"Symphonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who knows what symphonic scheme of things, life was a chromatic scale, yielding up to him through throbbing, living nerves of sheep-gut, the sheerest semitones ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... clear Paris sky; the pale dome of the Pantheon rising to the East; the background of the Luxembourg itself in which one was only conscious of the high lights on the long bold cornices; all set the key of the picture and gave it symphonic value. The eye rejected everything but the whites and the pearl greys, subordinating all other tones to its impression of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... has brought me still nearer to you in the crisis of the estro poetico, which the "Hungaria" [One of Liszt's symphonic poems.] brought forth in me; and, thanks to this good influence, I hope you will not be ...
— 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
... symphonic poem, "Les Djinns," the attitude more tenderly revealed in the "Variations Symphoniques," and, above all, the sonata in A Major, is dramatically represented. The solitary dreamer in his tower is surrounded and assailed by evil spirits, we hear the beating of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... theatre. Besides which, Wagner's works can now be heard in all large cities under the conditions necessary for their proper presentment, and as intended by their author-composer. Therefore, there is no longer the same reason as may have existed years ago, for the performance of extracts at purely symphonic concerts. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... reappear after it has served its purpose on the stage; it is then a reminiscence of past events. No finer example of this could be found than in the music of Isolde's swan-song, the so-called Liebestod, which is built up out of the motives of the life into a symphonic structure of ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... seized her with Tempest's first line, first elegant despairing gesture. It held her through Burlingham and Anstruther's "sketch" of a matrimonial quarrel, through Connemora and Eshwell's "delicious symphonic romanticism" of a lovers' quarrel and making up, through Tempest's recitation of "Lasca," dying to shield her cowboy lover from the hoofs of the stampeded herd. How the tears did stream from Susan's eyes, as Tempest wailed ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... watch'd their flocks by night,' - Thus swells the long familiar sound In many a quaint symphonic flight ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... Liszt, nothing daunted because he couldn't shake out an honest throw of a tune from his technical dice-box, built his music on so-called themes, claiming that in this matter he derived from Bach. Not so. Bach's themes were subjects for fugal treatment; Liszt's, for symphonic. The parallel is not fair. Besides, Daddy Liszt had no melodic invention. Bach had. Witness his chorals, his masses, his oratorios! But the Berlioz ball had to be kept a-rolling; the formula was too easy; so Liszt named his poems, named his notes, put dog-collars on his harmonies—and yet ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... which, by one voice, are ranked as the greatest ever written, reaching in the last, known as the "Choral," the full perfection of his power and experience. Other musicians have composed symphonic works remarkable for varied excellences, but in Beethoven this form of writing seems to have attained its highest possibilities, and to have been illustrated by the greatest variety of effects, from the sublime to such as are simply ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention,—that of not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and for fear lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings; so that his works are rather symphonic dramas than operas. The voice is brought down to the rank of an instrument, put on a level with the violins, the hautboys, and the drums, and treated instrumentally. Man is deposed from his superior position, and the centre of gravity of the work passes into the baton ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... symphonic sense that thrills The silent frame of mortal things; Its heart beats in the ancient hills, In every ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... songwriters, Grieg, Richard Strauss, and our American MacDowell. Schubert's best songs have never been equalled. They belong in the realm of modern music quite as much as Wagner's music-dramas and Liszt's symphonic poems. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... have national flavor they are German. Johan Selmer, while a prolific composer, will probably be best remembered as a conductor. Christian Sinding, after Grieg, is the best-known Norwegian composer. His productions range from symphonies and symphonic poems through chamber music to romances. He is credited with a wide range of musical ideas, deep artistic earnestness, and bold power of expression; but his compositions in the larger forms are ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... weird my spent ear filling. When Silence clasped thee in her dismal spell, And Earth born Music sang her sad farewell; Thy mighty Genius, as in scorn, Arose in silent majesty to dwell, Where from symphonic spheres thou heard'st to swell, As on celestial breezes borne, Sounds, scarce by angels heard, e'en in their dreams; Which, at thy bidding, wrought a thousand themes, And pouring down in rich pellucid streams, Filled organ grand and resonant horn; With rarest sweetness touched each ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... He sought to discover the symphonic note of a shell; There are bits of him broken and bloody, to show you the place where he fell; I've reason to fear on his exquisite ear the rats ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... swelled in shrillness, the electric shudders deepened. Alone in this elemental overture to tempest I took no note of time, but felt, through self-abandonment to the symphonic influence, how sea and air, and clouds akin to both, were dealing with each other complainingly, and in compliance to some maker of unrest within them. A touch upon my shoulder broke this trance; I turned and saw a boy ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to tell you about a group of my girls who recently started out on their professional work. They were in the Ned Wayburn "Symphonic Jazz Revue," which was arranged by my producing department for the Middle Western Moving Picture Theatres. These girls had all been around the Studios for about six months, practicing and working hard, and this was the first experience for most of them. They were a wonderful ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... work of music, should never be, "Do I like it or not?" but "Do I understand it?" "Is the music conveying a logical message to me, or is it merely a sea of sound?" The first and last article in the music-lover's creed, I repeat, should be familiarity. When we thoroughly know a symphony, symphonic poem or sonata so that, for example, we can sing the themes to ourselves, the music will reveal itself. The difference between the trained listener and the person of merely general musical tendencies is that the former gains a definite meaning from the music often at a first hearing; whereas, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... suggested to the later composers a way in which an endless variety of pleasing tone pictures might be created—but established, and demonstrated by the clearness with which he did it, and the ever fresh variety and charm of his works, that this was the way in which symphonic material must be put together. For further particulars relating to the sonata form, as such, the student is referred to my "Primer of Musical Forms" (Arthur P. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... His fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, B minor Sonata, Concert Etudes and many transcriptions, appear on all modern programs, and there are many pieces yet to be made known. He is the originator of the Symphonic Poem, for orchestra; while his sacred music, such as the Oratorio "Christus," and the beautiful "Saint Elizabeth," a sacred opera, are monuments ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... from les Nouvelles Mditations. This poem, addressed to Victor Hugo, consists of several divisions, in different meters, only the last of which is here given. It inspired the symphonic poem of Liszt by ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... inscribed to me. There are so many—by Chausson (his symphony), Ropartz, Dubois (his sonata—one of the best after Franck), d'Indy (the Istar variations and other works), Gabriel Faure (the Quintet), Debussy (the Quartet)! There are more than I can recall at the moment—violin sonatas, symphonic music, chamber-music, choral works, compositions ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... of Chopin the concerts of the Conservatoire are made mention of; they were founded in 1828 by Habeneck and others and intended for the cultivation of the symphonic works of the great masters, more especially of Beethoven. Berlioz tells us in his Memoires, with his usual vivacity and causticity, what impressions the works of Beethoven made upon the old gentlemen above-named. Lesueur considered ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the possibilities and limitations of the human voice that amounts to stupidity. Because a composer can write great symphonies the public is inclined to think that everything he writes is great. Let it be understood once for all that bad voice writing is bad whether it is done by a symphonic writer or a popular songwriter. In the present stage of human development there are certain things the voice can do and other things it cannot do, and these things can be known only by those who understand the voice, and are accustomed to ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... fluid and unending quality of music. Like any other new art it is not to be understood at first and I confess in the beginning it said nothing to me but eventually I began to take pleasure in watching it. Now Isadora's poetic and imaginative interpretation of the symphonic interlude from Cesar Franck's Redemption is full of beauty and meaning to me and during the whole course of its performance the interpreter scarcely rises from her knees. The neck, the throat, the shoulders, the head and ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the Czar and a friend of her childhood. She chose the Altenburg chateau for her home. A year later, Liszt, who had found a neighbouring hotel too remote, took up his home in one of the wings of the chateau. Here he spent the most profitable years of his artistic life. His twelve Symphonic Poems, his Faust and Dante Symphonies, his Hungarian Rhapsodies, and many other important works, including also literary compositions, he achieved here. The irritation he had felt at the superficial meddling, and domineering criticism of his would-be Muse, the Comtesse ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... that bankrupt establishment. The funeral expenses were unpaid, and Auguste's pupils had been frightened away by the shock of successive disasters and the general atmosphere of wretchedness that pervaded the house. Auguste himself was writing a symphonic poem, Icarus, dedicated to the memory of his son. Caroline was barely twenty when she was called upon to face this tangle of difficulties, but she reviewed the situation candidly. The house had served its time at the shrine of idealism; vague, distressing, unsatisfied yearnings had brought it low ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... with a symphonic introduction descriptive of the first morning of creation, in which the flutes and horns, combined with the strings, are used with exquisite effect. In a brief recitative ("In rosy Mantle appears") Uriel pictures the joy of Adam and Eve, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... the ear with the barrel of his rifle. It soon ceased to be an ear, and became of the size and consistency of a muffin. My second casualty was brought about by a well-known orchestral conductor, who however confidently he could pilot his players through the most complicated Symphonic Poem was invariably out of his depth whenever, the ranks being turned about, he was required to form fours. His manoeuvre that morning had been a wild and undisciplined fugue, culminating in an unconventional stretto upon an exceedingly dominant ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various |
