent word through Lorenzo, the trumpeter of Lucca, who is now in our Duke's service, to inquire whether I was inclined to help them at the Pope's Ferragosto, playing soprano with my cornet in some motets of great beauty selected by them for that occasion. [2] Although I had the greatest desire to finish the vase I had begun, yet, since music has a wondrous charm of its own, and also because ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... humor of the action of Charles turns on his assumption that his sister was "a fallen woman," and must be saved from disgrace. This opinion was shared by various other shady respectables, who kept the matter secret by lifting a soprano wail of woe from the housetops, declaring that Mary had smirched their good names and those of their friends by her outrageous conduct. These people also busied themselves in spreading a report that Mary had gone into "French ways," it being strongly held, then as now, by the rank ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... are a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, with such a voice as that!" she cried; "you are out of your senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... young gentleman named Valentine Veery, who was a distant cousin of Jolly Robin's, was the singing leader. He had been chosen on account of his being able to sing both alto and soprano at the same time. And as soon as everybody had found a comfortable seat for ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the performance was Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment," beautifully sung by members of the regular company. But somehow the spectacle of a fat soprano nearing forty in the role of the twelve-year-old vivandiere, although impressive, was not sublime. A third of the audience were soldiers. In the front row of the top balcony were a number of wounded. Their bandaged heads rested against the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The contralto will not care to catechise the bass; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... that had belonged to the chorister in the old temple. "Upon Shemimith" means "set for bass voices;" "Upon Alamoth," "set for female voices." "Upon Muthlabben," a curious transliteration, means "arranged for training the soprano voices." Professor Murray supposes that this particular psalm was used for ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... it so," I said, and involuntarily was silent to listen for an instant to the melodious flood which swept from aisle to aisle in golden billows. Out from the wave of organ music and men's voices, boyish soprano notes sprayed high, flinging their bright crystals up, up, until they fell, shattered, from ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... only to fill an unexpected place, or make a decorous entry afterward, to play accompaniments. Fortunately Kitty Meryon sang, in a pinched little soprano, not nearly so pretty as her silver ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the protest, pointing out that, if the suggestion were acted on, her name would sound just like Tubb, which was that of a soprano vocalist. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... had been two weeks since he had remonstrated with Colette for the surprisingly sudden announcement, made in seeming seriousness, that she was going to study opera with a view to going on the stage. The fact that she had a light, sweet soprano adapted only to the rendition of drawing-room ballads did not lessen in his eyes the probability of her carrying out ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... down at-heel air of the hotel—a personage who took high-handed possession of us and our traps. "Will ces dames desire a salon—there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... first night of autumn Joe's shop was crowded with noisy feet and voices of all sizes that squeaked one minute in a shrill soprano and in the next sank to a ragged bass. Joe's shades were never drawn and all the world could see the boys playing Old Maid and Rummy, shooting caroms or sitting on the counter, swinging their feet, eating apples and cracking ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... soprano, alto and tenor, or alto, tenor and bass; and do not separate upper parts more than an octave. For a chord or two they may (for the sake of better voice-leading) ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... berth across, probably lower ten, came that particular aggravating snore which begins lightly, delicately, faintly soprano, goes down the scale a note with every breath, and, after keeping the listener tense with expectation, ends with an explosion that tears the very air. I was more and more irritable: I sat on the edge of the berth and hoped the snorer would choke to death. He had considerable vitality, however; ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I. Epstein, the soprano soloist from St. Louis, will sing a symphony known as the "Surprise Symphony" at the concert by the University Orchestra in the auditorium to-morrow night. The piece was written by Haydn. The symphony was so named by the composer on account of the startling effects produced. The ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... wakes to sound, for not a bird is mute: The robin pipes the piccolo; the blackbird plays the flute; While high upon a cedar-top a thrush with bubbling throat Lifts up to this accompaniment her clear soprano note. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... will prefer Dilettantism in this world for his outfit, shall have it; but all the gods will depart from him; and manful veracity, earnestness of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. He can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for hire;—and probably that is ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... under this host's roof, with the guest impending at any moment. Then a diversion was created by some of the church choir practicing the harmonium with the singing of certain more or less lugubrious anthems. Mrs. Rivers presently joined in, and in a somewhat faded soprano, which, however, still retained considerable musical taste and expression, sang, "Come, ye disconsolate." The wind moaned over the deep-throated chimney in a weird harmony with the melancholy of that human appeal as Mrs. Rivers ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... befitted their position as pillars of the church, and from this vantage had a good view of the proceedings. She could see every one in the choir, seated up there behind the organ on the side platform. Polly Currier was in the choir; she wasn't a Methodist, but she had a flute-like soprano voice, and the Methodists—whom all the town knew had "poor singing"—had overstepped the boundaries of sectarianism for this revival. Polly looked like an angel in pink lawn and rose-wreathed leghorn hat; she couldn't ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... haven. However that may have been, such intrusion was never resented; my Swedish prima donna, or my qualifications as a basso profondo, or a brass-bandsman, were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... seated, when the choir, with Tremendous K. at their head, came hurrying down the aisle, and took their places in seats beside the pulpit. Joanna Falls was leading soprano, by virtue of a voice of peculiar strength and carrying power, Gavin Grant, who had the best baritone voice in the countryside, led the boys, and Minnie McKenzie, whose father was an elder, and Martha ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... English in graceful but unobtrusive compliment to the hostess. Then the Queen sang in German, he playing the accompaniment. And in his letter to his sister Fanny, telling her of all this, in his easy, gossipy, brotherly way, Felix adds that the Queen has a charming soprano voice, that only needs a little cultivation and practise to make her fit to take the leading ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... claqueurs, this first German audience seemed serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic. They use more judgment about applause than the French. They never interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. Even their ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... of joy from a quarter of a million throats. She was radiant; smiling and dimpling she waved her handkerchief with the abandonment of a child. The storm of applause increased, rolling up the street to the very summit of Twin Peaks. Suddenly the soft liquid notes of a clear soprano fell upon the air, and instantly the great multitude was wrapped in silence. Out over the heads of the people the exquisite tones floated, mounting upward to the stars. It was the 'Last Rose of Summer,' and ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... a bawling on his own account Neewa turned tail to the nest and ran. Miki was not a hair behind him. In every square inch of his tender hide he felt the red-hot thrust of a needle. It was Neewa that made the most noise. His voice was one continuous bawl, and to this bass Miki's soprano wailing added the touch which would have convinced any passing Indian that the loup-garou devils were ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... from the attendant, and in helping her to put it on, touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver. The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's passionate soprano, Ich kann's nicht fassen, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... not stop, although it was Christmas Eve, and the only carol I heard in the trenches was the loud, deep chant of the guns on both sides, and the shrill soprano of whistling shells, and the rattle on the keyboards of machine-guns. The enemy was putting more shells into a bit of trench in revenge for a raid. To the left some shrapnel shells were bursting, and behind the lines our ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... and moved slowly towards the house. The drawing-room was lighted, and the guests were now gathering there to listen to a lady at the piano singing. They could hear her plainly enough, for her voice, said to be soprano, was exceedingly shrill, and she was singing, Tell me, my heart—a difficult thing, all flourishes, and she rendered it like an automaton lark with ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... disgrace and calamity which had befallen her house. For one, two, three whole days the town was excited and amused by the scandal; then there came other news—a victory in Germany; doubtful accounts from America; a general officer coming home to take his trial; an exquisite new soprano singer from Italy; and the public forgot Lady Maria in her garret, eating the hard-earned ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conservative gentlemen alone in the churches? How sombre they would look with the flowers, feathers, bright ribbons and shawls all gone—black coats only kneeling and standing—and with the deep-toned organ swelling up, the solemn bass voice heard only in awful solitude; not one soprano note to rise above the low, dull wail to fill the arched roof with triumphant melody! One such experiment from Maine to California would bring these bigoted ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... attend service on Sunday; I knew the chaplains quite well. One Sunday I was late; as I went in, the choir were busy with something in the way of music. I have no idea what it was, but it went on and on, seemingly a race between the soprano and tenor, with occasional bursts of hurried sentences from the alto and bass, until my patience and ears were weary. The next day I met the chaplain, and, in the course of conversation, I spoke of the music the previous day. 'Was it an anthem or a ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... to drive over the Maloja to Chiavenna," said Claire; "Maurice has a party to go with. We shall start by the earlier post, and have lunch together at Vico-Soprano before he comes. And then when Maurice comes we shall say good-by; and then—and then, Miss Marley, I've been thinking—we mustn't meet again! I haven't told Winn yet, because he likes to talk as ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... natural enough that Patricia didn't like it. She owed her own position as a leading light-opera soprano to the cultivation to its highest possible perfection of a distinctly second-rate voice, to a precise knowledge of its limitations and to a most scrupulous economy in its effects. Inevitably, then, the raw splendors ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... hardly believe it was the Winnebagos, so perfect was the harmony. This was followed by "I Would That My Love," sung by Gladys and Nyoda. Sahwah drew a long, rapturous breath at the beautiful blending of alto and soprano. She was passionately fond of music. Then Gladys sang "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming," her clear high voice ringing over the water like a flute. The notes died lingeringly away, and the silence ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... was decisive, for that sound Hushed "Academie" sighed in silent awe; The fiddlers trembled as he looked around, For fear of some false note's detected flaw; The "Prima Donna's" tuneful heart would bound, Dreading the deep damnation of his "Bah!" Soprano, Basso, even the Contra-Alto, Wished him five fathom under ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the Khan of Tartary she could not have been more polite and frigid. The music to the first hymn was an air I had never heard before, so I stumbled miserably through the tenor, although Miss Mayton rendered the soprano without a single false note. The sermon was longer than I was in the habit of listening to, and I was frequently conscious of not listening at all. As for my position and appearance, neither ever seemed so insignificant as they did throughout the ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... And the soft, sweet notes floated over the sea in seductive cadences. Then two female voices sang sweetly to the accompaniment of the harp; and so exquisite was the effect that I fancied rejoicing angels whispering their songs to the winds that played so gently around us. One of the voices was a soprano of much sweetness and flexibility, for it ascended the scale with great ease, and its higher notes were flutelike. The other was a contralto of no mean order. And there joined in chorus with these, two male voices, evidently well trained, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... day had been one long succession of "crumbs" and "china plates"—conversationally. According to Kate, the roads had been muddy; the sun had been too bright; there had been chops when there should have been croquettes for luncheon; the concert seats were too far forward; the soprano had a thin voice, and the bass a faulty enunciation; at dinner the soup was insipid, and the dessert a disappointment; afterwards, in the evening, callers had stayed ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... cela que ca doit etre chante. Votre voix est delicieuse, le timbre que j'aime—mezzo-soprano, avec ces notes ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... obtained. Other places were picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers on the stage. The feminine element ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... the set he gave a remarkable proof of his detachment. Just as the Princess was preparing to serve one of her juiciest undercut strokes, the tones of a soprano practising her scales rang out from a neighbouring flat. "Rather sharp, I think," said Mr. BALFOUR, and the Princess, overcome by the ready wit of the ex-PREMIER, served four faults in quick succession. At the conclusion of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... us, who were musicians, were anxious to meet the famous dramatic soprano, Lilli Lehmann, who was living quietly in one of the suburbs of the city. Notes were exchanged, and on a certain day we were bidden to come, out of the regular hours for ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... waltz that Medora had learned from the hand-organs. She followed the air with nodding head in a sweet soprano hum. Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered in what strange waters Binkley had caught her in his seine. She smiled at him, and they raised glasses and drank of the wine that boiled when it was cold. Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the unusual spring catch of shad. Miss ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... and then a couple of men passing just under her window roused her with their deep voices, or a tired child's voice rose up above the patter of footsteps like a bird's pipe in the night. Cats squalled and snarled, and fled up the street; a soprano voice floated ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... was as Teutonic as his helmet), demanding vengeance and threatening annihilation. He brandished his pole in the face of Ortrud, stamping and roaring, then, bending his knees, waddled across the room and prodded Elsa, who winced perceptibly but continued to mingle her light soprano with the rolling bass of Mr. Church and the vociferations of the poet. Finally, at the staccato command of Mr. Todd's hoarsening voice, she toppled over into his arms and they both fell on ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... for ever remind me of the 22nd Psalm (according to the usual Protestant numbering the 23rd) which, in reality, I composed for a tenor, whereas the 137th is meant for a mezzo- soprano (Fraulein Genast, now married to Herr ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Florrie is looking?" he asked in a low tone of Gabriella, while his wife's laugh, high, shrill, penetrating in its dry soprano quality, fluted loudly on the opposite side of the table. Beside Patty's patrician loveliness, as serene and flawless as that of a marble goddess, Florrie appeared cheap, common, and merely pretty to Gabriella. The ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... And so personal force, musical genius, business talent, education, and general brain power went to the making of a man who hobnobbed with dukes and kings, who ruled musical England with an iron rule, who threatened to throw distinguished soprano ladies from windows, and was threatened with never an action for battery in return, who went through the world with a regal gait, and was, in a word, the most astonishing lord of music the world ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... "When the Harvest Days Are Over." Bert and Mary joined in; but when Billy attempted to add his voice he was dissuaded by a shin-kick from Bert. Saxon sang in a clear, true soprano, thin but sweet, and she was aware that she was singing ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the great artist and stricken father—he too was gay and amusing. He sang a wonderful little French song that was applauded violently by people at the nearby tables, and he drew wonderful caricatures of the musicians, the head waiter, the shockingly bad soprano, and of Mr. Bingle himself. Rouquin alone was nervous and uneasy, but of course only on account of his illustrious guests. He was constantly imploring both Madame and Monsieur Rousseau to reflect before speaking, and they ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... hotel-keeping. The breakfast was enlivened by snatches of song from the big, good-natured bush-girl who waited at table, and who "fancied" her voice somewhat, and marched into the breakfast-room singing in an ear-splitting Soprano: ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... whom we usually find, even in large cities and in musical institutions, I exempt from any special criticism, for they would not be able to understand my views. They permit soprano voices to sing scales in all the five vowels at once; begin with c instead of f; allow a long holding of the notes, "in order to bring out the voice," until the poor victim rolls her eyes and grows dizzy. They talk only of the fine chest-tones which ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... her lap and tore out his solitary safety-pin. He then clasped her tightly and made his explanation. He began in the softest of whispers, which increased in volume as it did in interest, so that he reached the climax at the full power of his boy soprano voice. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... large chamber at the top, we paid our respects to the seven bells, whose intricate changes I had so many times tried to follow. Their ringing is a puzzle. In the middle hung the melancholy campanone, with a silvery soprano by its side—a very Dante ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... turning a corner he saw by a clock that he had only five minutes in which to reach the station, three blocks away. An instant later he saw a shapely figure in soft furs suddenly describe a forward movement and drop in a heap to the sidewalk, ten feet in front of him. A melodious light soprano scream arose from the heap. A divinely turned ankle in a quite human black stocking was momentarily visible. He was by the side of the mass of furs ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the organ as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church, Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful, I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing; Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head, Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... with our own affairs that we didn't notice what was going on behind us till we heard Pochette declaiming bad profanity in a high soprano. Then I turned, and he was trying to stand off old King. But King wasn't that sort; he yelled to us to move up and make room, and then took down his whip and started up. Pochette pirouetted out of ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, Early Victorian ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... children. Behind her was a long line of ancestry of which anyone might rightfully be proud. Her face was pure and sweet and her eyes revealed the frankness and honest purpose of past generations. After breakfast she played for the hymns at prayers and in a clear, true, soprano led the singing. A twelve-year-old brother had selected the part of the Bible to be read and the eight-year-old sister had chosen the hymns. The father's prayer was simple and sincere and some of its sentences were remembered for many a day. After prayers the girl attended to the flowers. ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... vocalists; but Mme. Marchesi herself admits that the great demand to-day is for dramatic, and not for lyric, singers. Formerly, it was the bravura singer who bought dukedoms with his shekels; to-day, with the solitary exception of Patti, it is the dramatic soprano or tenor that gets from $500 to $1,000 a night. When will teachers and pupils wake up and recognize the new situation? When will American girls cease flocking by the hundreds to Milan to learn such roles as Lucia or Amina, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... dignity and vigorous compression, are perfectly suited to Tragedy, and yet we perceive in them an indescribable something, which seems to show that they were designed for the flexible throat of a soprano singer. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... until nearly midnight, the daughter Cleo playing on the harp with dextrous fingers, and throwing a soft soprano voice upon the air, like the tones of an angel, echoing over a ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... they had eaten. Oh, how they had eaten! He told him how nice all the Passover dishes were, and how sweet the wine. Fedoka listened attentively, and cast his eyes on Feitel's blouse. He was still thinking of "matzo." Suddenly there was a scream, and a cry in a high-pitched soprano: ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... the tenor always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... music constantly on tap means to a pilgrim from a town where two concerts in a winter is a gorge, and where about the only regular musical diversion is going to church on Sunday morning and betting on where the veteran soprano in the choir is going to hang on to the key or skid on the high turns. You laugh at me because I can't eat down-town unless I am encouraged by a bull fiddle, and because I gulp at free concert tickets like a young robin swallowing worms. But ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... supplement the air sung by Kadijah in contrapuntal treatment. Omar, the father of another maiden who is to be Mahomet's concubine, follows Abubekir's example; he and his daughter join in to form a quintette. The girl Ayesha is first soprano, Hafsa second soprano; Abubekir is a bass, Omar ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... old-fashioned home parlor entertainment, and no doubt most musical artists would have sneered at the programme, but Alice had a wonderfully sweet and sympathetic soprano voice, and as Frank sat watching the fitful flames play hide-and-seek in the open fire, and listened to those time-worn ballads, it seemed to him he had never heard singing quite so sweet. Much depends upon the time and place, and perhaps the romance of the open fire sparkling beneath the bank of ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... must be away and let him write in peace, so you and I will have to follow the trails together, yes?" She smiled down into Doris' piquant, freckled little face, and just at this moment there came from the living-room, where Helen was dusting, Dinorah's Shadow Song, sung in a clear, girlish soprano. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... she expected a miserable cavalier servente to be constantly upon his knees; or giving those odious expressive looks, which quite destroy my nerves whenever I am under the same roof as that horrible Lady Soprano. There is a little too much talk, to be sure, about Roman churches, and newly-discovered mosaics, and Abbate Maii, but still we cannot expect perfection. There are reports going about that Ernest Clay is either ruined ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... instruments. There are good singers among them, and these have positions, with a fitting salary attached, in all the churches, from the cathedral to the poorest ministry; and thus they are being trained, from the time when they sing soprano. They are fond of verses and representations. They are excellent translators, and can translate a Spanish comedy with elegance into verses of their own language. And thus, although all, both men and women, are fond of reading, they are indefatigable ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... further step from monochrome to polychrome; we have the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the sky, the blue in the sea, and the red in the figures in the boats,—as in a vocal trio we have the only three possible musical sounds of the human voice, the soprano, the basso, and the falsetto of the child's voice. All these colors are distinctly asserted and perfectly harmonized in a most exquisite play of tints, but it is still no more like Nature than the trio in "I Puritani" is like conversation. Turner never dreamed of painting like Nature, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Pippin Brothers took a bow and backed off into a vase of flowers we were all invited to listen to a soprano solo by ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... youngest—became suddenly attentive. Turning over the leaves of the hymnbook, he then gave out the first two lines of a hymn. The choir accordion in the front side bench awoke like an infant into wailing life, and Cissy Appleby, soprano, took up a little more musically the lugubrious chant. At the close of the verse the preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with a breezy bass that seemed to fill the little building with the trouble of the sea. Then followed prayer from Deacon Shadwell, broken by "Amens" from the preacher, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... quaint and simple hymn, Cicely Bourne glanced at Miss Eden and Susie Prescott with a little suggestive smile, and caught their appealing glances,—then, as the quavering chorus of boys and girls began, she raised her voice as the 'leading soprano,' and like a thread of gold it twined round all the notes and tied them together in clear and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... sang a reg'lar American song, with music to it. When she reached the chorus she stopped. Then away up in the balcony sounded the tiny treble of a boy's soprano, sweet as the ring of silver. The audience turned, to a man, and we seen, perched among the newsboys, the littlest, golden-haired youngster, 'bout the size of your thumb, his eyes glued to the face of his mother on the stage below, pourin' out ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... and A Maid Sings Light form one of the gramophone records made for "His Master's Voice" series by Alma Gluck. This lyric soprano has sung the two MacDowell songs with sympathy and perfect phrasing. The accompaniments were played by a Mr. Bourdon, who unfortunately disregarded the composer's ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... Pacchierotti, the famous soprano singer, is ill, and they say Lady Mary Duncan, his frightful old protectress, has made him so by her caresses denaturees. A little envy of the new woman, Allegrante, has probably not much mended his health, for Pacchierotti, dear creature, is envious enough. I was, however, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... perhaps, who might be selected to replace the offenders might refuse the service, if not allowed the same ridiculous prerogatives, and thus expose Their Royal Majesties to double mortification, the Queen seemed satisfied, and no more was said upon the subject, except to an Italian soprano, to whom the King signified his displeasure at his singing a 'salva regina' in the dress of a ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... stones. When the music did not amuse society, the diamonds and rubies twinkled and glittered uneasily, but when Cordova was trilling her wildest they were quite still and blazed with a steady light. Afterwards the audience would all say again what they had always said about every great lyric soprano, that it was just a wonderful instrument without a particle of feeling, that it was an over-grown canary, a human flute, and all the rest of it; but while the trills ran on the people listened in wonder and the ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... plants were enlarged, and the city bought a site up the river, built a dam, installed pumping engines and constructed water mains into the city. An opera house was built, which, though its walls never re-echoed to the high soprano notes of a prima donna; had trembled to their foundations at the invectives of E. T. Franks; had shed sections of blistered plaster at the sad wailings of Gus Wilson, and had been moved by the matchless eloquence of A. O. Stanley when telling the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... and the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the staccatoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano of ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... alluding to the fact that only here and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the work of singing bass. The large majority of women prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what has this fact to do with the matter of right in the premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without onions, but I never knew that fact to be brought forward ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... of that bull voice of his. He used it frequently. So they taped him, and Al here—" the name plainly referred to the machine—"used to play it back switched up so he sounded like a squeaky girl. That poor guy, he liked to busted a blood-vessel when he heard himself speakin' soprano. He raised hell and they sent Al here to be rehabilitated. But I switched another machine for him and sent it back, instead. Of course, Al don't ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of hypersexual idiocy unparalleled except in an English ballad of the popular order. On such belief, I said to myself, are young lovers brought up. Well, I suppose it would be difficult for a youthful soprano to put "her soul" into a song which asked, "What shall I give my dear one every morning for his breakfast?" or, "Who'll soothe your brow when the Income Tax is due, dear?" And yet, sooner or later, she will be faced with some such problems, and then her beloved ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... graduated from High School, third in her class, and again slightly to the rear of Estelle Foote, who read the valedictory, she was executing excitedly, if sloppily, "The Turkish Patrol," was singing in an abominably trained but elastic enough soprano, the "Jewel Song" from "Faust," and "Jocelyn," a lullaby, and at a private recital of the Alden School of Dramatic Expression had recited "A Set of Turquoise" to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... unromantic night, out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... invitation of the barkers outside questionable shows; the bawl of street-gamblers, who had all manner of devices, from ring-pitching to shell-games on folding tables, which they could pick up in a twinkling and run away with when their dupes began to threaten and rough them up; the clear soprano of the singer, who wore long skirts and sang chaste songs, in the vaudeville tent ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... again a third; and then, like so many roses after a shower, out they came, dripping, and laughing and screaming with glee. The little mother was kept busy enough, for it was Christmas-eve, and the carols and anthems were to be rehearsed for the last time, and Mrs. Morton's clear soprano voice could not be spared. Indeed, her voice was all that kept Teddie and Clover and Daisy in their neat little box of a house, for their father, a brave fireman, had been killed more than two years before at a fearful fire, and since then ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... only laughed. "Don't put yourself out, dear boy," he said. "I have enough for present necessities. If you think an automobile race is an easy thing to manage, try it. Every man who drives a racing-car has a coloratura soprano beaten to death for temperament. Then every racing-car has quirky spells; there's the local committee to propitiate; the track to look after; and if that isn't enough, there's the promotion itself, the advertising. That's my ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wives—" "Why two?" asked I. "You carry your affected simplicity too far", he cried. "How can there be a completely harmonious union without the combination of the Four in One, viz. the Bass and Tenor of the Man and the Soprano and Contralto of the two Women?" "But supposing," said I, "that a man should prefer one wife or three?" "It is impossible," he said; "it is as inconceivable as that two and one should make five, or that the human eye should see a Straight ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... iel. Somewhat iom. Somewhere ie. Son filo. Son-in-law bofilo. Sonata sonato. Song kanto. Songster kantisto. Sonnet soneto. Sonorous sonora. Soon baldaux. Soon (early) frue. Soot fulgo. Soothe kvietigi. Sop trempajxo. Sophism sofismo. Soprano soprano. Sorb sorpo. Sorcerer sorcxisto. Sorcery sorcxarto. Sordid malpurega. Sore ulcereto. Sorrel okzalo. Sorrow malgxojo. Sorry malgxoja—eta. Sort speco. Sort dece kunmeti, disspecigi. Sot drinkulo. Soul animo. Sound (try ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... right good choir for them days; the only trouble was that everybody wanted to be leader. That's a common failin' with church choirs, I've noticed. Milly Amos sung soprano, and my Jane was the alto; John Petty sung bass, and young Sam Crawford tenor; and as for Uncle Jim Matthews, he sung everything, and a plenty of it, too. Milly Amos used to say he was worse'n a flea. He'd start out on the bass, and first thing you knew he'd be singin' tenor with Sam Crawford; ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... doled out at long and impressive intervals, like the tolling of a heavy bell, more than half a hundred soprano voices were hastily getting in their requisite number of half ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... rare accomplishment of a perfect knowledge of how to wait, and to wait—if necessary—long. When the first golden down had shown itself on his cheek and lip she had not noticed it too much and when his golden soprano voice began to change to a deeper note and annoyed him with its uncertainties she had spared him awkwardness by making him feel the transition a casual natural thing, instead of a personal and characteristic weakness. She had loved every stage of innocence and ignorance and adorable ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... positively must and shall leave your solitudes and come and see the Kamtchatkans in Scriptural opera-ballet! Only second to Noe is La Femme de Lot, with dear Sarkavina, in clouds of white, doing a sensational whirling dance as she turns into the Pillar, while that amazing soprano, Scriemalona, sings the mysterious Salt Music. Bishops quite swarm at these performances. They say they consider it their duty to go, and that they never really understood the true character of NOAH till they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... Deacon's horse. For the Deacon has some queer notions about the duties of employers to their servants, and, though the very kindest of men, is generally thought by the neighbors to be "a queer stick." The Deacon's wife, who has a very sweet soprano voice, which, however, she never could be persuaded to use in our choir, was presiding at the piano. The children all had their hymn and tune-books, and they were "singing round"—each member of the ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... Ercole, do you take me for a soprano?" cried the boy, laughing, as he washed off the paint and the gum where the beard had stuck. Presently he got into his frock, which, as I told you, was a real one, provided by Ercole's brother, the Franciscan—quite quietly, of course, for it would seem ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Diversions and Luxuries: When Husbands are ruin'd, Children robb'd, and Tradesmen starv'd, in order to give Estates to a French Harlequin, and Italian Eunuch, for a Shrug or a Song; [Footnote: Farinelli, an eminent Italian soprano, went to England in 1734, remained there three years, sang chiefly at the Theatre of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then under the direction of Porpora, his old Master, became a great favorite, and made about, L5,000 a year. As The Man of Taste was performed at a rival house, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... canals, rose the manifold noises of Venetian life. All other sounds were dominated by the monotonous shouts of the gondoliers. Somewhere close at hand, perhaps in the opposite palace (was it not the Fogazzari palace?), a woman with a fine soprano voice was practising; the singer was young—someone who could not have been born at the time when Casanova escaped ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... had deeply indented sides to permit a free use of the bow, was mostly supplied with frets like a guitar, and had usually from five to seven strings. Its different sizes corresponded with the soprano, contralto, tenor and bass of the human voice. An extremely interesting treble viol much in vogue in the eighteenth century was the viola d'amore, with fourteen strings, the seven of gut and silver being supplemented by seven sympathetic wire strings ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... all the day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high and swaying, and as she took some steps of her dance before the gate, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... perfect as it may be in tone, is yet always very deficient in compass, as is obvious from the fact that the bass voice, the barytone, the contralto, and the soprano have all different registers, and are all required to produce a complete vocal harmony. If we could make organ-pipes with movable, self-regulating lips, with self-shortening and self-lengthening tubes, so that each tube should command the two or three octaves of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... out suddenly, into the heavy silence, in a tense and high soprano, with a voice not like ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Morris; while from his deep, unwinking eyes men saw calmly looking out a strong, deep nature, not observed before. He joined his mother and brother in the last hymn. Everybody knew the Ridgeleys could sing. They carried the burden of the grand and simple old tune nearly alone. The fine mezzo-soprano of the mother, the splendid tenor of Morris, and the rich baritone of Bart, in their united effect, had never been equalled in the hearing of that assembly. The melody was a sweet and fitting finale of the day, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... identification she says: "This is the hith of him 5-6 light eyes dark hair unwave shave and a Suprano Voice his age 58 his name Steve...." Even though Mr. Washington did not agree to spend his spare time looking for a disloyal husband with a soprano voice, he sent the poor woman a kind reply and suggested some means of ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail of water on her to ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... porch in the twilight. While Tony played on his flute they sang many songs. They were surprised how much talent they had in their own family circle. Aunt Bettie and Edith both had good soprano voices and Ruth a fair contralto. Bob sang tenor and his uncle bass. It was Maria, though, that surprised them with a remarkable ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien. Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in its singing sent ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... while Esther, standing some distance apart from them, started the air for their parting hymn. The girl was not thinking of herself and so was unconscious that the others, even while singing, were also listening with surprise and pleasure to the clear, rounded tones of her beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. In reality Esther Clark was thinking only of Betty and the news that Dick Ashton had just told her. Mr. Ashton, his father, had been taken ill in Italy and, though there was no immediate danger, might never be well again. For the present it ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... much to interest even such a cultivated man as M. Bois-le-Duc in Marie Gourdon. She had inherited from her mother a remarkable talent for music, such as many of the French Canadians have strongly developed. Her soprano voice was powerful, clear and flexible, and her ear was very correct. The good cure judged that, if given proper training, and the advantages Paris alone could afford, the little Canadian girl might become an artist of the first rank. But how send her to Paris? The thing ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... opera-house; admirable dancers, who performed a mighty pretty pantomime Comedie larmoyante without words; I liked it vastly. The famous Soprano singer Bedini was at Lucca; but here is our old London favourite Signora Giorgi, improved into a degree of perfection seldom found, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to be hung behind the Olio—for the act opened in One—and when the Olio went up, after the act's name was hung out, the lights dimmed to the blue and soft green of evening in the Quarter. Then the soprano commenced singing, the tenor took up the duet, and they opened the act by walking rhythmically with the popular ballad air to stage-centre in the amber of the spot-light. When the duet was finished, on came the baritone, and then the contralto, and there was a little comedy before they ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... accept this refusal, and produced a portfolio of old music. His niece selected a duet for soprano and tenor, and said that she would sing if any one would take the tenor; she stood with the music in her hand, looking dubiously at the circle of men around her. Not one could sing. Mrs. Delancey, my companion at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... are so near the dividing line that it requires wide experience and a fine ear for quality on the part of a teacher to determine in what direction they should be developed to greatest advantage. A fine ear may determine that the seeming mezzo is a true soprano, that the notes of the pupil who comes as a baritone have the tenor quality and that his scale safely can be added to, while the would-be tenor has the baritone timbre which will prevent his notes from ever ringing out with the true tenor quality. Yes, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... variety of accent, it filled the stifling atmosphere, and tickled many an empty brain, like the catchword political that can set a nation behind one astute wire-puller. Boys yelled it, men murmured it, and an elderly woman in a plush gown and yellow feathers screamed it out in a piercing soprano that would have put many a trumpet-blast to shame. Glasses were emptied and filled again in its honour. Yet nobody knew what it meant, and apparently nobody cared, except the Oxford boy who had already expressed his desire to be better informed on the subject. He ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... conservative church? I answer that, having freed their minds from sectarian prejudices, they recognized beauty and genius wherever found, and did not care what church or creed they had served, so that they found the gift of beauty from the infinite Father to man in them. With one glorious soprano voice and boundless talent, how much of joy was added to the circle! How we revelled in the choice creations of the masters of harmony, and how, slowly but surely, the missing link that was wanting in my mind to realize that music could cover the void that separated ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... notes, soft notes and shrill notes, all travel at the same rate. If bass notes traveled faster or slower than soprano notes, or if the delicate tones of the violin traveled faster or slower than the tones of a drum, music would be practically impossible, because at a distance from the source of sound the various tones which should be in unison would be out of ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... half-trembling womanly modesty with the beautiful confidence of genius and serene wisdom of art, addressed herself to song, as the orchestral symphony prepared the way for the voice in Casta Diva. A better test-piece could not have been selected for her debut. Every soprano lady has sung it to us; but nearly every one has seemed only trying to make something of it, while Jenny Lind WAS the very music of it for the time being. We would say no less than that; for the wisest and honestest part of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... in unison; and, as the natural soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass moved along in octaves, the different qualities of tone in the voices brought out the overtones and produced harmonic effects. When listening to chorals sung by two or three hundred ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... of congregation, whom the young preacher harangued by the hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church and, on one occasion, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... an English soprano sang Bach's Heart Ever Faithful. Variety was always welcomed at the parties ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... a French or an Italian air, merry or sad, in a voice which may be either tenor, contralto, soprano ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... if hoping to lighten their labours—lovers of music as these people are—a shrill, musical, woman's voice arose, starting a familiar chorus, which was taken up directly by the young, to rise and fall and swell along the valley, the sweet soprano tones supported by the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... exhibit their full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Master should be. [Query, would it be rude to say to a really good Van Dyck, "You go and be hung!" Perhaps the learned Editor of Musical Notes and Queries will reply. Of course much depends on the frame.] As for the new soprano SIBYL—more power to her organ! Her acting was good, but not great, and what ought to be her song par excellence went for nothing, or, at least, it could have been bought very cheap. There is far more ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... lean upon somebody, and at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... rapturously applauded, and the singers forced to give encore after encore. One youth who played the part of a little maid from school, and sang in a sweet soprano voice, caused the greatest enthusiasm of the evening; but then everything seemed ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... Such he will ever be. So I introduced him to Nettie and asked if he had this here song on a phonograph record. He had. He had it on two records. 'One by a barytone gentleman, and one by a mezzo-soprano,' says Wilbur. I set myself back for both. He also had it with variations on one of these punched rolls. He played that for us. It took him three minutes to get set right at the piano and to dust his fingers ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... on a bench in front of the main altar, tearing half a yard of crimson damask and nearly upsetting the priest officiating; and then, while Caper (red in the face, and totally unfit to hear the fine chorus of voices, among which Mustafa's, the soprano, came ringing out) was composing himself to listen, Pepe grabbed him with a 'Music's over; andiamo (let's go). Did you hear Mustafa? Bella voce, tra-la-leeeee! Mustafa's a contadino; I know his pa and ma; they changed him ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lullaby of Longfellow's, sung by a rich soprano voice floated upon the cool October air out from a beautiful and richly furnished suburban cottage in Wilmington. The singer sat alone at the piano. Though vulgarly called a "Negress," her skin was almost as fair as a Saxon's; and because of the mingling of Negro blood—more beautiful ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... his eyes, he glanced at her without turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to be observed, but her face held him. A color slowly flamed out on his pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted. A soprano singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and tittered, but he did ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the intervening shadows of valleys making the folds of their robes. As they approached the shore the resonant song of the robins blended with the human voices. Burt, however, heard only Amy's girlish soprano, and saw but the pearl of her teeth through her parted lips, the rose in her cheeks, and the snow of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... its efforts, and Mr. Porter, vociferating orders for silence, saw only too clearly the base advantage his wife had taken of his affection for his children. He took some money from his pocket and sent the leading treble out marketing, after which, with the assistance of a soprano aged eight, he washed up the breakfast things and placed one of them ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... which she gave the words "Sul mio sasso," in the Capuletti—is ringing in my memory yet. Her lower tones were absolutely miraculous. Her voice embraced three complete octaves, extending from the contralto D to the D upper soprano, and, though sufficiently powerful to have filled the San Carlos, executed, with the minutest precision, every difficulty of vocal composition-ascending and descending scales, cadences, or fiorituri. In the final of the Somnambula, she brought about ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... expression. In this time of affliction he found Isabel an ever-increasing comfort to him. Side by side they would sit, and the old man's face would lose its drawn look, and light up, as her clear young soprano pealed out over the din, urging this player to shoot, that to kick some opponent in the face; or describing the referee in no uncertain terms as a reincarnation of the late Mr ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... followed by another catastrophe named Minnehaha Jones, who picked up a couple of soprano songs and ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before—the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time had ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had followed his; for the first time in Somerset's experience, she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as the full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her trilling and soprano laughter. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... until I could take B natural. Later on, when the tone of my voice; had lowered to the barytone, impelled always by my desire to accomplish something, I took lessons in music from the Maestro Terziani, and appeared at a benefit with the famous tenor Boucarde, and Signora Monti, the soprano, and sang in a duet from "Belisaria," the aria from "Maria di Rohan,"and "La Settimana d'Amore," by Niccolai; and I venture to say that I was not third best in that triad. But I recognised that singing and declamation were incompatible pursuits, since the method of producing the voice ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... held with the piano alone for music, an accompanist, and a tenor and soprano of note, but very often a violin is added, and sometimes a mandolin orchestra and four or more singers vary the program. Professional singers and musicians usually leave when their numbers are over, in order to protect their throats from night ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... bronze bells and iron standards that mark El Camino Real—the King's Highway—which the padres trod in making their rounds of the early California missions. Lotta's Fountain has two tablets. One has its donor's name, and the other is inscribed to Luisa Tetrazzini, whose soprano was first acclaimed to the world from San Francisco, and who crossed the continent to sing Christmas carols to the people on this street corner in 1910. One block east, Montgomery street leads into the financial center of the Pacific. ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... has been christened as a shadowy ghost, or a royal symbol. The veriest urchin steers her, with a little fat hand on the heavy tiller twelve feet long, and a hunch of good rye-bread in his other fist. Now and then he sings out in a thin soprano, "Fayther, boat's a'ead," and his father, (hidden below), answers deep-toned, from the cabin, "Keep 'er away, lad." From him I asked, "How old is your boy?" and the parent's head popped up to see, but it was the child that smartly answered, "Eight years old." He looked five. Round the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... outcome of practices. Our human triangle formed part of the company. All three were musical, and two of them more than usually talented both in singing and acting—Violet and Bernard. The former especially—endowed with a beautiful soprano voice, which had been well cultivated, added to what is styled by the initiated "a good stage presence"—was much in request on all such occasions. She had filled more than one title-role in popular operas presented ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... the Christmas Story—out of the worn copy of the Scriptures which had served this pulpit almost from the beginning. He read it in the rich and cultivated voice of his training, but quite simply. Then Margaret sang, to the slender accompaniment of the little organ, the same solo which a famous soprano had sung that morning at the service at St. John's—and her brother William, listening from the pulpit, thought she sang it better. There was the quality in Margaret's voice which reaches hearts—a quality which somehow the ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... calmly, with the purest joy he sang, pausing at the end of every few bars to preen and call. His song was the soul of serenity, of all that is spiritual. Accompanied by the lower, more continuous notes from among the trees, it rose, a clear, pure, wonderful soprano, lifting the whole wide chorus ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of the larynx occasions diminished compass of the singing-voice, the notes of the upper register being the first to disappear. In some few cases of arrested development, the voice of the man retains the soprano compass of ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni Hasse, whose famous rivalry in 1726 and 1727 is here referred to, were singers of remarkable powers. Cuzzoni's voice was a soprano, her rival's a mezzo-soprana, and while the latter excelled in brilliant execution, the former was supreme in pathetic expression. Dr. Burney("History of Music," iv. 319) quotes from M. Quanta the statement that so keen was their supporter's party spirit, that ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... their dignity and vigorous compression, are perfectly suited to Tragedy, and yet we perceive in them an indescribable something, which seems to show that they were designed for the flexible throat of a soprano singer. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... enchained my attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice of suffering womanhood, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pitches are the left-hand strings of a piano; the larger ones of stringed instruments generally; bass voices; and large bells. Familiar high pitches are right-hand piano strings; smaller ones of other stringed instruments; soprano voices; small bells; and the voices ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... capital foil to Lady Georgina's acidulous soprano. It seemed to disarm her. She turned to me with a benignant wave of her hand. 'Miss Cayley,' she said, introducing me; 'my nephew, Mr. Harold Tillington. You've heard me talk of poor Tom Cayley, Harold? This is poor ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... had a sweet mezzo-soprano voice, of no great strength or compass, but perfectly trained and very pleasing to the ear. The sort of voice, Sir Philip thought, that would be soothing to the nerves of a tired man in his own house. Whereas, Janetta's singing had something impassioned ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... full, are full," sang the soprano, Clare Rossiter, of the yellow colonial house on the Ridgely Road. She sang with her eyes turned up, and as she reached G flat she lifted herself on her toes. "Of the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with an increasing abandon, half laughter and half tears, the clear young soprano voice ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... conversation with a certain interest until it turned this sharp corner, (for she seems rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of which she had been cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that swept all before it. So we had a great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Stridor — N. creak &c v.; creaking &c v.; discord, &c 414; stridor; roughness, sharpness, &c adj.; cacophony; cacoepy^. acute note, high note; soprano, treble, tenor, alto, falsetto, penny trumpet, voce di testa [It]. V. creak, grate, jar, burr, pipe, twang, jangle, clank, clink; scream &c (cry) 411; yelp &c (animal sound) 412; buzz &c (hiss) 409. set the teeth on edge, corcher les oreilles [Fr.]; pierce the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... briefly, and he had returned to his exchange of gallantries with Lady Castlerich, who he hoped would invite him to Morelands. Agnes did not quite like him. She liked Mr. St. Clare better. St. Clare had asked her if she sang, and when she told him that she was leading soprano in the convent choir he had talked agreeably ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... being called Peachy. She had an indistinct feeling that it sounded vulgar,—why she would have been unable to explain. Nevertheless, since anything was preferable to being called "Mother" at the top of Leonetta's strident soprano in the public highway, and for some reason or other Leonetta would not make use of the name "Edith," she felt that it would perhaps ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... piano and gave them "Maryland" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and was heartily applauded. Mary Lou was finally persuaded to sing Tosti's "Farewell to Summer," in a high, sweet, self-conscious soprano. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... from High School, third in her class, and again slightly to the rear of Estelle Foote, who read the valedictory, she was executing excitedly, if sloppily, "The Turkish Patrol," was singing in an abominably trained but elastic enough soprano, the "Jewel Song" from "Faust," and "Jocelyn," a lullaby, and at a private recital of the Alden School of Dramatic Expression had recited "A Set of Turquoise" ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... attended by many ladies, of whom one was a dowager countess, but there were also a bishop and a midshipman. The last had a bad cold and kept on blowing his nose during the performance of the soprano, a lady of strange appearance, said to be a ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... I could hear his clear tenor and Evelyn's sweet soprano filling the night with music. Presently they drifted into patriotic songs, in which Tom came out strong if not melodious. But when the piano sounded the notes of "Dixie" Evelyn's voice rose alone, clear and full-throated as that ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... benefit of those not learned in Sixteenth-Century Music, it may be interesting to hint that the melody is written here for the Second Soprano, and to add, for their encouragement, that the experiment of performing this Madrigal, unaccompanied, with two ladies, and two male voices in the Alto parts, proved perfectly successful, thanks to the science of Mr Fuller-Maitland and ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... happened to be Luther's "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott"; it was sung in English, but the Reverend Gottlieb Schultz, the missionary, forgetting the English words, drifted into the original German at the second verse, rather to the detriment of the performance. Miss Blake sang out her clear, simple soprano tones, very rich in the low notes. She was a handsome girl, rather stout, with blue eyes and dull yellow hair. Her face was somewhat pale from overwork and want of fresh air. Altogether, she had a strongly Teutonic look, and was, in fact, almost an exact counterpart of what her German ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... was detrimental to her whole career. As I have said, music was represented in our family by these two sisters. It was chiefly owing to Clara's career that the musical conductor C. M. von Weber often came to our house. His visits were varied by those of the great male-soprano Sassaroli; and in addition to these two representatives of German and Italian music, we also had the company of Mieksch, her singing master. It was on these occasions that I as a child first heard German and Italian music discussed, and learnt that any one who wished to ingratiate ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... too, regarded it as medicine, and hoped especially for a favourable effect from the exquisite soprano voice in the motet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... No. 211 of the Secular Cantatas, and was published in Leipzig in 1732. In German it is known as Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be silent, do not talk). It is written for soprano, tenor, and bass solos and orchestra. Bach used as his text a poem by Piccander. The cantata is really a sort of one-act operetta—a jocose production representing the efforts of a stern parent to check his daughter's propensities in coffee drinking, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... in getting ashore before it broke. We lighted a fire, but the blaze could not be seen far in such inky darkness. We hallooed, but received no answer, and finally ceased our efforts. Then one of the young ladies who possessed a very high and clear soprano voice, began singing at the very top of her power. It reached the wanderer in the darkness, and he rowed straight toward it. From that time on he became infatuated with the singer, declaring that her voice had come to him in his despair like an angel's straight ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... comfortable seats, meals, and music could be obtained. Other places were picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers on the stage. ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... back, again return, resound *Retro back, backward retroactive, retrospective *Se apart, aside seclude, secession *Semi half semiannual, semicivilized *Sub under, less than, subscribe, suffer, subnormal, inferior subcommittee *Super above, extremely superfluous, supercritical, soprano *Trans across, through transfer, transparent *Ultra beyond, extremely ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... voices made a quartet. Susan was ready with her beautiful contralto, Mrs. Blair sung the soprano, Mr. Blair the tenor, and ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... Brigaud in placing him in a house which he habitually visited almost daily, so that his visits, however frequent, could not be remarkable. It was not the dignified speeches of Madame Denis, nor the soprano of Mademoiselle Emilie. It was neither the contralto of Mademoiselle Athenais, nor the tricks of M. Boniface. It was simply poor Bathilde, whom he had heard so lightly spoken of; but our reader would be mistaken if he supposed ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... nature has been too strong for them, and the hedge will grow its own way in spite of pedants' shears. 'If the whole body were an eye, where the hearing?' The monotony of a church in which uniformity was the ideal would be intolerable. The chorus has its parts, and the soprano cannot say to the bass, 'I have no need of you,' nor the bass to the tenor, 'I have no ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... circumstances have delayed the performance at Vienna of this really pretty, nicely worked out opera. The mise-en-scene does not require any special efforts; the piece only requires a somewhat piquant and not unskillful soprano singer. Altogether the opera appears to me to be written in a charming style, not too superficially conservative, and to be one of the best among the new operas mezzo-carattere. In case you still have time and are not indisposed to give the opera in Frankfort, I can send you the score. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... pushes his way through the crowds, for poor Chancer has been doomed to disappointment in his wish to have this fair woman sing to him alone, for when the now full rich notes, now sweet to intoxication, of her mezzo-soprano voice fell on the air, the languid, sentimental or gay stayed their steps ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... could get on minus an affair of the heart. Ah, yes, that amatory lyre of his is an uncommonly adaptable instrument. I've known it thrummed to the praises of a middle-aged Duchess—quite a beauty still, even by daylight, with her three veils on, and an Operatic soprano, with a mascot cockatoo, not to mention a round dozen of frisky matrons of the kind that exploit nice boys. Just before we came out, it could play nothing but that famous song-and-dance tune that London went mad over at the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 9. The oratorios of "Il Penseroso;" and "Alexander's Feast" were performed at the Theatre in King Street; Handel's "Te Deum" and "Jubilate" with the "Messiah," at St. Philip's Church. The principal singers were Mrs. Pinto, first soprano, and Mr. Charles Norris, tenor; the orchestra numbered about 70, the conductor being Mr. Capel Bond of Coventry, with Mr. Pinto as leader of the band. The tickets of admission were 5s. each, the receipts (with donations) ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Op. 41, No. 1. It well repays careful study. Note the grip our composer has on the theme, it bobs up in the middle voices; it comes thundering at the close in octave and chordal unisons, it rumbles in the bass and is persistently asserted by the soprano voice. Its scale is unusual, the atmosphere not altogether cheerful. Chopin could be depressingly pessimistic at times. Op. 50, No. 3, shows how closely the composer studied his Bach. It is by all odds the most elaborately worked out of the series, difficult ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... knew she was young and adorable. It was a low-pitched voice for so little a woman, low and thrilling; a mezzo-soprano. His spirit went to ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Sunday evening in early June and the hour for Vesper service at Saint Zita's convent. Reverend Mother mounted the staircase leading to the chapel, then paused, with her hand upon the door, to listen as the wonderful soprano again took up ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... the most primitive harmony was a perfect fifth resulting from the attempt of men with different ranges to sing together. The difference between a bass and a tenor voice is just about a fifth. Between an alto and a soprano it is about a fourth. The difference in these voices made it impossible to sing melodies of wide range in unison, and so the basses and tenors sang in consecutive fifths. When women took up the chanting, they sang either in fifths ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... they enjoyed the singing; particularly their own. Both sang from one book, with much reserve, yet with such sweetly persuasive voices that those about them first listened and then added their own very best. The second tune was "Geer," and, with John's tenor going up every time Barbara's soprano came down, and vice versa, it was as lovely see-sawing as ever thrilled the heart of youth with pure and undefiled religion. They sang the last hymn to "Dennis." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... can depend upon Fran Van der Werff too. At first she wanted to decline, but when I proposed a pretty madrigal, yielded and took the soprano." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang "counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the mountains—ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's time or earlier ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... left his brother's roof and entered the Latin school connected with the Church of St. Michael at Lueneburg. It was found he had a beautiful soprano voice, which placed him with the scholars who were chosen to sing in the church service in return for a free education. There were two church schools in Lueneburg, and the rivalry between them was so keen, that when the scholars sang ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... glad to lay down their cards and the women to cease talking of their friends' love affairs. All the world over it is the same, a soprano voice subjugating all other interests; soprano or tenor, baritone much less, contralto still less. Many came forward to thank her, and, a little intoxicated with her success, she began to talk to some of her women friends, thinking it unwise to go back into a shadowy corner with Owen, making ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Mr. White, in the article already alluded to, "to think of the greatest prima donna, not only of her day, but of modern times—the most fascinating woman upon the stage in the first half of the nineteenth century—as singing the soprano parts of psalm tunes and chants in a small town then less known to the people of London and Paris and Vienna than Jeddo is now. Grace Church may well be pardoned for pride in a musical service upon the early years of which fell such a crown of glory, and which has since then been guided ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... not asked her to do that. Had not, on the contrary, her marriage really furthered it? Was she not more of a person to-day than the discouraged young woman he had found singing for pittances the leading dramatic soprano roles in the minor municipal operas of Germany and Austria? Wasn't that what she had said this morning—that falling in love with him was the best thing that could possibly have happened to her? He had taken it wrong when she said it, as if she were regarding him just as an instrument ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... tweet, tweet!" It was Bea's best soprano, with several extra trills strewn between the consonants. "Listen to the mocking-bird. Oh, the mocking-bird is singing on the bough. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... during my absence. I recommend her again to Milde and yourself. Preller will introduce her to you, and I beg that Milde will help her with good teaching. If I am not mistaken, she would stand proof well in mezzo-soprano parts. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... Dilettantism in this world for his outfit, shall have it; but all the gods will depart from him; and manful veracity, earnestness of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. He can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for hire;—and probably that is the real ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... two songs in his own inimitable fashion. Then Nora's sweet, high soprano voice began the "Serenata" to the subdued tinkling accompaniment of Reddy's mandolin. Two years in the conservatory had done much for Nora's voice, though its plaintive sweetness had been her natural heritage. As they listened ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... thirty years, until it has reached a point where all good Baptists dread death on account of his lugubrious profundo. Perhaps we should take this tragedy to heart, but we know that the Methodists are having the same trouble with their soprano, who "flats"—and has flatted for ten years, and is too proud to quit the choir "under fire" as she calls it; and we remember what a time the Congregationalists had getting rid of their tenor. So that ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Apostles (I having turned out Gethsemane in St. Matthew in the Gospel which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... turn gave place to an imitation of an American whistling an air from Carmen, and some “coon songs” she had picked up during her stay at New York. They, again, were succeeded by a superb rendering of the imprecation from Racine’s Camille, which made her audience realize that in gaining a soprano the world has lost, perhaps, its ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... have read the wisdom hid In the storm-inspired melody of thy thrush's bosom solemn: I should not then have understood what thy free spirit did To make the lark-soprano ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... descended for tea, an hour later, she was aware, from a considerable distance, of people and tumult in the drawing-room. Daphne's soprano voice—agreeable, but making its mark always, like its owner—could be heard running on. The young mistress of the house seemed to be admonishing, instructing, someone. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... us hear voices calling," broke in Katherine. "And each is a different voice according to our natures. Now Margaret's voice is soprano, but Jessie hears ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... person one of my happy discoveries;" said the old gentleman, complacently. "She possesses, I don't hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... delusion that she could sing was one of the minor trials of her life. She had been thoroughly trained in Paris, under a master who had prophesied great things for her; now her hours at the Rainhams' tinkly piano, playing dreary accompaniments to sentimental songs with Mrs. Rainham's weak soprano wobbling and flattening on the high notes, were hours of real distress, from which she would escape feeling her teeth on edge. Her stepmother, however, had thoroughly enjoyed herself since the discovery that no accompaniment presented any difficulty to Cecilia. It saved her a world of trouble in ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the soprano looked very interesting with her wet eyelashes, the tears stopped halfway in their course down her rounded cheek. The closing hymn promised endless peace and rest, but was voiced in the same tragic and hopeless music with which the ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... thoroughfare, and stopped at a private house in a quiet street. A carriage driving off, a cab drawing up behind our own, open windows with drawn blinds, upon which were profiled passing shadows of the guests within, and the ringing tones of a soprano voice, accompanied by a piano, gave sufficient indication of a party, and had served to attract a little crowd of soldiers and gamins ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... he naturally belonged as "one of the family." They were like the four notes in the chord: Skale, the great bass; Mawle, the mellow alto; himself and Miriam, respectively, the echoing tenor and the singing soprano. The imagery by which, in the depths of his mind, he sought to interpret to himself the whole singular business ran, it seems, even then to music and the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... with the necklaces? If you read the accounts in the newspapers, as no doubt you did, you will already have guessed her name. Yes, in truth, she was your great soprano, whom they called Madame Chiara, or La Chiara: so modest are you English, at least in all that concerns the arts, that when an incomparable singer is born to you she must go to Italy to borrow a name. She was returning from South Africa, where the finest of the three necklaces had ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Templars, and later becoming a member of the Sons of Temperance and Good Templars. She is active in all Christian work, being a member of the First Congregational Church of Lockport, in whose church work she takes prominent part, and whose solo soprano she has been for thirteen years; she is also an active member of the Christian Endeavor ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... young gentlemen. Charley resigns her to one of these latter, and she glides through a mazurka. That too ends, and as it grows rather warm, her partner leads her away to a cool music-room, whence proceed melodious sounds. It is Trixy at the piano, informing a select audience in shrill soprano, and in the character of the "Queen of the May," that "She had been wild and wayward, but she was not wayward now." Edith's partner finds her a seat and volunteers to go for an ice. As she sits fanning herself, she sees Charley approaching with a young man of about his own age, taller ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... fat Englishwoman who had driven Arithelli's horses in the chariot. She was by no means young, she had applied her rouge with a lavish hand, and her golden wig was an outrage. Her airs and graces were those of a well-fed operatic soprano. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... white gliding figure, moving to the measure of the cake-walk, keyed up the laughter to hysteria. It was the Ghost appearing to frighten Ophelia. His sepulchral bass notes mingled with her terror-stricken soprano. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Suspended over this table was a copy of Camille Roqueplan's picture: "The Lion in Love." In the recess near the window was a piano open, and evidently just abandoned by a woman; the little stool was half-overturned by catching in the dress of some one suddenly rising, and the music open was a soprano air from Puritani:— ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... most famous Italian coloratura soprano of the day, declares that she began to sing before she learned to talk. Her parents were not musical, but her elder sister, now the wife of the eminent conductor Cleofante Campanini, was a public singer of established reputation, and her success roused her young sister's ambition to ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... a flood of music floated out. A divinely sweet mezzo-soprano voice was singing to the accompaniment of a harp. As the master of the house flung wide the sitting-room door and announced the visitor, the sounds ceased, but the musician sat with her hands resting upon the gilded strings for a moment, her eyes turned in inquiry toward the door, then rose and with ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Wife Motive seems to be written in a curiously low key if we conceive it to be the index to the character of a soprano heroine; but let us look further. What are the two principal personages in the music-drama to be ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... public consideration—and the Edinburgh Review in the hands of Mr. Napier was the avowed organ of the ruling Whig powers—is sorely tested in the same way. The rival house may bribe his stars. His popular epigrammatist is sometimes as full of humours as a spoiled soprano. The favourite pyrotechnist is systematically late and procrastinatory, or is piqued because his punctuation or his paragraphs have been meddled with. The contributor whose article would be in excellent time if it did not appear before ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... in the human voice depends partly on the person who is speaking. You know that the fundamental of a bass voice is lower than that of a soprano. Besides the fundamental, however, there are a lot of higher notes always present. This is particularly true when the spoken sound is a consonant, like "s" or "f" or "v." The particular notes, which are present and are important, depend upon ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... highest among the rights of woman are fond of alluding to the fact that only here and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the work of singing bass. The large majority of women prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what has this fact to do with the matter of right in the premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without onions, but I never ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
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