"Soprano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sing those tiresome songs which so satisfy the musical taste of Bayswater—baritone songs about the Army and the Navy and their rollicking ways, and about old English country life; tenor songs about Grey Eyes and Roses and Waiting and Parting and Coming Back; soprano songs about Calling and Wondering and Last Night's Dance and Remembering and Forgetting—foolish words, foolish melodies, and clumsy orchestration. But they seem to please the well-dressed crowd that ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... back, backward retroactive, retrospective *Se apart, aside seclude, secession *Semi half semiannual, semicivilized *Sub under, less than, subscribe, suffer, subnormal, inferior subcommittee *Super above, extremely superfluous, supercritical, soprano *Trans across, through transfer, transparent ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she studies, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Quincy had a fine well-trained tenor voice, while Miss Putnam's mezzo-soprano was full and melodious and her rendition fully as artistic as that of her companion. One, two, three, four, five, six encores followed each other in quick succession, in spite of Professor Strout's endeavors to quell the applause and take up the next ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... frequently come in and make most impressive and solemn calls on Miss Mary Anne Bull, who was a brunette and a celebrated beauty of the day. I well remember her long raven curls falling from the comb that held them up on the top of her head. She had a rich soprano voice, and was the leading singer in the Centre Church choir. The two brothers also had fine, manly voices, and the family circle was often enlivened by quartette singing and flute playing. Mr. Bull kept a very large wholesale drug store on Front Street, in which his two sons, Albert ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... sounds.] Stridor — N. creak &c v.; creaking &c v.; discord, &c 414; stridor; roughness, sharpness, &c adj.; cacophony; cacoepy^. acute note, high note; soprano, treble, tenor, alto, falsetto, penny trumpet, voce di testa [It]. V. creak, grate, jar, burr, pipe, twang, jangle, clank, clink; scream &c (cry) 411; yelp &c (animal sound) 412; buzz &c (hiss) 409. set the teeth on edge, corcher les oreilles [Fr.]; pierce the ears, split the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... kneeling worshippers, smashed him down on a bench in front of the main altar, tearing half a yard of crimson damask and nearly upsetting the priest officiating; and then, while Caper (red in the face, and totally unfit to hear the fine chorus of voices, among which Mustafa's, the soprano, came ringing out) was composing himself to listen, Pepe grabbed him with a 'Music's over; andiamo (let's go). Did you hear Mustafa? Bella voce, tra-la-leeeee! Mustafa's a contadino; I know his pa and ma; they changed him when only five years old. Thought he was a Turk, didn't you? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... long as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys who were yet to make ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... virtue to VIRTU, ever offered such a spectacle before. He that will prefer Dilettantism in this world for his outfit, shall have it; but all the gods will depart from him; and manful veracity, earnestness of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. He can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for hire;—and probably that is ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... a brilliant soprano solo ("Hear ye, Israel"), beginning with a note of warning, and then with trumpet obligato developing into another melody of an impetuous and animated description ("I, I am He that comforteth"). The solo leads to the magnificent chorus, "Be not afraid," in which, after a short pause, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... The boy soprano, clad in white surplice, stood in the organ loft. The light shone full upon his crown of fair hair, and his pale face, with its serious blue eyes, looked paler than usual. Perhaps it was something in the tender ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... The rich and clear soprano voice had attained new power since Sir Oswald had heard it in the moonlit market-place; the execution of the singer improved day by day. The Italian singing-master spoke in raptures of his pupil—never was there a finer organ or more talent. Miss Milford could not fail to create a ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Aldermen all went back, swinging their gold-headed canes, and they had another meeting in the City Hall. Then they decided to send the highest Soprano Singer in the church choir to the Wise Woman; she could sing up to G-sharp just as easy as not. So the high Soprano Singer set out for the Wise Woman's in the Mayor's coach, and the Aldermen marched behind, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... completely disguised them; but at the end of the service one of them pushed hers back, and I recognized the golden hair of Alathea, as she joined a group rather formally collected on one side of the grave. She looked round as if to see that all were ready, and then in such a soprano voice as one seldom hears, she "started" the funeral hymn. It was the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... decisive, for that sound Hushed "Academie" sighed in silent awe; The fiddlers trembled as he looked around, For fear of some false note's detected flaw; The "Prima Donna's" tuneful heart would bound, Dreading the deep damnation of his "Bah!" Soprano, Basso, even the Contra-Alto, Wished him five ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... were missed. Johnny Byrd had an infectious way of making a party go and Maria Angelina's sweet soprano had become so much a part of every gathering that its absence now made ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... that they could both sing. There was hardly an opera in vogue that one or other did not know sufficiently well to be able to recall the chief musical numbers. Iris had a sweet and sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice, Jenks an excellent baritone, and, to the secret amazement of the girl, he rendered one or two well-known Anglo-Indian barrack-room ditties with ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... shoots its long hypotenuse upon the floor. In its drifting oval the entertainer, her shoulders back, her elbows out, her fists clenched and her body twisting into slow patterns, bawls in a terrifying soprano— ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... into his voice. "Leonard, please try to realize that the Terran Federation government doesn't give one shrill soprano hoot on Nifflheim whether it's fair or not, or whose fault what is. The Federation government's been repenting that charter they gave the Company ever since they found out what they'd chartered away. Why, ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... his feet, and opened his mouth like a gash cut in a steer by a cow catcher of an engine, and he yawned, and I guess he got the lockjaw, 'cause he kept his mouth open all the afternoon to get the air, like a soprano singer in a choir, who has been fed a cayenne pepper lozenger by the tenor, just before she gets up to sing: "A Charge to Keep, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... In writing, use soprano, alto and tenor, or alto, tenor and bass; and do not separate upper parts more than an octave. For a chord or two they may (for the sake of better voice-leading) ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... were other sounds which enchained my attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice of suffering ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stable boy, whose hair looked as sleek as the Deacon's horse. For the Deacon has some queer notions about the duties of employers to their servants, and, though the very kindest of men, is generally thought by the neighbors to be "a queer stick." The Deacon's wife, who has a very sweet soprano voice, which, however, she never could be persuaded to use in our choir, was presiding at the piano. The children all had their hymn and tune-books, and they were "singing round"—each member of the family selecting a hymn in ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these intervals ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... repeating audibly the first response, thus encroaching on the province of the choir-boys, who have now united, and form a fine and powerful chorus, less picturesque perhaps than the Druidical chorus in the first act of Norma, but quite as religious in its effect. After which comes a hymn, executed by a soprano, who is really a deserving little girl, and whom I little expected to find doing the leading business in a first-class church, when I first saw her in the chorus at the Stadt Theatre, seven years ago. MARGARET, warned by experience, does not venture to interfere ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... slender twig, and in a moment both are gone. Then, as if by a preconcerted signal, the throats are all atune. I lie on my back with eyes half closed, and analyze the chorus of Warblers, Thrushes, Finches, and Flycatchers; while, soaring above all, a little withdrawn and alone, rises the divine soprano of the Hermit. That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpractised ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... the frequency of waves reaching the ear are greater or fewer. Familiar low pitches are the left-hand strings of a piano; the larger ones of stringed instruments generally; bass voices; and large bells. Familiar high pitches are right-hand piano strings; smaller ones of other stringed instruments; soprano voices; small bells; and the voices of ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... beautiful palace, and straightway a rosy bengal light lit up the carvings of the fairy-like facade with a magical effect. The band, lurking melodramatically under the gleaming arches of the barge, struck up a prelude, and presently a soprano voice rose high and strong above the wind and stringed instruments, ringing superbly out across the water. The fantastic impression of the scene was so strong that it seemed as if the visible brilliance of the shining lights had entered into the voice itself, giving it a weird and uncanny splendour. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... Gethsemane in St. Matthew in the Gospel which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), the ugliness of the women, &c. &c. And meanwhile the fat pink profile perdu, the toupe of grey hair like powder of a colossal soprano sways to and fro fatuously over the gold grating ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... comparative perfection attained in the orchestra is through the very consummate manner in which he "raises the wind"; the gentleman who manipulates upon its keys may think he is the primum mobile in the matter; the soprano may fancy she is the life of the whole concern; the heavy bass or the chief tenor may respectively lay claim to the honour; but the fact is, its amongst the lot, so that there may be a general rubbing on the question ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... bobbed her suspiciously yellow head and smiled provocatively. Martin fled to the cloak-rack near the door. Hurriedly he donned top-coat and hat. Until he finally closed the front door behind him, a tinny wail poured out of the little parlor and assailed his ears, a reedy soprano declaiming passionately that she had raised no son of hers ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... all seated, when the choir, with Tremendous K. at their head, came hurrying down the aisle, and took their places in seats beside the pulpit. Joanna Falls was leading soprano, by virtue of a voice of peculiar strength and carrying power, Gavin Grant, who had the best baritone voice in the countryside, led the boys, and Minnie McKenzie, whose father was an elder, and Martha Henderson, Tremendous K.'s sister, ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... the mountain slope in a bell-like soprano. Why should a bell-like soprano call the name of the old Irish king in this remote wilderness? Was there witchery at work? Was the bear merely a part of the phantasmagoria of ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... account Neewa turned tail to the nest and ran. Miki was not a hair behind him. In every square inch of his tender hide he felt the red-hot thrust of a needle. It was Neewa that made the most noise. His voice was one continuous bawl, and to this bass Miki's soprano wailing added the touch which would have convinced any passing Indian that the loup-garou devils ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... Kadijah in contrapuntal treatment. Omar, the father of another maiden who is to be Mahomet's concubine, follows Abubekir's example; he and his daughter join in to form a quintette. The girl Ayesha is first soprano, Hafsa second soprano; Abubekir is ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail of water on her to make her let go, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every eardrum; patting From muffled tympani ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of the clouds, the eastern slopes of the mountains donned their royal purple, the intervening shadows of valleys making the folds of their robes. As they approached the shore the resonant song of the robins blended with the human voices. Burt, however, heard only Amy's girlish soprano, and saw but the pearl of her teeth through her parted lips, the rose in her cheeks, and the snow ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of twelve, securing such musical instruction as she could. In 1834, she made her first appearance in opera and scored a tremendous success. A splendid career seemed opening before her, when suddenly, a few months later, her voice, strained by the soprano parts which had been, assigned ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... decoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral of Terra Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice of Guadagni, the soprano for whom Gluck had written Che faru senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... blameworthy. Once in a while, it is true, he takes a perch and sings; but for the most part he is contented with a few simple notes, having no semblance of a tune. Possibly he holds that his pure contralto voice (I do not remember ever to have heard from him any note of a soprano, or even of a mezzo-soprano quality) ought by itself to be a sufficient distinction; but I think it likelier that his slight attempt at music is only one manifestation of the habitual reserve which, more than anything ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... melodies very prettily, went to the piano and gave them "Maryland" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and was heartily applauded. Mary Lou was finally persuaded to sing Tosti's "Farewell to Summer," in a high, sweet, self-conscious soprano. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... earlier in life the castration takes place. A number of secondary sexual characters remain undeveloped. The beard does not grow; in many instances a thick panniculus adiposus is formed; there are changes in the growth of the bones; the voice remains a soprano; and the other reproductive organs are imperfectly developed, the penis and the prostate remaining comparatively small An early castration does not, of course, result in the obliteration of all differences between the male and the female; we must rather say that a part only of the typical ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... got a case; Her voice is such a sweet soprano; Her people come from Northern Thrace; You ought to hear her play piano. If she would like my suicide— If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing, Me for a glass of cyanide, ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... her hands over her ears as if to keep from hearing her own shrill scream. It reached out into pure soprano range. ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... the Innisfield Presbyterian Church one Sunday morning a month later. And Miss Philura Rice—as was afterward remarked—sang the words with such enthusiasm and earnestness that her high soprano soared quite above all the other voices in the choir, and this despite the fact that Miss Electa Pratt was putting forth her nasal contralto with more than ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... their inclination for music is very great, and they make instruments. There are good singers among them, and these have positions, with a fitting salary attached, in all the churches, from the cathedral to the poorest ministry; and thus they are being trained, from the time when they sing soprano. They are fond of verses and representations. They are excellent translators, and can translate a Spanish comedy with elegance into verses of their own language. And thus, although all, both men and women, are fond ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... who were musicians, were anxious to meet the famous dramatic soprano, Lilli Lehmann, who was living quietly in one of the suburbs of the city. Notes were exchanged, and on a certain day we were bidden to come, out of the regular hours for ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... that young person one of my happy discoveries;" said the old gentleman, complacently. "She possesses, I don't hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes electrified me. I said to myself; ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... started. Fra Domenico at the foot of the altar had pattered through the Confiteor, his deep voice responded to by the soprano of the ministering page. The Kyrie was being uttered when the attention of the congregation was attracted by the sound of steps approaching the chapel door to the accompaniment of an ominous clank of steel. The men rose in a body, fearing treachery, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... for equal work. In the highest forms of work women compete on equal terms. In literature women are paid, for books or articles, the same prices that men receive. In art this is true. It is the picture or statue or musical ability that counts. Singers receive as much for the soprano as for the tenor voice. Actresses are paid according to "drawing" power, and woman dancers and acrobats, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... the same house. But then Kitty Tynan was as fond of singing as a canary, and relieved her feelings constantly by this virtuous and becoming means, with her good contralto voice. She was indeed a creature of contradictions; for if ever any one should have had a soprano voice it was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... voices are so near the dividing line that it requires wide experience and a fine ear for quality on the part of a teacher to determine in what direction they should be developed to greatest advantage. A fine ear may determine that the seeming mezzo is a true soprano, that the notes of the pupil who comes as a baritone have the tenor quality and that his scale safely can be added to, while the would-be tenor has the baritone timbre which will prevent his notes from ever ringing out with the true tenor quality. Yes, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... stepped to her side. Gratitude for his darling's deliverance filled his heart. Turning to him, she put one arm around his shoulders. His throaty tenor joined the caroling soprano. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the leaders; falsetto notes, high and strident, savage and shrilling, piercing the thrumming diapason of the men; long, droning tones like bagpipes, bubbling sounds like water flowing; and all in perfect time. The clear, fascinating false soprano of the woman leader had a cadence of ecstasy, and I marked her under a lamp. Her head was thrown back, her eyes were closed, and her features set as in a trance. Her throat and mouth moved, and her nostrils quivered, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... It was Bea's best soprano, with several extra trills strewn between the consonants. "Listen to the mocking-bird. Oh, the mocking-bird is singing on the bough. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... after each service of much divided opinion. Opinion was divided because the choir was divided—separated, in fact, into several small, select cliques, each engaged in deadly and bitter feud with the rest. When the moon-eyed soprano arose, with a gentle flutter, and opened her charming mouth in solo, her friends settled themselves in their pews with a general rustle of satisfaction, while the friends of the contralto exchanged civilly significant glances; and on the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... distance apart from them, started the air for their parting hymn. The girl was not thinking of herself and so was unconscious that the others, even while singing, were also listening with surprise and pleasure to the clear, rounded tones of her beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. In reality Esther Clark was thinking only of Betty and the news that Dick Ashton had just told her. Mr. Ashton, his father, had been taken ill in Italy and, though there was no immediate danger, might never be well again. For the present ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... christened as a shadowy ghost, or a royal symbol. The veriest urchin steers her, with a little fat hand on the heavy tiller twelve feet long, and a hunch of good rye-bread in his other fist. Now and then he sings out in a thin soprano, "Fayther, boat's a'ead," and his father, (hidden below), answers deep-toned, from the cabin, "Keep 'er away, lad." From him I asked, "How old is your boy?" and the parent's head popped up to see, but it was the child that smartly answered, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... and raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang "counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the mountains—ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... to a sunny ending. Fancy our own dear Pollyanna, the glad girl, adopted by an aunt in "Crime and Punishment." Even Dostoyevsky must have laid down his doleful pen to give her at last a happy wedding—flower-girls and angel-food, even a shrill soprano behind the hired palms and a ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... of the Ancient Mariner as to the cause of the delay. Much sailing in all weathers in the keen air of the northern lakes had ruined Captain McTavish's voice, which, at best, had never been intended for any part but a high soprano. And now it was almost inaudible with anger. It ill became the dignity of a sea captain to be thus publicly berated in ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... too, pleases my sense of the fitness of things. It cannot soften the woe of the people who are disinclined to the giving away of money, and the cheerful givers need no encouragement. For my part, I like to sit, quite undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate the amount of the collection ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... facial expression. In this time of affliction he found Isabel an ever-increasing comfort to him. Side by side they would sit, and the old man's face would lose its drawn look, and light up, as her clear young soprano pealed out over the din, urging this player to shoot, that to kick some opponent in the face; or describing the referee in no uncertain terms as a reincarnation of ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... from the restfulness of the haven. However that may have been, such intrusion was never resented; my Swedish prima donna, or my qualifications as a basso profondo, or a brass-bandsman, were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... consideration of being educated, and maintained, and paid a certain amount, is bound, legally bound, to devote her services to a master for a given time. The impresario of the 'Fenice' had often heard from travellers of that wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which was captivating all Rome, where the beauty and grace of the singer were extolled not less loudly. The great skill of these astute providers for the world's pleasure is evidenced in nothing more remarkably than the instinctive quickness with which they pounce ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... said of him that he is volatile; that he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a dreamer, looking for guidance to the traditions of mediaeval knighthood; ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... ceiling like the flanges of a fan; now and then a couple of men passing just under her window roused her with their deep voices, or a tired child's voice rose up above the patter of footsteps like a bird's pipe in the night. Cats squalled and snarled, and fled up the street; a soprano voice floated out on the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... home from singing school—she warbled like a bird. A sweeter voice than hers for song or speech I never heard. She was soprano in the choir, and I a solemn bass, And when we unisoned our voices filled that holy place; The tenor and the alto never had the slightest chance, For Mary's upper register made every heart-string dance; And, as for me, I shall not brag, ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... minor trials of her life. She had been thoroughly trained in Paris, under a master who had prophesied great things for her; now her hours at the Rainhams' tinkly piano, playing dreary accompaniments to sentimental songs with Mrs. Rainham's weak soprano wobbling and flattening on the high notes, were hours of real distress, from which she would escape feeling her teeth on edge. Her stepmother, however, had thoroughly enjoyed herself since the discovery that no accompaniment ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... speculations as to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before—the unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that up to this time ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Columbian Fair in Chicago when the tired passengers were suddenly surprised and charmed by the music of this melody. A young Christian man and woman, husband and wife, had begun to sing "My Jesus, I love Thee." Their voices (a tenor and soprano) were clear and sweet, and every one of the company sat up to listen with a look of mingled admiration and relief. Here was something, after all, to make a long journey less tedious. They sang all the four verses and paused. There was no clapping ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... will ever be. So I introduced him to Nettie and asked if he had this here song on a phonograph record. He had. He had it on two records. 'One by a barytone gentleman, and one by a mezzo-soprano,' says Wilbur. I set myself back for both. He also had it with variations on one of these punched rolls. He played that for us. It took him three minutes to get set right at the piano and to dust his fingers with a white silk handkerchief which he wore up his sleeve. And he ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!" "Amen!" trilled the soprano ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... five-and-twenty he had purchased a Gainsborough, and at thirty he had spent a large sum of money in exhuming some sonatas of Bach from the dust in which they were lying. At three-and-thirty he had wrecked the career of a fashionable soprano by inspiring her with the belief that she might become a great singer, a great artist; at five-and-thirty Bayreuth and its world of musical culture and ideas had interested him in spite of his unconquerable ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... my songs, thus far, has called for one. An obbligato? Never so much honored. No, indeed. Why, to me it would seem almost like singing with an orchestra. Imagine a 'cello. Imagine a flute—still I'm not a soprano going mad. Or imagine a saxophone; ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... together, yes?" She smiled down into Doris' piquant, freckled little face, and just at this moment there came from the living-room, where Helen was dusting, Dinorah's Shadow Song, sung in a clear, girlish soprano. ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Olivetan monk, published at Venice his L'Organo suonarino, a work "useful and necessary to organists,"—thus runs the title-page. At the end of the volume there are some pieces, vocal and instrumental (a Concerto for soprano or tenor, with organ, a Fantasia, Ricercata, etc.), among which are to be found two sonatas, the one entitled, "Prima Sonata, doppio soggietto," the other "Seconda Sonata, soggietto triplicato." They are written out in open score of four staves, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... be made to understand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... small, nearly unheard-of, German town. And so personal force, musical genius, business talent, education, and general brain power went to the making of a man who hobnobbed with dukes and kings, who ruled musical England with an iron rule, who threatened to throw distinguished soprano ladies from windows, and was threatened with never an action for battery in return, who went through the world with a regal gait, and was, in a word, the most astonishing lord of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... from the Sea," we have the further step from monochrome to polychrome; we have the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the sky, the blue in the sea, and the red in the figures in the boats,—as in a vocal trio we have the only three possible musical sounds of the human voice, the soprano, the basso, and the falsetto of the child's voice. All these colors are distinctly asserted and perfectly harmonized in a most exquisite play of tints, but it is still no more like Nature than the trio in "I Puritani" is like conversation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... hemispherical kettles of dye-stuffs or soap, swinging from poles over open fires in the yard; they spread out long webs of jeans and linen on the grass to dry or bleach, and all the while they sang—sang the measured rhythm of familiar hymns in the high soprano of white women—sang wild, plaintive lyrics in the liquid contralto of negresses. Men were repairing fences, and doing other Winter work in the fields, and from the woods came the ringing staccato of choppers. She met on the road leisurely-traveling negro women, who louted low ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... unconsciously trained by constant contact with her former owners, were of very creditable quality. She possessed a genuine talent for expressing herself neatly. For example, in describing a concert to which she had been taken, she praised the soprano singer's voice with much discrimination, winding up with, "It was—how shall I say it?— round—as round—as round ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... peerless prima donna, with a voice which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out, by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in fantasias rather ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... attraction for Dicky Graham, anyway?" the soprano voice queried. "She's a good seven years older than he is, and both her past and her youth are rather frayed at the ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... running feet became audible in the kitchen above, while bass voices were added to the shrill soprano that had sounded the former tocsin. The men had arrived from the stables. The burglar and the ghost regarded each other for a moment of suspended breathing; their mutual danger drew them together. Patty hesitated an instant, while she studied ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Little Kensington into the gardens, and, placing her carefully in the corner of a bench, would retire to a short distance and pretend to be absorbed in a book, while her sharp eyes kept up the watch for a long-haired tenor, or a beautifully dressed soprano, who should suddenly rush out from the bushes and ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... having freed their minds from sectarian prejudices, they recognized beauty and genius wherever found, and did not care what church or creed they had served, so that they found the gift of beauty from the infinite Father to man in them. With one glorious soprano voice and boundless talent, how much of joy was added to the circle! How we revelled in the choice creations of the masters of harmony, and how, slowly but surely, the missing link that was wanting ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... if the tenor always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... as I was able to judge, baritone voices were the most prevalent; in female voices, soprano. Their typical songs were chiefly performed in a chorus by men only, although once or twice I heard solos—which, nevertheless, always had a refrain for the chorus. The Bororos sang in fair harmony more than in unison, keeping regular time, and with occasional ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... not, in the days gone by, been excluded from the social life of the town, such as it was, and she had had her beaus, such as they were. Sometimes she wondered how the choir in the Presbyterian church had progressed since she, once the mezzo-soprano soloist, had resigned to sing lullabys to a nameless child, if Andrew Daney still walked on the tips of his shoes when he passed the collection-plate, and if the mortgage on the church had ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... short pants you speak about. I can't stand bein' laughed at, Mr. Gray. It comes hard to stand up in a class along with a bunch of children and make mistakes and have a little boy in a lace collar and spring heels snap his fingers and sing out in a sweet soprano, 'Oh, tee-cher!' Then have him show you up. They put me in with a lot of nursin' babes. What the hell? I weigh a hundred and ninety ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... her handkerchief like Lady Gusto, as if she expected a miserable cavalier servente to be constantly upon his knees; or giving those odious expressive looks, which quite destroy my nerves whenever I am under the same roof as that horrible Lady Soprano. There is a little too much talk, to be sure, about Roman churches, and newly-discovered mosaics, and Abbate Maii, but still we cannot expect perfection. There are reports going about that Ernest Clay is either ruined or ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde's stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, Early Victorian type ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... left. Sometimes, for a joke, I kill Sparrows and take their nest! Or make myself a home in a dove-cote—only I never seem to stay there long, for the Doves tell tales about me. I can sing a little, too; I have a high soprano voice ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, with such a voice as that!" she cried; "you are out of your senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful to keep ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... the Doxology." Then, pulling out his pitch-pipe from the dusty cushions of his seat, he would strut pompously down the church, ascend the stairs leading to the west gallery, blow his pipe, and give the basses, tenors, and soprano voices their notes, which they hung on to in a low tone until the clerk returned to his place in the lowest tier of the "three-decker" and started the choir-folk vigorously. Those Doxologies at the end! What a trouble they were! You could find ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... prisoners of war on the same principle that caponizing is resorted to for our kitchens,—the prisoners were easier to fatten and were more tender when cooked. The Italians allowed their children to be eunuchized for chorister purposes in church services, their soprano voices after this treatment being simply perfect. It was considered that, in the year prior to the papal ordinance of Pope Clement XVI forbidding the practice or the employment of eunuchs in choirs, four thousand boys, mostly in the neighborhood of Rome, were ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien. Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... preacher harangued by the hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, not always of a churchly nature, and emphasized by gestures which were more forceful than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... her cloak from the attendant, and in helping her to put it on, touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and felt her shiver. The words of one of Schumann's songs was borne to them on Mary Dyce's passionate soprano, Ich kann's nicht ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... about five seconds; then a slow, sweet, solemn utterance of the holy name in a tone as of meditative wonder; then another pause; then another wild, rich, passionate warble. Could you see him, you would marvel how so powerful and penetrating a soprano could ripple from so minute a throat; for he is one of the very tiniest of all feathered singers, yet his chant can be heard far across the broad river, and children going to school pause daily on the bridge, a whole cho away, to listen ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and low notes, soft notes and shrill notes, all travel at the same rate. If bass notes traveled faster or slower than soprano notes, or if the delicate tones of the violin traveled faster or slower than the tones of a drum, music would be practically impossible, because at a distance from the source of sound the various tones which should be in unison would be out of time—some ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... attractions as our party ever knew:— The fine hotel, the landlord, and the lordly bill of fare, And the dainty-neat completeness of the pretty waiters there; The touch on the piano in the parlor, and the trill Of the exquisite soprano, in our fancy singing still; Our cozy room, its comfort, and our thousand grateful tho'ts, And at our door the gentle face Of ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... written under inspiration by evangelists and prophets. It has stood the bombardment of ages, but with the result of more and more proof of its being a book divinely written and protected." "Science and Revelation are the bass and soprano of the same tune," he said. He defied the attempts of the loud-mouthed orators to destroy belief in the Bible. "I compare such men as Ingersoll, in their attacks on the Bible, to a grasshopper upon a railway-line with the express coming ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... was a little disconcerting. He found her at the piano, singing in her pathetic mezzo-soprano a song that used to he a favorite of Tyson's. The selection was another freak; it was the first time Louis had heard her sing that song since ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... were greatly ornamented with pictures and gilding, but the most attractive part of the Russian service is the singing, particularly at the Vespers, when the boys taking the soprano parts, accompanied by some most extraordinary deep bass tones of the men, swelling and filling the entire cathedral; all this, with occasional recitations from their sacred books, without any knowledge of their contents, excited in us the most ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... seems when this allotment was made out, There chanced to be an odd male, and odd female, Who (after some discussion and some doubt, If the soprano might be deemed to be male, They placed him o'er the women as a scout) Were linked together, and it happened the male Was Juan,—who, an awkward thing at his age, Paired off with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... admirably fitting doeskin gloves, bowed with great gravity and perfect self-possession. The hisses thereupon suddenly faded into piercing entreaties for a speech, in which a gallery lady with a powerful soprano voice became notorious as the leader. But the Jaeger author was not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu, and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring company. The ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... later by the high notes of a celebrated Metropolitan soprano, who had consented to exchange a few of her liquid notes for Goldwin ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... Mrs. Lee as matron rendered my services no longer necessary. Very pleasant memories cluster about the room in the court-house at Ringgold assigned to my special use. I often seem to hear once more the sweet music of "General Blandner's lute," sometimes accompanied by the clear soprano of Mrs. Gamble, sometimes by our blended voices. I remember as distinctly as if it were only yesterday the kindly faces and cheerful voices that smiled upon and greeted me as I ran in from the wards ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... her individual voice. How pretty she was! He sipped his coffee. Then came a zither solo—that abominable instrument of plucked wires, with its quiver of a love-sick clock about to run down; this parody of an aeolian harp always annoyed Krayne, and he was glad when the man finished. A stout soprano in a velvet bodice, her arms bare and brawny, the arms of a lass accustomed to ploughing and digging potatoes, sang something about turtle doves. She was odious. Odious, too, was her companion, in a duo through which they screamed and rumbled—"Verlassen bin i." At last she came out ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... quality was a genuine love for music. He could play any sort of instrument; and had besides a wonderfully sweet high soprano voice, which he was always ready to use for the pleasure of his friends. That promised many a happy night around the camp-fire, when once the Silver Fox Patrol had ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... with the calm self-confidence of a connoisseur. "Tell me, have you composed anything for a woman's voice, for a mezzo-soprano?" ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... day. Busy, busy, busy ..." sounded suddenly from the street in Ellen's thin soprano. Doctor June looked down at her, his expression scarcely changing, because it was always serenely soft. But the young clergyman saw with amazement the strange little figure with her unbound hair and her arms high ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... that she kept up her singing, for October 28, 1730, he wrote of his family, "They are one and all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can already form a concert, both vocal and instrumental, of my own family, particularly as my present wife sings a very clear soprano and my ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and came forward in response to the light keeper's command. She looked at the chair by the ancient parlor organ and announced: "Yes, indeed, it'll do real well, thank you, Cap'n Jethro." Her voice was a sharp soprano with liquid gurgles in it—"like pourin' pain-killer out of a bottle," this last still another quotation from the book ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... performance was Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment," beautifully sung by members of the regular company. But somehow the spectacle of a fat soprano nearing forty in the role of the twelve-year-old vivandiere, although impressive, was not sublime. A third of the audience were soldiers. In the front row of the top balcony were a number of wounded. Their bandaged heads rested against the rail. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to so mean a subterfuge as that, and to this day that manager believes that the reason SPIFFKINS abused him is because he refused his play! Sometimes SPIFFKINS threw a little light on subjects that were generally misunderstood. For instance, he said that NILSSON was a "charming mezzo-soprano," and declared that "RIP VAN WINKLE" was a more delightful translation from the French than had been seen for many a day. Occasionally SPIFFKINS eked out his salary by writing letters to the provincial press. In this respect he was invaluable, because his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... was new to me, evidently Brewer's sparrow. Its favorite resort was in the low bushes growing on the border of the mesa and along the edge of the cliff. Its song was unique, the opening syllable running low on the alto clef, while the closing notes constituted a very respectable soprano. A few extremely shy sparrows flitted about in the thickets of a hollow as we began our descent, and I have no doubt ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... first introduction to German music," said he, "and that it was grand old Johann Sebastian Bach whom you heard. That is one of the soprano solos in ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... contralto. An unknown solitary woman with a pale face walked through the room. The women followed with keen eyes the faded blue dress which was stretched upon a meagre body. Someone said that she was Madam Glynn, the soprano. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... was a pleasant one for Adelaide, being an earnest of the future for which, if she had not worked hard, she had controlled much. Edgar sang solos to her accompaniment, and put in his rich baritone to her pure if feeble soprano; he played chess with her for an hour, and praised her play, as it deserved: naturally, not thinking it necessary to make love to his sisters, he paid her almost exclusive attention, and looked the admiration he felt. She really was a very pretty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... terrible: SLUKER fired at everybody. MIDDLERIB hit him with the music stool. The soprano was thrown over the railing, and somebody turned ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... over this table was a copy of Camille Roqueplan's picture: "The Lion in Love." In the recess near the window was a piano open, and evidently just abandoned by a woman; the little stool was half-overturned by catching in the dress of some one suddenly rising, and the music open was a soprano air from Puritani:— ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... such thing. She jes likes to hear me sing. You're crazy!" The tramp-boy's young voice had its fashion of breaking and shrilling into a high soprano, like a girl's, for emphasis; he was as red as a beet, and he put his foot back in the stirrup, thrust out his under jaw and looked at the stirrup as though he had to determine how much wood had gone into its making. Again Bruce was ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... unwinking eyes men saw calmly looking out a strong, deep nature, not observed before. He joined his mother and brother in the last hymn. Everybody knew the Ridgeleys could sing. They carried the burden of the grand and simple old tune nearly alone. The fine mezzo-soprano of the mother, the splendid tenor of Morris, and the rich baritone of Bart, in their united effect, had never been equalled in the hearing of that assembly. The melody was a sweet and fitting finale of the day, swelling ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... listened to the first few night sounds of the foothills. The clear piping notes of migrating plover floated softly down to him, punctuated by the rasping cry of a nighthawk. A coyote raised his voice, a perfect tenor note that swept up to a wild soprano, then fell again in a whirl of howls which carried amazing shifts of inflection, tearing up and down the coyote scale. One after another added his voice to the chorus until it seemed that the swelling ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... as if hoping to lighten their labours—lovers of music as these people are—a shrill, musical, woman's voice arose, starting a familiar chorus, which was taken up directly by the young, to rise and fall and swell along the valley, the sweet soprano tones supported by the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... meals, and music could be obtained. Other places were picture theatres, and the "Kursaal" and "Casino" where variety entertainments were given nightly—mostly by French artists. Some very good turns were to be seen at the Kursaal, the popular favourite being a soprano, Mimi Pinson, who could bring the house down by her rendering of "Two Eyes of Grey." At the Casino the audience sat about at tables and consumed cool drinks whilst listening to or watching the performers on the stage. The feminine element predominated here, and there was an air of friendliness ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... finished there was the stir which always marks, in a gathering of people, a high pitch of feeling. Then someone sang, clear, soprano notes that drifted through the room and mingled with the spring gladness. The air was fragrant with the sweetness of the blossoms which decked the big room; through the long windows came the freshness of the June world outside. It was a day, an hour, sacred to the rites ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott |
