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Octave   Listen
noun
Octave  n.  
1.
The eighth day after a church festival, the festival day being included; also, the week following a church festival. "The octaves of Easter."
2.
(Mus.)
(a)
The eighth tone in the scale; the interval between one and eight of the scale, or any interval of equal length; an interval of five tones and two semitones.
(b)
The whole diatonic scale itself. Note: The ratio of a musical tone to its octave above is 1:2 as regards the number of vibrations producing the tones.
3.
(Poet.) The first two stanzas of a sonnet, consisting of four verses each; a stanza of eight lines. "With mournful melody it continued this octave."
Double octave. (Mus.) See under Double.
Octave flute (Mus.), a small flute, the tones of which range an octave higher than those of the German or ordinary flute; called also piccolo. See Piccolo.
4.
A small cask of wine, the eighth part of a pipe.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Octave" Quotes from Famous Books



... when Harriet brings important news. She has a slightly quicker step, carries her head a little more firmly, and when she speaks impresses her message upon me with a lowered voice. When Harriet looks at me severely and drops down an octave I prepare ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... not justify, disposes us to forgive much. Indeed, the Rondo may be said to overflow with joyousness; now the notes run at random hither and thither, now tumble about head over heels, now surge in bold arpeggios, now skip from octave to octave, now trip along in chromatics, now vent their gamesomeness in the most ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... Octave and Louis, two of his sons, and both now grandfathers, still live on the old place, and are highly respected. Only a few years ago the old homestead echoed to the voices of five of Roussel's sons, with their families; but death has taken two, one has removed, and two only now ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... printed text, all musical references—including single notes showing pitch—were shown on a musical staff. In this e-text, these brief passages are shown in brackets as [Music: e' e''], where c'-c'' is the octave beginning at middle C. Durations are not significant ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard

... coincidence, the flight of her boy occurred during the octave of the Epiphany, when the Church reads the history of the loss of Jesus in the temple, and it also happened that he, like the Divine Child, was twelve years of age at the time of his disappearance. These circumstances greatly consoled the poor mother in her bereavement: she united her desolation ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... have always some connection), so from Chaucer I was led to think on Boccace, who was not only his contemporary, but also pursued the same studies; wrote novels in prose, and many works in verse; particularly is said to have invented the octave rhyme, or stanza of eight lines, which ever since has been maintained by the practice of all Italian writers, who are, or at least assume the title of Heroic Poets; he and Chaucer, among other things, had this in common, that they ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... vertically, so that studs at their lower ends rattle in holes in a horizontal bamboo. This causes them to emit musical sounds of a pitch proportioned to their length, as in an organ-pipe. The respective lengths of the three tubes are as one, two and four, so that the note of two is an octave graver than one, and that of four an octave graver still. Thus, when they are shaken the sounds are in accord. Twelve similar sets of three each are suspended from a single bar, and their lengths are so proportioned that they sound the musical scale—the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... may be briefly defined as a rimed poem in iambic pentameter, containing fourteen lines, divided into the octave of eight lines and the sextet ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... Janeiro, which is in the same latitude as Cape Frio, and they entered the said river on the day of St. Lucy, which was December 13th, in which place they took in wood, and they remained there until the first octave of Christmas, which was December ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... the Anarchists, La Revolte, undertook to publish this declaration, having taken great pains to secure an absolutely correct copy of the original. The "Declaration of G. Etievant" made a sensation in the Anarchist world, and even "cultured" men like Octave Mirbeau quote it with respect along with the works of the "theorists," Bakounine, Kropotkine, the "unequalled Proudhon," and the "aristocratic Spencer!" Now this is the line ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... almost leaped an octave in a sudden shrill of apprehension. Other voices mingled with his in ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... natives of Port Jackson, having fallen to the low pitch of their voices, recommenced their song at the octave, which was accompanied by slow and not ungraceful motions of the body and limbs, their hands being held up in a supplicating posture; and the tone and manner of their song and gestures seemed to bespeak the goodwill and forbearance of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... been a triumph. Galbraith had persuaded Goldsmith and Block to buy the little Empire dress in maize and corn-flower; Rose had done her hair, and Olga had been allowed to sing, on the first encore, the refrain to All Alone, quite by herself. She'd gone up an octave on the end of it to a high A, which in its perfect clarity had sounded about a third higher and had brought down the house. Patricia had been furious, of course, but was at bottom too decent to show it much and had actually congratulated Olga when she came off. It looked as if she'd ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... activities. Two hundred and fifty-eight vibrations of air per second produce on the ear the sensation we call do, or C of the soprano scale; five hundred and sixteen give the upper C, or an octave above. So the sound runs up in air till, above, say, thirty-five thousand vibrations per second, there is plenty of sound inaudible to our ears. But not inaudible to finer ears. To them the morning stars sing together in ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... key-note—doubtless arose from their simplicity and naturalness, and was later sanctioned by acoustical law; the interval of a perfect fifth having one of the simplest ratios (2-3), and being familiar to people as the first overtone (after the octave) struck off by any sounding body—such as a bell or an organ pipe. The Venetian composers, notably Willaert, had also quite fully developed this principle of Tonic, Dominant and Subdominant harmony in order to give homogeneity to their antiphonal choruses. Even to-day these ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... whether I would rather hear "Qui sdegno," from Mozart's "Magic Flute," or "Love Me and the World is Mine." Upon the latter being chosen he asked the accompanist to transpose it, and upon this gentleman's suggesting a third lower, he said: "No, put it down an octave." And that's where he sang it, too. I gently but firmly advised the young man to seek other paths than musical ones. However, such extreme examples as ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... the spectacle was similar throughout France. "The rural nobility of former days," says the Marquis de Mirabeau, "spent too much time over their cups, slept on old chairs or pallets, mounted and started off to hunt before daybreak, met together on St. Hubert's, and did not part until after the octave of St. Martin's. . . . These nobles led a gay and hard life, voluntarily, costing the State very little, and producing more through its residence and manure than we of today with our tastes, our researches, our cholics and our vapors. . The custom, and it may be said, the obsession of making ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... beyond recalling? No one had understood her as he had done; no one in all the world. It would be a sort of melancholy pleasure to talk to him again, and what harm could it do? Why should she deny herself? That night she wrote a sonnet, all but the last two lines of the octave—which would not come, and the next day she composed a graceful little note to tell Fanny she was ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... four Ladies of the Palace at the beginning of the Empire, Madame de Lucay, Madame de Remusat, Madame de Talhouet, Madame de Lauriston, were added thirteen other ladies: Madame Duchatel, Madame de Seran, Madame de Colbert, Madame Savary, Madame Octave de Segur, Madame de Turenne, Madame de Montalivet, Madame de Bouille, Madame ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... the time to read them, Mr. Holliwell," she said, that extraordinary, over-expressive voice of hers running an octave of regret; "an' someway Pierre don't like that I should spend my evenin's on them. Seems like he thinks I was settin' myself up to be knowin' more than him." She laughed ruefully. "Me—knowin' more'n Pierre! It's laughable. But ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... delightful than to possess good aesthetic faculties—to be able to enjoy books, music, pictures, plays! This artistic sensibility is the one undoubted advantage of man over other animals, the extra octave in the gamut of life. Most enviable of mankind is the appreciative person, without a scrap of originality, who has every temptation to enjoy, and none to create. He is the idle heir to treasures greater than India's mines can yield; the bee who sucks at every flower, and is not even asked ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... much of it. But now tell me if you can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No one, at present ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... day after the octave of the Visitation, in one of the hermitages of Mount Carmel, praying to God for one of my brothers, I said to our Lord,—I do not know whether it was only in thought or not, for my brother was in a place where his ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... They are practically omnipotent, until one of them rises by still larger sacrifices to a still higher caste, and becomes sole master. If there are no more degrees to reach, the whole scale is run through again an octave higher, so to speak. The jaws of the killed pigs are hung up in the gamal in bundles or rows, as a sign of the wealth and power of the proprietor. These chiefs are in connection with the mightiest spirits, have supernatural ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... with all the depth of a woman's soul. Her French marriage never touched her very deeply, so she seems quite heart-free, ready to begin from the very first of love and sound the notes through the whole octave. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... she could no longer command a steady tone the beaux restes of her art and her authoritative style caused Pauline Viardot, who was hearing her then for the first time, to burst into tears. Ronconi's voice, according to Chorley, barely exceeded an octave; it was weak and habitually out of tune. This baritone was not gifted with vocal agility and he was monotonous in his use of ornament. Nevertheless this same Chorley admits that Ronconi afforded him more pleasure in the theatre than almost any other ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... things, or how sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. If you already know space sensibly, you can answer the former question by pointing to any interval in it, long or short; if you know the musical scale, you can answer the latter by sounding an octave; but then you must first have the sensible knowledge of these realities. Similarly Bergson answers the intellectualist conundrums by pointing back to our various finite sensational experiences and saying, 'Lo, even thus; even so are these other ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... could be done consistently, and all the notes of nature given in this way an octave or two down, it would be right and necessary so to do: but be it observed, not only does nature surpass us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses white paper, but she also infinitely ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... sense, as affording the requisite centre for a new departure of the creative Spirit, that man is said to be a "microcosm," or universe in miniature; and this is also what is meant by the esoteric doctrine of the Octave, of which I may be able to speak more fully on ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... bookseller is drowsy, and glad not to have the trouble of chaffering. The English go past, and do not tarry beside a row of dusty boxes of books. The heat threatens the amateur with sunstroke. Then, says M. Octave Uzanne, in a prose ballade of book-hunters—then, calm, glad, heroic, the bouquineurs prowl forth, refreshed with hope. The brown old calf-skin wrinkles in the sun, the leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the cover of a ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... with whom I am associated in my daily relations. I not unfrequently practise the divine art of music in company with our landlady's daughter, who, as I mentioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a well-marked barytone voice of more than half an octave in compass, I sometimes add my vocal powers to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... scuffle, and out went the light; Antonia cried out "Rape!" and Julia "Fire!" But not a servant stirred to aid the fight. Alfonso, pommelled to his heart's desire, Swore lustily he'd be revenged this night; And Juan, too, blasphemed an octave higher; His blood was up: though young, he was a Tartar, And not at all disposed to prove ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... not better suited to the lofty sound of the epic muse than to the complaining tone of the elegy."[441] Hoole chooses the couplet for his version of Ariosto, because it occupies the same place in English that the octave stanza occupies in Italian, and because it is capable of great variety. "Of all the various styles used by the best poets," he says, "none seems so well adapted to the mixed and familiar narrative as that of Dryden in his last production, known by the name of his Fables, ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... at this time, again, that English literature was enriched by translations of Ariosto and Tasso—the one from the pen of Sir John Harrington, the other from that of Fairfax. Both were produced in the metre of the original—the octave stanza, which, however, did not at that period take root in England. At the same period the works of many of the Italian novelists, especially Bandello and Cinthio and Boccaccio, were translated into English; Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' being a treasure-house of Italian works ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... that M. Octave Duplessis in the "Figaro" should find that characteristic work of H. G. Wells, the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... camp at Drepanum, in the realm of Sicilia, on the octave of the Epiphany, in the year of grace MCCLXX.; and so our Lord have you heartily in ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... On the octave of Easter, at the celebration of mass, in the Secret, the intercession of the Virgin is made to appear as essential a cause of our peace and blessedness as the propitiation of Christ; or rather, the two are represented as joint concurrent causes; as though the office of the Saviour was confined ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... irreverent and contemptuous rage, joyless as the rabidness of a dog, and the sympathy of audience given in an almost appalled humility of intense, rapturous, and yet entirely reasoning and reasonable pleasure; between these two limits of octave, the reader will find he can class, according to its modesty, usefulness and grace, or becomingness, all other musical art. For although purity of purpose and fineness of execution by no means go together, degree to degree (since fine, and indeed all but the finest, work is often spent in the most ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... they were thinking of one woman. For at parting Tara had said again, "It's all been her doing—first and last." And Roy—with every faculty sensitised to catch ethereal vibrations above and below the human octave—divined that identical thought in his father's silence. Her doing indeed! None of them—not even his father—knew it better ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... listened with ever-increasing rapture to this wondrous exercise; these trills, springing from octave to octave, drew forth her loudest applause; she trembled with ecstasy, and as the king closed with a brilliant cadence, she clapped her hands and shouted enthusiastically. She stood up respectfully before the artiste ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... among the many writers who were very kind in reviews, Mr. GEORGE A. SALA, who was chiefly influential in introducing Hans Breitmann to the English public, and who has ever been his warmest friend. Another friend who encouraged and aided me by criticism was the late OCTAVE DELEPIERRE, a man of immense erudition, especially in archæology, curiosa and facetiæ. I trust that I may be pardoned for here mentioning that he often spoke of Breitmann's "Interview ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... only criticises, but attempts also to correct. In either case, it aims to reform by education; it deals with actual problems of humanity rather than with abstract moral truths; and it seeks to amuse always, and to reform if possible. It must not be confused with the Moral Story of Class II. Octave Thanet writes this style of story almost exclusively, and any of her work selected at random would be a good illustration; her "Sketches of American Types" would be listed under (1), and such stories as "The Scab" ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... impressive stories of mountaineer life by Mary Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock); the humorous, Alice-in-Wonderland kind of stories told by Frank Stockton; and a bewildering miscellany of other works, of which the names Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Hamlin Garland, Alice French (Octave Thanet), Rowland Robinson, Frank Norris and Henry C. Bunner are as ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking, it occupies the ninth place. It proceeds from the sixth volume of the series, 'The Conquest of Plassans;' which is followed by the two works that deal with the career of Octave Mouret, Abbe Serge Mouret's elder brother. In 'The Conquest of Plassans,' Serge and his half-witted sister, Desiree, are seen in childhood at their home in Plassans, which is wrecked by the doings of a certain Abbe Faujas and his relatives. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... Mr. Octave Delepierre, who since 1830 has published some ten or twelve monographs relating to the antiquities and history of Flanders, has presented the English public during the course of the present year with a history ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... together, with the Reverend Doctor Gaster for whipper-in: now, I think you cannot do better than make the fourth with Miss Cephalis; and then, as my father-in-law that is to be would say, we shall compose a very harmonious octave." ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... simple abstract of the whole story is, that Satan, being ejected, and sternly charged under Almighty menaces not to intrude upon the young Paradise of God, 'rides with darkness' for exactly one week, and, having digested his wrath rather than his fears on the octave of his solemn banishment, without demur, or doubt, or tremor, back he plunges into the very centre of Eden. On a Friday, suppose, he is expelled through the main entrance: on the Friday following he re-enters upon the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... pipes. In the "solo organ" the principal stops are the harmonica, krum, horn, and flageolet, but many of the stops in the swell and choir organs work in connection with the solo. In the "pedal organ" are 12 stops, viz.: Open diapason 16ft. (bottom octave) wood, ditto, 16ft., metal, ditto, 16ft. (bottom octave) metal, bourdon principal, twelfth, fifteenth, sesquialtra, mixture, posanne, 8ft. trumpet, and 4ft. trumpet. There are besides, three 32ft. stops, one wood, one metal, and one trombone. There are four bellows attached to ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... hearsay; and thus the singular good fortune was reserved for me, on my visit to Count Waldstein in September 1899, to be the first to discover the most interesting things contained in these manuscripts. M. Octave Uzanne, though he had not himself visited Dux, had indeed procured copies of some of the manuscripts, a few of which were published by him in Le Livre, in 1887 and 1889. But with the death of Le Livre in 1889 the Casanova inedit came to an end, and has never, so far as I know, been continued ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Philadelphia. He was still a young man, and one of the most remarkable whom I have ever known. He was a great scholar. He was more familiar with all the rariora, curiosa, and singular marvels of literature than any body I ever knew except Octave Delepierre, with whose works he first made me acquainted. He had translated Ik Marvel's "Reveries of a Bachelor" into French, and had been accepted by a Paris publisher. He had been a lawyer, an agent for ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... feast were defrayed by the Almoner out of the revenues of the chapter. An account of Nicholas of Newark, Boy-Bishop of York in 1396, shows that, besides gifts in the church, donations were received from the Canons, the monasteries, noblemen, and other benefactors. On the Octave he repaired, accompanied by his train, to the house of Sir Thomas Utrecht, from whom he obtained "iijs. iiijd."; on the second Sunday he went still farther afield, including in his perambulation the Priories ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... been here a week," said the young man. "I am here with my patron, for I have one now. I am now with the Viscount de Mussidan, as his private secretary. M. Octave is not the most agreeable man in the world to get on with, as he gets into the most violent passions on very trivial occasions; but he has a good heart, after all, and I am very pleased with the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... with their elbows resting on the marble tables, were talking in low tones about their love affairs, the quarrels of Lucie and Hortense, and the scoundrelism of Octave. They were no longer young, were too fat or too thin, tired out, used up. You could see that they were almost bald; and they drank beer ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... and interpreted by the sense of gender and the next stage by the sense of touch. Above that we have the senses of taste, hearing, sight, smell and clairvoyance. So that the human body is in reality a magnetic musical instrument of seven octaves, each octave constituting a separate sense and each sense subdivided into seven degrees. The radiation of magnetism from exterior objects strikes the human body in these different degrees of vibration and it is the ability of the body to receive these vibrations and of the brain to analyze them, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... her voice almost an octave in the intense excitement she was evidently trying to combat. The sound penetrated to Aileen, shut in the back hall, and again she thrust her fingers into her ears. At that moment Octavius entered from the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... must possess his soul in patience for an indeterminable wait, he was casting about for a place to secrete himself, when a change in the tenor of the talk between mistress and maid was conveyed by a sudden lift of half an octave in the latter's voice, sounding a sharp note of protest, to be answered by Liane ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... head of the table at luncheon, Mrs. Galland, with her round cheeks, her rather becoming double chin, and her nicely dressed hair, almost snow-white now, suggested a girlhood in the Bulwer Lytton and Octave Feuillet age, when darkened rooms were favored for the complexion and it was the fashion for gentlewomen to faint on occasion. She lived in the past; the present interested her only when it aroused some memory. To-day all her memories were of the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... arouse a mental breeze, which cools one's thoughts, and, although there may be no water for miles, yet we can fairly hear the drip of cool drops falling from thick moss to pools below. First an octave of two notes of purest silver, then a varying strain of eight or ten notes, so sweet and powerful, so individual and meaningful that it might stand for some wonderful motif in a great opera. I shut my eyes, and I was deaf to all other sounds while the wren sang. And as it dwelt on the last note of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... decline to see Franz Lachner, who had been specially engaged for the festival, and did not return his call. Tausig certainly delighted us by carolling Lachner's 'Old German Battle Song' in the upper octave, which, thanks to his boyish falsetto, was within his reach; however, even his pranks were no longer able to cheer us. Everything, which under other circumstances would have made this summer month one of the most stimulating in my life, now contributed ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... our introductory sentences to seven deprecatory texts? . . . Why can we not introduce the anthem used on Easter-day, instead of the Venite, throughout the Octave; or at least on Easter Monday and Tuesday? Would not spiritual life be deepened and intensified, and, best of all, be strengthened, by the use in the same manner of a suitable anthem instead of the Venite on Advent Sundays, on Christmas-day, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, holds at present the first place in France. Its chief exponents have been Victor Hugo, the two Dumases, Sardou and Octave Feuillet. Between them and the followers of the Classic School there was for some time a lively war. The latter wanted to exclude the Romanticists from the Theatre Francais, but without success. In spite of the beauty of its French, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... deafening shake, which was not unmusical. She made a chirping cry in the morning, supposed to be the call for her companions, beginning slowly, and ending by two barks, which sounded like the tenor E and its octave, at which time the poor thing became evidently agitated. She was, generally speaking, very gentle, and much preferred ladies to gentlemen; but if her confidence had been once acquired, she seemed to place as much ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... with high voices, teachers usually "place"[5] the medium notes first, roughly speaking, from G to d (for male voices one octave lower). Then the lower notes are developed, mostly by descending scale passages, the lowest note practised being usually C. The high notes are sometimes "placed" by ascending scale passages and arpeggios, but more often ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... range of tones does not properly distinguish it from ordinary speech. In speech we have likewise a variation of tones, and even in ordinary conversation there is a difference of from three to six semi-tones, as I have found in my investigations, and in some persons the range is as high as one octave. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... the percipient sees, or whether what is seen is like a sort of photograph impressed upon the atmosphere of a particular locality, and visible only to certain persons, who are able to sense etheric wave-lengths which are outside the range of the single octave forming the solar spectrum. It throws no light on this question, because, in the case of my being seen by Mr. S. in Edinburgh and that of Miss B. and her mother being seen by me at Norwood, none of us ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... time, and a major third below them as regarded pitch. The housekeeper, a large, dark person with a fringe on her upper lip, unshaven and unashamed, produced a really remarkable effect by singing the air an octave below the trebles. Unfortunately Lady Ingleby was apt to confuse her with the butler. Myra herself was the first to admit that she had not "much ear"; but it was decidedly trying, at a moment when she dared not remove her ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... said he, "is everything. According to the researches of the Ecole Polytechnique, in Paris—no doubt you, yourself, have studied there, n'est-ce pas?—vibration of the first octave from 2 to 8 per second, give us no sense-impression. From the fourth to the fifteenth octave, 16 to 32,768 per second, we get sound. The qualities of the 16th to the 24th are—or have been, until I investigated—quite ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... incredulously, for the voice rumbled heavily an octave below his own bass. Either the look of the stocky catapult, as he launched himself on the fleeing servant, or the invidious servility of the innkeeper, sobered the landlord, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... your pardon..." she said, dropping her voice a whole octave. "I understand you... to be indebted to a person like me... a retired actress.... ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... so strange that both their voices sank into solemnity, and had an acute observer listened to them he would have noticed that these two mellow voices had similar beauties, and were pitched exactly in the same key, though there was, of course, an octave ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... violet being produced by a more rapid succession of impulses than that which produces the impression of red. The vibrations of the violet are about twice as rapid as those of the red; in other words, the range of the visible spectrum is about an octave. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... s. 59) calls the instrument barbiton or barymite (from [Greek: barus], heavy and [Greek: mitos], a string), an instrument producing deep sounds; the strings were twice as long as those of the pectis and sounded an octave lower. Pindar (in Athen. xiv. p. 635), in the same line wherein he attributes the introduction of the instrument into Greece to Terpander, tells us one could magadize, i.e. play in two parts at an interval of an octave on the two instruments. The word barbiton was frequently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... Octave Barres liked his friends to come to his studio, and a few of us who believed in his talent used to drop in during the afternoon, and little by little I got to know every picture, every sketch; but one never knows everything that ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and two semi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a long succession of Mozarts and ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... worshippers. The choir was perched high above common humanity, and praised God for the congregation in wonderful voices, four in number, the soprano of which cost more than a preacher's salary, and soared half an octave higher than any other voice in the city. To be sure she was often fatigued, for she frequently danced late of a Saturday night. And occasionally the grand tenor was disabled from appearing at all for morning service by reason of the remarkably late hour and unusual dissipation of the night before. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... North,' surely their themes, chivalry, war, and love, were as like as can be; and as to the compliment, if you knew what the Italians think of Ariosto, you would not hesitate about that. But as to their 'measures,' you forget that Ariosto's is an octave stanza, and Scott's any thing but a stanza. If you think Scott will dislike it, say so, and I will expunge. I do not call him the 'Scotch Ariosto,' which would be sad provincial eulogy, but the 'Ariosto of the North, meaning of all countries ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... winter with his elder brother Octave, he was much sought after for his rare musical talents, as well as his personal attractiveness, which charmed all with whom he came in contact. Madame la Marquise was proud of both her sons, but Rene she idolized, ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy

... their parts written in the upper octave, and not admitting that their part can be written below that of clarinets or hautboys, frequently transpose entire passages an octave higher. The conductor, if he does not carefully peruse his score, if he is not thoroughly ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, curses mix with tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own. Checkers were played in the waist at the time of Shenly's burial; and as the body plunged, a player swept the board. The bubbles had hardly burst, when all hands were ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... mysterious sounds of the trembling strings made a deep and wonderful impression upon me. Lauretta began very softly and held on, the note rising to fortissimo, and then quickly broke into a crisp complicated run through an octave and a half. I can still remember the words of the beginning, 'Sento l'amica speme.' My heart was oppressed; I had never had an idea of anything of the kind. But as Lauretta continued to soar in bolder and higher flights, and as the musical notes poured upon me like sparkling ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... and spaces of the staff; and, alas! the names of these lines and spaces change continually with the change of key or pitch. For example: if we commence a scale with C, our do will be on the first added line below the staff, and its octave, do, on the third space counting from the lowest. If we commence a scale with G, our do will be on the second line from the bottom, and the octave on the first space above the staff; and so on for all the other scales ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... had walked a few steps without noticing Phina, and unconsciously his index finger touched one of the keys of the piano. A loud C of the octave below the staff, a note dismal enough, answered ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... the head. All this is unsatisfactory. We cannot explain by such coarse analogies an impression which is very precise, and more sensible (this fact has its importance) for an interval of half a tone than for an interval of an octave. It is probable that the true explanation is to be found in the still little understood connection between the elements ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... thin cheeks, high forehead shaded by coarse dark hair which Jay Allison had slicked down now heavily rumpled. I still didn't think I looked anything like the doctor. Our voices were nothing alike either; his had been pitched rather high, falsetto. My own, as nearly as I could judge, was a full octave deeper, and more resonant. Yet they issued from the same vocal chords, unless Forth was having ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... novel M. Octave Feuillet adds two charming people to that chosen group of personages in which he loves to trace the development of the more serious elements of character amid the refinements and artifices of modern society, and which make such good company. The proper function of fictitious ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... returned the widower, trying to look sheepish, and dropping his voice an octave lower. "S'pose I hadn't oughter tell on 'em, but—er—can you ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... see such a boy!" continued the termagant, her tones a whole octave above the treble staff, as it seemed to me. "How dare you put ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... pleasures of life, merely manipulated by the imagination and the memory, have too little variety or magnitude in them without further aid. Art without the moral sense to play upon, is like a pianist whose keyboard is reduced to a single octave. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... better that you kept the secret," Bobby said thoughtfully, as he dropped into a chair by the piano. He sat silent for a moment while, bending forward, he idly picked out the first few notes of the cavatina on the lowest octave of the bass. Then he added, "I don't see how you managed it, Thayer; but it is a good deed done. Was there any ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... tones took on definite shapes in her mind. The bass B of the fourth octave appeared to her as a heavily veiled woman; the middle E resembled a young man who was stretching his arms. In chords, harmonies, and harmonic transformations these figures were set in motion, the motion depending on the character of the composition: a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... of the Biblioteca de Autores Espaoles; Part IV has been edited by Paz y Melia for the Coleccin de Escritores Castellanos, Vols. XLIV and XLIX. The passage in question may be found in Canto II, octave 8.) Churchman, "Byron and Espronceda," Revue hispanique, Vol. XX, p. 210, adds the information that Espronceda probably took the lines directly from Villalta, who had quoted them in his historical novel ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... musical. Their favourite instruments were double flutes; immensely complex pipe-organs; harps, great and small. They had another remarkable instrument made up of a double octave of small drums which gave forth percussions remarkably disturbing to the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... or five notes that were fairly true, half an octave in the middle register of the instrument, Christophe understood that it was an old friend and he said kindly,—thinking ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... notes from the lower octave for economy's sake, and many stops were habitually left destitute of their bottom octaves altogether. Frequently the less important keyboards would not descend farther ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... that time, the Prior went thither to announce their arrival and pay his respects, accomplishing the tedious journey of thirty leagues on foot, sleeping on the ground and living on bread and water. He arrived at La Vega on a Saturday, and the next day, being Sunday in the octave of All Saints, he preached a sermon on the glories of paradise prepared for the saints, of which Las Casas says, "It was a sermon so lofty and so divine that I held myself happy to hear it." In response to the Prior's invitation at the close of his ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... in length, 0.434 meter in width, and 0.217 meter in height, and would provide it with fifteen catgut strings, tuned, not like those of other instruments to the third, fourth, or fifth, but all in unison or to the octave, in order, says he, that its sound shall be very harmonious. The experiments of Kircher showed him the necessity of employing a sort of concentrator in order to increase the force of the wind, and to obtain all the advantage possible from the current of air that was directed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... experience of life, their solution is so obvious that they cease to be problems. Thus, the unaided intellect might be puzzled to say how sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. Yet a child can answer the question by sounding an octave on the piano. But this solution is reached by having sensible knowledge of the reality and not by logical argument. Bergson's view, therefore, is that the intellect has been evolved for practical purposes, to deal in a certain way with material things by cutting up ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... with a few added strokes, all pictorial, the poet works that reflection into decoration. A sonnet could not well be more summary. In fact, the poem in structure of thought very closely resembles a sonnet; its first two stanzas corresponding to the octave, and its last stanza to ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... hazing into man's estate Edwin Ross, whose voice, all in a breath, could slip up from the quality of rock in the drilling to the more brittle octave of early-morning milk-bottles, wore a nine shoe and a thirteen collar. His first long trousers were let down and taken in. His second taken up and let out. When shaving promised to become a manly accomplishment, his complexion suddenly clouded, postponing that ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... from mother to daughter. And we may doubt whether the important class of men and women who write and read the novels of illicit love, could ever have existed, had not the psychological artists of modern times, from Rousseau to George Sand, and from Stendhal to Octave Feuillet, found ready prepared for them in the countries not re-tempered by Protestantism, an assoiation of romance, heroism, and ideality with mere adulterous passion, which was unknown to the corruption of Antiquity and to the lawlessness of the Dark Ages, and which remained ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... They added variety to the unity already achieved and yet did not reach liturgical perfection nor liturgical beauty. They loaded the Breviary by introducing saints' days with nine lessons, thus avoiding offices of three lessons. And by keeping octave days and days within the octave as feasts of nine lessons, they almost entirely destroyed the weekly recitation of the psalter; and a large portion of the Breviary ceased to be used at all. The Franciscan book became very popular owing to its handy form. Indeed its use was almost universal ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... me think of Cervantes. But I'd already noticed his hands, and I felt sure they weren't the hands of a laboring man. They were long and lean and finicky-fingered hands, the sort that could span an octave much better than they could hold a hayfork. And I decided to see him hoisted ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... syl.), the son of Argante (2 syl.). During the absence of his father, Octave fell in love with Hyacinthe, daughter of G['e]ronte, and married her, supposing her to be the daughter of Signor Pandolphe, of Tarentum. His father wanted him to marry the daughter of his friend G['e]ronte, but Octave would not listen to it. It turned out, however, that the daughter ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... it, doubt it. Our father director here tells us that before he went to Naples he did not believe it. That is, they have vague ideas of natural means, exaggeration, etc., not of course imputing fraud. They say conversions often take place in consequence. It is exposed for the Octave, and the miracle continues—it is not simple liquefaction, but sometimes it swells, sometimes boils, sometimes melts—no one can tell what is going to take place. They say it is quite overcoming - and people cannot help crying to see it. I ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... extreme end, the highest octave, of the series of waves. Their power of penetration implies that they are excessively minute, but even these have not held their secret from the modern physicist. From a series of beautiful experiments, in which ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... loneliness. We shall not allow a pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who says that "Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse." She was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this octave to strike a note of sincerity not usual ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... contemptuously styled the "Chipping-Sparrow,"—a name which I will never consent to apply to him,—his voice is no mean accompaniment to the general chorus which may be heard every still morning before sunrise, during May and June. His continued trilling note is to this warbling band what the octave flute is to a grand concert of artificial instruments. The voices of numbers of these birds, which are the very first to be heard and the last to become silent in the morning, serve to fill up the pauses in this sylvan anthem, like a running appoggiatural accompaniment in certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... went the performer, running up the gamut till he reached the octave and was about to run down again, but he stopped short, lowered his instrument, and turned from a warm pink to a deep purply crimson, for West suddenly burst out into a half-hysterical roar of laughter, one which he vainly ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... towns, their knights, men-at-arms, and archers-the seaports, from Whitehaven to Penzance, were obliged, by an order in council, dated February 7th, to send vessels rated at twenty-five tons and upwards to Milford, by the octave of Easter. King's letters were issued whenever the usual ordinances failed, and even the press-gang was resorted to, to raise the required number of mariners. Minstrels of all kinds crowded to the camp, enlivening it by their strains, and enriching themselves the while. The wind coming fair, the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... woman he loved, at the risk of breaking his neck, which was romantic in the extreme. It is not easy to be a romantic character in the eyes of a lady who lives on the stage, and by it, and constantly gives utterance to the most dramatic sentiments at a pitch an octave higher than any one else; but Logotheti had succeeded. There never was a woman yet to whom that sort of thing has not appealed once; for one moment she has felt everything whirling with her as if the centre of ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... M. Octave Delepiere, in his Doute Historique, denies the tradition of her having been burnt to death at Rouen; and Vignier discovered in a family muniment chest the "contract of marriage between" Robert des Armoise, knight, and Jeanne d'Arc, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... are hung in the square tower, just above the roof of the church. The bells are nine in number. The smallest weighs several hundred pounds, while the largest weighs several thousand. The musical range is an octave and a quarter, rather a limited scale, it is true, but the ringer is a thorough musician, and has managed to ring out many an air within this compass, which but for his ingenuity would have been unsuited to these bells. The largest bell, the "Big Ben," ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... man of twenty-two, whose cheeks betrayed a soft, peachy down, and whose voice had scarcely a compass of one octave. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... the bulb, the hum of the interrupter swept down an octave or two and died away. Then Thorndyke and Dr. Norbury rose from their chairs and went towards the mummy, which they lifted tenderly while Polton drew from beneath it what presently turned out to be a huge black-paper envelope. The single glow-lamp was switched off, leaving ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... distinctly, and without intensity or emotion, commencing fully and with some abruptness, and terminating gently and almost inaudibly, the result is the equable concrete. This of course may be produced with intervals, either upward or downward, of any degree—tone, semitone, third, fifth, or octave. It must be said, however, that some syllables, and even some vowels, lend themselves more easily than others to that prolonged utterance which is essential to the production of wide intervals and the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... in pursuit, shouting for assistance. But, at that early hour, there are never many people in the wide avenues of this part of the town. The man, who was making off swiftly, increased his distance, turned down the Rue Octave-Feuillet, and disappeared. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... this annual octave of festivity held more sacred than at Hurricane Hall. It was the will of Major Warfield that they should have their full satisfaction out of their seven days' carnival. He usually gave a dinner party on Christmas day, after which his people were free until ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... generals and commanders, extolling to the skies their own leaders, and degrading beyond measure those of their enemies, not knowing how much history differs from panegyric, that there is a great wall between them, or that, to use a musical phrase, they are a double octave {24a} distant from each other; the sole business of the panegyrist is, at all events and by every means, to extol and delight the object of his praise, and it little concerns him whether it be true or not. But history will not admit the least degree of falsehood any more than, as physicians ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... brought to the heading-block in the King's City. Now great indeed was the joy in Brookside, and great joy and feast they made; and the Lady of the Castle sat at the high-table, clad in golden garments, at a glorious banquet which was held every night of the octave of the day when they had first heard these good tidings. But when the Carline saw the sadness of the Maiden because of it, she said to her: "Nay, nay, my child, put on a good countenance and up with thine heart. For every tale is good till the next one is told; and I must tell thee that these ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... was uttered suddenly, explosively, and an octave and more higher than the pitch of the melody. At the same moment that it was uttered, Paula's and Dick's hands were abruptly shot toward each other's, either clenched or open. The point of the game was that Paula's hands, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... was composing my mind with a segar at one of the windows of the sitting-room, and Rowley, having finished the light share of work that fell to him, sat not far off tootling with great spirit, and a marked preference for the upper octave, Ronald was suddenly shown in. I got him a segar, drew in a chair to the side of the fire, and installed him there—I was going to say, at his ease, but no expression could be farther from the truth. He was plainly on pins ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... seizes his fore-legs, and commands him to say 'William,' he treats the hearer With a gurring voluntary; and after this species of music has been protracted for a longer or a shorter period, his voice seems to fall a full octave before he comes ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... are heterogeneous: 512: 576 is a definite ratio; but the corresponding notes, C, D, in the treble clef, present only a difference. Hence (2) the correspondence of each note with each number is a distinct fact. Each octave even is a distinct fact; there is a difference between C 64 and C 128 that could never have been anticipated without the appropriate experience. There is, therefore, no such law of these parallel series as there is for temperature ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... Long prior to 1896 Octave Chanute, an engineer, gave the subject much study, and in that year made many remarkable flights, developing the double plane, ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... "Come, Octave," she said, smiling and kissing me, "do not be foolish. Come, my dear, all these horrors have unsettled your mind; you are feverish. Give me ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... hearth may brand the name of Steyn and his stout burghers with infamy; but the clean-souled people of the Motherland, the people from whose ranks our greatest fighters and thinkers spring, will not endorse that cry. No, not though every slanderous throat shall shriek until they cannot wail an octave higher. ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... for his work, declared that the latter should henceforth be his pupil. Every one was delighted, and the father felt so proud and happy that he signalised the event by presenting Franz with a five-octave piano. To be able to rank himself with Beethoven as 'scholar of Salieri' was indeed a high reward for Schubert, and the old man was as good as his word, for he gave his new pupil daily lessons ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... Marie Claire. Introduction by Octave Mirabeau. Translated from the French by J. N. Raphael. London ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... companions' hands and the man at the piano will play "Everybody wants a key to my cellar" or something equally appropriate, very soulfully and slowly, with a wistful eye on the half-smoked cigarette which he has parked on the lowest octave and intends finishing as soon as the picture is over. But I prefer the plain frank statement that it was the fourth day of the voyage. That is my story and I mean to ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... metaphorically on the back, and also ventilating his own opinions on the apathy of the working man in claiming his vote. Then somebody got up and denied that ladies were by nature theological. Their virtues were superior to those of men just as their voices were an octave higher. He was for having a Moral Department of the State presided over by ladies. Only one lady spoke; a jaunty young woman in a sailor's hat, who said that in religious persecutions men, not women, had been ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... characteristically abstract and arid. He borrows no illustrations from external nature. The beauty of the world and all that lives in it might have been non-existent so far as he was concerned. Nor do his octave stanzas in praise of rural life form an exception to this statement; for these are imitated from Poliziano, so far as they attempt pictures of the country, and their chief poetical feature is the masque ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... fortress of Largoet is in much the same condition, nothing of the ancient structure having been conserved save the famous Tour d'Elven, considered to be the most beautiful castle keep in all Brittany, which has also a literary distinction as being the scene of some of the most touching episodes in Octave Feuillet's Roman d'un jeune ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... named Octave de Camps, was a descendant of the famous Abbe de Camps, so well known to bibliophiles and learned men,—who, by the bye, are not at all the same thing. People in the provinces have the bad habit of branding with a sort of decent reprobation any young man who sells his inherited estates. ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac

... calculated harmony that men, seeking to interpret it by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their human experience, supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals: Plato as we see (who learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, perched on the whorls of the great spindle and ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... intrusted plenipotentiary authority, was always the faction for the moment uppermost. For the mode of working the Parlamento and Balia, see Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4; Varchi, vol. ii. p. 372. Savonarola inscribed this octave stanza on the wall ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... laddie." I am decidedly of opinion that both in this and "There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame," the second or high part of the tune being a repetition of the first part an octave higher, is only for instrumental music, and would be much ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... unconcealed contempt for the desire that he had awakened in them and could no longer satisfy. He avoided them, and followed the workman into places where the latter was at home. There he sounded his jovial condescension an octave lower. The gin-shops now rang with his jokes; and they took on more and more the character ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... unity." So day and night those birds gave praise to God. St. Brendan, therefore, seeing these things, gave thanks to God for all his marvels, and the brethren were refreshed with that spiritual food till the octave of Easter. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... publishers, one's last book is always inferior to the preceding one. May I be hung if that is not true. Why does Levy admire Ponsard and Octave Feuillet more than father Dumas and you? Levy is academic. I have made more money for him than Cuvillier- Fleury has, haven't I? Well, draw a parallel between us two, and you will see how you will be received. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... entitles a book The Dangerous Age we may feel sure she does not intend to write of the dangers of early youth. The dangerous age described by Karin Michaelis is precisely that time of life which inspired Octave Feuillet to write the novel, half-dialogue, half-journal, which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1848, was adapted for the stage, played at the Gymnase in 1854, and reproduced later with some success at the Comedie-Francaise—I mean the ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... shade I stood, and seemed to regard my horse with curiosity. On my imitating their chirp one fluttered down, and attempted to alight on my horse's ears. On my whistling to them, one whistled some beautifully varied notes, as soft as those of an octave flute, although their common chirp was harsh and dissonant. The male and female seemed to have very different plumage, especially about the head; that on the one having the varying tint of the Rifle bird, the head ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... by the introduction of Individual Initiative and Selection. This is the doctrine of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm; and the transition from the generic working of the Creative Spirit in the Cosmos to its specific working in the Individual is what is meant by the doctrine of the Octave. ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... voice with different degrees of amplitude, and a sound, which is an approximation to the vowel uttered, is produced from the piano. Theory shows that, had the piano a very much larger number of strings to the octave, the vowel sounds would be perfectly reproduced. My idea of the action of the apparatus, shown in Fig. 3, was this: Utter a sound in the neighbourhood of the harp H, and certain of the rods would be thrown into vibration with different amplitudes. At the other end of the circuit the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... at every second vibration of the shorter string: this produces a compound sound, which is more agreeable to the ear than any other, except the unison; this note, when compared with the tone produced by the longer string, is called the octave to it, because the interval between the two notes is so divided by musicians that from one to the other they ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... in the high notes, as if his fingers did not touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... being the very type of the melancholy stretches of the Campagna. In the same way I have frequently thought that the Jodeln of the Swiss was an imitation of the echo of the mountains, each note repeated first in octave, or fifth, and then in its third below. The Campagna song is to be heard not only in the Campagna, but everywhere in the country,—in the vineyards, in the grain-fields, in mountain and valley, from companies working together, and from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... a day in those sunny springtimes when she still ran wild with Johanna had she held taunting parley with those two crystal love-notes, and now she straightened to her best height, pursed her lips, whistled back the brave octave, and listened again. A distant cowbell tinkled from some willows in another meadow across the river, a breeze moved audibly by, and then the answer came. "Bob—Bob White?" it inquired from the top of a pine-covered ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... should. Her hands were large but finely shaped, with long fingers somewhat turned back at the tips, and pretty pink nails—the hands were especially noticeable, because even when Eileen was not playing the pianoforte, she was prone to extend her thumb as though stretching an octave and to flick it ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... were old men of rank. One of them was very anxious that his mother should become a Christian, and on the day when our Lord accorded him this mercy he was greatly rejoiced; he made a great feast, inviting the people to eat at his house, and furnished to them a bountiful repast. We celebrated the octave of Corpus Christi with a solemn procession, in which we bore the most blessed sacrament through the streets, which were decorated and adorned for the occasion with as much splendor as was possible. They laid all their riches and gold chains on the platform; and although it was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... tones, the elements, that is, of melody and harmony, are as follows. We cannot avoid the observation that certain tones "go together," as the phrase is, while others do not. This peculiar impression of belonging together is known as consonance, or harmony. The intervals of the octave, the fifth, the third, for instance, that is, C-C', C-G, C-E, in the diatonic scale, are harmonious; while the interval of the second, C-D, is said to be dissonant. Consonance, however, is not identical with pleasingness, for different ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... G, with excellent results. There is a flute which transposes a minor third higher than the ordinary flute; but it is not much used in the orchestra, although used in the army, as is also a flute one semitone higher than the concert flute. The piccolo, or octave flute, is more employed in the orchestra, and may double the melody in the highest octave, or accentuate brilliant points of effect in the score. It is very shrill and exciting in the overblown notes, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... to signify them by notes on the gamut. But if the Robin were supposed to represent the German flute, the Blue-Bird might be considered as the flageolet, frequently, but not incessantly, interposing a few mellow strains, the Swallow and the Hair-Bird the octave flute, and the Golden Robin the bugle, sounding occasionally a low but brief strain. The analogy could not be carried farther without losing force ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... Madame Sidonie, who figures in M. Zola's novel, 'La Curee.' The male cousin, mentioned immediately afterwards, is Octave Mouret, the leading character of 'Pot-Bouille' and 'Au ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... is endowed with the most pleasing echo of all the echoes we have read of. The guide sounded two sonorous notes, about half an octave apart; the echo answered with the most enchanting, the most melodious, the richest blending of sweet sounds that one can imagine. It was like a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely softened by distance. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain



Words linked to "Octave" :   interval, religious festival, musical octave, church festival



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