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Crescendo   /krɪʃˈɛndoʊ/   Listen
Crescendo

noun
(pl. crescendi, crescendos)
1.
(music) a gradual increase in loudness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Crescendo" Quotes from Famous Books



... also, of the absence of bird voices,—so silent the fields and groves and orchards were, compared with what she had been used to at home. The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere was the shrill, brassy crescendo of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... [<] Crescendo hairpin [x] small cross [] 45 degree downstroke [/] 45 degree upstroke [/] large circumflex shape [O|] a circle bisected by a vertical line protruding both ways [Gamma] The Greek capital gamma [mid-dot] a dot at the height of a hyphen ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... Emile Augier, Halevy and Becque—with a crescendo that in the last of the four is somewhat harsh—diverged from the traditional path, and in their plays put men and women whose motives and conduct were nearer to the humanity of their audience. The departure from old lines in these dramatists is patent; and, after discounting the part that ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... closer, she saw that he walked with his chin on his breast; when he reached the gate at the end of the avenue, he did not see it and bumped into it. "Dios mio!" she heard him mutter. "Dios! Dios! Dios!" The last word ended in tragic crescendo; he leaned on the gate, and there, in the white silence, the last of the Farrels stood gazing up the avenue as ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... a bottle of coffee sitting somewhere. He'd done that once, and the stuff had boiled out all over everywhere when he pulled the air out of the little room. Nope, no coffee. No obstacles to turning on the pump. He thumbed the button, and the pumps started to whine. The whine built up to a crescendo, then began to die away until finally it could only be felt through the walls or ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett

... they met, Stepton looked at the curate casually, the second time more sharply, the third time with scrutiny. He knew how to make a crescendo. The curate noticed it, as of course the professor intended. He did not know who Stepton was, but he began to wonder about this birdlike, sharp-looking man, who evidently took an interest in him. And presently his wonder changed ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... she had supported him to a chair she could do nothing but stare at him, with her hands clasped and her eyes goggling, and cry, "Aaron, Aaron, dear!" in crescendo. His sole replies to her were hollow sounds in his throat that sounded ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... back from the street by the outriders. Before Benton's eyes the whole mass of humanity swam in a blur of confusion and vertigo. The passing files of blue and red soldiery seemed wavering figures mounted on reeling horses. The King's carriage swung into view and a crescendo of cheering ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... that you should be keeping my stenographer from working?" Zalnitch's voice rose in a shrill crescendo. "Get out of here! You have no ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... intensity. Thus the ability to augment and diminish the volume of tone was so highly esteemed—indeed, so essential—that singers spent much time in acquiring the messa di voce, that is, the steadily graduated emission of tone from the softest degree to the loudest and again to the softest: p [crescendo symbol] f [decrescendo symbol] p. This exercise invariably formed a part of each day's study, and was practised on several vowels throughout the scale, except the extreme tones, save in rare instances. It was, in fact, indispensable that the singer should be able to colour every tone ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... of lines in the same direction in a kind of crescendo or wave-like movement suggests continuous pressure of force in the same direction, as in this series of instantaneous actions of a man bowling, where the line drawn through or touching the highest points in each figure takes the line of the ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... the kind of moonlight they have in Germany," she laughed when she found it. After hammering out a few discords of her own she started recklessly into the incomprehensible "presto," thundering away at every crescendo as if to break her fingers. "Isn't it fine, Daddy?" she ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... Amsterdam was to work slowly up to a grand crescendo effect; and the crescendo was the Ryks Museum. We had two days of Amsterdam (the second was mostly spent at the diamond cutters') ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... nocturnal battle-sounds rose in a swift crescendo of bursting shells and rattling staccato of machine-gun fire, which echoed in weird music from cliff to ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... A crescendo of enjoyment secured by means of wine is apt to lack restraint and presently, as the fun grew, it began to verge on the riotous. The officers pressed about the girls until the two were separated, and Janice found herself in a corner surrounded by flushed-faced men who elbowed and almost wrestled ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... sun and its surrounding ocean of life—ah, that is beyond me! but the sun will dry up, too, and its ocean of life no doubt be drawn to other greater suns. For everything seems to go on more or less in the same way, only crescendo, everywhere ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... assured her, smoothing back her hair. But she continued to sob on in a gradual crescendo of despair, till the vehemence of her weeping began to frighten him, and he drew her to her feet and tried to persuade her to let herself be led upstairs. She yielded to his arm, sobbing in short ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... out, one by one; the sharp blast of a whistle cuts the air, the clang of a bell peals out, the rumble of a wagon is heard, and the street cars begin their clatter and clang. All this comes floating up to you on the still morning air, until an ever-increasing crescendo of sounds is borne in upon you, telling that the town has awakened from its nap, stretched itself like a drowsy giant, and is ready once more to grapple ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... and gradually ran up the scale till it reached a crescendo shout and then died out in a soft sound like a woman's wail. Heard anywhere the sound would have been alarming enough, but coming as it did in the midst of these unknown, mysterious Mountains of the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... don't git another spell o' the shallers," put in Mrs. Lem as the old man's chuckles threatened a crescendo. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... converse of the dactylic. There is presented in each case a single curve; the dactyl moves continuously away from an initial accent in an unbroken decrescendo, the anapaest moves continuously toward a final accent in an unbroken crescendo. But in the anapaestic form as well as in the dactylic there is a clear duality in the arrangement of elements within the group, since the two unaccented beats fall, as before, into one natural group, while the accented ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... faint, as though the girl's horror was somehow communicated to him. The scream reverberated through his brain, rising in an intolerable crescendo, blotting out other sensory perception. He fought to regain control of his fading senses, but the castle court blurred and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. He started sliding down an endless, dark chute, ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... each a many-wired harp to the winds that come down from the high divide. Their music is never still; now a low, ominous rush, soft but mighty, swelling as it nears, the rush of a winged host, rising swiftly to one fearsome crescendo until the listener cowers instinctively as if under the tread of many feet; then dying away to mutter threats in the distance, and to come again more fiercely; or, it may be, to come with a gentler sweep, as if pacified, even yearning, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... teachings of the Immoderate Left, whose humour is all their own, wrestled with those of Mother Earth, who has her own humours. Then Midmore laughed till he could scarcely stand. In due time Mr. Sidney laughed too—crowing and wheezing crescendo till it broke from him in roars. They shook hands, and Midmore went home grateful that he had held ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... there was always a breeze when one had passed the Giuseppone going towards Ischia, and beyond the island there was sometimes quite a lively sea. What would it be to-night? Her heart cried out for a crescendo. Within her, at that moment, was a desire like the motorist's for speed. More! more! More wind! More sea! ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... roared, Sudden and jagged the lightning played, Faster and faster the raindrops poured, Sobbing and surging the tree-crests swayed, Cracking and crashing above, below. Crescendo! ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... a field service man, and we went back to his machine and sat on it and talked music—music that seemed to be the only reality there in the midst of death, and the spirit that was moving men in the moonlight to forget death for something more real than death. And so it came about that the crescendo of our talk ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... Job's comforter—a perfect Eliphaz the Temanite! Oh, oh!" Her soft crescendo was ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... bombarded Braunau, with red-hot balls, for some days; [2d-10th December (Espagnac, i. 171).] intent to explode the Seckendorf-Broglio projects before winter quite came. Seckendorf, in a fine frenzy, calls to Broglio, "Help!" and again calls; both Kaiser and he, CRESCENDO to a high pitch, before Broglio will come. "Relieve Braunau? Well;—but no fighting farther, mark you!" answers Broglio. To the disgust of Kaiser and Seckendorf; who were eager for a combined movement, and hearty attack on Prince Karl, with perhaps capture of Passau itself. At sight of Broglio and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... huge trees swayed, bent, and came crashing earthward. Far away the noise of the felling sounded, softened by distance; snowy jets of steam puffed up above the trees, the panting of a toy locomotive came on the breeze, the mean, crescendo whine ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... communicating with one another only by such whispers as might be perpetrated in church. But this did not last very long. From the moment the first turn was given to the tap in the cider-barrel, the attentive observer might have detected a rapid crescendo of human voices, which rose into a roar long before the end of the feast. When all had eaten their fill, songs were called for, and "Master" Perryman, of course, led off with ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... never even gave her a glance as he came up; his machine flew by with a swirl, amid a crashing crescendo; then it disappeared in the dust of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... same moment the sky was lit up by all manner of S.O.S. lights and the innumerable flashes from our guns, which were now showing their maximum strength for the first time. They belched forth concentrated death, the roar reached such a deafening crescendo that conversation was entirely out of the question—indeed it was impossible to hear one's own voice. However, the scene was truly impressive, and the grandeur was ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... hair paused to pour himself out another glass of wine; and his voice, losing the dreamy note of reminiscence, sharpened to a more rapid utterance—a crescendo for ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... hearing, carrying refreshments and little charcoal stoves. The signal for the next act is a deafening clicking noise made by one of the stage hands on two sticks, which gradually rises to a shattering crescendo as the curtain is drawn aside. It must be understood that the theatre that I am describing was set apart for national drama. In others there are topical farces and laughter is continuous; but I did not visit any. On board ship, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... Splendid Heights with glances of wonder at the line of cornices that crowned the narrow canyon of Broadway, and rose up crescendo in a vista closed by the campanile of the Woolworth Building, raised like a pencil against the sky, fifty-five storeys high. On the beaches beneath these great crags, on the sidewalks, and pinned between the sturdy policemen—who do not turn backs to the crowd but face it alertly—and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... as they echoed over the waters of the bay, were never sweeter nor more inspiring. As the Philadelphia approached quarrantine, the notes of the American anthem swelled until, as she slowed down to await the coming of the physicians and customs officials, it rose to a great crescendo which fell upon the ears of all within many hundred yards and brought an answering chorus from the throngs who waited to extend their hands to ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... muffled, distant, he thought in the voice of Alden. It was stifled, cut off ere it had come to full crescendo, in a very significant manner. Silence, then, fell about him, the chill silence of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the Huguenots almost bewildered the hearers; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... ruined himself for la Vittoria; but I respect the impersonation of art," he said under his breath to the ladies as they stood at the door; "hark!" The piano was touched, and the voice of Irma di Karski broke out in a shrill crescendo. Rocco Ricci within gave tongue to the vehement damnatory dance of Pericles outside. Rocco struck his piano again encouragingly for a second attempt, but Irma was sobbing. She was heard to say: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was at such a height as to give hope that long-distance messages might be despatched. There was a certain amount of suppressed excitement on the evening of that day when the engine started and gradually got up speed in the dynamo. The sharp note of the spark rose in accompanying crescendo and, when it had reached its highest pitch, Hannam struck off a message to the world at large. No response came after several nights of signalling, and, since sledging had usurped every other interest, the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... he seemed to have left the smoke and dirt behind. The street became quieter. Boarding-houses and tailors' shops ceased. Here and there appeared a bit of lawn, shrubbery, flowers. The residences established an uptown crescendo of magnificence. Policemen seemed trimmer, better-gloved. Occasionally he might have noticed in front of one of the sandstone piles, a besilvered pair champing before a stylish vehicle. By and by he came to himself to find that he was staring at the deep-carved lettering in a stone horse-block before ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... sleep and the refusal of food. In both it is possible to detect the influence of this pronounced force of opposition. As the child lies sobbing or screaming in bed, every new approach to him, every fresh attempt at pacification, renews the force of his opposition in a crescendo of sound. But it is in his refusal of food that the child is apt to find his chief opportunity. Meal-times degenerate into a struggle. There at least he can show his complete mastery of the situation. No one can swallow his food for him, and he knows it. He can clench his teeth and shake his head ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... talking begin, first one voice, then a crescendo, as if two or three clamored together; then one voice again. (It was impossible, so far, to distinguish which ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... equal to his wishes. While the general applause was sounding, Klesmer gave a more valued testimony, audible to her only—"Good, good—the crescendo better than before." But her chief anxiety was to know that she had satisfied Mr. Deronda: any failure on her part this evening would have pained her as an especial injury to him. Of course all her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... A crescendo of snapping twigs and rustling leaves marked his going, however; and Patsy leaped the brook and settled herself, tailor fashion, in the midst of the sunshine and the lady's-slippers. She unpinned ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... his mellow tones, are the altos; the nuthatch and the tanager take up the tenor, while the red-headed woodpeckers, the crows and the cuckoos bear down heavy on the bass. Growing with the light, the fugue swells into crescendo. Lakes of sunshine and capes of shadow down the old road are more sharply defined. Bushes of tall, white melilot, clustered with myriads of tiny flowers, exhale a sweet fragrance into the morning air. The clearing around the house is flooded with sunlight. In the ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... bosom. She wondered that the victim made no attempt to escape, uttered no cry for help. Suddenly she felt something whirling and buzzing in her brain, while a wild fluttering filled both her ears; then the swirling, fluttering torment rose in a swift and awful crescendo which seemed to involve all creation in its vortex; then a pang like a lightning-thrust and a crash like the thunder that goes with it, and she saw a tall man striding rapidly from the window. She was still sure it was no personal concern of hers, yet an idle curiosity ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... push everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came into the studio with the announcement that a lady ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... is Mario. Hear that magnificent chest note from the chestnuts! then a crescendo, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... theatrical about its position and stage properties, its one high-curtained window and balcony, with a sort of pole or flag-staff; for the place is official or rather municipal. Round it swelled the crowd, with its songs and poems and passionate rhetoric in a kind of crescendo, and then suddenly the curtain of the window rose like the curtain of the theatre, and we saw on that high balcony the red fez and the tall figure of the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... suicidal gloom. Three months hence their state of mind will no doubt appear in all its absurdity, but at the moment it is too piteous for words. When you think what they were yesterday and the day before, there is no language to express the crescendo of their despair. I came upon Mr. Riley this morning, standing by the window of the mess-room, and contemplating the facade of the railway station. (It is making a pattern on our brains.) I tried to soothe him. I said it ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... "The crescendo of quarrel is most skilfully and drolly arranged;—a scene on classic lines boldly challenging and, what is more, maintaining comparison with Sheridan." Mr. ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... drove hitherward to the Honsbruck Lawsuit by way of Paris, in Autumn last, there had fallen out some dispute, about the monads, the VIS VIVA, the infinitely little, between Madame and Konig; dispute which rose CRESCENDO in disharmonious duet, and "ended," testifies M. de Voltaire, "in a scene TRESDESAGREABLE." Madame, with an effort, forgave the thoughtless fellow, who is still rather young, and is without malice. But ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... afar. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for her, there was little variety in the sequence of his ideas. She was accustomed to his beginning at the grumbling stage before dinner, and proceeding by a crescendo movement to the pitch of rage, which was rarely reached until he had finished his meal, when he generally seized his hat and dragged Gianbattista away with him, declaring loudly that women were not fit for ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... downfall of Gladstone. The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... my clothes and buckled my gold belt around my waist. The fire was humming away in a steady crescendo, punctuated by confused shouts of many men. Light flickered redly through the cracks of the loosely constructed hotel building. I found Johnny ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... the super-Simba. The dispute might in the ordinary course of events have come to shooting; but only after hours of excited wrangling, and as a climax worked up to in a crescendo of emotion. This expeditious nipping in the bud was a thoroughly ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... Victoria say it!" cried Sylvia with conviction. Father came out on the veranda, saying to Mother, "Isn't that crescendo superb?" To Sylvia he said, as though sure of her comprehension, "Didn't you like the ending, dear—where it sounded like the Argonauts all striking the oars into the water ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... night birds take their turn, making the now dense darkness more terrible with their harsh, sinister cries. Little by little as the night deepens, bellows, roars and howls resound upon every part in a slow crescendo until they are fused into a general and appalling uproar which could not be more awful if the gates of Hell were to be ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... see the King of Prussia, to be sure, and the Prince, and the people climbing up the trees like the grubs on the gooseberry bushes, and heard the feu de joie, whose crescendo and diminuendo was very fine indeed, but altogether it was not worth the trouble of being tired and ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... Only instead of its being a smash that opened a way to better things, it might have been a smash without a recovery. It is part of my business to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before Holsten was just a hundred years' crescendo of waste. Only the extreme individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up material—insanely. They had got through three-quarters of all the coal in the planet, they had used up most of the oil, they ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... style of the comic in its unadulterated state, and in both I received the same impression. The first time, the clowns came and went, collided, fell and jumped up again in a uniformly accelerated rhythm, visibly intent upon affecting a CRESCENDO. And it was more and more to the jumping up again, the REBOUND, that the attention of the public was attracted. Gradually, one lost sight of the fact that they were men of flesh and blood like ourselves; one began to think of bundles of all sorts, falling and knocking against ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... busy about the house all the morning; ate her lunch in solitude. Outside, the fierce wind, rising in a crescendo shriek, howled around the eaves. The day darkened, but no rain fell. At last Carroll resolved to take her husband's advice. She stopped for Mina Heinzman, and the two walked around to the stable, where the men harnessed ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... voiced the beautiful plea for aid in the hour of man's supreme need, which finds expression in the first two lines. Then, with his bow gripping the strings in a great sweeping crescendo, he poured forth in full strong chords the triumphant faith ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... in octaves. This is the favorite aria of all who have heard it,—of myself, as well,—and is written right into the voice of Adamberger. One can see the reeling and trembling, one can see the heaving breast which is illustrated by a crescendo; one hears the lispings and sighs expressed by the muted violins with flute in unison. The Janizary chorus is, as such, all that could be asked, short and jolly, written ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... come down from the branches of the trees, seating themselves on the dry leaves and assembling like an orchestra. After all are ready, they begin beating the leaves with their hands, at first very slowly, like the quiet prelude to a symphony, and gradually increasing in tempo until the grand crescendo is reached. Then, as if by the direction of an invisible leader, the music suddenly ceases. To deny that this is to them a real concert would lead us into extreme absurdities. In this connection it is interesting to note that when a baby is expected in the village, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... chanted Polly Adams in a vigorous crescendo, as she watched the retreating figure of her guest. Then climbing down from her perch on the front gate, she added to herself, "Mean old thing! I s'pose she thinks I care because she's gone home; but I'm glad of it, so there!" And with an emphatic shake of ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... appear. Over and over again she had lived right through the moment of opening the front door for him at a little before seven o'clock. The moments between seven o'clock and a quarter past had been a crescendo of torment, intolerable at last. His lateness was inexplicable, and he was so close to that not to look for him ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... mask emotion, they joined hands and trudged silently back up the bank with filling eyes and chins a-quiver until they gained the rear of the house. Here they sat down all forlorn, and began to weep bitterly and in an ascending crescendo. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... the pavement with his malacca. The sneaking figure of the informer was swallowed up in the fog. But not a dozen paces had the Chief Inspector gone when he was arrested by a frenzied scream, rising, hollowly, in a dreadful, muffled crescendo. Words ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... to make me uneasy—there was no place to stop. A failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had ever hoped to be, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... voice in a steady crescendo until the last cry became a hoarse, cracked yell that was as unlike his own full, rich, mellow tone as any sound could well be. Yet the dog heard it, ay, and recognised it, for he immediately replied vigorously. Leslie continued to shout, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... reason why I should work as hard as ever! Why should I go on earning money, money, money? Yes, I know! They come to hear me, they crowd the house, they pay, they clap their hands when I sing the mad scene in Lucia, or Juliet's waltz song, or the crescendo trills in the Huguenots! But I ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... those words as you should," he cried, "until you know and feel the glory of that wondrous cross. Never, never, never." His voice rose in a passionate crescendo. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... belts sagged and fell inert, the wheels whirred listlessly, clocks all over the great city began to toll for one more long day ended and gone, while the voices of the girl toilers rose superbly and filled the gathering stillness with the soft crescendo refrain: ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... side were madly plunging horses, eyes staring, mouths agape exposing long white teeth that flashed wickedly in the moonlight, manes tossing wildly, and air whistling through wide-flaring nostrils. On and on they swept down the valley. The roar of hoofs rose to a mighty crescendo of thunder, above which, now and then, the terrified girl caught fierce yells from the flank of the herd. So close were the terrorized horses running that it was impossible for the girl to see the ground before her. Sweating, plunging bodies surged against ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... in rising crescendo as their speed increased. Then, abruptly, the sound broke off into deathly silence as the limit of audibility was passed. Against the brilliant background of swift color changes and geometric light-shapes that so quickly merged into the familiar ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent

... brightness that we feel to be the dawn fulfilled. In the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as an alteration. 'Yes,' we say at the full brightness, 'this is what I just meant.' 'No,' we feel at the dawning, 'this is not yet the full meaning, there is more to come.' In every crescendo of sensation, in every effort to recall, in every progress towards the satisfaction of desire, this succession of an emptiness and fulness that have reference to each other and are one flesh is the essence of the phenomenon. In every hindrance of desire the sense of an ideal presence ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... exasperate, exacerbate; add fuel to the flame, oleum addere camino [Lat.], superadd &c (add) 37; spread &c (disperse) 73. Adj. increased &c v.; on the increase, undiminished; additional &c (added) 37. Adv. crescendo. Phr. vires ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... musical instrument, in moments of excitement, ascends to a higher pitch, increasing in intensity of tone as it sweeps upward. Consequently every progression from lower to higher tones, whether played or sung, demands a crescendo unless some plainly denoted characteristic of the music calls for different treatment. A descending passage, as a return ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and sat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... center, driving its forces in this section in a disorganized flight toward Valievo. The days that ended the first invasion were renewed. Nor was this flight a mere sudden panic; it had, in fact, risen in a crescendo, from a small beginning, until it developed into ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... her voice became more ugly, less like hers, as if the emotion that governed her just then made a crescendo, became more ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... black branches Sway slowly, Mark the beat, Then stop. The wind hums, Delicate, lacelike tops Quiver and ripple With the quick response Of the violins. With the shriek of the wind They writhe and toss, Measuring the crescendo ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder

... a voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... smiled on me when she gave Leicester conge and fiery quittance. She hath me in favour, and all shall be well with Michel and Angele. O fool, fool, fantastic and flavoured fool, sing me a song of good content, for if this business ends not with crescendo and bell-ringing, I am no butler to the Queen ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... lay awake that night hearing the gradual diminuendo of the noises of traffic outside, till, when she thought there would be a hush, the crescendo of the work of the coming day began, she felt no doubt as to what this was which absorbed her and kept sleep so far aloof from her eyelids. It had started from as small a beginning as a fire that devastates ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... purpose, this long while, in Heaven and on Earth. But it is not in the power of reward or punishment to bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your Highness? When I am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never, never,' in steadv CRESCENDO tone:—so that his Highness is glad to escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the left hand: and ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... an insistent siren blared a crescendo and diminuendo blast of sound, and two minutes remained. In every stateroom and in every lounge and ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... defeat the electric cars, gigantic insects of the dawn, began to howl and the trains on the elevated railway thundered by. The city's voice, which never ceases, but which had sunk to a sleepy murmur, suddenly awoke, and with clattering, snarling crescendo roar announced the coming of the tides of toilers. "I am facing the day," he said to himself, "and the papers containing the contemptuous judgments of my critics are being delivered in millions to my fellow-citizens. This thing I have gained—I am ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... at the end, this passion for new laws, and the interpreter, though he had too just an instinct to take so high a key, followed him with an able crescendo. Weedie thought he had his audience in hand, though it was the interpreter who really had it, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... On stopping for refreshment at a wayside tavern, Bianca was struck by the arresting looks of the ostler who was tending their steaming steeds. Beckoning to him, she asked of him his name; he turned his vacant eyes round and round wonderingly for a moment. "Crescendo," he replied. Bianca's eyes flashed fire. "Accelerato!" she cried imperiously, and, hypnotised into submission, the scared man fled upstairs, ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... interpretation is yours! The instrument provides the devices for accelerating or retarding the time and for making the tone loud or soft, but when to whip up the time or to slow down, when to use the sustaining or the soft lever or when to swell through a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo—all that is left to your own taste, judgment and discretion. There is, indeed, among the improvements introduced in the pianola a contrivance, of which more hereafter, by which complete ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... see this slender, blue-eyed woman as I write. She is walking up and down beside her spinning-wheel. I can hear the dreary buz-z-z-z of the spindle as she feeds it with the fleecy ropes. That loud crescendo echoes in the still house of memory. I can hear her singing as she steps forward and slows the wheel and swings the cradle with ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... sprang up in his seat, and, looking in the direction of certain instruments, he brought down his stick determinedly, and, having obtained the effect he desired, his beat swung leisurely for a while.... "'Cellos, crescendo," he cried. "Ah, mon Dieu! Ta-ra-la-la-la! ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... resemblance," said one writer, "to any instrument, except we could imagine the tone of musical glasses to be magnified in volume to the same gradation of power." She could ascend at will—though she was ignorant of the rules of art—from the smallest perceptible sound to the loudest and most magnificent crescendo, exactly as she pleased. One of her favorite caprices of ornament was to imitate the swell and fall of a bell, making her tones sweep through the air with the most delicious undulation, and, using her voice at pleasure, she would ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... Now are you satisfied?" The cruel desire to hurt gave this added thrust. "No? Then let me tell you that I have never loved you, never! I've always loved Philip Danvers—always—always—always!" Her voice rose in crescendo. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... against slavery, Garrison remained true to his principles of non-resistance. But his denunciations of slavery made more impression on the popular mind, and aided in stirring up much of the violent sentiment in the North which expressed itself in a crescendo of denunciation of the slave owners. In the South, where anti-slavery sentiment had been strong before, a new defensive attitude began to develop. As Calhoun said of the northern criticism ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... said, "is not for regulation by law. No one has the right," he declared, with an emphatic thump on the bar, "to dictate to the individual on the subject." He went on at high pressure in a heated crescendo for some moments, denouncing any interference by public bodies. Then of a sudden he laid a hand on Abe's shoulder and abruptly dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. His eyes were smiling and shining with the feelings which stirred him. Everything was forgotten ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... rippled softly by shadowy rock, or splashed joyous and exultant down its boulder-strewn path. It was this same brook whose music drifted into his little attic bedroom at night, stilled to a faint, far-away murmur as the wind died down, rising to a high, clear crescendo of rushing, tumbling water as the breeze stirred in the tree tops and brought to him the forest sounds. Hour after hour he lay awake listening to it, his childish imagination picturing fairies and elves holding their revels in the woods beyond. An oratorical little brook it ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... do!" and began angrily to tear up one of the music sheets, when suddenly he stopped and raised his head and listened intently. Such a lovely melody, so soft and clear, rising and falling in the sweetest cadences, now growing louder and louder in a wild, passionate crescendo, ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... and out, and one catches the voices of young ladies inviting people in the stalls to take tea or coffee or to buy chocolates, and the occupants of the pit to refresh themselves with "ginger-beer, lemonade, bottled ale or stout," a phrase to which they give a species of rhythmical crescendo. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... stillness had passed, and I could just make out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the mountains, ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! a long wailing crescendo beginning softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into indescribable ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... octaves; swell to pedal; great to pedal; choir to pedal. Mechanical accessories: swell tremulant, choir tremulant, bellows signal; wind indicator. Pedal movements: three affecting great and pedal stops, three affecting swell and pedal stops; great to pedal reversing pedal; crescendo and full organ pedal; balanced great and choir ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy

... so much money on, an' rared with me own hand, as I did her an' her mother before her, growin' old an' sour an' lonely, or bein' a slave to some worthless crawler." The old voice grew perilously soft, and saved itself from a break by a swift crescendo. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... again this evening, not for anything in particular, but unconsciously proving that men are gregarious animals. I like this neighbor. His name is Brown. I like the name Brown, too. It is easy to pronounce. By a gentle crescendo you go to the summit and then coast to the bottom. The name Brown, when pronounced, is a circumflex accent. Now, if his name had happened to be Moriarity I never could be quite sure when I came to the end in pronouncing it. I'm ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... almost entirely on each other and it is very interesting being thrown with people of so many different nationalities. I have been living so fully it seems to me for the last three or four years and still always a crescendo. I don't know why I always write so much about myself—egotistical youth—but how I realize my youth. Even while youth itself makes my head whirl, I stand back within myself and say almost sadly—it is youth. It is sad in a way because I know that ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff

... excitement began with the dismissal of school and increased therefrom in crescendo until it reached to a crash of positive ecstasy in the concert itself. They had a "perfectly elegant tea;" and then came the delicious occupation of dressing in Diana's little room upstairs. Diana did Anne's ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... approached a crescendo they danced with increasing hysteria. Some shrieked and fell to the ice groaning, their bodies twisting in convulsions. Others laughed madly—laughed at the dreadful horrors with which the dead would smite ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... love-duet with Butterfly at the close of the first act in such fashion that our hands were wrung, we were perspiring, and I at least was near to fainting. Such fury, such volume of liquid sound could not go on, we felt. But it did. He carried a terrific crescendo passage as lightly as a school-girl singing a lullaby, and ended on a tremendous note which he sustained for sixty seconds. As the curtain fell we dropped back in our seats, limp, dishevelled, and pale. It was we who were exhausted. Caruso trotted on, bright, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... who shot Mr. Fenley!" Farrow could only repeat each word in a crescendo of amazement. Being a singer, he understood the use of a crescendo, and ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... stallion. A snarl of incredible ferocity made Satan turn, but without the slightest dread, apparently. For an instant the two stood nose to nose, Black Bart a picture of snarling danger and Satan with curiously pricking ears and bright eyes. The growling rose towards a crescendo, a terrible sound; then a lean hand shot out with that speed which Joan could never comprehend—and which always made her think, rather breathlessly, of the strike of a snake. The fingers settled around the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... looking upon us, how fair to stay and sway upon the breast of eternity! But the net is inexorable, and gently, slowly pulls me down. Now we sink straight, now we whirl in slow, eddying circles, spiral-like; while at each turn those bells ring out clanging now in wild crescendo, then whispering dread secrets of the ocean's depths. Oh, ye mighty bells, tell me from your learned lore of the hopes of mankind! Tell me what fruit he beareth from his strivings and yearnings; know not ye? Why ring ye now so joyful, so hopeful; then toll ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... herself and went to the door. As she shut it behind her she could hear Mrs. Wladek's voice, rising to a crescendo of threats and abuse, and Mr. Fredericksohn's calm, scholarly attempts to stem ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)

... of shrubs in either garden afforded us additional protection. Thus entrenched, we had stood an hour, watching a pair of lighted bow-windows with vague shadows flitting continually across the blinds, and listening to the drawing of corks, the clink of glasses, and a gradual crescendo of coarse voices within. Our luck seemed to have deserted us: the owner of the purple diamonds was dining at home and dining at undue length. I thought it was a dinner-party. Raffles differed; in the end he proved right. Wheels grated in the drive, a carriage and pair stood at the steps; there ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... pale consort, in whom the passionate pleading of the Thracian bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna, Orfeo's song receives adequate expression. It is closely imitated from the corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano's own. Addressing Pluto, Orfeo discovers the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... stood out sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying foliage. The sky beyond had darkened, charged to the brim with mystery. The atmosphere became moist and cold; the valley ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... cried Galen Albret, in a crescendo outburst. "Silence! I will not be gainsaid! You have made your choice! You are no longer a daughter ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... slow bass scale on a sort of two-stringed horse-fiddle of a strange shape. Average Jones' still untouched glass, almost full of the precious port, trembled and sang a little tentative response. Up-up-up mounted the thrilling notes, in crescendo force. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... this, I say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio: Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to 'feel the truth and Stir of Day'; till Beethoven's pompous March should begin, and the Chorus, with 'Arthur is come, etc.'; the chief Voices raising the words aloft (as they do in Fidelio), ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... about, and walked briskly up and down beside the track until a speck of blinking light rose out of the white wilderness. It grew rapidly larger, until they could make out a trail of smoke behind it, and the roar of wheels rose in a long crescendo. Then a bell commenced to toll, and the blaze of a big lamp beat into their faces as the great locomotive ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow moon—then silence, where crescendo laughter fades... the car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows where the distance grew, then crushed the yellow shadows ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... once: I button my clothes tightly, so as to afford the Bees the least possible opportunity, and I enter the heart of the swarm. A few blows of the mattock, which arouse a far from reassuring crescendo in the humming of the Anthophorae, soon place me in possession of a lump of earth; and I beat a hasty retreat, greatly astonished to find myself still safe and sound and unpursued. But the lump of earth which I have ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... Wave? D'ye remember that typhoon we was in an' how, when I was that tuckered out an' so seasick I couldn't stand up, you made me pump ship an' when I protested, you stuck a horse pistol under my nose an' made me? That man, Adelbert P. Gibney was me! Me! Me!" Scraggs's voice rose in a crashing crescendo; his teeth clicked together and he shook his skinny fist under the great Gibney nose. Gibney paled and ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... noise of long drawn out howling notes, mingled with roars, the crescendo effect ending in a peal of weird yells that were like the cries of a laughing hyena, mingled with the sardonic ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... became the confidant, in turn, of Madame's sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur's impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stephanie, she kept on saying "Oui, Monsieur" and "Non, Monsieur," in a crescendo of maddening demureness. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... the most pliant touch possible—and therefore regarded the use of the thumb in the ascending scale on two white keys in succession—the semitones EF and BC—as practicable. On the grand piano of the present day we regard it as irreconcilable with conditions of crescendo legato." This Chopin fingering in reality derives directly from Hummel. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... mysteriously locked and what few guards were in the pit proved to be helpless against the outraged horde from above. The priests and the guards were being torn to pieces as though by the fangs of maddened dogs. The screams of terror and agony were a crescendo drowning the whine of ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis

... plastic expression which characterizes the lyric actors of our day is a real profanation of scenic musical art. Not only are singers allowed to walk and gesticulate on the stage without paying any attention to the time, but also no shade of expression, dynamic or motor, of the orchestra—crescendo, decrescendo, accelerando, rallentando—finds in their gestures adequate realization. By this I mean the kind of wholly instinctive transformation of sound movements into bodily movements such as my ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze



Words linked to "Crescendo" :   loudness, increasing, music, decrescendo, volume, intensity, increase, swell



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