"Instrumental music" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of only four words, and yet those four words may contain enough suggestion for four pages of music; but to found a song on those four words would be impossible. For this reason the paramount value of the poem is that of its suggestion in the field of instrumental music, where a single line may be elaborated upon.... To me, in this respect, the poem holds its highest value of suggestion.... A short poem would take a lifetime to express; to do it in as many bars of music is impossible. The words clash with the music, they fail to carry the full suggestion ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... important instrument, resembles our guitar. They seem to recognize three grades of priests—the emam, the pandita, and the sarip, named in order of superiority. Their churches are great, circular inclosures, made of nipa and bamboo, with no attempt at decoration. Sacred instrumental music is supplied by bells and drums. The drum at Uato, where I was, being of extraordinary size, required two men to operate it. Each town contains a large percentage of ladrones, whose influence is offset by the pandita (or elders), three or five for every barrio. These are the secondary priests, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... opportunity is provided in Comus for the introduction of instrumental music? dancing? display of scenery? Describe the concluding scene (beginning with the appearance of Sabrina) as you imagine it to have been performed at ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... course arose a greater heterogeneity of melody. Simultaneously there came into use the different modes—Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian, AEolian, and Lydian—answering to our keys; and of these there were ultimately fifteen. As yet, however, there was but little heterogeneity in the time of their music. Instrumental music being at first merely the accompaniment of vocal music, and vocal music being subordinated to words,—the singer being also the poet, chanting his own compositions and making the lengths of his notes agree with the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... else shall I favor you with—instrumental music, or songs, ballads, whistling choruses, or what? I await your orders. I have an extensive repertoire from which you may select," and her fingers passed softly over the keys as she ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... I have spent more time upon vocal culture than upon instrumental music," Violet responded, and this assurance drew forth a smile of approbation ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... career. Mrs. Kellow is a resident of Cresco, Iowa, a church singer of note, and the possessor of a contralto voice of great volume. As a composer she has to her credit "marches, cakewalks, schottisches, and other styles of instrumental music." We are given a picture of Mrs. Kellow at work: "Mrs. Kellow's best efforts are made in the evening, and in darkness, save the light of the moonbeams on the keys of her piano." We are also told that "she is happy ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... of my three children, has learned dressmaking. She has unusual ability in instrumental music. Aside from her studies at Tuskegee, she has ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... the idea that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little exaggerated, they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument. The author of this book is now against instrumental music in this type of ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... musical history leads to the conclusion that while the people are fairly developed in certain aspects of the aesthetics of music, such as rhythm, they are certainly undeveloped in other directions—in melody, for example, and in harmony. Their instrumental music is primitive and meager. They have no system of musical notation. The love of music, such as it is, is well-nigh universal. Their solo-vocal music, a semi-chanting in minors, has impressive elements; but these are due to the passionate outbursts and ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... felt how much the splendour and magnificence of the Roman Catholic worship tends to exalt the spirit of devotion, and to inspire the soul with rapture and enthusiasm. Not only the impressive melody of the vocal and instrumental music, and the imposing solemnity of the ceremonies, but the pomp and brilliancy of the sacerdotal garments, and the rich and costly decorations of the altar, raise the character of religion, and give it an air of dignity and majesty unknown to any of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... purpose. They sat down at the table opposite to each other, the magician's back towards the beaufet. The princess presented him with the best at the table, and said to him, "If you please, I will entertain you with a concert of vocal and instrumental music; but as we are only two, I think conversation may be more agreeable." This the magician took as a ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... very high place in the esteem of the Greeks for its general influence on the mind. Running, wrestling, throwing the dart, etc., the games practiced at the public contests, were early taught. Boys at sixteen or eighteen came of age, and were enrolled as citizens. (7) Musical Instruments: the Dance. Instrumental music was common among the Greeks at games and meals, and in battle. They used no bows on the stringed instruments, but either the fingers or the plectrum,—a stick of wood, ivory, or metal. There were three sorts of stringed instruments, the lyre, the cithara (or zithern), ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... of another niece, and he would probably not hesitate to send Mavis to Vienna for the best masters, should she presently display any natural talent. Her cousin Ruby sang like an angel from the age of ten; but Mavis so far exhibited more inclination for instrumental music. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... I could see in such places the guitar rather than the piano, and good vocal more than instrumental music. ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... propriety and like a Christian. She was awake, but did not cry at all, and seemed to crow with immense satisfaction at the lights and brilliant uniforms, for she is very intelligent and observing. The ceremony took place at half-past six P.M. After it there was a dinner, and then we had some instrumental music. The health of the little one was drunk ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... cavalcade through the streets of London to the palace. There were sixty ladies mounted on beautiful palfreys, accoutred with the new-fashioned side-saddles. Each of these ladies conducted a knight, whom she led by a silver chain. They were preceded by minstrels and bands of instrumental music, and the streets were thronged ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... before. Thus employed, with occasional interludes of meditative gazing out upon the ceaseless whirling rush of the snow, the day passed rapidly and pleasantly away, wound up by an hour or two of vocal and instrumental music after dinner. They retired early to their warm comfortable state- rooms that night, and were lulled to sweet dreamless slumber by the howling of the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... be observed, two radically different possibilities of development. The "sacred fervor of his sensitive soul," which he had nourished with the German instrumental music, had encountered the tendency to sensualism, and, as we find so often in Wagner's works, these two elements of our nature were powerfully portrayed, with the victory ever remaining to the judicious and serious conception of life. Struggles and ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... company, and it was very seldom that he did not add something of his own invention, agreeably to surprise by some unexpected stroke of magnificence and gallantry. Sometimes he had complete concerts of vocal and instrumental music, which he privately brought from Paris, and which struck up on a sudden in the midst of these parties; sometimes he gave banquets, which likewise came from France, and which, even in the midst of London, surpassed the king's collations. These entertainments sometimes exceeded, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Tragedy and regular Comedy have been fewest, and that the melo-dramas have in number exceeded all the others put together. They do not mean by melo-drama, as we do, a drama in which the pauses are filled up by monologue with instrumental music, but where actions in any wise wonderful, adventurous, or even sensuous, are exhibited in emphatic prose with suitable decorations and dresses. Advantage might be taken of this prevailing inclination to furnish a better description of entertainment: ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Napoleon and Marie Louise passed slowly along a water-walk, where hidden music issued from a subterranean grotto, to a vine-clad arbor adorned with mirrors, monograms, flowers, and wreaths, and listened to a concert of vocal and instrumental music, French and German; then they went further into the garden, stopping before a Temple of Glory, where were four handsome women representing Victory, the muse Clio, and Renown; then trumpets sounded, triumphal songs were sung, and perfumes were burning on golden tripods. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... some unknown region, and sing hallelujahs to the LORD, forever. He rather sensibly imagines that such everlasting singing may in time produce hoarseness, so he prepares his vocal organs for the long concert by a vigorous discipline while here, and at the same time cultivates instrumental music, having a dim idea that the LORD has an ear for melody, and will let him, when he is tired of singing, vary the exercise "wid de banjo and de bones." This is all he knows; and his owner, however well-disposed he may ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... and Parrhasii? Honor nourishes art, and glory is the spur with all to studies; while those studies are always neglected in every nation which are looked upon disparagingly. The Greeks held skill in vocal and instrumental music as a very important accomplishment, and therefore it is recorded of Epaminondas, who, in my opinion, was the greatest man among the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute; and Themistocles, some years before, was deemed ignorant because at an entertainment ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... mote in Saxon times, and in quite early days horns sounded in English homes on the arrival of guests. The hunting horn was found in every house of importance in mediaeval times, and in the sixteenth century it had become semicircular. Great composers testify to the value of the horn in instrumental music, Handel and Mozart writing pieces specially ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... recently been quarreling in their convention at Pittsburgh upon the subject of instrumental music in churches. But while they are debating whether it is right to have organs in churches, intelligent people are opening museums, conservatories, and libraries upon the Sabbath; and unless the pulpit soon learns how to meet the real wants ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... march had been rendered by one of the music pupils on the beautiful Estey piano which adorned the platform, there was not a standing place left for seeing nor hearing. The young people kept everybody interested and pleased for three hours, by readings, recitations, instrumental music, and songs. "The Delsarte Children," a drill by eight little girls, whose motions were accompanied with strains of music, was prettily and accurately presented, and was ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... staccato scansion, or by the beating of time throughout the utterance. The last of these methods is a halting between two courses which casts doubt on the results as characteristic of either type of activity. There is no question that the rhythmic forms of recitative poetry differ vastly from those of instrumental music and chanted speech. The measures of spoken verse are elastic and full of changefulness, while those of music and the chant maintain a very decided constancy of relations. The latter present determinable types of grouping and succession, while it is questionable ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... pipe of tobacco. One of the learned doctors took the German visitor to the weekly meeting of a Music Club in one of the colleges. Here were assembled bachelors, masters and doctors of music of the University—no professionals were employed—who performed vocal and instrumental music to their mutual gratification, though, apparently, not to the satisfaction of the visitor, who records his opinion that the music was "very poor." "It lasted," he says, "till 11 P.M., there was besides smoking and drinking of wine, though we ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... afflicting himself. He called for his supper, ate with a better appetite than he had done since his leaving Samarcand, and listened with some degree of pleasure to the agreeable concert of vocal and instrumental music that was appointed to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... instrumental music, certainly the weakest side of American civilization. That of the occasion of which we write, had three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently general to be termed characteristic, in a national point of view. In the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... an artist. He taught Miriam how to model animals, and even men, in the clay of the Jordan, and how to carve them out in marble, and something of the use of pigments. Also this man, who was very clever, had a knowledge of singing and instrumental music, which he imparted to her in her odd hours. Thus it came about that Miriam grew learned and well acquainted with many matters of which most girls of her day and years had never even heard. Nor did she lack knowledge of the things of her own faith, though ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... such general interest as to make it worth while to expand this summary by an attempt to apportion its contents among the Arnstadt-Muehlhausen period, the Weimar period, the Coethen period (chiefly remarkable for instrumental music and comparatively uninteresting in its easy-going choral music), and the last period (1733-1750) in which, while the choral works became at once more numerous and more terse (e.g. Jesu, der du meine Seele) the instrumental music, though never diffuse, shows an increasing preference for designs ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... received appeased the poet's bitterness. The Earl was benign, the young ladies were beautiful, and two of them sang Scottish songs charmingly. Urbani, an Italian musician who had edited Scotch music, was there, and sang many Scottish melodies, accompanying them with instrumental music. Burns recited some of his songs amid the deep silence that is most expressive of admiration. The evening passed very pleasantly, and the lion of the morning had, ere the evening was over, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... are naturally of a lively and open temper. The contemplation of the effects which such advantages produce must afford the highest gratification to a benevolent mind. They are usually seen laughing or singing whilst at work, and the intervals allowed them are mostly employed in dancing to their rude instrumental music, which frequently begins at sunset and ceases only with the daylight that recalls them to their labour. Since they were first carried thither, from different parts of Africa and Madagascar, to the present hour, not so much as the rumour of disturbance ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to the ear unaccustomed to it; song, in unison, is the natural music of savage man; harmony is art; to be pleased with it therefore, implies a mind and ear cultivated and refined. The same remark hold good with instrumental music. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... departments. Other boats joined them on the way, some of them bearing musicians; and when they approached the city, whose shores and wharves, and every part of Fort George and the Battery, were covered with people, there was a grand flotilla in the procession, the oars keeping time with instrumental music. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... After the reorganization of the Association as a Phalanx, Mr. John Dwight was the Chief of the Festal Series, and as he was, first of all, a musician, it followed that music formed the principal feature of our entertainments. Vocal and instrumental music was thoroughly taught in the school, and, as nearly all the members of the community were music lovers, and many were singers and players, the place was melodious from morning until night. There was always some new song or perhaps some very old one to be tried, some local composition ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... a number of trees situated as in a little wood, and is an exceedingly handsome one. As you enter the garden, you immediately hear the sound of vocal and instrumental music. There are several female singers constantly hired here to sing ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... reputation for magnificence which the Borgia had acquired. That night the Pope gave a supper-party, at which were present some ten cardinals and a number of ladies and gentlemen of Rome, besides the ambassadors of Ferrara, Venice, Milan, and France. There was vocal and instrumental music, a comedy was performed, the ladies danced, and they appear to have carried their gaieties well into the dawn. Hardly the sort of scene for which the Vatican was the ideal stage. Yet at the time it should have given little or no scandal. But what a scandal was there not, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Saturday nights an essay or theme was set. Drawing formed part of the regular work of the School below the first three Forms. Singing was taught to all the younger boys and a School Choir had been formed consisting of boys and masters. Nearly half the School learned instrumental music, chiefly the Piano, and there were one or two School Concerts given every year and in addition concerts of classical ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... Haydn received a commission which showed the wide reputation he had then gained. The Chapter of Cadiz Cathedral requested him to write some instrumental music for performance on Good Friday. "The Seven Words of our Saviour on the Cross" was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... of military instrumental music, gives warning of the arrival of Mars. Venus, Adonis, the Graces, the nimphs, and hunters, show signs ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... similar simple means of emotional expression) into the background, and is itself so transformed by new harmonic resources, many of which are Wagner's own discovery, that it may almost be said to constitute a new form of art. The influence of this upon instrumental music is as yet helpful only in those new forms which are breaking away from the limits of the sonata style; and it is impossible at present to sift the essential from the unessential in that marvellous compound of canonic device, Wagnerian harmony, original technique and total disregard of every ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... full-grown men and members of the secret society. At such times the men encamp and feast for weeks or even months together on the open space in front of the society's lodge, and masked dances are danced to the accompaniment of the instrumental music. These initiatory ceremonies are held at intervals of about ten or fifteen years, when there are a considerable number of young men to be initiated together.[388] Although we are still in the dark as to the real meaning of this and indeed of almost all ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... with lavish supplies of explosive bullets, the towns and villages welcomed us with proffered fruit and the flaunting of British flags; the troops, on the other hand, seizing every chance of entertaining friends and foes alike with instrumental music, comic, sentimental, and patriotic songs. Even on the warpath, tragedy and comedy seem as inseparable as the Siamese twins; in proof whereof here follows the programme of one such soldierly effort to aid a local church charity in the ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... includes the following works: mass for four voices, Requiem Mass, "Oratorio de Noel," "Tantum Ergo," the Nineteenth Psalm for solos, chorus, and orchestra, and many minor pieces for choir use. He has been a prolific writer, but his fame thus far rests upon his instrumental music. He has travelled much as a virtuoso in Russia, Spain, Germany, and England, conducting his own compositions, and also giving piano and organ recitals, in which he has met with great success. He also ranks high as a musical critic, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Instrumental music next turned my head, or, more definitely—a violin. I bought a fiddle on my own account. Of course my father saw the instrument; if I could keep it out of his sight I could not very well keep it out of his hearing. Then, besides, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Graham was deafened to that. All the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. He perceived what had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chanting together. It was not simply a song, the voices were gathered together and upborne by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music of an organ, a woven texture of sounds, full of trumpets, full of flaunting banners, full of the march and pageantry of opening war. And the feet of the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... worship. Some of the furniture employed in the temple worship, is here introduced, to harmonize with the rest of the symbolic scenery. "Harps and golden vials" signify praise and prayer. Our modern advocates for instrumental music in God's worship, to be consistent, must associate with the "harps," the "incense-cups" and the "golden altar:" for all belonged alike to the service of the temple. Even in the time when such "vessels of the ministry" were in use ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... Genius. Hume, Dr. Johnson, Sir W. Scott, Robert Peel and Lord Byron had no ear for music, and neither vocal nor instrumental music gave them the slightest pleasure. To the poet Rogers it gave actual discomfort. Even the harmonious Pope preferred the harsh dissonance of a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... knowledge. It is to be borne in mind that the name, minstrel, was applied equally to those who sang, and accompanied their voices with the harp, or some other instrument, and to those who were skilled in instrumental music only. The harp was the favorite and indeed the national instrument of the Britons, and its use has been traced as far back as the first invasion of the country by the Saxons. By the laws of Wales, no one could pretend to the character of a freeman ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... passions, that they may be considerably operated upon, without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose; of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental music. In reality, a great clearness helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in some sort an enemy to all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... interrupted. From the direction of the side window there came a burst of instrumental music. With it, singing the words of a waltz from a popular opera, ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... following departments: Common English, Normal, College Preparatory, College, Vocal and Instrumental Music, and Industrial, and a department for trained nurses. The faculty of the institution has consisted of the president, the normal principal, the industrial teacher, and ten other teachers. The boarding department is conducted ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various
... to France, and was afterward captured and imprisoned in England for two years—had managed to evade the law against stage plays as early as 1656, by presenting his Siege of Rhodes as an "opera," with instrumental music and dialogue in recitative, after a fashion newly sprung up in Italy. This he brought out again in 1661, with the dialogue recast into riming couplets in the French fashion. Movable painted scenery was now introduced from France, and actresses took the female parts ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... speech and "appropriate instrumental music by the band," which consisted of a drum and a bass-viol, the people dispersed to amuse themselves as they saw fit, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... grounds in true Bohemian style, but everybody enjoyed it. The evening passed very pleasantly with vocal, instrumental music, etc. It was a fitting celebration, and one which both old and young will no doubt often be pleased to look back upon. Mr. and Mrs. Trueman and the members of their family dispensed the kindest hospitality and ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... representing in fourteen embroidered designs the chief military exploits of Spinola. Here the banquet, a cold collation, was already spread on a table decked and lighted with regal splendour. As soon as the guests were seated, an admirable concert of instrumental music began. Spinola walked up and down providing for the comforts of his company, the Duke of Aumale stood behind the two princesses to entertain them with conversation, Don Luis Velasco served the Princess of Conde with plates, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hoped that all Scottish characteristics known to the Southron are here: pawkiness and pride of race; love of the dram; redness of hair; eldership of, and objection to instrumental music in the Kirk; hatred of the Sassenach; inability to see a joke, etc., etc. An undying portrait is thus put on record of the typical Scot ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... ears is not less admirably and scientifically contrived with regard to vocal and instrumental music. They distinguish the variety of sounds, the measure, the stops, the different sorts of voices, the treble and the base, the soft and the harsh, the sharp and the flat, of which human ears only are capable to judge. There is likewise great judgment in the smell, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... universally accepted with unqualified satisfaction by the most eminent vocalists; and equally so by the most renowned and accomplished performers on stringed instruments, although these instruments are capable of an indefinite variety of intonation. The high development of modern instrumental music would not have been possible, and could not have been acquired, without the manifold advantages of the tempered intonation by equal semitones, and it has, in consequence, long become ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... and, had there been, it would not have evidenced a Saxon knowledge of tuning the strings to given intervals, and playing upon each string. The little light which has been thrown on the condition of instrumental music at the time renders it doubtful whether any bowed instrument was used, other than for the purpose of rendering a rude extemporaneous accompaniment to the voice ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... I know no Caucasian instrumental music composer has ever ordered the performers under his direction to sing a few of the first measures of his composition while the string division of the orchestra played its opening chords. Only the ignorant Negro composer ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... that and other ways Mr. Tyers presented him with a gold ticket entitling him to admission for ever. Among the improvements dating from this new ownership was adequate provision of music. An orchestra was erected, and in addition to instrumental music many of the most famous singers of the day were engaged. The innovations of Mr. Tyers have left their impress on the literature of the place in prose and verse. A somewhat cloying example of the latter is found in an effusion describing ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the same liberty of improvising on the given theme, embroidering these with fanciful capricci, and indulging their own taste in symphonies connected with the main structure by slight and artificial links. Instrumental music had not yet taken an independent place in art. The lute, the trumpet, or the stops of the organ, followed and imitated the voice; and thus in this confusion a choir of stringed and wind instruments was placed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... performances of mingled vocal and instrumental music, stand the two Sacred Harmonic Societies, which execute oratorios and similar works in Exeter Hall. The original Sacred Harmonic Society has within the last couple of years split into two bodies. It had long contained within itself the elements ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... Sometimes a bell would ring out of the box, and the woman would go to this instrument, take down the tube and hold it to her ear, and talk into the mouthpiece. There was another box from which voices would issue, of people conversing, or of orators, or of singing, and sometimes instrumental music. None of these were objects made by savages; these people probably traded with some fairly high civilization. They were not illiterate; he found printed matter, indicating the use of some phonetic alphabet, and paper pamphlets containing printed reproductions of ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... a soul for music. But whether he intended by this to sanction the introduction of instrumental music into public worship, is not clear. 'The late Abraham Booth and Andrew Fuller were extremely averse to it; others are as desirous of it. Music has a great effect on the nervous system, and of all instruments the organ ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fantasia, concerto, overture, symphony, variations, cadenza; cadence; fugue, canon, quodlibet, serenade, notturno [Italian], dithyramb; opera, operetta; oratorio; composition, movement; stave; passamezzo [obs3][Italian], toccata, Vorspiel [German]. instrumental music; full score; minstrelsy, tweedledum and tweedledee, band, orchestra; concerted piece[Fr], potpourri, capriccio. vocal music, vocalism[obs3]; chaunt, chant; psalm, psalmody; hymn; song &c. (poem) 597; canticle, canzonet[obs3], cantata, bravura, lay, ballad, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... we discussed expression and interpretation from a general standpoint, closing with certain comments upon the interpretation of vocal music. But it must be admitted at once that expression in instrumental music is a vastly more intricate matter than in the case of vocal music; and in order to get at the subject in any tangible way, it will be necessary for us, first, to analyze music into its expressional elements; ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... The pastor made a speech, a fair-haired schoolgirl recited a long piece of poetry composed by the master in the sweat of his brow, the Choral Verein sang, the Young Men's Verein—who were given to instrumental music—piped and blew a chorale, and not till the all-prevading joy and enthusiasm had found sufficient vent in the firing of cannon, in speeches, poetry, and music, did the carriages move on, and finally reach the steps of Friesenmoor ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... in the choir. They had come to this innovation, though they drew the line at instrumental music. He had a really fine tenor voice. Mr. Leverett sang in a sort of natural, untrained tone, very sweet. Mrs. Hollis couldn't sing at all, but she was very proud to have the children take after their father. There were times when Aunt Priscilla sang for herself, but her voice had grown rather ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... arpeggio (plural arpeggi) is a derivation of the Italian word arpa (meaning harp), and from this word arpa and its corresponding verb arpeggiare (to play on the harp) are derived also a number of other terms commonly used in instrumental music. Among these are—arpeggiamento, arpeggiando, arpeggiato, etc., all of these terms referring to a harp style of performance, the tones being sounded one after another in rapid succession instead of ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... Other ornamental wares were to be found at the same shop; such as violins, flutes, hautboys, musical books, English and Dutch toys, and London babies. About this period, Mr. Dipper gives notice of a concert of vocal and instrumental music. There had already been an attempt at ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... does exist so far as he is concerned. There is no more a universal community of sensation than of thought. When I am at work my own thought is more real than any impression received through the sense organs. It is louder than the babel of voices or the strains of instrumental music, and more conspicuous than any object upon which the eye may fall. These external impressions are admitted or shut out at will. I then know that my thought is as real as my senses, that the images of thought are as ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... stage performances were changed. The transient attractions of the Museum were constantly diversified, and educated dogs, industrious fleas, automatons, jugglers, ventriloquists, living statuary, tableaux, gypsies, Albinoes, fat boys, giants, dwarfs, rope-dancers, live "Yankees," pantomime, instrumental music, singing and dancing in great variety, dioramas, panoramas, models of Niagara, Dublin, Paris, and Jerusalem; Hannington's dioramas of the Creation, the Deluge, Fairy Grotto, Storm at Sea; the first English Punch and Judy in this country, Italian Fantoceini, mechanical figures, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... and yet, to my thinking, it falls far short of the melody of the human voice. I have listened to some of the most celebrated singers, and of the most distinguished performers, but it appears to me now, that I never, on any other occasion, heard the melody of the human voice, or instrumental music half so enchanting, as that which came floating over the lake on that calm summer night. There was a volume and compass about it which can never be reached in a concert room. It was not loud, but it seemed to fill all the air with ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... imagined, no sooner had the man left than he flung down his instrument and dashed downstairs."[12] And again, "With a half-malicious intent of frightening them (his electors at Oriel), it was told them that Mr. Newman had for years belonged to a club of instrumental music, and had himself taken part in its public performances, a diversion, innocent in itself, but scarcely in keeping, or in sympathy with an intellectual Common-Room, or promising a satisfactory career to a nascent Fellow ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... for the friendly cover of a grand piece of instrumental music to ask Mrs. Evelyn if she had heard from his mother, and she was very glad to go into details with him, while he was infinitely relieved that the silence was over, and he could discuss the matter with ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should exercise a world redeeming power, and promote all social advancement, must appear strange, when first mentioned to those who are familiar only with fashionable operatic performances and the heartless style of vocal and instrumental music in vogue at the centres of musical education, which is robbed as thoroughly as possible of all ethical life, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... concert was to be performed, and consequently the little baron had brought in his willow flute; but he could not get a note out of it, nor could his papa, and therefore the flute was worth nothing. There was instrumental music and song, both of the kind that ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... recognition of what it is not, and by a comparison with the more definite and familiar arts. Music consists of the intangible and elusive factors of rhythm and sound; in this way differing fundamentally from the concrete static arts such as architecture, sculpture and painting. Furthermore, instrumental music, i.e., music freed from a dependence on words, is not an exact language like prose and poetry. It speaks to our feelings and imaginations, as it were by suggestion; reaching for this very reason depths of our being quite beyond the power of mere words. No one can define rhythm except ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... were scattered, and the homage of the lords performed, the choir sung this anthem, with instrumental music of all sorts, as a solemn conclusion of ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... had obtained all the weapons, Indra addressed him in due time, saying, 'O son of Kunti, learn thou music and dancing from Chitrasena. Learn the instrumental music that is current among the celestials and which existeth not in the world of men, for, O son of Kunti, it will be to thy benefit.' And Parandana gave Chitrasena as a friend unto Arjuna. And the son of Pritha ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... dinner, when pastry-work and march-pane-devices were brought forward, when glasses, and slain fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went round, and when the guests rose and themselves went round, and, at length, danced round: for they had instrumental music from the city there. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the warmer regions of Asia and Africa, the little education bestowed upon women, is entirely calculated to debauch their minds and give additional charms to their persons. They are taught vocal and instrumental music, which they accompany with dances, in which every movement and every gesture is expressively indecent: but receive no moral instruction; for it would teach them that they were doing wrong. This, however, is not the practice in all parts of Asia and Africa: the women ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... and the men in their cells, the choir, which leads the singing and furnishes the instrumental music for the occasion, is taken out, and, under the watchful care of an officer, is conducted to the chapel where they practice until time for the regular services. The choir was composed of convicts who ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... numerous priests, fine looking men, with long flowing beards, in robes of most costly materials; the genuflexions are numerous and very low, incense is much used, and there are some good pictures, but no statuary and no organ or other instrumental music; but the chanting is ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... ornate concert-room here, or theatre or opera house. There is not even a salon for gossip and smoke and exercise. The whole is one enormous salle de jeu, and the clink of gold against yellow gold is the only instrumental music. The cartwheel five-franc piece is nowhere permissible now, and at the rouge et noir tables hundred-franc notes are the smallest stake. There is a change in everything except in the croupiers and the chefs, and the actual ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... there was little or no difference. But as to plurality of bishops in the congregation, their tenure and jurisdiction of office, the relations of comity between sister churches, the duties and powers of an evangelist, the laying on of hands in induction into authority, instrumental music in the congregation, the Sunday-school and its organization, the order of social worship, the mid-week meeting for prayer, and numerous other matters of scriptural life, there were as many shades of opinion as there were ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... very early times till the 4th century A.D. every four years, near Delphi, in honour of Apollo, who was said to have instituted them to commemorate his victory over the Python; originally were contests in singing only, but after the middle of the 6th century B.C. they included instrumental music, contests in poetry and art, athletic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... entering, all was silence;—but the priest having intoned the vespers, the sweet tones of a large melodeon suddenly swelled through the sanctuary, mingling with the voices of the sisters. This for a time had a singular effect. To hear music in these wild woods, far away from civilized society where instrumental music forms part of the ordinary pleasures and amenities of life, served to recall to one's memory other days and other climes. After vespers, the Superior of the convent conducted the party through the building to view it. The ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... consisted in waving their tails and moving their heads in a regular succession of measured movements resulting in a cadence which evidently pleased the eye of the Mahar as the cadence of our own instrumental music pleases our ears. Sometimes the band took measured steps in unison to one side or the other, or backward and again forward—it all seemed very silly and meaningless to me, but at the end of the first piece the Mahars upon the rocks showed the first indications of enthusiasm that I had ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the accompaniment of instrumental music. There are many allusions in the book of Psalms and elsewhere in the Old Testament to the harp (kinnor), the psaltery (nebel), the ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... forgotten things more than a generation ago, while Lortzing's still lives on the stage of Germany. Peter deserved to be celebrated in music, for it was in his reign that polyphonic music, albeit of the Italian order, was introduced into the Russian church and modern instrumental music effected an entrance into his empire. But I doubt if Peter was sincerely musical; in his youth he heard only music of the rudest kind. He was partial to the bagpipes and, like Nero, played ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to the dance, favoured us with "the Marseillaise" with the French words, being occasionally prompted by the head of the orchestra, who nearly worked himself into a frenzy while accompanying the dancers with both vocal and instrumental music at the same time. The Maharajah himself was plainly dressed in white robes, with a pair of pale-green striped silk pantaloons fitting his legs like stockings from the knee down, and terminating in a pair of English socks, of which he seemed immensely proud. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... apparently wider culture than his own regarded with almost despairing horror, as being dangerous to the orthodox practice of their art. He forthwith acquired the literary facility necessary for the expression of his agreement with my views, and gave tangible proof of this in a lengthy treatise on 'Instrumental Music,' which appeared in Kolatschek's German monthly journal. He also sent to me another strictly theoretical work on the 'Structure of Musical Theme and Phrase.' In this he showed the originality of his ideas about Mozart's and Beethoven's methods, to an extent which ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... and crape; the black dress of men mixed with glittering white; hands folded sadly on knees, or crossed on breasts, with seriousness; faces sunk in thought—solemn stillness. Meanwhile, out of silence in the adjoining chamber, to the accompaniment of instrumental music, rose a grand funeral hymn, given by a chorus of the most famous artists in the city. The solemnity of the mourning, with its character of high life and unusualness, roused admiration for the man who had given such ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... morning witnesses to a specimen of native tumbling and dancing, with the usual accompaniments of vocal and instrumental music; by far the most diverting part of the entertainment was the dancing, but even this did not at all answer the expectations they had formed of it. The dancers were liberally supplied with country beer, and like most amusements of the kind, this one ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... something symbolic or mythological; but at any rate it must embody a narrative, whether it is that of the signing of a treaty, a charge of dragoons, a declaration of love or the feeding of chickens. The same is true of music. The popular song tells something, almost without exception. Even in instrumental music, outside of dance rhythms, whose suggestion of the delights of bodily motion is a reason of their popularity, the beginner likes program music of some kind, or at least its suggestion. So it is in literature. With those who are intellectually young, whether young in years ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick |
