"Melodic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite safe on this point Herr Klesmer played a composition of his own, a fantasia called Freudvoll, Leidvoll, Gedankenvoll—an extensive commentary on some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and he certainly fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the piano as that moderately responsive instrument lends itself to, having an imperious magic in his fingers that seem to send a nerve-thrill through ivory key and wooden hammer, and compel the strings ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... choosing to modernize the spelling of Milton, for surely the reading of our classics should be made as little difficult as possible, and he is right also in making an exception of such abnormal forms as the poet may fairly be supposed to have chosen for melodic reasons. His exhaustive discussion of the spelling of the original editions seems, however, to be the less called-for as he himself appears to admit that the compositor, not the author, was supreme in these matters, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... strongest and most original of his immediate predecessors, Pelham Humphries, influenced him chiefly by showing him the possibility of throwing off the shackles of the dead and done with. The contrapuntal formulas and prosaic melodic contours, to be used so magnificently by Handel, were never allowed to harden and fossilise in Purcell's music. Even where a phrase threatens us with the dry and commonplace, he gives it a miraculous twist, or adds a touch of harmony that ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... transcriptions for the violin—with certain provisos," said Mr. Elman, in reply to another question. "First of all the music to be transcribed must lend itself naturally to the instrument. Almost any really good melodic line, especially a cantilena, will sound with a fitting harmonic development. Violinists of former days like Spohr, Rode and Paganini were more intent on composing music out of the violin! The modern idea lays stress first of all on the ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... style and structure are more naive, more original than Wagner's, while his medium, less artificial, is easier filled than the vast empty frame of the theatre. Through their intensity of conception and of life, both men touch issues, though widely dissimilar in all else. Chopin had greater melodic and as great harmonic genius as Wagner; he made more themes, he was, as Rubinstein wrote, the last of the original composers, but his scope was not scenic, he preferred the stage of his soul to the windy spaces of the music-drama. His is the interior play, the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... crime. It is a memorable fact in the history of this opera, that on its first performance it was coldly received, and the Italian critics declared it had no vitality; though no opera was ever written in which such intense dramatic effect has been produced with simple melodic force, and no Italian opera score to-day is more living or more likely to last than ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... in France. As Watteau found a Flemish school in France and left a French school stamped forever, so Foster found the United States a home for imitations of English, Irish, German and Italian songs, and left a native ballad form and melodic strain forever impressed upon it as ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... more accented syllables beginning with the same consonant or with a vowel: Von weissen Wolken umwogt, 59, 2—is used to enhance the rhythmic-melodic character of a poem, as is also assonance—the agreement of vowels in two or more accented syllables, 36. Often assonance is practically a form of impure rhyme, Grunde—verschwunden, 41, ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... invention, beauty of form, and exactness of method, he has never been surpassed, and has but one or two rivals. The composer of three of the greatest operas in musical history, besides many of much more than ordinary excellence; of symphonies that rival Haydn's for symmetry and melodic affluence; of a great number of quartets, quintets, etc.; and of pianoforte sonatas which rank high among the best; of many masses that are standard in the service of the Catholic Church; of a great variety of beautiful songs—there ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the trees as they brought refreshments to the troops; the red glow of the camp fires illuminating the eager and enthusiastic faces of the young officers grouped around the colonel; the snorting and stamping of the horses nearby; an occasional melodic outcry of a sentinel out in the night; all these things merging into an unforgettable scene of great romanticism and beauty. That night I lay for a long while stretched near the smoldering ashes of the camp fire, with my cape as a blanket, in a state of lassitude and somnolence, my ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... uniform group of rhymed lines. Alden defines it in his English Verse as "the largest unit of verse-measure ordinarily recognized. It is based not so much on rhythmical divisions as on periods either rhetorical or melodic; that is, a short stanza will roughly correspond to the period of a sentence, and a long one to that of a paragraph, while in lyrical verse the original idea was to conform the stanza to the melody for which it was written." "Normally, then," Alden adds in his Introduction to ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... makes free use of another composer's melody, doubtless would defend his act with the argument that he is not writing "serious music," only melodies for the passing hour and therefore that he ought to be permitted the artistic license of weaving into his songs themes that are a part of the melodic life of the day. [1] But, although some song writers contend for the right of free use, they are usually the first to cry "stop thief" when another composer does the same thing to them. However, dismissing the ethics of this matter, right here there ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Jesus"? On its strains His spirit must have nightly floated free, Though still about his hands he felt his chains. Who heard great "Jordan roll"? Whose starward eye Saw chariot "swing low"? And who was he That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh, "Nobody knows de trouble ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various |
