"Orchestra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a music book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers, whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and young women ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... kind-hearted clergyman, and it was for his funeral that I paid my next visit to Possendorf a few years later. I did not go to the place again till long afterwards, when I visited it on an excursion such as I often made, far into the country, at the time when I was conducting the orchestra in Dresden. I was much grieved not to find the old parsonage still there, but in its place a more pretentious modern structure, which so turned me against the locality, that thenceforward my excursions were always ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... might go and talk things over," he said; and a moment later they were crossing the theatre to the stage door. The final curtain had fallen only a moment before, but the lights were up, the orchestra halfway through a swift waltz, and the audience, buttoning coats and struggling with gloves, was pouring up the aisles. Duncan, through all his anger and apprehension, felt a little thrill of superiority over these departing playgoers as he and his stepmother were admitted ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... laughed, Susan giving her usual little bounce of joy as she settled into her seat, and the orchestra began a spirited selection. "Look there, Bill, what are ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... bishops, hideous demons, skeletons with grinning skulls and weird creatures with papier mache heads of bears, tigers, dragons and even stranger beasts. Wild but not inharmonious music from shaven-headed members of an orchestra of weird instruments—gongs, shawns, cymbals, long silver trumpets—deafened the ears. Crowds of gaily-clad spectators covered the flat roofs of the building and arcades, thronged the verandahs, filled the windows and squatted around ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... to his companions in the little London orchestra in which he played, and he kept his daughter, Anna, in such severe seclusion that they little more than knew that she existed and was beautiful. Not far from Soho Square, they lived, in that sort of British lodgings in which room-rental carries with it the privilege ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... for orchestra, chorus, and solo voices, and is in six scenes or parts, the first of which is described as being "in the nature of a prologue, wherein a dream of Columbus is pictured. Evil spirits and sirens hover about the sleeping mariner threatening and taunting him. The Spirit ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Malagaski had made his garden-party as deadly dull as possible. Little groups of bored people drifted about under the trees and exchanged the usual commonplace observations. Tea and cakes were served under a canopy tent and the local orchestra struggled with pagan music. ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... of lying in bed in the morning, firstly, because he had to conduct the orchestra in the evening, and secondly, because he drank more than one glass of beer before he went home and to bed. He had tried once or twice to get up early, but had found no sense in it. He had called on a friend, ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... he whom but yesterday Broadway had known as the Speed Kid, on whom head-waiters had smiled and lesser waiters fawned; whose snake-like form had nestled in so many a front-row orchestra stall. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... heavens and take no heed of your sublunary divisions. But they have eaten and drunk me out of house and home; at that hour, too, when the most meteors were predicted: and what is worse they invaded my garret in their clumsy jack-boots, and have thrown my Orchestra Coeli out of gear. I was mending it when you knocked. By the way,' he added more kindly, 'I can go on mending it while you wash your wound, which will appear less horrid when cleansed of all this blood. I have a fire upstairs, and hot ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... [The orchestra plays. During the ritornello THEKLA expresses in her gestures and countenance the struggle of her feelings; and at the moment that she should begin to sing, contracts herself together, as one shuddering, throws the instrument down, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... be a wait of twenty-five minutes, while sounds of hammering and dropping may be heard from behind the curtains. The Boys' Club orchestra will render the "Poet and Peasant Overture" four times in ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... morning clothes, some of the women painted, others ordinary respectable members of the bourgeoisie, were sitting and dining and smoking and chattering loudly. Glasses, cigarettes, bottles, all sorts of dishes, strewn upon the tables, caught Sally's bewildered eye. Above all, a scratching orchestra rasped out a selection from one of Verdi's operas. A huge unmanageable noise of talk and laughter swelled the torrent of sound. Deafened, her nerve destroyed, Sally timidly followed the apparently aimless ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... as he is good to my sister, he shall know of it." Hans delighted him every evening, by the powers of his violin; and the bergman, excessively fond of music, like most of his countrymen, declared that he might perform in the emperor's orchestra, and find nobody there to beat him. When he took his leave, therefore, he seized one of Hans's hands with a cordial gripe that was felt through every limb, and into the other he put a bag of one thousand rix dollars, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... 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
... during an interminable compulsory lecture. Here and there—but most rarely—one saw an eager woman with bright eyes, head bent forward and body spellbound, still enchantedly following the course of the play. Between the acts the orchestra pattered ragtime and inanities from the new comic operas, while the audience in general took some heart. When the play was over, we were all enthusiastic; though our admiration, however vehement in ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... the Hanway findings, and the further he read the more his satisfaction stood on tiptoe. Conceive a gallery hung round with paintings that would baffle a Rubens and set a Murillo to biting the nail of envy! Have an orchestra polished to the last touch of execution, discoursing the divinest work of some highest priest of music. Sentinel the scene with marbles that would have doubled the fame of a Praxiteles. Now, with your stage set, invite to its sumptuous midst some amateur of all the arts whose senses ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... excitement, grotesque figures, and the sharp satire of Parisian wit, produced extravagant effects. These carnival follies had their special Pandemonium in the rue Saint-Honore and their Napoleon in Musard, a small man born expressly to lead an orchestra as noisy as the disorderly audience, and to set the time for the galop, that witches' dance, which was one of Auber's triumphs, for it did not really take form or poesy till the grand galop in "Gustave" was given to the world. That tremendous finale might serve as ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... it's over!" and I experience a feeling of freedom. The worst of it all is the scandal about the tickets. Observe that I had twelve orchestra seats and a box! (Le Figaro had eighteen orchestra seats and three boxes.) I did not even see the chief of the claque. One would say that the management of the Vaudeville had arranged for me to fail. Its ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... manhood, he found a world in transition; he realized that he was on the threshold of a new order of things, and with ready prescience took advantage of such as could be utilized in his art. Through Beethoven the resources of the orchestra were increased, an added range was given the keyboard of the piano, the human voice was given tasks that at the time seemed impossible of achievement. He established the precedent, which Wagner acted on later, of employing the human voice as a tool, an instrument, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... stack of programmes and was pointing out the stars on the list to the youngest Miss Bevis. The back of the hall was rapidly filling, and one or two other parties strolled into the stalls. The orchestra had already commenced to play the overture ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... wept, and whispered love-words at his will; now, one high string pleaded its passionate melody to a low and sighing accompaniment that never swelled to reach it; and now, the nineteen strings sounded together as a full orchestra, bursting in triumphant harmonies, and almost deafening to hear; again, the deepest string began a fugue that was taken up by the next above and the next, and traversed all, gathering sonorous strength as the parts ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... "real" party was too exciting to permit of thinking of one's feet. Jerry moved as though in a dream. Like Gyp, she felt delightfully grown-up. The spacious, old-fashioned Everett home was gay with holiday greens, in one corner an orchestra played, Patricia with her mother and her older sister greeted each guest in such a jolly way that one felt in a moment that one was going to have the best sort ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... strength. Still she suits the character represented, and comes exactly up to my idea of poor Lucy, devoted and broken-hearted, physically and morally weak. Though the story is altered, and the interest weakened, how graceful the music is! how lovely and full of melody! The orchestra is good, and composed of blacks and whites, like the notes of a piano, mingled in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... lead my nation and to be loved by them, I should put great golden feathers on my helmet, I should use rhetorical expressions, spout monologues in public, organize wide cavalry charges at reviews, and move through life generally to the crashing of an orchestra. For by doing this even a vulgar, short, and diseased man, who dabbled in stocks and shares and was led by financiers, could become a hero, and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... fact—M. Sylvain Pons, whose name appears on the covers of well-known sentimental songs trilled by our mothers, to say nothing of a couple of operas, played in 1815 and 1816, and divers unpublished scores. The worthy soul was now ending his days as the conductor of an orchestra in a boulevard theatre, and a music master in several young ladies' boarding-schools, a post for which his face particularly recommended him. He was entirely dependent upon his earnings. Running about to give private lessons at his age! —Think of it. How many a mystery ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... felt the smart of sudden tears as from the orchestra whispered a loved and familiar melody that rose, little by little, into that wild and plaintive Zingari air she had sung so often in the Silent Places ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... He once said to me, "Sir, you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to."' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773. Boswell writing of this Tour said:—'I also may be allowed to claim some merit in leading the conversation; I do not mean leading, as in an orchestra, by playing the first fiddle; but leading as one does in examining a witness—starting topics, and making him pursue them.' Ib. Sept. 28. One day he recorded:—'I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might not have the labour of writing down his conversation.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... things had been partaken of, the little guests danced to the music furnished by an orchestra that had been playing during the feasting, and eyes sparkled, and ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... decoration of the house is not done in the rough scenic style so common in the most of the theaters of the country, but is the perfection of frescoe painting, and is capable of bearing the closest examination. The stage is very large, and slopes gradually from the rear to the footlights. The orchestra pen is sunk below the level of the stage, so that the heads of the musicians do not cut off the view of the audience. The dressing of the stage is novel. The side scenes or wings, instead of being placed at right angles to the spectator as in most theaters, are so arranged that the scene ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra under a masterful baton; "Now please get right into this carriage, and don't keep me roasting here another minute." To the cabdriver she called ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... at least they were, the orchestra of the Berlin Opera. They are now the Bolshevik Music Commission. They are here this morning to see about getting their second ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Thor I heard the Huguenots admirably performed. Decorations excepted, I really thought it better done than at the Academie Royale. Meyerbeer's brilliant and original conceptions, in turning the chorus into an oral orchestra, are better realized. A French vaudeville company performed on the alternate nights. Carl, the rich Jew manager of the Wieden, and proprietor of the Leopold-Stadt Theatre, is adding largely to his fortune, thanks to the rich and racy drolleries of Nestroz and Schulz, who are the Matthews and Liston ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... noises, distinguished only by hard or gentle blows upon the skin; and the song was extemporaneous. In the pauses of the dance, any man in the company, who chose it, came forward and recited, in a sort of low guttural tone, some story or incident: this was taken up by the orchestra and the dancers, who repeated it in a higher strain, and danced to it. These amusements continued till midnight, when the voyagers retired on board their vessels, accompanied ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... or haffits, both of which still remain in part. We now see the west front robbed of its most unique features; the gallery was reached by a long passage at each end from stairs in the angle-buttresses. It probably was a gallery for an orchestra, and may have also been used as a pulpit ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... Scotchman as editor of what we came in due time to know as "The Dial!" A concert of singing mice with a savage and hungry old grimalkin as leader of the orchestra! It was much safer to be content with Carlyle's purring from his own side of the water, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wild all week to know what godmother had decided upon. She only laughed when we teased her to tell us, and said we'd see. We were sure it would be something very elegant and formal. Maybe a real grown-up affair, with an orchestra from town and distinguished strangers to meet the three fathers, Eugenia's, Stuart's and the ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... intent before a truly educated audience has not the slightest similarity to the half-draped chorus of sensual operetta before a gallery which wants to be tickled. But who would claim that the dramatic literature of the sexual problems with which the last seasons have filled the theatres from the orchestra to the second balcony has that sublime aesthetic intent, or that it was brought to a public which even posed in an aesthetic attitude! As far as any high aim was involved, it was the antiaesthetic moral value. The plays presented themselves ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... caught helplessly and needlessly by the devout worshipper in a town or country church. Look to your organist, that he wot something of the value of time and the mysteries of tune; or, if a country parson, drill cleverly that insubordinate phalanx of soi-disant musicians, a rustic orchestra; and exclude from the latter, at all mortal hazards, the huntsman's horn, the volunteer fiddle, and the shrill squeaking of the wry-necked pipe. Much is being now done for congregational psalmody; but when ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... become interested in that and forgotten to talk of their claims, and some good whisky after it, or cleared out one of the cabins and had a dance there with some of the hands who lived near, and a man to whistle tunes for them if there was no other orchestra; but no! Stephen thought that cards were wrong and wouldn't have them in his house, and whisky too, and dancing worst of all, and only the sin of avarice and the lust of gold was to be connived at there. As she stood there, the thought slipped into her mind quite suddenly, so suddenly ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... New York City, 1893. Traveled much until he was eight years old, then lived in Racine, Wisconsin, and was educated in the Racine high school. Went to Chicago, intending to join the Thomas Orchestra as violinist, but instead, joined the staff of the Chicago Journal and later that of the Daily News. War ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... blood, I seemed to sit there and evaporate The Flying Dutchman (for it was that I had been hearing) with a wonderful sense of life, warmth, well-being and pride; and the noises of the city, voices, bells, and marching feet, fell together in my ears like a symphonious orchestra. In the same way, the excitement of a good talk lives for a long while after in the blood, the heart still hot within you, the brain still simmering, and the physical earth swimming around you with the colours of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mass of hieroglyphics, each the graphic symbol for some definite human sensation or reaction; only these symbols have been extraordinarily enriched and are fused in representation, so that, like instruments in an orchestra, they are merged in the voluminous sensation they constitute together, a sensation in which, for attentive perception, they never ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... part, alarmed by the prospect of a rapprochement between Athens and the Entente Powers, set himself, as on all similar occasions, to impugn the Hellenic Government's sincerity. At a signal from the Conductor, all the instruments of the orchestra broke into the familiar chorus. The whole Press of France and England rang again with calumny and fairy-tale. Out they came again in regular sequence and with unvarying monotony: plots and secret letters, weird stories of German intrigue, constant ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... the pendent roll, Not by machinery anatomized, till stamina and staple fly away, But with hand-cards concocted, and symmetrically formed, Of wool, white or grey, or the refuse flax smoothed to a silky lustre, It greeteth the fingers of the spinner. In this Hygeian concert Leader of the Orchestra, was the Great Wheel's tireless tenor, Drowning the counter of the snapping reel, and the quill-wheels fitful symphony, Whose whirring strings, yielded to children's hands, prepare spools for the shuttle. At intervals, like a muffled drum, sounded ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... quarters, the violinist who had played there that morning. Only a few of those present had known Schilsky personally; but one and all were curious to catch a glimpse of the quondam Leipzig student, who, it was whispered, would soon return to the town to take up a leading position in the orchestra. Schilsky was now KONZERTMEISTER in a large South German town; but it was rather as a composer that his name had begun to burn on people's tongues. His new symphonic poem, UBER DIE LETZTEN DINGE, had drawn down on his head that mixture of extravagant laudation and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... celebration is unfortunately very scanty, but they seem to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood. In the sacrament the novice became a partaker of the mysteries by eating out of a drum and drinking out of a cymbal, two instruments of music which figured prominently in the thrilling orchestra of Attis. The fast which accompanied the mourning for the dead god may perhaps have been designed to prepare the body of the communicant for the reception of the blessed sacrament by purging it of all that could defile by contact ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the unmarried office men and engineers lived was gay with colored lights and cedar festoons. The hall in the rear of the building had an excellent dancing floor. The orchestra was composed of three Mexicans—hombres—with mandolins and a guitar, and an Irish rough-neck who brought from the piano a beauty of melody that was like a memory of the Sod. The four men produced dance music that New York ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... flowers, furbelows, veils, coaches and coach-drivers, from the magistrate's to the church, from the church to the banquet, from the banquet to the dance, from the dance to the nuptial chamber, to the music of the orchestra and the accompaniment of the immemorial pleasantries uttered by relics of dandies, for are there not, here and there in society, relics of dandies, as there are relics of English horses? To be sure, and such is the osteology of ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... company began a dance of truly superlative merit. I know not what it was about, I was too much absorbed to ask. In one act a part of the chorus, squealing in some strange falsetto, produced very much the effect of our orchestra; in another, the dancers, leaping like jumping-jacks, with arms extended, passed through and through each other's ranks with extraordinary speed, neatness, and humour. A more laughable effect I never saw; in any European ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guests returned to the house they discovered that the rugs had been removed, and that an orchestra was now at hand to furnish music for dancing. Given music and a smooth floor, young people do not mind exertion on a hot June afternoon. Dancing was at once in full swing. Nor did the young people leave until after ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... no means a guarantee that the same results may be obtained in every instance, and with less favoured subjects. The average compass in male voices is about two octaves minus one or two tones. I mean, of course, tones that are really available when the singer is on the stage and accompanied by an orchestra. Now, a baritone who strives to transform his voice into a tenor, simply loses the two lowest tones of his compass, possibly of good quality and resonance, and gains a minor or major third above the high G (sol) of a very poor, strained character. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... was, at this time, his favourite place of resort. We have seen how enthusiastically he expresses himself on the subject of Mr. Kean's acting, and it was frequently my good fortune, during this season, to share in his enjoyment of it,—the orchestra being, more than once, the place where, for a nearer view of the actor's countenance, we took our station. For Kean's benefit, on the 25th of May, a large party had been made by Lady J * *, to which we both belonged; but Lord Byron having also taken a box ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... as difficult to distribute the various facts of the whole effect, as to identify one's self. I had only a public and general consciousness of the delight given by the harmony of hues in the parquet below; and concerning the orchestra I had at first no distinct impression save of the three hundred and thirty violin-bows held erect like standing wheat at one motion of the director's wand, and then falling as if with the next he swept them down. Afterwards files of men with horns, and other ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the leading lady said: "If my lute-player could play a few chords here—or the orchestra for him-it would help me tremendously. I've got all this long cross ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of theater-going was exceedingly small. He had never been in so large a play-house as this one of Morena's; he had never seen so large and well-dressed an audience; never heard a full and well-trained orchestra. In spite of himself, he began to be distracted, excited, stirred. When the curtain rose on the beautiful tropical scene, the lush island, the turquoise sea, the realistic strip of golden sand, Pierre gave an audible oath of admiration and surprise. The people about him ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was generally indifferent to events in the Cathedral, went nevertheless to inquire of His Eminence's condition. He had a plan which he quickly explained to the family during dinner. The funeral of a cardinal deserved the execution of a celebrated mass, with a full orchestra recruited in Madrid. He had already cast his eyes on the famous Requiem of Mozart; that was the only reason for which he was ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... what he was playing so incoherently. It was precisely the novelty of this equipment that had attracted my attention to him, just as it excited the merriment of the passing throng, who jeered him and left the hat of the old man empty, while the rest of the orchestra pocketed whole copper mines. In order to observe this odd character at my leisure, I had stepped, at some distance from him, upon the slope at the side of the causeway. For a while he continued playing. Finally he stopped, and, as if recovering himself after a long spell ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... when the play is new our greatest energy should be devoted to it. Indeed, there is a strong tendency to adopt the idea contained in a phrase of Mr Gordon Craig's to the effect that the players are "performers in an orchestra," and since a play is not like a piece of chamber-music, where the performers are treated individually, but rather resembles a work performed by a full band, there is an almost valid excuse for paying comparatively little attention to the acting. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Democracy when the "competitive" principle has replaced the "hereditary," not the kings, princes and nobles, but bankers, merchants, railroad magnates, capitalists, politicians, editors, educators, writers and artists occupy the high seats, hold the baton and beat the time for the great social orchestra." (Ross-Social Psychology.) "Power and influence," said Morley, "no longer reside in the Crown but in the strong, subtle forces called Public Opinion: and that Public Opinion is apt to involve fatal contentment with simple answers to ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... under some flat stone, whence he will emit a sound like a tinkling bell. Lastly, when not croaking amid the foliage, the tree frogs indulge in the most graceful dives. And so, in May, as soon as it is dark, the pond becomes a deafening orchestra: it is impossible to talk at table, impossible to sleep. We had to remedy this by means perhaps a little too rigorous. What could we do? He who tries to sleep and cannot needs ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... find place there in the field attended to, while on the other hand my slight headache is inhibited and an appointment is forgotten. At a gay banquet, my attention may be given to the whole hall with all its color effects and its flowers, and to all that the table offers and to the music from the orchestra and to the jokes of my neighbors. It is not true that any one of those parts suppresses the vividness of the others, they seem rather to maintain and to help one another; and yet in the next moment, my neighbor may bring me news which absorbs my mind entirely and leaves no room for the flowers ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... was flung open suddenly! The staccato of the orchestra of the looms sounded more loudly and provided entrance music. Astonishment rendered Mac Tavish hors de combat. He dropped his weights and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... show had closed, the hall had been cleared of chairs and canvas, exposing a glassy, tempting surface, and the orchestra had moved to the stage. They played a rollicking, blood- stirring two-step, while the floor swam ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... conclusively indicated that loud, quick music was disagreeable to her. Professor C. Reclain of Leipsic, once, during a concert, saw a spider descend from one of the chandeliers and hang suspended above the orchestra during a violin solo; as soon, however, as the full orchestra joined in, it quickly ascended to its web.[59] This fact of musical discrimination in a creature so low in the scale of animal life is truly wonderful; it indicates that these lowly creatures have arrived at a degree of aestheticism ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... itself like a huge boa about to engulf a tiny rabbit. The simile forced itself against her volition; all this monstrous preparation for a—rabbit! In a concert-hall the poetic idea of the tone-poem was petty. And the churning of the orchestra, foaming hysteria of the strings, bellowing of the brass—would they never cease! Such an insane chase after a rabbit! Yes, she said the word to herself and found her lips carved into a hard smile, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... play well advanced. A robbery had been planned—for it was a "crook" play—and the heroine had already received wild-eyed the advances of a fur-coated millionaire. When the lights of the theatre popped up, and members of the orchestra began once more unmercifully to tune their instruments, it was possible to look round at the not especially large audience. But in whichever direction Emmy looked she was always brought back as by ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... of music and went often to the opera. A couple of evenings after Madame de Bellegarde's ball he sat listening to "Don Giovanni," having in honor of this work, which he had never yet seen represented, come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of the curtain. Frequently he took a large box and invited a party of his compatriots; this was a mode of recreation to which he was much addicted. He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre, and taking them to drive ...
— The American • Henry James
... that these few minutes are only an interlude. Over here I am Mademoiselle Idiale who sings to-night at Covent Garden. See my roses. There are two rooms full of reporters and photographers in the place now. The leader of the orchestra is in my bedroom, and two of the directors are drinking whiskies and sodas with this new manager of mine in the dining-room. Between five and six o'clock this afternoon you will get the message. It is somewhere, I think, in the city that you will have to go. There will ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tragedy ends—worse than Phrynicus's poorest, when they pelted his chorus from the orchestra with date-stones. And ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... been," said he, "much famous in my time, unt had a individualness pointed out whereeffer I went. I vas orchestra leader at the Theater Royal in Stuttgart, unt our king haf complimented me many times. But I vas foolish. I vas foolish enough to think that ven a man iss great he can stay great. I married me to a clefer prima donna, unt composed a great ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... third-rate theater on the Surrey side of London was crowded to overflowing. There was a grand spectacular drama, full of transformation scenes, fairies, demons, spirits of air, fire, and water; a brazen orchestra blowing forth, and steam, and ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... early and went to the theatre. A play in fifteen acts was performed. Tedious by its prolixity, the language, unintelligible to me, made it still more wearisome. The music played in the orchestra was very beautiful; and the officer, who had behaved so politely to us in permitting the gates, on the first night of our arrival, to be opened, seated on a high stool, rose conspicuously above the other musicians, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... merrymaking. Shows and caravans choked the narrow streets; huge roundabouts as "patronised by all the crowned heads of Europe," swung giddily round in the market-place, and the shouts of the stall-keepers, and the din of the orchestra, and the ceaseless crack of the rifle ranges, where boys were shooting for cocoa-nuts, made a noise that was ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... steeples in vivid relief against the sky, and put a new gilding on storm-beat en vanes and weathercocks. All this Bog described in his own way to his uncle; and his uncle, stooping at the lever, kept on ringing with unabated zeal; and all the other bells banged away like an orchestra of which Uncle Ith was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... had drained his coffee they rose and passed into the great lounge, with its many little tables set beneath the palms, where a fine orchestra was playing Maillart's ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... with cheers and bravos, calling my name, intoxicated with enthusiasm, and dazzled, not by a daring feat, but by the spirit that prompted it. Women tore off their jewels to twist them into a sling for my injured hand; men rose and made me a conqueror's ovation; the orchestra played the old Etrurian hymns of freedom; I was attended home with a more than Roman triumph of torch and song, stately men and beautiful women. But chameleons change their tint in the sunshine, and why should men always march under one color? Friend, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of the same rich hues hung gracefully suspended from the ceiling, trembling to the least current of air; oil lamps, upheld by almost invisible wires, dangled in profusion; while within the far corner, occupying a slightly raised platform later to be utilized by the orchestra, was an imposing pulpit chair lent by the Presbyterian Church, resting upon a rug of skins, and destined as the seat of honor for the fair guest of the evening. Moffat surveyed all this thoughtfully, and proceeded proudly to the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... fire with the romance of this continental city love to speak of the splendors of the French Opera House, the first place in the country where grand opera was heard, and tell of the tiers of beautiful women with their jewels and airs and graces. Above the orchestra circle were four tiers, the first filled with the beautiful dames of the city; the second filled with a second array of beautiful women, attired like those of the first, with no apparent difference; yet these were the octoroons and quadroons, whose beauty and wealth were all the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... lights, and the company in the circle round the orchestra make a most brilliant and gay appearance; and had I been with a party less disagreeable to me, I should have thought it a place formed for animation and pleasure. There was a concert, in the course of which a hautbois concerto was so charmingly played that I could ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... satisfaction arises from the well-doing, and not from the fact that it is Sewing well done; for anything well and thoroughly done, even if it be only boot-blacking on a street corner, or throwing paper torpedoes in a theatre orchestra to imitate the crack of a whip in the "Postilion Galop," gives to its doer the same sense of self-satisfaction. It would be folly now, as it may have been in old times, for our girls to spend their hours and try their eyes over ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... of the tones of all instruments, the cultured hearer can at once detect any variation from this character. Further, he knows how the tones of a badly-played instrument would sound if the instrument were correctly handled. An unskilled trumpeter in an orchestra, for example, may draw from his instrument tones that are too brassy, blatant, or harsh. An observant hearer knows exactly what these tones would be if ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... the professor's nameday and we went to entertain him with an orchestra, present him flowers ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... to my feet. "Go quickly and call one of the maids to come and help you dress. Angeline, I'll do your hair. Bertha, where are your shoes? Gertrude, that's a beautiful gown—just your color. Hurry into it. There goes the bell. Hark! the orchestra is beginning." ...
— Different Girls • Various
... before the usual gentle snores arose from Mrs. Pennypoker's corner. Soon afterwards, the silence of the night was broken by the sound of stealthy footsteps, coming up the river bank from the engineers' tents. A moment later, the music from a full orchestra of combs roused the sleepers ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... Kipling evenings the 'mise-en-scene' was a striking one. The bare hotel room, the pine woodwork and pine furniture, loose windows which rattled in the sea-wind. Once in a while a gust of asthmatic music from the spiritless orchestra downstairs came up the hallway. Yellow, unprotected gas-lights burned uncertainly, and Mark Twain in the midst of this lay on his bed (there was no couch) still in his white serge suit, with the light from the jet shining down on the crown ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "That was the moon shining in. I wanted you to hear what a difference it makes. When a ray of the sun, for instance, strikes that 'feeler' over there, a harmonious and majestic sound like the echo of a huge orchestra is heard. The light of the moon, on the other hand, produces a different sound— lamenting, almost like the groans of the wounded on ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... the oldest of Mr. Punch's young men thought he would like to hear some orchestral music on Monday week last, so he dropped in at the Queen's Hall to assist at a concert of the new British Symphony Orchestra. The name of the founder and conductor, Mr. RAYMOND ROZE, was already familiar, for Mr. Punch's young man was old enough to remember Mr. ROZE'S mother, MARIE ROZE, in her brilliant prime as prima donna of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... to ingentilire, with infinite loss to quaintness and charm, the "Orlando Innamorato" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo. Moreover, Ariosto has many qualities unknown to Boiardo; wit, malice, stateliness, decided eloquence and power of simile and apostrophe; he is a symphony for full orchestra, and Boiardo a mere melody played on a single fiddle, which good authorities (and no one dare contest with Italians when they condemn anything not Tuscan as jargon) pronounce to be no Cremona. All these advantages Ariosto certainly has; and I do not quarrel with those who prefer ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... and she said solemnly to Roland, and with the utmost sincerity, that she dared not dance. It was the broad road to perdition. Roland had not cared to argue with such a prejudice. He knew well that the dancing would follow the public singing, as naturally as the singing followed the professional orchestra. But he said then, as he said frequently afterward: "It is such a pity, Denas, you have not a mother you can advise with and who could help and encourage you. It just locks a girl up in a box to be ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... where you stand, there was an orchestra of fifty musicians; there, where that young sister kneels so devoutly, was a buffet: what was upon it I cannot tell, but I know it was there, and in the gallery on the left, where a modest supper of lentils and cream cheese is now preparing ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... dairying world are due chiefly to a division of labor, the introduction of system and co-operation. Our machinery, we are sorry to say, is not yet quite perfect in all its parts, and does not move with the precision and harmony of the orchestra, to which we have already alluded. Yet, although still in its infancy, it has already produced and does annually ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... rather more barnlike than ours, but this theater was of a sufficiently handsome presence, and when we had been carried into it by the physical pressure exerted upon us by the crowd at the entrance we found its vastness already thronged. The seats in the orchestra were mostly taken; the gallery under the roof was loud with the impatience for the play which the auditors there testified by cries and whistlings and stampings until the curtain lifted; the tiers of boxes rising all round the theater ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... orchestra of life, if you can't play the first violin, beat the drum; if you can't beat the drum, pound the triangle; and if you can't contribute anything at all to the music, get in step with it and do the best job of marching in the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... the play absorbed the leisure of the cottagers. Little else was talked of. To Jerry Morton had been assigned the responsibility of organizing an orchestra of local talent, and he came twice a day or oftener, to report progress or ask counsel. The tan shoes, whose excessively pointed toes betrayed that probably they were as old, if not older than Jerry himself, but which in Jerry's estimation were synonymous with unpretentious elegance, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... Yes—and you think Mary Jane can play, don't you? You think she can sit down and jerk more music than a whole orchestra, don't you? But she can't. You might about as well set a crowbar to opening oysters as set her to playing on that piano. You ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... gigantic orchestra they would make! Some are playing on the stage, others in orchestras, and many thousands are daily enjoying the pleasure and popularity of being able to play ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... telegrams, special delivery letters, and telephone messages from the Hatter, the Red Queen, the Dormouse, and many another well-beloved Wonderland character. Afterward the Walrus and the Carpenter sang a song and then, with great acclaim and a crash of the orchestra, the folding doors opened and Alice herself, impersonating 1921, entered, gathered up the March Hare, and with a graceful little poem of farewell to 1920 took the head of ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... who is a good pianist may, with perfect propriety, offer his services to the hostess as orchestra for impromptu dancing, or may offer to relieve any lady so engaged, to allow her to dance. If, however, there are more ladies than gentlemen, and he is needed to fill up a set, he must not insist upon playing, but go where he ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... "Nothin' doin' in the complimentary line. I'm too wise to be bamboozled by a switch of hair and a newly massaged arm. Oh, I guess you'll make good in the calcium, all right, with plenty of powder and paint on and the orchestra playing 'Under the Old Apple Tree.' But don't put on your hat and chase downstairs to fly to the Little Church Around the Corner with me. I've been up against peroxide and make-up boxes before. Say, all joking aside—don't you think ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... so nice to me lately as you were the first few days," he said plaintively in the privacy afforded by the strains of a comb orchestra vigorously conducted at the end of the room. "I must have offended you without meaning it; clumsy fellow ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... star. The journalistic astronomers must point their telescopes long and steadily at the European firmament and proclaim their discovery in the columns of their papers. Again, furores are expensive. One must hire an auditorium, hire an orchestra, and, according to some very frank and disgusted young virtuosos who have failed to succeed, hire a critic or so like the amusing Trotter in Fanny's First Play. What with three and four concerts a night why should not the critics have a pourboire for ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... at gun-drill. A thousand students from the university enrolled themselves, and drilled from morning till night. These student-soldiers had probably the best military band ever known; it consisted of the entire orchestra of the Theatre Royal, all volunteers. A Danish officer, sent on some message under a flag of truce to the British fleet, was required to put his message in writing, and was offered a somewhat damaged pen for ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... and felt inspired to do her very best. As to Captain Fracasse, excited by the quarrel, he acted superbly. Zerbine surpassed herself. Shouts of laughter and storms of clapping followed her animated words and gestures. From one corner, near the orchestra, came such vigorous bursts of applause, leading all the rest and lasting longer than any, that at last Zerbine's attention was ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... relieved from absolute gloom by the lightness and elegance of its furniture and appointments, the profusion of flowers, and the soft grey carpet, so thickly piled that every sound was deadened. The delicate strains of music came from an invisible orchestra concealed behind a canopy of palms. The head-waiters had the correct clerical air, half complacent, half dignified. Among the other diners were many beautiful women in marvellous toilettes. A variety of uniforms, ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in a warm, mellow basso that had won my heart from the first. His singsong lent peculiar charm to the pages that we read in duet. As he read and interpreted the text he would wave his snuff-box, by way of punctuating and emphasizing his words, much as the conductor of an orchestra does his baton, now gently, insinuatingly, now with a passionate jerk, now with a sweeping majestic movement. One cannot read Talmud without gesticulating, and Reb Sender would scarcely have been able to gesticulate without ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... end of the first part of the program, and there was a buzz of conversation which softened into silence as the school orchestra filed on the stage. It was warmly greeted, for this was its first public appearance, and the proud parents of the performers were anxious to hear the results of their practice together. Like wise boys they didn't try ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... stage hung a fourteen-foot American flag. Flags of other nations, in smaller bits of bunting, trailed off on either side. The piano stood before the center of the stage, down on the floor. Grouped near were the music stands and chairs for other members of the orchestra on this ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... a process of making life more complex and subtle. We have the piano, the violin, the orchestra. Yet we also have rag-time, which is a reaction from the nervous tension of American commercial life, a swinging back to the old days when man, though a brute, was free. There is release and exhilaration in the barbaric, syncopated songs and in the animal-like ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Mrs. Tophevie's fan brought him back to consciousness, and he was almost guilty of a sigh as the log cabin faded from his vision, with the Plymptons and Abigail Jones, leaving instead that heated ballroom, with its trained orchestra, its bevy of fair young girls, its score of white-kidded dandies with wasp-like waists and perfumed locks, and Ethie ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Few of us said anything; but our eyes wandered over all with a species of delight, that I am certain can be felt in a theatre only once. Anneke's sweet face was a picture of youthful expectation; an expectation, however, in which intelligence and discretion had their full share. The orchestra was said to have an undue portion of wind instruments in it; though I perceived ladies all over the house, including those in our own box, returning the bows of many of the musicians, who, I was told, were amateurs from the army and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... and also took a peep from behind the curtain. His gaze was long and searching. The scrutiny did not satisfy him, and he turned away and began to pace backward and forward in one of the wings, moody and thoughtful. The stamping had ceased while the orchestra was playing, but it now commenced again, apparently louder than ever. Lady Macbeth in full dress now came on the stage, pale and agitated. She also took a peep from behind the curtain. The spectacle frightened her, and turning to Mr. Hackett, she ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... copying of certain methods of life, an oppressive sameness, mark so much of modern religion. What a freshening up there would come into all Christian communities if every man lived by his own perception of truth and duty! If a musician in an orchestra is listening to his neighbour's note and time, he will lose many an indication from the conductor that would have kept him far more right, if he had attended to it. And if, instead of taking our beliefs and our conduct from one another, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The men and women still sitting at the other tables saw nothing unusual about these four, indifferently dressed, indifferently conditioned. The hotel orchestra, playing ragtime in deafening concord, ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... Morris was a popular dance orchestra leader in and around Shopton. He was also much in demand as ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... cannot. This meaning changed naturally from its original one of being the simple expression of fear to that of welcoming a chieftain; and, if one wishes to push the theory to excess, we may still see a shadowy reminiscence of it in the manner in which the violinists of an orchestra applaud an honoured guest—perchance some famous virtuoso—at one of our symphony concerts by striking the backs of their ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... stair through that doorway," she said, pointing to one near the orchestra, if so it could be called; "it will lead you to the sleeping-room, where you'll be after finding some beds. You'll remember that first come first served, and if you don't be tumbling into one it will be your ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... open-air theatre. They had built it on the ruins of an estaminet, roofed it over with odds and ends of tin and tarpaulin, and the play was on. There was the orchestra against the back-cloth, rendering selections from popular Pekin revues on the drum, cymbal and one-stringed fiddle. There were the actors apparelled in the gorgeous costumes of old Cathay strutting mechanically ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... The orchestra was playing a soft intermezzo, and of a sudden the lights went down in the house, hushed to silence as the curtain went slowly up upon ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... wish to make the acquaintance of one of these modern Nimrods, and his friend Mery arranges a supper, to which he invites a certain Monsieur Louet, who plays the fourth bass in the orchestra of the Marseilles theatre. The conversation after supper is a good specimen of persiflage. After doing ample justice to an excellent repast, during which he had scarcely uttered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... early, she found everything in uproar. The main performance was under way, the orchestra was playing and the audience intermittently applauding. The infusion of the amateurs clogged the working of things behind the stage, crowded the passages, dressing rooms, and wings, and forced ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... fond of music, bushmen and townsmen alike. They may not know very much about it, but they are anxious to learn all they can. They will even pay to hear something above their appreciation, if the Australasian tells them that it will improve their musical taste. The orchestra in the Melbourne Town Hall will accommodate 500 performers, and the hall itself can seat 4,000 people. The Sydney and Adelaide Town Halls are little smaller, and yet it is no uncommon sight to see them filled ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... could not go on. I was choking. The tears were in my Eyes, and my throat was choked with sobs. But the music went on, and the chorus took up the song, and between the singers and the orchestra they covered the break my emotion had made. And in a little space I was able to go on with the next verse, and to carry on until my part in the show was done for the night. But I still wondered how it was that they had not had to ring down the curtain upon me, and that Tom ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the patrols could be heard beating time on the stones beneath with even more regularity than the feet of the dancers on the floor of the saloon. From time to time the watchword was repeated from post to post, and occasionally the notes of a trumpet, mingling with the strains of the orchestra, penetrated into their midst. Still farther down, in front of the facade, dark masses obscured the rays of light which proceeded from the windows of the New Palace. These were boats descending the course of a river, whose waters, faintly illumined ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... and popular; and half the audience at least was composed of the relations and friends of the chorus. Most people had a 'Susan,' an 'Alice,' or a 'William' making signs to them at intervals from the orchestra; and when anything went particularly well, and the applause was loud, the friends of Susan or Alice beamed with a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... engagement reception, an event properly festooned with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly seen and still more faintly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sitting in orchestra chairs, wouldn't they?" said Augereau. "It's not feasible. As for the boxes, they're mostly held ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... musicians from twenty regiments, who played in turn. But on the opening of the ball the entire orchestra executed a triumphal march, during which the aides-de-Camp, most elegantly attired, received the ladies invited, and presented ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Marise went on, "that I ought not to let that part of it spoil concert music for me. And it doesn't, of course. I've had some wonderful times . . . people who play in orchestra and make chamber-music are the real thing. But the music you make yourself . . . the music we make up here . . . well, perhaps my taste for it is like one's liking (some people call it perverse) for French Primitive painting, or the something so awfully touching and heart-felt ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... It was his father, the old savage, who was entertained on board a French frigate, and for the first time heard an orchestra. When the little concert was over, the captain, to find which piece he liked best, asked which piece he'd like repeated. Well, when grandfather got done describing, what piece do you think ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... also offered an almost insurmountable obstacle to the production of any work from an American hand until very recently. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been a noble exception to this rule, and has given about the only opening possible to the native writer. The Chicago Orchestra, in eight seasons under Theodore Thomas, devoted, out of a total of 925 numbers, only eighteen, or something less ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... arose from the orchestra, and every heart stirred to the premonitory waver and lift of the curtain. Slowly it rose, and discovered a mourning apartment, with a lady in mourning, sitting in a mourning chair, and attended by a mourning maid. The play was Congreve's tragedy of "The Mourning Bride," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... The peculiar and characteristic Magyar instrument which is indispensable to every gypsy orchestra, taking the place of harp and piano. It is in the form of a zither of large size, played with padded sticks, and forms the foundation ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... were really happy days for all of us, at any rate in comparison with those we had previously experienced. We had by this time quite an orchestra of reed flutes and the fiddles aforesaid, whose strings were of gut procured from the native wild-cat—a very little fellow, by the way, about the size of a fair-sized rat; I found him everywhere. These cats were great thieves, and only roamed about at night. I trapped them in great ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena, raising the wind from her own lungs, forced it through a hollow reed. From these beginnings we have the organ and the orchestra, producing such sounds as nothing in nature ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... balls are now in great vogue in France. The latest novelty for them is the ribbon dance. Eight ribbons of different colors are attached to a ring in the ceiling. Four girls and four boys hold the ends of the ribbons. The orchestra strikes up, and the eight children dance a measure which enables them to plait the ribbons. The orchestra then starts another measure, the children another step, and the plait is unplaited. Each of the dancers may be ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... another officer, advanced from one of these groups; they walked backward and forward, laughing and chattering loudly, without regarding the presence of the princess. They then drew near the orchestra, and called out in ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... that one is more beautiful than the other, only that each is different in its charm. After all, Life, wherever one sees it, is, if one has eyes, a wonderful pageant, the greatest spectacular melodrama I can imagine. I'm glad to have seen it. I have not always had an orchestra stall, but what of that? One ought to see things at several angles and from several ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... passion for the gardener's little daughter, who had subsequently run away with a lackey; of his first sermon as a young abbate, after which he found in the offertory bag, in addition to the usual collection, a number of love letters; of his doings as a fiddler in the orchestra of the San Samueli Theatre; of the pranks which he and his companions had played in the alleys, taverns, dancing halls, and gaming-houses of Venice—sometimes masked and sometimes unmasked. In telling ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... suspense, certain significant dispositions of personages, a certain logical growth of emotion,—these are the only means at the disposal of the playwright. It is true that, with the assistance of the scene-painter, the costumier and the conductor of the orchestra, he may add to this something of pageant, something of sound and fury; but these are, for the dramatic writer, beside the mark, and do not come under the vivifying touch of his genius. When we turn to romance, we find this no longer. Here ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
