"Improvisation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great council of the realm, which now became an English parliament; and for the first time since the Norman Conquest men of the subject race were called up to deliberate on national affairs. It does not matter whether this was the stroke of a statesman's genius or the lucky improvisation of a party- leader. Simon fell, but his work remained; Prince Edward, who copied his tactics at Evesham, copied his politics in 1275 and afterwards at Westminster; and under the first sovereign since the Norman Conquest who bore an English ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... printed in the L., and were peremptorily rejected by them, and sent back to their author. The "Eidolons" was sent back by Dr. H., of "Scribner's Monthly" with a lengthy, very insulting and contemptuous letter. "To the Sun-Set Breeze," was rejected by the editor of "Harper's Monthly" as being "an improvisation" only. "On, on ye jocund twain" was rejected by the "Century" editor as being personal merely. Several of the pieces went the rounds of all the monthlies, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... you the sources of my information! Isn't that like a woman!" she exclaimed. "You see, it did not concern me at all at the time I heard it. I didn't even realize its importance and I didn't hear much," she proceeded, her introduction giving time for improvisation. "You see, Partow was inspecting the premises with Colonel Lanstron. My mother had known Partow in her younger days when my grandfather was premier. We had ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... caught sight of the familiar gray horse, with the accustomed bunch of hay sticking out behind, and had saved his life by an adroit improvisation. For Tom had been in the habit of substituting another name for "Mrs. McQuarry," and though he might take liberties with his neighbor across the way, well he knew the dire consequences of taking Auntie Jinit's ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... incurable cannibal grandee with two incongruous traits. His favourite morsel was the human hand, of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. And when he said good-bye to Mrs. Stevenson, holding her hand, viewing her with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in the falsetto of Marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind a sentimental impression which I try ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fair to remain one of the world's types, like Don Quixote or Mr. Micawber, for all his natural Provencal gift of improvisation and, indeed, from his self-recognized necessity of keeping it in check, was another strenuous artist. He wrote each manuscript three times over, he told his biographer, and would write it as many more if he could; and his son, in writing of him, has this ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... koochey strains are on the air while heroes are dying. The Miserere is in our ears when the lovers are reconciled. Ragtime is imposed upon us while the old mother prays for her lost boy. Sometimes the musician with this variety of sympathy abandons himself to thrilling improvisation. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... all her heart and soul; and she flew now through the starlit, sultry night, crying, "La guerre! La guerre! La guerre!" and chanting to the enraptured soldiery a "Marseillaise" of her own improvisation, all slang, and doggerel, and barrack grammar; but fire-giving as a torch, and rousing as a bugle in the way she sang it, waving the tricolor high ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... cosmic rays, trying to keep making some sort of intelligent sounds while they clung together and waited, and, with the other half of his mind, trying not to think of everything that could go wrong with that jerry-built improvisation they had just dumped onto Keegark. If it didn't blow, and the geeks found it, they'd know that another one would ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... short life, when, as he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous "Farewell to Life." Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an ode,—and such papers were ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... season and place to place, but constant in its continuity and in its absorption of the principal forces of the main belligerents. The unity of control culminating in unity of command which marked the closing stages of the war was therefore not so much a brilliant improvisation on the part of any general or statesman as the inevitable lesult of the history of the war; and the misfortunes of the Entente did more than its foresight to bring that consummation to pass. In the main it was due to the gradual weakening and then the collapse of Russia, which ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... palace of Art; that at the root of all ease lies slow, and, for long, profitless-seeming labor, as at the root of all grace lies strength; that ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil, sunk into the spirit, and making it strong and ready; that never worthy improvisation flowed from brain of poet or musician unused to perfect his work with honest labor; that the very disappearance of toil is by the immolating hand of toil itself. He only who bears his own burden can bear the burden of another; he only who has labored shall ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Professor Child, the greatest authority upon English and Scottish balladry, and Professors Gummere, Kittredge and W. M. Hart have emphasized the element of "communal" composition, and illustrated it by many types of song-improvisation among savage races, by sailors' "chanties," and negro "work-songs." It is easy to understand how a singing, dancing crowd carries a refrain, and improvises, through some quick-tongued individual, a new phrase, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... authorship; on the contrary, the inference of what may be called community authorship is, in many instances, irresistible. They are the product of a social condition which, so to speak, holds song of this kind in solution; of an age in which improvisation, singing, and dancing are the most natural and familiar forms of expression. They deal almost without exception with matters which belong to the community memory or imagination; they constantly reappear with variations so noticeable as to indicate free and common handling ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... ballads, which, like the Scalds of old, he composed during the act of recitation, while the others struck in with the chorus. He had no notion whatever of music, but an infallible ear for rhythm. His knack of improvisation he at all times exercised freely. The verses which he thus produced, and which he invariably attributed to an anonymous author whom he styled "the Judicious Poet," were exclusively for home consumption. Some of these effusions illustrate a sentiment in his disposition ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... The improvisation went wildly and adventurously on, and the curtains dropped together amidst the facile acclaim ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and humoured, and indulging his deep and true family affection. But he was a solitary man for the most part, and mixed with men, involved in a cloud of his own irresistibly fantastic and whimsical talk; for his real gift was half-humorous, half-melancholy improvisation ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... well known that, on certain stages, the Italian theatre has returned to improvisation and thereby produced creative actors— who, however, must follow the author's suggestions—and this may be counted a step forward, or even the beginning of a new art form that might ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... feeling which pervades many of Emerson's earlier Essays and much of his verse, in these long-treasured reminiscences of the poetical improvisation with which the two boys were thus unexpectedly favored. Governor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... specimens will suffice to suggest phrases for every other card. Such phrases may be written out and got by heart—only twenty-three being required; but this seems useless, for it does not require much tact at improvisation to hit upon a phrase commencing with any letter. However, it will be better to take every precaution rather than run the risk of stopping in the performance, whose success mainly depends upon the apparently inspired rapidity of the answers. The performer ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... did, and the effect was superb, and no doubt the deceased did turn over in his grave, for the improvisation called into play every pipe on the whole instrument. However, I could see that this constant pelting at the hands of an unkind fate through the medium of his most cherished possession was having its effect upon Carson's hitherto impregnable philosophy. ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... tore off his bib and his neck-tie, and for three minutes without cessation he shrieked wildly and unintelligibly. It was possible to make out, however, that "arteest" and "ten dollair" were the themes of the improvisation. Finally he sank exhausted into the chair, and his white-faced wife rushed ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Bonneville's Peak came into view a low humming sound startled the hunters. It came from Pogosa. With eyes lit by the reviving fires of memory, she was chanting a hoarse song. She seemed to have thrown off half the burden of her years. Her voice gradually rose till her weird improvisation put a shiver into Wetherell's heart. She had forgotten the present; and with hands resting on the pommel of her saddle, with dim eyes fixed upon the valley, was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... We know Richard Strauss' big tone poems, the biggest things in music since Wagner. But did you know that he's written some charming little pieces for pianoforte? Just listen to this. It's a 'Traeumerei' or 'Revery,' a delicious little dreamy improvisation. He 'metrostyled' it himself and, as I've never heard anyone play it, I'm only too glad to have his directions. They give you the general hang of the thing 'right off the reel,' so to speak. But later on, when I become more familiar with it, if I want to vary the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... familiar with comic paper mosquito stories, and some of them are very good. But until actual experience takes you by the hand and leads you into the realm of pure fancy, you will never know of what improvisation the human mind ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... words and the simple melody which carried them were evidently an improvisation. But the voice—did that issue from a human throat? Yes, for in distant Spain and far-off Rome, in great cathedrals and concert halls, he had sometimes listened entranced to voices like this—stronger, and delicately trained, but reared upon even ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... stood behind the musician's chair muttering in an undertone: "Only one Bach, only one Bach." The King requested the improvisation of a fugue in six parts, which the master did to the astonishment of all present. But for the new instrument Bach had little use. He complimented Silberman on his production, but he found fault with ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... the second part of the development the performer, exalted, even a little intoxicated with his sense of success, essayed a bit of improvisation considerably more important than the first. This time he ceased absolutely to follow Rubinstein's harmony, and, retaining simply the melody, changed, however, to a minor key, he produced an odd, rhythmical little series of syncopations so rich, so strange, and withal so unlawful ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... himself or his guests, not even of Barbara. As for Rose, she was merely a set of pedals in perfect mechanical adjustment. He was not even conscious of his thoughts. They came and went without deliberation, and were expressed as they came and dismissed as they went in the terms of his extraordinary improvisation. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the still greater terror of the microscopic courtiers, began that "genial" and wild life which he and his august companion led during several years. Hunting, riding on horseback, masquerades, private theatricals, satirical verse, improvisation of all sorts, flirtation particularly, filled up day and night, to the scandal of all worthy folk, who were utterly at a loss to account for his serene highness saying "Du" to this Frankfort roturier. The gay Dowager Duchess, Wieland's firm friend, looked upon these juvenile freaks ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... numberless permutations and combinations, each of which alters the tone and pitch of the units that compose it, with fluid ideas that never have an outlined existence until they have found their phrases and the improvisation is complete, is it to be wondered at that the art of style is eternally elusive, and that the attempt to reduce it to rule is the forlorn ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... wishes to "carry away" his body of players as well as his audience, the former to a unanimously acted improvisation, the latter to a unanimously felt emotion, needs above all "commanding personal magnetism," and everything else must be ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... auditorium, it is equal chances whether you hear a work of Beethoven, Victor Herbert, Schonberg, or Mr Hirsch. If you are 'artistic,' you may choose between a large coloured photograph of the Eiffel Tower, a carbon print of Botticelli, and a reproduction of an 'improvisation' by Herr Kandinsky. You may buy an Elizabethan dining-table, a Graeco-Roman bronze, the latest dress designed by M. Bakst, or a packet of pins. Or you may sit and muse on the life of the employee of this ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... 'The Arrow and the Song,' which came into my mind as I stood with my back to the fire, and glanced on to the paper with arrowy speed. Literally an improvisation." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... all to the Sidonian poet. Most of them are epideictic; a good many are on works of art and literature; there are some very beautiful epitaphs. There is in his work a tendency towards diffuseness which goes with his talent in improvisation mentioned by Cicero. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... is the Spanish love for the improvisation of well-turned couplets; in olden days a skilful verse might procure the poet a dress of cloth-of-gold, and it did on one occasion actually raise a beggar-maid to a royal throne: even now it has power to secure ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the disciple who ultimately betrayed and sold him to the Holy Office, declares in his deposition that Bruno sought to make himself the author of a new religion under the name of "Philosophy." He was not a man to conceal his ideas, and in the fervour of his improvisation he no doubt revealed what he was; some tumult resulted from this free speaking of Bruno's, and he was forced to discontinue his lectures at ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... over a soft mingling of chords she began with a little ripple of melody, MacDowell's lovely, hurrying, buoyant "Improvisation," with its aeolian vibrancies, its light, bright surges of sound, sinking at the last into cradled restfulness. Without pause or transition she passed on to Grieg; the wistful, remote appeal of the strangely misnamed "Erotique," ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... raid upon this house. But we had no choice; in time of Revolution prudence is impossible, and it is speedily seen that it is useless. Confidence, always confidence; such is the law of those grand actions which at times determine great events. The perpetual improvisation of means, of policy, of expedients, of resources, nothing step by step, everything on the impulse of the moment, the ground never sounded, all risks taken as a whole, the good with the bad, everything chanced on all sides at the same time, the hour, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... opportunity. And often he succeeds. The old Dutch painter cherished with a kind of piety his colours and pencils. Antony Watteau, on the contrary, will hardly make any preparations for his work at all, or even clean his palette, in the dead-set he makes at improvisation. 'Tis the contrast perhaps between the staid Dutch genius and the petulant, sparkling French temper of this new era, into which he has thrown himself. Alas! it is already apparent that the result also loses something of longevity, of durability—the colours fading or changing, from ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... a smile to those majestic Lombard buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life and movement. The thought of the artist in its first freshness and vivacity is felt in them. They have all the spontaneity of improvisation, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music. Moulding the supple earth with 'hand obedient to the brain,' the plasticatore has impressed his most fugitive dreams of beauty on it without effort; and what it cost him but a few fatigueless hours to fashion, the steady heat of the furnace has gifted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... danced to the beat of the heat of the music's heart; and with heel and toe he danced. And as he danced, he sang, all apant, filling up with nonsense-sounds when the rhythm's imperative tramp outran his improvisation; and singing he danced, and dancing sang: with abdomen and arms he danced, and with toe and ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Christian God, and as much woman as man, because she could best understand this sex from her love for her mother. He appeared in many aspects of physical and moral beauty; was eloquent, master of all arts, and above all of the magic of musical improvisation; loved as a friend and sister, and at the same time revered as a god; not awful and remote from impeccability, but with the fault of excess of indulgence. She estimated that she composed about ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... husband that heaven has ever kneaded. I will give you five per cent. on the dowry." "Since yesterday," he writes in another letter, "I have given up dowagers and have come down to widows of thirty. Send all you find to Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisation was one of his early noms de plume]; that's enough—he is known at the city limits. Take notice. They are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and they are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't required. The varnish goes, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... a sonata or concerto should entirely absorb the attention of the student to such a degree that, as he is able to play it, it has become a part of him. He should be able to play it as though it were an improvisation—of course without doing violence to the composer's idea. If he masters the composition in the way it should be mastered it becomes a portion of himself. Before I even take up my violin I study a piece thoroughly in score. I read and reread it until I am at home with ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... first division; knowledge of the seven kinds of verse, and how to measure them by letters and syllables, form another of them; judgment of the seven kinds of poetry, another of them; lastly, Dichedal [or improvisation], that is, to contemplate and recite the verses without ever thinking of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... a post farther south along the pike, and Drew settled himself in his own patch of cover, with Hannibal close at hand. The passing of time was a fret, but one they were used to. Drew thought over the plan. Improvisation always had to play a large part in such a project, but he believed they had a chance ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... assemble all the resources of the country, all the intelligence of her children, all their moral energy and direct them toward a single aim—victory. We must have organized everything, foreseen everything. Once hostilities have begun no improvisation will be worth while. Whatever lacks then will be lacking for good and all. And the slightest lack ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... could be remembered while narrowly watching the clock. I was astride the bulwarks again when the Windhover was free of her moorings. There was a lack of deliberation and dignity in this departure which gave it the appearance of improvisation, of not being the real thing. I could not believe it mattered whether I went or not. My first voyage had, that is, those common circumstances which always make our crises incredible when they face us, as if they had met us by accident, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... no direct evidence that he then fixed his vague, tumultuous, youthful impressions in verse. Indeed, the texture and style of the "Pleasures" forbid the thought that it was a hasty improvisation. When nearly eighteen years old, Akenside was sent to Edinburgh, to commence his studies for the pulpit, and received some pecuniary assistance from the Dissenters' Society. One winter, however, served to disgust him with the prospects of ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... before he moved a muscle, but then he heard, far away, thin, and clear, whistling from behind the hotel. It was no recognisable tune. It was rather a strange improvisation, with singable fragments here and there, and then wild, free runs and trills. It was as if some bird of exquisite singing powers should be taken in a rapture of song, so that it whistled snatches here and there of its usual melody, but all between were great, whole-throated rhapsodies. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... blouse. She was balancing lightly as she walked, keeping time to the rhythm, and followed by a procession of children in single file. (A belief in the efficacy of motion to stimulate one's power of improvisation made Old Mother Gibson the liveliest of games.) And arriving at the center of the stage, she delivered herself in a singsong ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Nadab, having been cautioned, commenced one of those surprising feats of improvisation with which he used to charm audiences. He took us all off, and had rhymes pat about all the principal persons in the room: King's pins (which he wore very splendid), Martin's red waistcoat, etc. The Colonel was charmed with each feat, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one bit. But I am not the less of opinion that it is possible to be premature in some things; and to do this just now would be premature. I know what you would say—that you would not have asked it, but for that unfortunate improvisation of it in the play. But that I was not responsible for, and therefore owe no reparation to you ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... sang to any one who would listen to him. I say that he sang—I mean, of course, that he spoke his verses; it was a minstrel's simple improvisation. But there are people in the villages of southern France who still recall that ungainly, shambling figure. He had grown a beard; it crinkled thickly, hiding his mouth and chin. He laughed a great deal. He was not altogether clean. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Fahrenheit, 62.25 degrees. Our Jerusalem bread being now exhausted, we took to that of the desert-baking, which is very good while fresh and hot from the stones on which the improvisation of baking is performed, but not otherwise for a European digestion: and our servants, with the Bedaween, had to chase the chickens every morning. The survivors of those brought from Jerusalem being ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... military service here; if we had even, as I wanted and urged in public, kept a couple of million of rifles in store here, ready for the improvisation of great military forces, Germany, however anxious to strike her blow, would probably have held her hand. We were tempting her to war ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... we have let the gift of lyric improvisation die out. Sitting islanded on some gray peak above the encompassing wood, the soul is lifted up to sing the Iliad of the pines. They have no voice but the wind, and no sound of them rises up to the high places. But the waters, the evidences ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the "asinine" vulgar, was not fastidious. His rank, unweeded eloquence, abounding in a play of words, rabbinic allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he professed to despise, with a shameless image here or there, product not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation, was akin to [243] the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, volcanic soil, fertile in the irregularities which manifest power. Helping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense,—irresponsible babble; the tune was an improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it with scorn, Nature, everywhere singing ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... petulance and frenzy which proved that the 'furie francaise' is not the exclusive right of the stronger sex. In this jumble of grave, wild, and sad notes, Gerfaut recognized, by the clearness of touch and brilliancy of some of the passages, that this improvisation could not come from Aline's unpractised fingers. He understood that the piano must be at this moment Madame de Bergenheim's confidant, and that she was pouring out the contradictory emotions in which she had indulged for several days; ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... little cleric behind him; but it has never been settled by artistic authorities whether the cleric lost much. The pantomime was utterly chaotic, yet not contemptible; there ran through it a rage of improvisation which came chiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was inspired tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world, that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particular expression ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... all from spontaneity—it is an improvisation. Friendship, on the contrary, is, so to say, built up. It is a sentiment that progresses with circumspection. It is the egoism of the mind, whilst love is the egoism ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Baccio Ugolino possessed some skill in improvisation, and was also accomplished in the art of singing and accompanying himself upon the lute or viol. We shall in another place in this work examine the methods of the lutenists and singers of the fifteenth century in adapting polyphonic compositions ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Atellanae, so called from Atella, an Oscan town of Campania, and often mentioned as Osci Ludi. These were more honourable than the other kinds, inasmuch as they were performed by the young nobles, wearing masks, and giving the reins to their power of improvisation. Teuffel (L. L. S 9) considers the subjects to have been "comic descriptions of life in small towns, in which the chief personages gradually assumed a fixed character." In the period of which we are now treating, i.e. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... by her singular gift of speech that she cast her spells and worked her wonders in this little circle. Full of thoughts and full of words; capable of poetic improvisation, had there not been a slight overweight of a tendency to the tangible and real; capable of clear, complete, philosophic statement, but for the strong tendency to life which melted down evermore in its lava-current the solid blocks ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... measuredly, lifted and let fall throughout the length of all the curious performance. The voice was not unmusical, nor was the quaint old ballad-air adopted by the singer unlovely in the least; simply a monotony was evident that accorded with the levity and chance-finish of the improvisation—and that the song was improvised on the instant I am certain—though in no wise remarkable, for other reasons, in rhythmic worth or finish. And while his smiling auditors all drew nearer, and leant, with parted lips to ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... trees, but he could not make them sing; therefore thou art greater than Orpheus, for thou compellest my aged Muse to song." The style of both words and music suggests that the whole cantata was thrown off, as Mainwaring suggests, on the spur of the moment, and this improvisation may well have taken place at one of the Arcadians' garden parties, for there is a well-known account of a similar improvisation by the poet Zappi and the composer ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... and Clemence instantly to pace and turn, posture, bow, respond to the song, start, swing, straighten, stamp, wheel, lift her hand, stoop, twist, walk, whirl, tiptoe with crossed ankles, smite her palms, march, circle, leap,—an endless improvisation of rhythmic motion to ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... instrument thoroughly. After this he is as free as the fish in the sea, and his only preoccupation is the music. Then, to play freely with the colors on his vast palette, there is but one way—he must plunge boldly into improvisation. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... of technological improvisation," he told the bewildered Watchman. "You have installed a short-range transceiver into the machine, and this headset is a portable transceiver for Dulaq. Now he can sit in his hospital bed and still ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... annoyance—if the trivial distraction deserved so harsh an epithet—changed, giving place to a sense of refined pleasure almost as fatal to my complacency, for it compelled me to think apart. What was this new pleasure? Ah! I was reading to an accompaniment—a faint, far-off improvisation just on the verge of silence, too scant and elusive ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Jasmin composed The Gascons, which he improvised at a banquet given to the non-commissioned officers of the 14th Chasseurs. Of course, the improvisation was carefully prepared; and it was composed in French, as the non-commissioned officers did not understand the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... appointment. No personal friendship existed between them, and the Administrator dreaded the return to the feverish complications of Egyptian politics of the man who had always been identified with unrest, improvisation, and disturbance. The pressure was, however, too strong for him to withstand. Nubar Pasha, the Foreign Office, the British public, everyone clamoured for the appointment. Had Baring refused to give way, it is probable that he would have been overruled. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... harmonic minor, melodic minor-are the only ones which Occidental music employs, but Indian music outlines 72 THATAS or scales. The musician has a creative scope for endless improvisation around the fixed traditional melody or RAGA; he concentrates on the sentiment or definitive mood of the structural theme and then embroiders it to the limits of his own originality. The Hindu musician does not read set notes; he clothes anew at each playing ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... sense of melody was painfully dull, and some of his lighter effusions, as he would have called them, are almost ludicrously wanting in grace of movement. We cannot expect in a modern poet the thrush-like improvisation, the impulsively bewitching cadences, that charm us in our Elizabethan drama and whose last warble died with Herrick; but Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning have shown that the simple pathos of their ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Among all the works of Pushkin there is not one which exhibits so high a degree of artistic skill, or so vigorous and powerful a genius, as this drama, in which every word, every dialogue, seems to unite the certainty of study and meditation with the fire and naturalness of a happy improvisation, and in which there is not a character nor an allusion which destroys the truth and vigour of the composition, viewed as a faithful mirror of Russian nationality, Russian history, and Russian character. The remainder of Pushkin's short, alas! but laborious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... production. In the evening Oscar Hammerstein pitchforked the opera on to the stage of the Lenox Lyceum—an open concert room, and a poor one at that. There was a canvas proscenium, no scenery to speak of, costumes copied from no particular country and no particular period, and a general effect of improvisation. But the musical forces were superior to Mr. Aronson's, and had there been a better theater the Casino performance would have been greatly surpassed. There was a really fine orchestra under the direction of Mr. Adolph Neuendorff, but it sat out on the floor of the hall, which reverberated ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... before Mr. Britling's eyes of red flannel petticoats being torn up in a rapid improvisation of soldiers to resist a sudden invasion. Passing washerwomen suddenly requisitioned. But one must not let oneself be laughed out of good intentions because of ridiculous accessories. The idea at any rate ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... made by Mozart in reference to Beethoven in the spring of 1787. It was the only meeting between the two composers. [The prophetic observation was called out by Beethoven's improvisation on a theme from ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... point, indeed, there has been no improvisation. Nothing was trusted to chance. What is it that alone has secured us the time to make ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... door. He blushed too, and certainly looked as foolish as a young man of some wit and self-possession can be expected to look, as he walked in with a roll of music in his hand, and said, with an air of hesitating improvisation,— ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... than I, had called on Annunciata, brought me to her the next day. She was friendly, brilliant in her conversation, and appeared deeply impressed with my improvisation on "Immortality"—the immortality first of eternal Rome, and then of the fair singer's art—to which I was pressed when Bernardo let out ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... reason remains which tends to confuse the student as to what really constituted opera. This is owing to the fact that there existed the very important element of improvisation, of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... thousand-odd plays—or was it twelve thousand?—is by no means an isolated instance. Perhaps the strong sense of individual validity, which makes Spain the most democratic country in Europe, sanctions the constant improvisation, and accounts for the confident planlessness as common in Spanish architecture as in Spanish ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... improvisation the monk who played the part of prompter lost his place and skipped some paragraphs. The text returned to San Diego, and with a long series of exclamations and contrasts the father brought to a close the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... said that Chopin met Mme. Sand at a musical matinee, given by the Marquis of C, where the aristocracy of genius, wealth and beauty had assembled. Chopin had gone to the piano and was absorbed in an improvisation, when lifting his eyes from the keys he encountered the fiery glances of a lady standing near. Perhaps the truer account of their first meeting is that given by Chopin's pupil Gutman. Mme. Sand, who had the faculty of subjugating every man of genius she came in contact with, asked ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... dedicated to "Non plus Ultra." The latter was meant for Woelfl, a famous pianist and contemporary. His music is now forgotten, and his name is principally remembered in connection with Beethoven; like the latter, his talent for improvisation was great. The late J.W. Davidson, in his long and interesting preface to Brewer & Co.'s edition of Dussek's A flat sonata, leads us to believe that Dussek's publisher, and not the composer himself, was responsible for the change of title ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... view: the vivid glowing Provencal is fresher, more vehement, and mettlesome; the dreamy German more monotonous, tame, and melancholy. The one is given to proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm. The stamp of the occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provencal work; while with the German Minnesingers, everything—Nature as well as love—tends ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... worth a beam of summer sun or summer moon; but I have lingered in Provence where every man is a nightingale, and I caught there the fever of improvisation. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... susceptible, and endowed with a reckless bravery and contempt of death. The Malays have considerable originality in versification. The pantoum is particularly theirs—a form arising from their habits of improvisation and competitive versifying. They have also the epic or sjair, generally a pure romance, with much naive simplicity and natural feeling. And finally, they have the popular ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... fervour to begin observing he directed that an old telescope, which he had used in his first celestial attempts, should be tied at one end to the bed-post, and at the other fixed near his eye as he reclined. Equipped only with this rough improvisation he began to take notes. Lady Constantine was forgotten, till one day, suddenly, wondering if she knew of the important phenomenon, he revolved in his mind whether as a fellow- student and sincere friend of his she ought not to be sent for, and instructed in the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... a rich, fibrous mezzo-soprano; and the music she sang, half chant, half melody, was evidently an improvisation. The words were the exquisite song which ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Beethoven's method of composing: slow, cautious, but invincible in its final effect; an idea frequently being altered as many as twenty times. At the age of twenty-two he was chiefly known as a pianist with wonderful facility in improvisation; his compositions had been insignificant. The next eight years—up to 1800, when Beethoven was thirty—were spent in acquainting himself with the Viennese aristocracy and in building up a public clientele. Then follows the marvellous period until ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... animated but decorous, that evening a week later. He had tried to play an improvisation called "The Battle of San Juan Hill," with a knowledge of the piano limited to the fact that if you struck alternate keys at the same time, there appeared not to be ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... but by intellectual superiority as well. The poetesses of the Arabs are numerous, and some of them hold a high rank. Their poetry was impromptu, impassioned, and chiefly of the elegiac and erotic type. The faculty of improvisation was cultivated even by the most barbarous tribes, and although such of their poetry as has been preserved is mostly a kind of rhymed prose, it often contains striking and beautiful thoughts. They called improvised poetry ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... was the nature of the music. As he rode closer to the trees it grew clearer. It was unlike any song he had ever heard. It was a strange improvisation with a touch of both melancholy and savage exultation running through it. Calder found himself nodding in ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... foster and enrich the actual activity, we must understand the subtle value of initial play materials, of having at hand ready for the promptings of play impulse the necessary foundation stones on which a superstructure of improvisation can be reared. ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... whom, it was offered, that he induced friends of his to release young Donizetti from his military servitude. He now pursued musical composition with a facility and industry which astonished even the Italians, familiar with feats of improvisation. In ten years twenty-eight operas were produced. Such names as "Olivo e Pasquale," "La Convenienze Teatrali," "Il Borgomaestro di Saardam," "Gianni di Calais," "L'Esule di Roma," "Il Castello di Kenilworth," ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... To her music was the only form of prayer, and it never failed to move her to a vague aspiration, she herself knew hardly what. Her dreams of the world faded, and she was only cognisant of the dim church and the inspired improvisation of her beloved Monsieur Gabriel. This was his answer to her as yet unasked question. She had come to him for guidance, to beg his counsel concerning her brother's letter, and he had told her in his music all that he knew of the world. He had shown her the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... decorated with flowers and gilded branches. His left arm was resting on the instrument, his chin in his hand, almost concealing his face. He beat the drum slowly with a little stick held in his right hand, and he sat motionless, in a reflective attitude, with his thoughts concentrated on his improvisation, peeping between his fingers at the immense ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... beauty and poetry, and the power of expressing them. Spirit, 89:21 God, is heard when the senses are silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The influence or action of Soul confers a freedom, which explains the phe- 89:24 nomena of improvisation and the fervor ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... rhythm, delivered rapidly but distinctly in a croaking and unsteady voice; and if Babalatchi considered it a song, then it was a song with a purpose and, perhaps for that reason, artistically defective. It had all the imperfections of unskilful improvisation and its subject was gruesome. It told a tale of shipwreck and of thirst, and of one brother killing another for the sake of a gourd of water. A repulsive story which might have had a purpose but possessed no moral whatever. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... for himself a bold and original style, Demosthenes had still greater difficulties to overcome in regard to the external requisites of an orator. He was not endowed by nature, like AEschines, with a magnificent voice; nor, like Demades, with a ready flow of vehement improvisation. His thoughts required to be put together by careful preparation; his voice was bad, and even lisping; his breath short; his gesticulation ungraceful; moreover, he was overawed and embarrassed by the manifestations of the multitude.... The energy ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... awakening. Hugh's mother, who had an extraordinary gift for improvisation, began to tell the children stories in the nursery evenings; and these tales of giants and fairies grew to have an extreme fascination for the child; not that he peopled his own world with them, as some imaginative children do; the boy's perceptions were ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Yusuf had finished his improvisation and the poetry which he produced, Princess Al-Hayfa bussed him upon the brow, and he seeing this waxed dazed of his wits and right judgment fled him and he fell fainting to the floor for a while of time. And when he came to himself ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... six o'clock, and Perry had lost all resemblance to the young man in the liniment advertisement. He looked like a rough draft for a riotous cartoon. They were singing—an impromptu song of Baily's improvisation: ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that is new daily, but everything is new all day. I am not concerned with the rights and wrongs of that controversy; my point is only that William James, in this genial evolutionary view of the world, has given a rude shock to the genteel tradition. What! The world a gradual improvisation? Creation unpremeditated? God a sort of young poet or struggling artist? William James is an advocate of theism; pragmatism adds one to the evidences of religion; that is excellent. But is not the cool abstract ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... musical talents of the individual on Mars the pupil is impressed with the necessity of expressing the true self, and the original improvisation or composition is the method by which the pupil expresses his understanding of the subject. No one attempts to ape the technique or genius of another, for on Mars all are geniuses. This is true in every form of activity. All must ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... sudden thought; impromptu, improvisation; inspiration, flash, spurt. improvisatore^; creature of impulse. V. flash on the mind. say what comes uppermost; improvise, extemporize. Adj. extemporaneous, impulsive, indeliberate^; snap; improvised, improvisate^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... started an animated conversation with a lady. Exasperated at such an affront to his artistic honour, Beethoven rose up, glared at the pair, and shouted out, 'I play no more for such hogs,'—nor would he touch another note or allow Ries to do so, although earnestly entreated by the company. 'His improvisation,' Czerny tells us, 'was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... things, Corilla so made her way in the world that members of the nobility were wont to throng to her house, and many sovereigns, en passage at Florence, took pains to seek her society. Corilla's successor was the beautiful Fantastici, a young woman of pleasing personality and remarkable powers of improvisation, who soon ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... me to give you an improvisation. Listen then. You have heard me speak prepared, now hear me unprepared. I think I risk but little in making an attempt to speak without premeditation in view of the extraordinary approval which I have won by my set speeches. For ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the end, sent the heroic soldiers home, and obliged M. Arago to shut his window. A day never passes without one or more of our rulers putting his head out of some window or other, and what is called "delivering himself up to a fervid improvisation." The Ultra newspapers are never tired of abusing the priests, who are courageously and honestly performing their duty. Yesterday I read a letter from a patriot, in which he complains that this caste of crows are to decree ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... certain visible uncouthness, and at first this seems in keeping with his matter; but the uncouthness, when you look into it, turns out to be itself a refinement, and what has seemed a confused whirl, an improvisation, to be the result really of reiterated labour, whose whole aim has been to bring the spontaneity of the first impulse back into the laboriously ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... whatever. But he had a new story to tell his friends in the clubs of Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, Los Angeles. And whenever he told it, Sudden Selmer would repeat what he called The Skyrider's Dream from the first verse to Mary V's last—even unto Bud's improvisation. He would paint Johnny's bombardment of the choir practice until his audience could almost hear the thud of the rocks when they landed. He would describe the welt on Aleck's head, the exact shade of purple in Curley's face when his boss called him ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... frantic medical detachment that paced the decks of those three ships for two days and nights after the ships arrived in the harbor of Archangel while preparations were being made for the improvisation ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... his thoughts than for those thoughts themselves. He wrote little and carefully. He is remarkable for his virtuosity, his harmonious handling of the most varied meters. He never, like Zorrilla, produces the effect of careless improvisation. In the matter of poetic form Espronceda has been the chief inspiration of Spanish poets down to the advent of Rubn Daro. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, with his happy knack of hitting off an author's characteristics in a phrase, says: "He still stirs us with his elemental ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... three in the afternoon until five or six. Etiquette was banished. Diderot's simplicity and vehemence were as conspicuous and as unrestrained at Tsarskoe-selo as at Grandval or the Rue Taranne. If for a moment the torrent of his improvisation was checked by the thought that he was talking to a great lady, Catherine encouraged him to go on. "Allons," she cried, "entre hommes tout est permis." The philosopher in the heat of exposition brought ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... influence of La Farge, and of that eminently picturesque genius Stanford White, mingled with that of the younger French school in forming its decorative and almost pictorial character. It was a kind of improvisation, done at prodigious speed and without study from nature—a sketch rather than a completed work of art, but a sketch to be slowly developed into the reliefs of the Farragut pedestal, the angels of the Morgan tomb, the caryatids ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... been the "Lohengrin" march, it is thought by many to be very effective for the organist, all through the ceremony, to continue on the swell organ a dreamy sotto voce improvisation, in the course of which a varied reiteration of "Faithful and true" serves as an affecting expression of the sentiment of the hour. The most enjoyable tears are shed by the emotional under this inspiration. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... among them would mean but one thing—immediate death. Since he spoke in German, a young French lieutenant translated the warning for the benefit of the Frenchmen and the Belgians, and a British noncom. did the same for his fellow countrymen, speaking with a strong Scottish burr. He wound up with an improvisation of his own, which I thought was typically British. "Now, then, boys," he sang out, "buck up, all of you! It might be worse, you know, and some of these German chaps don't seem a ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... was no one else who wanted the post. She was rather plain except when be-rouged and be-pencilled. The company included several tailors and tailoresses of talent, and the low comedian was a Dutchman who sold herrings. They all had the gift of improvisation more developed than memory, and consequently availed themselves of the faculty that worked easier. The repertory was written by goodness knew whom, and was very extensive. It embraced all the species enumerated by Polonius, including comic opera, which was not ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... inspiration; as history, superficial and untrue; as morality, enervating and antinomian. The author is assuredly far nearer the mark in another place when he speaks of "that immense improvisation which is the French Revolution" (ii. 35)—an improvisation of which every step can ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... dances, the caleinda and the bl (which latter is accompanied by chanted improvisation) are danced on Sundays to the sound of the drum on almost every plantation in the island. The drum, indeed, is an instrument to which the country-folk are so much attached that they swear by it,— Tambou! being the oath ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... had just come in and was settling himself at the piano, in place of the musicians who had been performing. This was an especial treat not on the programme, and all that was needed in Mary's opinion to complete a heavenly evening. He played the same improvisation that had caught her up in its magic spell the day of her arrival, and she went to her room in the uplifted frame of mind which finds everything perfection. Even her strained relations with Ethelinda seemed a trifle, the tiniest thorn in ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... invention, declamation, bearing, and gesticulation, each in its proper connection. Elsewhere too we read of an oratorical training directed solely to practical application. No accomplishment was more highly esteemed than the power of elegant improvisation in Latin. The growing study of Cicero's speeches and theoretical writings, of Quintilian and of the imperial panegyrists, the appearance of new and original treatises, the general progress of antiquarian learning, and the stores of ancient matter and thought which ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... 4. Improvisation on themes given—still by the same. And that was all; neither more nor less, except lively conversation during the intervals, and enthusiasm if there was room ...
— 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
... stakes and thrust them through the wire netting to form a support to a large blanket. With this he thought that perhaps a little shelter might be obtained. We crowded beneath this precarious protection, but the first blast of the gale which swept the field after its improvisation, whisked the blanket and the stakes into the air. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... varied in character, some of them being too fiery to be attempted by mortals. It is related that Akbar, the emperor, once ordered the famous singer, Naik Gobaul, to sing the Raagni, or improvisation, of the mode of fire. The poor singer entreated for a less dangerous task, but in vain. Then he plunged up to his neck in the waters of the river Jumna, and began. Before he had finished half of the song, the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... on his frowning forehead, Patty ran to the piano, and began to play "Silver Threads Among the Gold," to a rag-time improvisation ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... nor led me to deem superfluous any of these qualifications; in fact, I should make the list a little longer were I to write it now, and should add, perhaps, the prudence of Franklin, the inventive power of Edison, and the talent for improvisation of the early Troubadours. ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... election as deputy, his friend Jose Antonio Garcia Blanco collected from local journals the series of poems, Flores do campo, which is supplemented by the Ramo de flores (1869). This is Joao de Deus's masterpiece. Pires de Marmalada (1869) is an improvisation of no great merit. The four theatrical pieces—Amemos o nosso proximo, Ser apresentado, Ensaio de Casamento, and A Viuva inconsolavel—are prose translations from Mery, cleverly done, but not worth the doing. Horacio e Lydia (1872), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... oven. They are not expensive if you can find one to buy. If you cannot find one for sale, see if you cannot improvise one in some way by getting a heavy cover for a deep frying-pan. It would be well to try such an improvisation at home before starting, and learn if it will bake or burn, before taking ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... resemblance between the different folk-songs of Europe; but enough has, perhaps, been said to support the position that some of them are popular and primitive in the same sense as Maerchen. They are composed by peoples of an early stage who find, in a natural improvisation, a natural utterance of modulated and rhythmic speech, the appropriate relief of their emotions, in moments of high-wrought feeling or on solemn occasions. "Poesie" (as Puttenham well says in his Art of English Poesie, 1589) "is more ancient ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... emotions of pain to such a degree, that we feel almost solaced when the first phrase returns; and, free from the disturbing contradiction of a naive, simple, and inglorious happiness, we may again sympathize with the noble and imposing woe of a high, yet fatal struggle. This improvisation terminates like a dream, without other conclusion than a convulsive shudder; leaving the soul under the strangest, the wildest, the most ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... eloquence, abounding in play of words, rabbinic allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he professed to despise, with here and there a shameless image,—the product not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation—was akin to the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, volcanic soil, fertile in such irregularities as manifest power. Helping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric illustration, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... recognizes the ability on his part to handle the language of the contemporary poets, and also perhaps to imbue it with his own personal feelings. His poems inserted in letters, which make a show of the elegant pretence of improvisation, but in reality already display a great dexterity in rhyming and in the use of imagery, may be compared to Hagedorn's poetry; but at the same time Goethe is trying to attain the serious tone of the "Pindarian" ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with the eternal cigarette as some long-hidden memory swept across your mind? So I believe, and so I understand the terse silence when you rise abruptly from the piano in the middle of some sad, low improvisation, and I lose you in the smoke-laden darkness of the room. Life for us moderns has its difficulties at times, life being, as it were, anything but modern. We have so many gods, not all of them false, either; but the Voice of the Dweller in the Innermost ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... from the local Polish population and partly from Poland proper. An army which the French Government held to be capable of intimidating the League of Nations garrison of ten thousand fully equipped men, was thus improvised. The supposition is that interested parties connived at its improvisation. It could not otherwise have sprung spontaneously into being. After the first week of the rising, many of the insurgents began to desert the leader Korfanty on the ground that their wages were not high enough. Much money had to be spent in the affair. It might be asked what ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... copper curls and mahogany features, is a delectable creation; says some strangely unlady-like things (as is expected of him); is still oddly preoccupied with "gear-boxes" and other anatomical detail; and generally indulges in a fine careless rapture of reminiscence and improvisation—zealously assisted by Mr. WILL EVANS' familiar tip-tilted nose and bland refusal to be perturbed by entirely unrehearsed effects and obviously irregular cues. A jovial and irreverent pair of potentates, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... guessed that I did not believe her to be the author, and proposed that we should try bouts rimes. The pretty sister gave out the rhymes, and we all set to work. The ugly sister finished first, and when the verses came to be read, hers were pronounced the best. I was amazed, and made an improvisation on her skill, which I gave her in writing. In five minutes she returned it to me; the rhymes were the same, but the turn of the thought was much more elegant. I was still more surprised, and took the liberty of asking her name, and found her to be the famous ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of the six spacemen was burned in twenty-four hour stretches of improvisation and detailed calculations. Roger and Alfie redesigned the fuse to ensure perfect co-ordination of the explosions. Astro and Shinny surpassed their previous efforts by putting enough power in the five small reaction units to more than do the job required. Tom, standing long watches on the control ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... else. We know Richard Strauss' big tone poems, the biggest things in music since Wagner. But did you know that he's written some charming little pieces for pianoforte? Just listen to this. It's a 'Traeumerei' or 'Revery,' a delicious little dreamy improvisation. He 'metrostyled' it himself and, as I've never heard anyone play it, I'm only too glad to have his directions. They give you the general hang of the thing 'right off the reel,' so to speak. But later on, when I become more familiar with it, if I want to vary ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... the inspired gaze of his blue eyes open on another world, the rosy glow that tinged his cheeks, and, above all, the heavenly serenity which ecstasy stamped on his proud and noble countenance, would have supposed that he was looking on at the improvisation of a really great artist. The illusion would have been all the more natural because the performance of this mad music required immense executive skill to achieve such fingering. Gambara must have worked at it ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... was a source of intense amusement to Harry, who insisted on the recital of detail after detail, until Desiree allowed her memory to take a vacation and substitute pure imagination. Nor was the improvisation much inferior to ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... there, I will make a better speech than I want to." He was hardly capable of the severe study and care by which great parliamentary speakers are trained; but before a popular audience, and on all occasions where brilliant and effective improvisation was called for, he was almost unequaled. His funeral oration over the dead body of Senator Broderick in California, his thrilling and inspiriting appeal in Union Square, New York, at the great meeting of April, 1861, and his reply to Breckinridge ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... tongue, dialect; patois; discourse, oration, address, plea, declamation, dissertation, epilogue, allocution, exhortation, disquisition, effusion, descant; harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, rhapsody, philippic, invective, rant; soliloquy, monologue; dialogue; colloquy; trialogue; interlocution; improvisation; toast; equivocation, prevarication, quibbling; ambages, pseudology, amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, extemporization, impromptu, improvise, improvisation, brogue, aphasia, amnesia, oratory, elocution, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... exchanging a smiling commentary with each other. She looked at them, smiled at them each, in succession. Every one had his turn, and this always helped to give Blanche an audience. Incoherent and aimless as much of her talk was, she never looked prettier than in the attitude of improvisation—or rather, I should say, than in the hundred attitudes which she assumed at such a time. Perpetually moving, she was yet constantly graceful, and while she twisted her body and turned her head, with charming hands that never ceased to gesticulate, ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... imagination. But when we reached home he sat down to the piano in the dark, and played on and on as if he were pouring out his whole soul in the flood of sweet melody; and when, after an hour of marvellous improvisation, he stopped and said to us, "I couldn't help it: I had to reel off all that I have been seeing and hearing this afternoon," then I was content, for I knew nothing had been thrown away on our friend, and that if he could not talk about it all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Before they had fairly mastered one argument, the jury were hurried on to another. Mr. Ramsey is by no means incapable of making a forcible speech, and I think he should have trusted to his power of improvisation. There was no need for a long effort. He might have concentrated himself on a few salient points of our defence, and pressed them on the jury with all his might. His own sentiments, naturally expressed, in homely language, would have had ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote |
