"Improvisation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proved that the 'furie francaise' is not the exclusive right of the stronger sex. In this jumble of grave, wild, and sad notes, Gerfaut recognized, by the clearness of touch and brilliancy of some of the passages, that this improvisation could not come from Aline's unpractised fingers. He understood that the piano must be at this moment Madame de Bergenheim's confidant, and that she was pouring out the contradictory emotions in which she had indulged for several ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... any too violent attack upon the Teutonic bandits would arouse protests which might injure our cause. I, being no orator, had only my poor written speech, which, as I could not alter it, became dangerous. It was necessary to prepare the ground. Destree mounted the platform and, in a masterly improvisation, began by establishing a long, patient and scholarly parallel between Flemish and Italian art, between the great painters of Florence and Venice and those of Flanders and Brabant; and thence, by imperceptible degrees, he shifted his ground to the present distress in Belgium, to the atrocities and ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and maintained her rights, not only by physical force, but by intellectual superiority as well. The poetesses of the Arabs are numerous, and some of them hold a high rank. Their poetry was impromptu, impassioned, and chiefly of the elegiac and erotic type. The faculty of improvisation was cultivated even by the most barbarous tribes, and although such of their poetry as has been preserved is mostly a kind of rhymed prose, it often contains striking and beautiful thoughts. They called improvised poetry "the daughter of ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... can do their best only on great occasions. Our brown thrush, for instance, is a magnificent singer, albeit he is not of the best school, being too "sensational" to suit the most exacting taste. His song is a grand improvisation: a good deal jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... in her salon, holding in her hand a little green branch; and her words have an ardor quite peculiar to her; it is impossible to interrupt her. At these times she produces on one the effect of an improvisation." ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... magnificent conceit of the male in his understanding of the female character was sufficiently developed to cause him to welcome the improvisation which he had just heard. Perhaps that was the way it had been. Of course that was the way it had been. What a fool he had been not to understand. He cast his eyes repeatedly toward the house. He managed to ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... people they are passionate, vain, susceptible, and endowed with a reckless bravery and contempt of death. The Malays have considerable originality in versification. The pantoum is particularly theirs—a form arising from their habits of improvisation and competitive versifying. They have also the epic or sjair, generally a pure romance, with much naive simplicity and natural feeling. And finally, they have the popular song, enigma, ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... third reason remains which tends to confuse the student as to what really constituted opera. This is owing to the fact that there existed the very important element of improvisation, of which ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... thousand-odd plays—or was it twelve thousand?—is by no means an isolated instance. Perhaps the strong sense of individual validity, which makes Spain the most democratic country in Europe, sanctions the constant improvisation, and accounts for the confident planlessness as common in Spanish architecture as in Spanish ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... Lope de Vega was in proportion to his rare powers. For the forty or fifty years that he wrote, nobody else was willingly heard upon the stage, and his dramas were performed in France, Italy, and even in Constantinople. His extraordinary talent was nearly allied to improvisation, and it required but a little more indulgence of his feeling and fancy to have made him not only an improvisator, but the most remarkable one that ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Mr. Britling's eyes of red flannel petticoats being torn up in a rapid improvisation of soldiers to resist a sudden invasion. Passing washerwomen suddenly requisitioned. But one must not let oneself be laughed out of good intentions because of ridiculous accessories. The idea at any rate was the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... take drama with any seriousness, as an art as well as an improvisation, we shall realise that one of its main requirements is that it should make pictures. That is the lesson of Bayreuth, and when one comes away, the impression which remains, almost longer than the impression of the music itself, is that grave, regulated motion of the actors. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... conditions were that he should be able to read music at sight. This he could not do, and his utter incapacity was tested at the Mahlcasten, before a crowd of artists, by the conductor. Barty failed signally, amid much laughter; and he impudently sang quite a little tune of his own, an improvisation. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... fibrous mezzo-soprano; and the music she sang, half chant, half melody, was evidently an improvisation. The words were the exquisite song which ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... we have let the gift of lyric improvisation die out. Sitting islanded on some gray peak above the encompassing wood, the soul is lifted up to sing the Iliad of the pines. They have no voice but the wind, and no sound of them rises up to the high places. But the waters, the evidences of their power, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... his improvisation the Caliph was pleased by it and marvelled at the eloquence of his tongue and the sweetness of his speech,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... am not concerned with the rights and wrongs of that controversy; my point is only that William James, in this genial evolutionary view of the world, has given a rude shock to the genteel tradition. What! The world a gradual improvisation? Creation unpremeditated? God a sort of young poet or struggling artist? William James is an advocate of theism; pragmatism adds one to the evidences of religion; that is excellent. But is not the cool abstract piety of the genteel getting more than it ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... possesses of itself all beauty and poetry, and the power of expressing them. Spirit, 89:21 God, is heard when the senses are silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The influence or action of Soul confers a freedom, which explains the phe- 89:24 nomena of improvisation and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... "carry away" his body of players as well as his audience, the former to a unanimously acted improvisation, the latter to a unanimously felt emotion, needs above all "commanding personal magnetism," and everything else must be ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... the dancers promenaded he'd switch to a new improvisation, ending in a whirlwind of wit and telling personalities, which sent the company into hysterical laughter. I joined in the dance, rather gawkily no doubt, for my mother's father was a Quaker preacher and we had never been allowed to dance at home. The ladies regarded ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... secured some thin stakes and thrust them through the wire netting to form a support to a large blanket. With this he thought that perhaps a little shelter might be obtained. We crowded beneath this precarious protection, but the first blast of the gale which swept the field after its improvisation, whisked the blanket and the stakes into the air. They were ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... regulated by a scenario to the formal learning of parts falls within the historical period of the German stage. It seems probable that the romantic playwrights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both in England and in Spain, may have adopted a method not unlike that of the drama of improvisation, that is to say, they may have drawn out a scheme of entrances and exits, and then let their characters discourse (on paper) as their fancy prompted. So, at least, the copious fluency of their dialogue seems to suggest. But the typical modern play ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... a soft mingling of chords she began with a little ripple of melody, MacDowell's lovely, hurrying, buoyant "Improvisation," with its aeolian vibrancies, its light, bright surges of sound, sinking at the last into cradled restfulness. Without pause or transition she passed on to Grieg; the wistful, remote appeal of the strangely ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... clumsily. Individual taste must be judge of his success in these experiments. Sometimes the ear is worried by an attempt to trace the logic of the rhymes which are concealed by the rough jolting of the metre. Sometimes he makes no attempt to repeat the first verse, but continues in irregular improvisation. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... is the Spanish love for the improvisation of well-turned couplets; in olden days a skilful verse might procure the poet a dress of cloth-of-gold, and it did on one occasion actually raise a beggar-maid to a royal throne: even now it has power to secure the lover his lady's most tender smiles, or at the worst a glass ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... and raised his hat as he walked toward it, to enter that way instead of by the door. He blushed too, and certainly looked as foolish as a young man of some wit and self-possession can be expected to look, as he walked in with a roll of music in his hand, and said, with an air of hesitating improvisation,— ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the grass, like a frightened fairy army put to rout by the onslaught of the recent shower. A blackbird, whose cheery note suggested melodious memories drawn from the heart of the quiet country, was whistling a lively improvisation on the bough of a chestnut-tree, whereof the brown shining buds were just bursting into leaf,—and Alwyn, whose every sense was pleasantly attuned to the small, as well as great, harmonies of nature, paused for a moment to listen to the luscious piping of the feathered minstrel, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... several weeks, he took to going out again and seeing other men, while none of his friends, except Georges, had any suspicion of what had happened, the daimon of improvisation pursued him still. It would take possession of Christophe just when he was least expecting it. One evening, at Colette's, Christophe sat down at the piano and played for nearly an hour, absolutely surrendering himself, and forgetting that the room ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... succeeds. The old Dutch painter cherished with a kind of piety his colours and pencils. Antony Watteau, on the contrary, will hardly make any preparations for his work at all, or even clean his palette, in the dead-set he makes at improvisation. 'Tis the contrast perhaps between the staid Dutch genius and the petulant, sparkling French temper of this new era, into which he has thrown himself. Alas! it is already apparent that the result also loses something ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... of Campania, and often mentioned as Osci Ludi. These were more honourable than the other kinds, inasmuch as they were performed by the young nobles, wearing masks, and giving the reins to their power of improvisation. Teuffel (L. L. S 9) considers the subjects to have been "comic descriptions of life in small towns, in which the chief personages gradually assumed a fixed character." In the period of which we are now treating, i.e. before the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... unadvisedly and unconsciously; if he failed it was because he knew no better. You feel that as you read. The freshness and fun of Pickwick—a comic middle- class epic, so to speak—seem mainly due to high spirits; and perhaps that immortal book should be described as a first improvisation by a young man of genius not yet sure of either expression or ambition and with only vague and momentary ideas about the duties and necessities of art. But from Pickwick onwards to Edwin Drood the effort ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... pure and simple, is the most popular, because the easiest, in which even the Prophet was caught napping sometimes, at the dangerous risk of following the perilous leadership of Imru 'l-Kays. It is the metre of improvisation, of ditties, and of numerous didactic poems. In the latter case, when the composition is called Urjuzah, the two lines of every Bayt rhyme, and each Bayt has a rhyme of its own. This is the form in which, for instance, Ibn Malik's Alfiyah is written, as well as the remarkable ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... up my sleeves and armoured myself in a blue gingham apron before invading the realm of Susie Sweetapple, who only knows how to boil things, including the tea. Like a true artist I engaged in an improvisation. The only really bad thing about codfish, Aunt Jennie, is its intrusive quality when it is prepared by the hundreds and thousands of quintals. Otherwise, like eggs and potatoes, it is capable of a multiplicity of avatars. We brought the dish ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... friends and acquaintances, and generally in such a manner that the company had no difficulty in guessing the person intended. On one of these occasions, Franz Ries was persuaded to take his violin and improvise an accompaniment to his friend's improvisation, which he did so successfully, that, long afterwards, he more than once ventured to attempt the same in public, with his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the greatest authority upon English and Scottish balladry, and Professors Gummere, Kittredge and W. M. Hart have emphasized the element of "communal" composition, and illustrated it by many types of song-improvisation among savage races, by sailors' "chanties," and negro "work-songs." It is easy to understand how a singing, dancing crowd carries a refrain, and improvises, through some quick-tongued individual, a new phrase, line or stanza of immediate popular effect; and it is also easy ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... and edited, and they illustrate, most vividly, Beethoven's method of composing: slow, cautious, but invincible in its final effect; an idea frequently being altered as many as twenty times. At the age of twenty-two he was chiefly known as a pianist with wonderful facility in improvisation; his compositions had been insignificant. The next eight years—up to 1800, when Beethoven was thirty—were spent in acquainting himself with the Viennese aristocracy and in building up a public clientele. Then follows the marvellous period ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... but his two balancing palms danced to the beat of the heat of the music's heart; and with heel and toe he danced. And as he danced, he sang, all apant, filling up with nonsense-sounds when the rhythm's imperative tramp outran his improvisation; and singing he danced, and dancing sang: with abdomen and arms he danced, and with toe and heel ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... many deficiencies. Earth, that in France or Gallipoli hid the germs of gangrene and tetanus, here merely produced a mild infection. Lucky for us that we did not need to inject the wounded with tetanus antitoxin. But an added charm was given to our work by the necessity of improvisation. Broken legs were put up in plaster casings with metal interruptions, so that the painful limb might be at rest, and yet the wound be free for daily dressings. The Huns left us plaster of Paris, damp indeed but still serviceable after drying; the corrugated iron roofing of the native jail provided ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... decorous, that evening a week later. He had tried to play an improvisation called "The Battle of San Juan Hill," with a knowledge of the piano limited to the fact that if you struck alternate keys at the same time, there appeared ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... of the second part of the development the performer, exalted, even a little intoxicated with his sense of success, essayed a bit of improvisation considerably more important than the first. This time he ceased absolutely to follow Rubinstein's harmony, and, retaining simply the melody, changed, however, to a minor key, he produced an odd, rhythmical little series of syncopations so rich, so strange, and withal ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... had just come in and was settling himself at the piano, in place of the musicians who had been performing. This was an especial treat not on the programme, and all that was needed in Mary's opinion to complete a heavenly evening. He played the same improvisation that had caught her up in its magic spell the day of her arrival, and she went to her room in the uplifted frame of mind which finds everything perfection. Even her strained relations with Ethelinda seemed a trifle, the tiniest ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Nadab, having been cautioned, commenced one of those surprising feats of improvisation with which he used to charm audiences. He took us all off, and had rhymes pat about all the principal persons in the room: King's pins (which he wore very splendid), Martin's red waistcoat, etc. The Colonel was charmed ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... minor-are the only ones which Occidental music employs, but Indian music outlines 72 THATAS or scales. The musician has a creative scope for endless improvisation around the fixed traditional melody or RAGA; he concentrates on the sentiment or definitive mood of the structural theme and then embroiders it to the limits of his own originality. The Hindu musician does not read set notes; he clothes anew ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... whether you hear a work of Beethoven, Victor Herbert, Schonberg, or Mr Hirsch. If you are 'artistic,' you may choose between a large coloured photograph of the Eiffel Tower, a carbon print of Botticelli, and a reproduction of an 'improvisation' by Herr Kandinsky. You may buy an Elizabethan dining-table, a Graeco-Roman bronze, the latest dress designed by M. Bakst, or a packet of pins. Or you may sit and muse on the life of the employee of this place, who gets from it all that in less favoured civilisations family, guild, club, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... generally. Maria thinks very highly of it." And in another letter he calls it "a little narrative poem." In December, 1848, it was published in a thin volume alone, and at once justified the poet's expectations of popularity. The poem was an improvisation, like that of his "musing organist," for it was written, we are told, almost at a single sitting, entirely within two days. The theme may have been suggested by Tennyson's Sir Galahad, but his familiarity with the old romances and his love of the mystical and symbolic ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless permutations and combinations, each of which alters the tone and pitch of the units that compose it, with fluid ideas that never have an outlined existence until they have found their phrases and the improvisation is complete, is it to be wondered at that the art of style is eternally elusive, and that the attempt to reduce it to rule is the forlorn hope ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... imagination. But when we reached home he sat down to the piano in the dark, and played on and on as if he were pouring out his whole soul in the flood of sweet melody; and when, after an hour of marvellous improvisation, he stopped and said to us, "I couldn't help it: I had to reel off all that I have been seeing and hearing this afternoon," then I was content, for I knew nothing had been thrown away on our friend, and that if he could not talk about it all he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... that picturesque,' he said, pointing to a booth that had been set up by the wayside. On a tiny stage a foot or so from the ground, by the light of a lantern and a few candle ends, a man and a woman were acting some rude improvisation. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... dances, the caleinda and the bl (which latter is accompanied by chanted improvisation) are danced on Sundays to the sound of the drum on almost every plantation in the island. The drum, indeed, is an instrument to which the country-folk are so much attached that they swear by it,— Tambou! being the oath uttered upon all ordinary occasions of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... feeling which pervades many of Emerson's earlier Essays and much of his verse, in these long-treasured reminiscences of the poetical improvisation with which the two boys were thus unexpectedly favored. Governor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... artistic skill, or so vigorous and powerful a genius, as this drama, in which every word, every dialogue, seems to unite the certainty of study and meditation with the fire and naturalness of a happy improvisation, and in which there is not a character nor an allusion which destroys the truth and vigour of the composition, viewed as a faithful mirror of Russian nationality, Russian history, and Russian character. The remainder of Pushkin's short, alas! but laborious life, however filled with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... rose a little in volume now. It was a happy sound, without a recognizable tune, but a gay, wild improvisation as if a violinist, drunk, was remembering snatches of masterpieces, throwing out lovely fragments here and there and filling the intervals out of his own excited fancy. Joan ran to the window, forgetful of the puppy, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... acts on, articulates and organizes the Sound into Speech, and which measures the sound quantitatively, as in Music, is the Scientific Attribute corresponding with Knowledge. The result of these two in combination is the Art of Speech, generally, and Improvisation or Song as the Fine Art of this ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have a Dutch oven. They are not expensive if you can find one to buy. If you cannot find one for sale, see if you cannot improvise one in some way by getting a heavy cover for a deep frying-pan. It would be well to try such an improvisation at home before starting, and learn if it will bake or burn, before ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... great council of the realm, which now became an English parliament; and for the first time since the Norman Conquest men of the subject race were called up to deliberate on national affairs. It does not matter whether this was the stroke of a statesman's genius or the lucky improvisation of a party- leader. Simon fell, but his work remained; Prince Edward, who copied his tactics at Evesham, copied his politics in 1275 and afterwards at Westminster; and under the first sovereign since the Norman Conquest who bore an English name, ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... improvisation," he told the bewildered Watchman. "You have installed a short-range transceiver into the machine, and this headset is a portable transceiver for Dulaq. Now he can sit in his hospital bed and still be ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... Baring was bitterly opposed to General Gordon's appointment. No personal friendship existed between them, and the Administrator dreaded the return to the feverish complications of Egyptian politics of the man who had always been identified with unrest, improvisation, and disturbance. The pressure was, however, too strong for him to withstand. Nubar Pasha, the Foreign Office, the British public, everyone clamoured for the appointment. Had Baring refused to give way, it is probable that he would have been overruled. At ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Marie de' Medici listened as he poured forth in impassioned improvisation lines which from that day to this no one who has ever loved has heard untouched. The actor's training gave to the burning words of the poet artistic expression worthy of the most finished theatrical production, and as such ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... born above all from spontaneity—it is an improvisation. Friendship, on the contrary, is, so to say, built up. It is a sentiment that progresses with circumspection. It is the egoism of the mind, whilst love is the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... uncle and an older brother of Snorky's were on the same floor, but he had not been introduced and his courage failed him. He returned to his room and contemplated the white bed spread, the pillow slips and the muslin curtains in a wild hope that something might lend itself to an improvisation. Then he shook his head mournfully. There was only one way out. To appear properly dressed in this, a strange house, before strangers, he would have to commit a crime! The only way to get a white tie was to steal one. At this moment ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... favourite morsel was the human hand, of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. And when he said good-bye to Mrs. Stevenson, holding her hand, viewing her with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in the falsetto of Marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind a sentimental impression which I try ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... behind the musician's chair muttering in an undertone: "Only one Bach, only one Bach." The King requested the improvisation of a fugue in six parts, which the master did to the astonishment of all present. But for the new instrument Bach had little use. He complimented Silberman on his production, but he found fault with the unequal tones. ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... holidays with us in Fourteenth Street, and I think my first childish conception of the enviable lot, formed amid these associations, was to be so little fathered or mothered, so little sunk in the short range, that the romance of life seemed to lie in some constant improvisation, by vague overhovering authorities, of new situations and horizons. We were intensely domesticated, yet for the very reason perhaps that we felt our young bonds easy; and they were so easy compared to other small plights of which we had stray glimpses that my first assured conception of true ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Chamouni, but they are leaving. To their great regret." I had got up, too; I listened to this statement, and I wondered. I am almost ashamed to mention the subject of my agitation. I asked myself whether this was a sudden improvisation, consecrated by maternal devotion; but this point has never been elucidated. "They are giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you would like them. I would suggest your telegraphing. The weather is glorious," continued Mrs. Church, "and the highest ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... horrible, wierdlike, and tumultuous. And through the very fury of these passages there would start tones of ravishing and gentle beauty—the incense of an adoring heart wafted to the black heavens through the lightnings and lamentations of Nineveh. Again the musician changed the purpose of his improvisation; it was no longer dismal and appalling, it was pathetic. The instrument became, as it were, the organ of sadness, it became eloquent with an inarticulate wo; it was a breast bursting with affliction, a voice broken with sorrow, a soul dissolving with emotions. Then the variable harmonies ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... short life, when, as he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous "Farewell to Life." Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an ode,—and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... were a little group standing at the door—they were just going), in beautiful academic language, and it was most interesting, graphic, and exact. Even W., who knew him well and admired him immensely, was struck by his brilliant improvisation. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... intellectual awakening. Hugh's mother, who had an extraordinary gift for improvisation, began to tell the children stories in the nursery evenings; and these tales of giants and fairies grew to have an extreme fascination for the child; not that he peopled his own world with them, as some imaginative children do; the boy's ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... those thoughts themselves. He wrote little and carefully. He is remarkable for his virtuosity, his harmonious handling of the most varied meters. He never, like Zorrilla, produces the effect of careless improvisation. In the matter of poetic form Espronceda has been the chief inspiration of Spanish poets down to the advent of Rubn Daro. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, with his happy knack of hitting off an author's characteristics ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... source of intense amusement to Harry, who insisted on the recital of detail after detail, until Desiree allowed her memory to take a vacation and substitute pure imagination. Nor was the improvisation much inferior ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... inspiration; as history, superficial and untrue; as morality, enervating and antinomian. The author is assuredly far nearer the mark in another place when he speaks of "that immense improvisation which is the French Revolution" (ii. 35)—an improvisation of which every step can ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... gives a smile to those majestic Lombard buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life and movement. The thought of the artist in its first freshness and vivacity is felt in them. They have all the spontaneity of improvisation, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music. Moulding the supple earth with 'hand obedient to the brain,' the plasticatore has impressed his most fugitive dreams of beauty on it without effort; and what it cost him ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... India has thus proved a great Imperial asset, and in weighing the value of India's contribution to the War it should be remembered that India's forces were no hasty improvisation, but were an army in being, fully equipped and supplied, which had previously cost India annually a ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... dancer once, and he had not entirely neglected the new school of foot improvisation, so different ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... his deep and true family affection. But he was a solitary man for the most part, and mixed with men, involved in a cloud of his own irresistibly fantastic and whimsical talk; for his real gift was half-humorous, half-melancholy improvisation ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... declamation, dissertation, epilogue, allocution, exhortation, disquisition, effusion, descant; harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, rhapsody, philippic, invective, rant; soliloquy, monologue; dialogue; colloquy; trialogue; interlocution; improvisation; toast; equivocation, prevarication, quibbling; ambages, pseudology, amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, extemporization, impromptu, improvise, improvisation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... lyric range, especially so far as tune is concerned, was always narrow. His sense of melody was painfully dull, and some of his lighter effusions, as he would have called them, are almost ludicrously wanting in grace of movement. We cannot expect in a modern poet the thrush-like improvisation, the impulsively bewitching cadences, that charm us in our Elizabethan drama and whose last warble died with Herrick; but Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning have shown that the simple pathos of their music was not irrecoverable, even if the artless poignancy of their ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... detachment that paced the decks of those three ships for two days and nights after the ships arrived in the harbor of Archangel while preparations were being made for the improvisation ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... or concerto should entirely absorb the attention of the student to such a degree that, as he is able to play it, it has become a part of him. He should be able to play it as though it were an improvisation—of course without doing violence to the composer's idea. If he masters the composition in the way it should be mastered it becomes a portion of himself. Before I even take up my violin I study a piece thoroughly in score. I read and reread it ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... eye, fire, the best dough for a husband that heaven has ever kneaded. I will give you five per cent. on the dowry." "Since yesterday," he writes in another letter, "I have given up dowagers and have come down to widows of thirty. Send all you find to Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisation was one of his early noms de plume]; that's enough—he is known at the city limits. Take notice. They are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and they are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't required. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... no direct evidence that he then fixed his vague, tumultuous, youthful impressions in verse. Indeed, the texture and style of the "Pleasures" forbid the thought that it was a hasty improvisation. When nearly eighteen years old, Akenside was sent to Edinburgh, to commence his studies for the pulpit, and received some pecuniary assistance from the Dissenters' Society. One winter, however, served to disgust him with ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... improvisation there ran in the middle voices, like a thread, or cantus firmus, the insignificant notes, wholly insignificant in themselves, which he found on the page of the quartet, which by chance lay open on the music-stand; ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... nature of a recitative without any rhythm, delivered rapidly but distinctly in a croaking and unsteady voice; and if Babalatchi considered it a song, then it was a song with a purpose and, perhaps for that reason, artistically defective. It had all the imperfections of unskilful improvisation and its subject was gruesome. It told a tale of shipwreck and of thirst, and of one brother killing another for the sake of a gourd of water. A repulsive story which might have had a purpose but possessed no moral whatever. Yet it must have pleased Babalatchi ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... universal military service here; if we had even, as I wanted and urged in public, kept a couple of million of rifles in store here, ready for the improvisation of great military forces, Germany, however anxious to strike her blow, would probably have held her hand. We were tempting her to war by our ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... up, and breaking, as she sometimes did, into improvisation, chanted, in the most mournful ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... you the sources of my information! Isn't that like a woman!" she exclaimed. "You see, it did not concern me at all at the time I heard it. I didn't even realize its importance and I didn't hear much," she proceeded, her introduction giving time for improvisation. "You see, Partow was inspecting the premises with Colonel Lanstron. My mother had known Partow in her younger days when my grandfather was premier. We had them both ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the musical talents of the individual on Mars the pupil is impressed with the necessity of expressing the true self, and the original improvisation or composition is the method by which the pupil expresses his understanding of the subject. No one attempts to ape the technique or genius of another, for on Mars all are geniuses. This is true in every form of activity. All must be ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... of Art; that at the root of all ease lies slow, and, for long, profitless-seeming labor, as at the root of all grace lies strength; that ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil, sunk into the spirit, and making it strong and ready; that never worthy improvisation flowed from brain of poet or musician unused to perfect his work with honest labor; that the very disappearance of toil is by the immolating hand of toil itself. He only who bears his own burden can ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... April fields till star—light Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing Like notes of music that run together, into winning, In the inspired improvisation of love! But to put back of us as a canticle ended The rapt enchantment of the flesh, In which our souls swooned, down, down, Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves— Annihilated in love! To leave these behind for a room with lamps: And to stand with our Secret mocking itself, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... the writer who has given such delight, has influenced so many writers, and has taught so much to so many persons, can hardly have been a shallow mannerist, or an ungovernable partisan. No one denies that Macaulay had a prodigious knowledge of books; that in literary fecundity and in varied improvisation he has rarely been surpassed; that his good sense is unfailing, his spirit manly, just, and generous; and lastly, that his command over language had unequalled qualities of precision, energy, and brilliance. These are all very great and sterling qualities. And it is right to acknowledge them with ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Duncan Grant, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Stanley Spenser, Mr. Gertler, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Bomberg, Mrs. Bell, and Mr. Epstein—for it would be absurd to omit from this list an artist possessed of such skill, scholarship, and surprising powers of improvisation and development as the last-named. Of these some already have been touched by that breath of life which, blowing from Paris, has revolutionized painting without much discomposing the placid shallows ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... challenged, with its fulness and golden weight, the floods of sunshine, matching light with sound, spontaneous both, and rivals for the favors of the soft atmosphere. Singing with all its heart, outdoing all it knew, forgetting imitation in wild improvisation, watching her window as it danced upon the twigs and fluttered into the air, conscious of her listening as it purled and warbled towards her, and sounded every pipe and trumpet, virginal and clarion, hautboy and castanet, in the orchestra of its rustic bosom, the mocking-bird's ode seemed almost ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... musicians as Wagner, Beethoven and Mozart," said he, "must possess in a tremendous degree the musical sense. The German knowledge of tone and its combinations is extraordinary; and their music in turn is as complex as their psychology and as simple as the improvisation of a child." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... rocks and trees, but he could not make them sing; therefore thou art greater than Orpheus, for thou compellest my aged Muse to song." The style of both words and music suggests that the whole cantata was thrown off, as Mainwaring suggests, on the spur of the moment, and this improvisation may well have taken place at one of the Arcadians' garden parties, for there is a well-known account of a similar improvisation by the poet Zappi and the composer ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... "Improvisation? In one sense, yes; I had to take in the facts of the case very quickly. But you don't mean that you ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... was six o'clock, and Perry had lost all resemblance to the young man in the liniment advertisement. He looked like a rough draft for a riotous cartoon. They were singing—an impromptu song of Baily's improvisation: ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... however, in the end, sent the heroic soldiers home, and obliged M. Arago to shut his window. A day never passes without one or more of our rulers putting his head out of some window or other, and what is called "delivering himself up to a fervid improvisation." The Ultra newspapers are never tired of abusing the priests, who are courageously and honestly performing their duty. Yesterday I read a letter from a patriot, in which he complains that this caste of crows are ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... stopped in passing kept telling what a fine fellow young Bates was, what good timber he was sending in. Several of them told George frankly they thought that was to be his job. He was so ashamed of that, he began instant improvisation. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of genius, and when only ten years of age used to collect an audience in his father's shop, by his talent for improvisation. He thus attracted the notice of Gravina, a celebrated patron of letters, who adopted him as his son, changed his somewhat ignoble name of Trepassi to Metastasio, and had him educated in every branch necessary for a literary career. He still continued to improvise verses on any given subject ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Improvisation—the worst possible form of energy in a war crisis—was now the only resource left to the Tsar's Ministers. And the financial problems had first of all to be faced. In this, as in other spheres, the country was bound by and to Germany, so that the task may fairly be ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... for himself a bold and original style, Demosthenes had still greater difficulties to overcome in regard to the external requisites of an orator. He was not endowed by nature, like AEschines, with a magnificent voice; nor, like Demades, with a ready flow of vehement improvisation. His thoughts required to be put together by careful preparation; his voice was bad, and even lisping; his breath short; his gesticulation ungraceful; moreover, he was overawed and embarrassed by the manifestations of the multitude.... The energy and success with ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... Not only do we see the picture; we hear Diderot's own voice in ecstasies of praise and storms of boisterous wrath. There is such mass in his criticism; so little of the mincing and niggling of the small virtuoso. In facility of expression, in animation, in fecundity of mood, in fine improvisation, these pieces are truly incomparable. There is such an impetus animi et quaedam artis libido. Some of the charm and freedom may be due to the important circumstance that he was not writing for the public. He was not exposed ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the ordinary she often did tend to put matters in a fresh aspect, more palatable to her self-love, and more picturesque in detail than the actual happening. That is one of the advantages of the rapidly-working brain, that its power of improvisation is, in solitude, very constant and reassuring. It is as though such a grain, upon this more strictly personal side, were a commonwealth of little cell-building microbes. The chief microbe comes, like the engineer, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... last to offer itself to his immature judgment. Gleemen had sung, harpers had harped, but the excitement culminated when Siward, a Northumbrian noble, who was a great musician, and skilful in improvisation, did not disdain, like the royal Alfred, to take the harp and pour forth an extemporary ode of great beauty, whereupon the whole multitude rose to their feet and waved their wine cups in the air, in ardent appreciation ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... fathomless imbecility, hoochey koochey strains are on the air while heroes are dying. The Miserere is in our ears when the lovers are reconciled. Ragtime is imposed upon us while the old mother prays for her lost boy. Sometimes the musician with this variety of sympathy abandons himself to thrilling improvisation. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the Allies have had to improvise, and on the whole the improvisation has kept pace with the demands made upon it. They have brought their military science up to date, and to-day the disparity in science and equipment between the antagonists has greatly diminished. There has been no escaping Bloch after all, and the deadlock, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... unoccupied, but the window looking to it was open, and through the lace curtains I could distinguish the sound of voices. I began to play; at first, one of the airs that Maddalena had taught me; but before it was finished, I had glided off, as usual, into an improvisation. ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... no family or were at feud with it, and they gave not a thought to the solemn verdict of posterity. For correspondents who were brimming over with humour, imagination, and enthusiasm, no situation could be more thoroughly favourable to sparkling improvisation; and accordingly they have left us letters which will be ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... sing and Clemence instantly to pace and turn, posture, bow, respond to the song, start, swing, straighten, stamp, wheel, lift her hand, stoop, twist, walk, whirl, tiptoe with crossed ankles, smite her palms, march, circle, leap,—an endless improvisation of rhythmic motion to this modulated ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... completely bewitched me. Nor was I alone under the influence of its spell; we all spent a delightful evening. The conversation had drifted into anecdote, and brought out in its rushing course some curious confessions, several portraits, and a thousand follies, which make this enchanting improvisation impossible to record; still, by setting these things down in all their natural freshness and abruptness, their elusive divarications, you may perhaps feel the charm of a real French evening, taken at the moment when the most engaging familiarity makes each one forget his own ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... minutes the annoyance—if the trivial distraction deserved so harsh an epithet—changed, giving place to a sense of refined pleasure almost as fatal to my complacency, for it compelled me to think apart. What was this new pleasure? Ah! I was reading to an accompaniment—a faint, far-off improvisation just on the verge of silence, too scant and elusive for ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... at the prosperous homestead of one who could scarcely write his name; the digger, peeping out of his hole—like a rabbit out of his burrow—at the license hunters, had, perhaps, in another clime charmed cultivated audiences by his singing and improvisation; the bush was full of ne’er-do-wells—singers and professional entertainers and so on—who had “come to grief” and had to take to hard work to earn a crust to carry them on until they could “strike a new patch.” No wonder that, with all this talent to hand, songs and ballads of a rough sort ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... afflatus of prophecy, and there flow from his lips, as if in improvisation, surely the most limpid, the most spontaneous ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... know Richard Strauss' big tone poems, the biggest things in music since Wagner. But did you know that he's written some charming little pieces for pianoforte? Just listen to this. It's a 'Traeumerei' or 'Revery,' a delicious little dreamy improvisation. He 'metrostyled' it himself and, as I've never heard anyone play it, I'm only too glad to have his directions. They give you the general hang of the thing 'right off the reel,' so to speak. But later on, when I become more familiar with it, if I want to vary the interpretation according ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... by others. His own soul is full of harmony, endless in variety, and most ravishing. Take from him, were it possible, all remembrance of the music written by others, and he would still be an object of delight and amazement on account of his matchless power in improvisation. Listen to his own "Rain Storm," and you shall hear, first, the thunder's reverberating peal, and anon the gentle patter of the rain-drops on the roof: soon they fall thick and fast, coming with a rushing sound. Again is heard the thunder's awful ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... Sometimes this improvisation had concluded with a homily in kinder words, in which she would be entreated to go forth and try to be a better woman. And sometimes, but not often, she had decided that a shoe clerk, no matter his age, would ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... character, some of them being too fiery to be attempted by mortals. It is related that Akbar, the emperor, once ordered the famous singer, Naik Gobaul, to sing the Raagni, or improvisation, of the mode of fire. The poor singer entreated for a less dangerous task, but in vain. Then he plunged up to his neck in the waters of the river Jumna, and began. Before he had finished half of the song, the water around him began to boil. He paused, but, finding the emperor's ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... approbation, and the day after the first performance Bjornson wrote a friendly, youthfully ardent article on it in the Morgenblad. It was not a notice or criticism proper, but rather a free, fanciful improvisation on ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... eh, for an improvisation? The key of that drawer isn't on that ring at all. And even if she does manage to open the drawer there's no blue paper in there at all. She'll be quite ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... and the blowing of horns up and down the stairs and through every room, were varied by ballads, which, like the Scalds of old, he composed during the act of recitation, while the others struck in with the chorus. He had no notion whatever of music, but an infallible ear for rhythm. His knack of improvisation he at all times exercised freely. The verses which he thus produced, and which he invariably attributed to an anonymous author whom he styled "the Judicious Poet," were exclusively for home consumption. Some of these effusions illustrate a sentiment in his disposition which was among ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... any emotion whatever. But he had a new story to tell his friends in the clubs of Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, Los Angeles. And whenever he told it, Sudden Selmer would repeat what he called The Skyrider's Dream from the first verse to Mary V's last—even unto Bud's improvisation. He would paint Johnny's bombardment of the choir practice until his audience could almost hear the thud of the rocks when they landed. He would describe the welt on Aleck's head, the exact shade of purple in Curley's face when his boss called ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... farther south along the pike, and Drew settled himself in his own patch of cover, with Hannibal close at hand. The passing of time was a fret, but one they were used to. Drew thought over the plan. Improvisation always had to play a large part in such a project, but he believed they ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... — N. impulse, sudden thought; impromptu, improvisation; inspiration, flash, spurt. improvisatore^; creature of impulse. V. flash on the mind. say what comes uppermost; improvise, extemporize. Adj. extemporaneous, impulsive, indeliberate^; snap; improvised, improvisate^, improvisatory^; unpremeditated, unmeditated; improvise; unprompted, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... foraged for it before they came in from their sunset, or their afternoon in the park. When dinner consisted mainly of a steak or chops, with one of the delicious salads their avenue abounded in, and some improvisation of potatoes, and coffee afterward, it was very easy to get it up in half an hour. They kept one maid, who called herself a Sweden's girl, and Louise cooked some of the things herself. She did not cook them so well as the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... French Government held to be capable of intimidating the League of Nations garrison of ten thousand fully equipped men, was thus improvised. The supposition is that interested parties connived at its improvisation. It could not otherwise have sprung spontaneously into being. After the first week of the rising, many of the insurgents began to desert the leader Korfanty on the ground that their wages were not high enough. Much money had to be spent in the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... me to deem superfluous any of these qualifications; in fact, I should make the list a little longer were I to write it now, and should add, perhaps, the prudence of Franklin, the inventive power of Edison, and the talent for improvisation ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... ability on his part to handle the language of the contemporary poets, and also perhaps to imbue it with his own personal feelings. His poems inserted in letters, which make a show of the elegant pretence of improvisation, but in reality already display a great dexterity in rhyming and in the use of imagery, may be compared to Hagedorn's poetry; but at the same time Goethe is trying to attain the serious tone of the "Pindarian" odes, just ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had just finished it, and handed it to him. Beethoven read it over, he continues, "walked up and down the room, humming as usual, instead of singing—and opened the piano. My wife had often asked him in vain to play; but now, putting the text before him, he began a wonderful improvisation, which, unfortunately, there were no magic means of recording. From this fantasy he seemed to conjure the theme of the aria. Hours passed but Beethoven continued to improvise. Supper, which he intended to share ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... ever rhymed was worth a beam of summer sun or summer moon; but I have lingered in Provence where every man is a nightingale, and I caught there the fever of improvisation. What ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... demand were theatrical performances of a lower kind. These were farces, interludes, character-pieces, and dumb-shows known as "pantomimes." The farce was a loosely constructed form of fooling comedy, containing much of the ready Italian improvisation or "gag," and regularly introducing the four stock characters which have lasted with little disguise for so many centuries There was an old "grandfather," the forerunner of the modern pantaloon; a cunning sharper; a garrulous glutton with ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... own, with European Marchen, or children's tales, and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses himself in song. A typical example is the Song of Lamech ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... center of a row suddenly struck a high note, beginning a few words from a hymn, or an improvisation. She sang through a phrase, and then others joined in, singly or in pairs or in tens, without any apparent rule except close harmony. These voices burst in from any point, a perfect glee chorus, some high, some low, some singing words, and others merely humming resonantly, a deep, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Borgogna," was so highly admired by the Venetian manager, to whom, it was offered, that he induced friends of his to release young Donizetti from his military servitude. He now pursued musical composition with a facility and industry which astonished even the Italians, familiar with feats of improvisation. In ten years twenty-eight operas were produced. Such names as "Olivo e Pasquale," "La Convenienze Teatrali," "Il Borgomaestro di Saardam," "Gianni di Calais," "L'Esule di Roma," "Il Castello di Kenilworth," "Imelda ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... certain visible uncouthness, and at first this seems in keeping with his matter; but the uncouthness, when you look into it, turns out to be itself a refinement, and what has seemed a confused whirl, an improvisation, to be the result really of reiterated labour, whose whole aim has been to bring the spontaneity of the first impulse back into the laboriously ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... were wet, while she leaned her head against the back of the oaken pew. To her music was the only form of prayer, and it never failed to move her to a vague aspiration, she herself knew hardly what. Her dreams of the world faded, and she was only cognisant of the dim church and the inspired improvisation of her beloved Monsieur Gabriel. This was his answer to her as yet unasked question. She had come to him for guidance, to beg his counsel concerning her brother's letter, and he had told her in his music all that he knew of the world. He had shown her the cruel agony of the worldly ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and his sorrows and his temptations faded from him. He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his fingers moving almost of themselves, his eyes, half closed, seeing only ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... delight the company with some of her improvisations. Others, overhearing this, mingled in the conversation, and added their requests to those of the cardinal; and, the feeling becoming general, the requests for an improvisation became universal and pressing; people, momentarily forgetting the great and celebrated improvisatrice Corilla, with a feverish curiosity turned to the new and unknown star. Corilla stood almost alone—only Cardinal Albani remaining ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... suffice to suggest phrases for every other card. Such phrases may be written out and got by heart—only twenty-three being required; but this seems useless, for it does not require much tact at improvisation to hit upon a phrase commencing with any letter. However, it will be better to take every precaution rather than run the risk of stopping in the performance, whose success mainly depends upon the apparently inspired rapidity of the answers. The performer might conceal in the hollow of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... lady. Exasperated at such an affront to his artistic honour, Beethoven rose up, glared at the pair, and shouted out, 'I play no more for such hogs,'—nor would he touch another note or allow Ries to do so, although earnestly entreated by the company. 'His improvisation,' Czerny tells us, 'was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs, for there was ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... domesticity, was almost as well-designed for the display of a festal assemblage as one of those airy pleasure-halls which the Italian architects improvised to set off the hospitality of princes. The air of improvisation was in fact strikingly present: so recent, so rapidly-evoked was the whole MISE-EN-SCENE that one had to touch the marble columns to learn they were not of cardboard, to seat one's self in one of the damask-and-gold arm-chairs ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton |
