"Keyboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the small keyboard in her desk, and lo the heavy double curtains swiftly and silently unrolled and covered the windows. At the same moment, the beautifully ornamented, dome shaped center of the lofty ceiling began to glow with a constellation of soft, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... or tension; the sound-board, which is the resonance factor; and the bridge, connecting it with the strings. The strings, sound-board, and bridge are indispensable, and common to all stringed instruments. The special fact appertaining to keyboard instruments is the mechanical action interposed between the player and the instrument itself. The strings, owing to the slender surface they present to the air, are, however powerfully excited, scarcely audible. To make them sufficiently audible, their pulsations have to be communicated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... through the rents in its dark-green velvet covering. The unfortunate square piano had had no pity shown it; more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always open, and one could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once famous name-"Sebastian Erard, Manufacturer of Pianos and Harps for S.A.R. Madame la Duchesse de Berri." Not only Louise, the eldest of the Gerards—a large girl now, having been to her first communion, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the cypress twigs through the deep green. On her knees she held a large musical instrument all made of ivory, and inlaid with black, a lute with eleven strings, but of the shorter kind with the head of the keyboard turned back at a right angle. It lay in her lap, in the ample straw-coloured folds of her silk skirt, and its broad white ribband was passed over her shoulder, and pressed on her lace collar on the left side of ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... he realized that he was on the threshold of a new order of things, and with ready prescience took advantage of such as could be utilized in his art. Through Beethoven the resources of the orchestra were increased, an added range was given the keyboard of the piano, the human voice was given tasks that at the time seemed impossible of achievement. He established the precedent, which Wagner acted on later, of employing the human voice as a tool, an instrument, to be used in the exigencies of his art, as if it were a part ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... down obediently to the instrument. He watched her for a few moments from the toe of her kid slipper on the pedals to the swell of her shoulders above the keyboard, with a strange, abstracted face. Presently she stopped ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the keyboard became an indistinguishable blur Peters played on untiringly. But at last he rose, closed the piano and turned on an electric lamp ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... to point toward the figure of the woman who is to hold his mind. The shading of the lights, the patches of dark shadows, the vagueness of some parts, the sharp outlines of others, the quietness of some parts of the picture as against the vehement movement of others all play on the keyboard of our mind and secure the desired effect ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... grandfather was one of the first manufacturers of upright pianos, and being struck with the difficulties and defects of the harp, constructed, in 1810, an instrument a cordes pincees a clavier—the strings connected with a keyboard. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... in rage and despair; of a musician who, after repeated failures in trying to imitate a storm at sea, obtained the result desired by angrily running his hands together from the extremities of the keyboard,—bear in mind that even this "luck" came to men as the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the letters found in the copy and can identify them upon the keys of the typewriter. Scrutiny enables him to find any particular key, and in the course of a few hours be develops a certain awkward familiarity with the keyboard and acquires some speed by utilizing these familiar muscular movements and available bits of knowledge. All these prelearned movements and associations are brought into service in the early stages of improvement, and a degree of proficiency is quickly attained which cannot be exceeded ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... excited, which is peculiar to the race of fishermen. The only time when he was perfectly still was when Tanrade worked in silence. He would then often sit beside him for hours waiting until the composer dropped his pen, swung round in his chair to the keyboard at his elbow, and while the piano rang with melody the little boy's eyes danced. He forgot during such moments of ecstasy that his father was either out at sea with his nets or back in the village good-naturedly drunk, or that his mother, whom he ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... we cherish, and crosses the boundary into distinctly human intercourse. There begins in its mind the development of the most wonderful of all conceivable apparatus, a subtle and intricate keyboard, that will end at last with thirty or forty or fifty thousand keys. This queer, staring, soft little being in its mother's arms is organizing something within itself, beside which the most wonderful ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... he sat down at the piano. How long he played he never knew, for when they found him several hours later, it was quite dark and the old man was completely unconscious; his head had fallen on his arm which rested on the keyboard ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Ger. Handharmonica, Ziehharmonica), a small portable reed wind instrument with keyboard, the smallest representative of the organ family, invented in 1829 by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... near the piano she sat down on the stool, while he took a small chair and established himself near the corner of the instrument, at the upper end of the keyboard. The shaded lamp cast a little light on both their faces, as the two looked at each other, and Margaret realised that she was not only very fond of him, but that his whole existence represented something ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... took his seat in a far corner of the dining-room whence he could see all entrances and exits. She was not there. He ate little, quickly, watchfully. She did not come. He lingered in the lounge over his coffee, drank two liqueurs of brandy. But still she did not come. He went over to the keyboard and examined the names. Number twelve, on the first floor! And he determined to take the note up himself. He mounted red-carpeted stairs, past a little salon; eight-ten-twelve! Should he knock, push the note under, or....? He looked furtively round and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Museum—before the days of electric light—and the latest A.W. Rimington's. Both of these instruments were built upon a supposed correspondence between a given scale of colors, and the musical chromatic scale; they were played from a musical score upon an organ keyboard. This is sufficiently easy and sufficiently obvious, and has been done, with varying success in one way or another, time and again, but its very ease and ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... her father, unlovely, soiled and terror-stricken? His desultory mental queries suddenly stopped as he raised his eyes to the far corner of the room, for there, covered with an old shawl, he made out the lines of a piano. He opened the keyboard and struck a chord. It wasn't so bad—a little tuning—he could ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... up to the piano, where Mr Armstrong, still in the clouds, was roaming at will over the chords, and laid his father's letter on the keyboard. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... consciousness. I heard Rubinstein play when a boy—what did his false notes amount to compared with his wonderful manner of disclosing the spirit of the things he played! Plante, the Parisian pianist, a kind of keyboard cyclone, once expressed the idea admirably to an English society lady. She had told him he was a greater pianist than Rubinstein, because the latter played so many wrong notes. 'Ah, Madame,' answered Plante, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... worshipers sat down. Captain Eben took a figured handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The thin, nearsighted young woman who had been humped over the keyboard of the melodeon, straightened up. The worshipers relaxed a little ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... high, and on the neck, low," Johnny promptly finished his code. Having thus made a code keyboard of Bland's person, he settled himself ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... it was, but amusingly expressive. So, too, was the way he walked over toward it, with an air of cautious determination, of readiness for anything, that made Paula want to laugh. He dropped down sidewise on the bench, turned up the lid and dug his fingers into the keyboard. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and many women. It is at once a light which lightens the darkness of the future, a presentiment of the sacred joys of a shared love, the certainty of mutual comprehension. Above all, it is like the touch of a firm and able hand on the keyboard of the senses. The eyes are fascinated by an irresistible attraction; the heart is stirred; the melodies of happiness echo in the soul and in the ears; a voice cries out, "It is he!" Often reflection casts a douche of cold water on this boiling ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... the pianola performs for you. It gives you, from the moment it enters your house, control over the keyboard of the pianoforte that so long has stood mute in your home. All you have to do is to put in the perforated music roll, work the pedals—and the music begins. Supposing it is that coon song from the comic ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... were near green hills, and far blue mountains, and certain rocky eminences in the middle distance, but nothing of grandeur. Poplars marched along with us on either side, primly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an invisible ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... news and the universal interest in it have affected the national thought and character. The whole people have acquired a certain metropolitan temper; they feel everything at once and in common; a single pulse sends anger, grief, or triumph through the whole country; one man sitting at the keyboard of the telegraph in Washington sets the chords vibrating to the same tune from sea to sea; and this simultaneousness, this unanimity, deepens national consciousness and intensifies popular emotion. Every man ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... she had never appeared to such an advantage. After all, her argument was reasonable and rational. A titillating sensation suffused his being. In fancy he saw the little dining-room, which adjoined her boudoir; he saw her at the piano, her white fingers tripping, as in the old days, over the keyboard; he heard her singing one of her gay and reckless songs; he saw her dainty feet tripping through the dance he ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... corner; and be careful to stop her in time, I should hate to push a piano through one of my host's parlor walls just for the want of a little care. (They push until the piano stands against the wall on the other side of the room, keyboard in.) There! That's first-rate. You can put a camp-chair on top of it for the prompter to sit on; there's nothing like having the prompter up high, because amateur actors when they forget their lines, always look up in the air. Perkins, go sit out in the hall and imagine yourself an enthusiastic ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... its health he was at a loss when it developed ailments; and to these it was prone, being a machine of temperament and airs, inclined to lose spirit, to sulk, even irritably to refuse all response to Dave's fingering of the keyboard. Dave was sincerely startled when his son one day skillfully restored tone to the thing after it had disconcertingly rebelled. Sam Pickering, on the point of wiring for the mechanic who had installed his treasure, looked upon the boy with awe as his sure hands wrought knowingly among ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... tried to get some conception of its shape and size, of the space it occupied in primeval night. It was cold and hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He went back to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way down into the mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to know that it must be done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached this highly artificial instrument ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... mornings. During the service, his wonder was still more excited by the organist's performance on the barrel-organ, the doors of which were thrown open behind to let the sound fully into the church, by which the stops, pipes, barrels, staples, keyboard, and jacks, were fully exposed, to the wonderment of the little boys sitting in the gallery behind, and to none more than our young musician. At eight years of age he began to play upon his father's old fife, which, however, would not sound D; but his mother remedied the difficulty by buying for ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... letting himself down on to the keyboard of the piano with a loud musical crash, and laughing heartily all the time. "Why don't you get on with your work? Anyone would think you were in training for a cat-gut scraper at a low theatre instead of for an officer ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... little difficulty, removed the covers from an instrument as large as a grand piano, but with an upper case added. This strange-looking instrument, besides this second body and its keyboard, supported the openings or bells of various wind instruments and the closed funnels of a few ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... mere boy, used to amuse himself by searching on the piano for harmonies of which the constituent notes were widely scattered on the keyboard, and, as his hands were too small to grasp them, he devised a mechanism for stretching his hands, which he wore at night. Fortunately, he did not go so far as Schumann, who made similar experiments with his hands and thereby disabled one of them for life. What prompted Chopin to ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... unprecedented experience—an experience that would not leave me as it found me. This strange struggle with myself taxed all my powers; the sweat started out on my forehead. At last the moment came when I could struggle no longer. I laid my hand on the keyboard, and pushed myself round on the stool. There was a momentary dazzle before my eyes, and after that I saw plainly. My hand, striking the keys, had produced a jarring discord; and while this was yet tingling in my ears, Paton, who was sitting in his ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... that what I had taken for the keyboard of the organ was no keyboard but only a slit, and one of the little Lords dropped a plaque of metal into it. And then the angels played and the world turned round and the organ made a noise and the people began killing one another and the two little ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... is connected to the computer, it assumes that a Mini-Disk is connected. To use the Expansion Interface without a Mini-Disk, press the BREAK key on the TRS-80 keyboard. This will override the Mini-Disk mode and allow ...
— Radio Shack TRS-80 Expansion Interface: Operator's Manual - Catalog Numbers: 26-1140, 26-1141, 26-1142 • Anonymous
... my mother. After that 'the bastard'—for such was the name they gave me—was soon condemned to isolation. No one would associate with me during play-time. No one would sit beside me in the school-room. At the piano lesson, the girl who played after me pretended to wipe the keyboard carefully before commencing her exercises. I struggled bravely against this unjust ostracism; but all in vain. I was so unlike these other girls in character and disposition, and I had, moreover, been ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... involved in reading a full score are: first, training the eye to read from a number of staffs simultaneously and assembling the tones (in the mind or at the keyboard) into chords; and second, transposing into the actual key of the composition those parts which have been written in other keys and including these as a part of the harmonic structure. This latter difficulty may be at least partially overcome ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... his best verses, and Milton at the keyboard of his organ. Shakespeare's language is no longer the mere vehicle of thought; it has become part of it, its very flesh and blood. The pleasure it gives us is unmixt, direct, like that from the smell of a flower or the flavor of a fruit. Milton sets everywhere his little ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... of the speaker, the quickness with which she had grasped the situation and leveled her revolver, brought The Hopper to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room, where he fell with a discordant crash across the keyboard of a grand piano. He turned, cowering, to confront a tall, young woman in a long ulster who advanced toward him slowly, but with every mark of determination upon her face. The Hopper stared beyond the gun, held in a very steady hand, ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat—something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be—sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor—janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your Art ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... by the great singer Pacchierotti. He was received with the greatest favor by the queen, Marie Antoinette, and the court, and made the acquaintance of Gluck, who warmly admired the brilliant player who had so completely revolutionized the style of execution on instruments with a keyboard. Here he also met Viotti, the great violinist, and played a duo concertante with the latter, expressly composed for the occasion. Clementi was delighted with the almost frantic enthusiasm of the French, so different from the more temperate approbation of the English. He was wont to say jocosely ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... excited by the unusual pleasure she felt in playing once more with her husband, and this sudden shattering of her hopes of a renewed tenderness proved more than she could bear: she put her head between her hands upon the keyboard and broke ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... having before it the cerebral machinery, all nicely laid out, together with the acquired art of selecting and touching the right nervous elements in order to produce the desired motion, as a skilful player of the piano handles his keyboard." ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... willingly go,' she said, 'but it is not necessary. I found two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... in St. George's Hall, Liverpool, Eng. . . . Frontispiece Prehistoric Double Flutes The Wind-chest; Front View. The Wind-chest; Side View. The Pneumatic Lever Nomenclature of Organ Keyboard Portrait of Moitessier Tubular Pneumatic Action The First Electric Organ Ever Built The Electro-Pneumatic Lever Valve and Valve Seat, Hope-Jones Electric Action Portrait of Dr. Peschard Console, St. Paul's Cathedral, ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... understanding, and turned to the keyboard. Then, without notes, and with a delicate touch of perfectly modulated interpretation, she began to render "Trauemerei," as though she, too, had been dreaming of ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... Des Esseintes was not inclined to listen to this music. He confined himself to sounding one note on the keyboard of his organ, by swallowing a little glass of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... soles of their boots as their legs dangled in the air. In the midst of all, a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, as the rays of the Aurora that go about ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... the room stood an old grand pianoforte, the top propped open, and the keyboard exposed as if it had been but recently employed. A chair with a ragged cushion on top of it was pushed a little back, and a sheet of music drooped from the stand towards the keys. My entrance had excited no regard, and I took my place in this dim corner to look about me. The count ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... days before a Mr. Bailey, who boarded in the house, and whose daughter was taking music lessons, had tried to purchase her piano, telling her that so fine a player as herself ought to have one with a longer keyboard. Ethie had thought so herself, wishing sometimes that she had a larger instrument, which was better adapted to the present style of music, but she could not bring herself to part with Aunt Barbara's present. Now, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Each channel has at the lower end an escapement B to release the matrices one at a time. Each of these escapements is connected by a rod C and intermediate devices to one of the finger-keys in the keyboard D. These keys represent the various characters as in a typewriter. The keys are depressed in the order in which the characters and spaces are to appear, and the matricies, released successively from the lower end of ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... ultra-modern as those of Wagner's "Parsifal" may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone farther still ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... keyboard. Hardly daring to lift them, she followed up the air with a wild variation and dropped back upon it again—not upon the air pure and simple, but upon the air as it might be rendered by a two-thirds-intoxicated ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... liked any of the women to whom he would be fitfully agreeable upon the voyage. Once or twice, during each crossing, he did his best and made himself very charming indeed, to keep his hand in,—for the same reason that he kept a dummy keyboard in his stateroom, somewhere down in the bowels of the boat. He practised all the small economies; paid the minimum rate, and never took a deck chair, because, as Horace was usually in the cardroom, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... days when Delancey Nicoll was the White Hope of the Brownstone Court House—declared Mr. Tutt's summation was the greatest that ever they heard. For the shrewd old lawyer had an artist's hand with which he played upon the keyboard of the jury and knew just when to pull out the stops of the vox humana of pathos and the grand diapason of indignation and defiance. So he began by tickling their sense of humor with an ironic description of afternoon tea ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... away from the company, so that only his shoulders and the back of his grey head were visible, bent over his keyboard. It was sad to see a grey head in that situation; and one wondered what had brought it there, what story of vice or weakness or evil fortune. Though his instrument was harsh, and he had to bang it ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... the Hungarian tongue. His wants were simple, but his pride was Lucifer's. By no means a virtuoso, he had the grand air, the grand style, and when he sat down to play one involuntarily stopped breathing. He had a habit of smiting the keyboard, and massive chords, clangorous harmonies inevitably preluded his performances. I knew some conservatory girls who easily could outstrip Piloti technically, but there was something which differentiated ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... church to play the organ—a neat little instrument of some eight or ten stops; and it was while "giving out" the familiar tune of Antioch that I noticed, in the reflection of a little mirror placed above the keyboard, that Mr. Bronte had entered the church, and was passing up the aisle. He wore the customary black gown, and the lower part of his face was quite buried in an enormous white neckcloth—the most monstrous article of the kind I had ever beheld. The reflection in that little ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... child spent several health-giving months in the country. To help her happily to occupy her time, the good friend bought Kate a cheap concertina. By the hour she would sit in the sunshine, mastering the keyboard, and soon she could play simple Army tunes. How richly our Heavenly Father blesses the gifts of love! All unconsciously, the good soldier was preparing the Angel Adjutant of the future to win the hopeless and despairing of many ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... one of the Adeles, as the industrious lady from next door, after a final bang, withdrew her hands from the keyboard. "And how ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... successfully adopted roles demanding another range than the one needed for their earlier efforts. But it is an open question whether the performer's instrument really changed. It must either have been wrongly classified at one of the two periods, or the vocal keyboard—so to speak—transposed a little higher or lower. The character of the instrument remains the same; a viola strung as a violin would still retain ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... oratorio scheme. He had ordered a new organ for the theatre at a cost of L500, constructed so that he might have a better command of his performers, and he had also acquired another instrument, which Jennens calls a "Tubalcain"—in other words a set of bells played from a keyboard—which he intended to use in the scene in which the Israelites welcome David after his victory over the Philistines. It is curious that Handel should have dramatised the insanity of Saul just after he had himself recovered from ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... not homelike; the rooms seemed too sombre and dark To her eyes, sun-accustomed; the neighbors too near And too noisy. The medley of sounds hurt her ear. Sudden laughter; the cry of an infant; the splash Of a tenant below in his bath-tub; the crash Of strong hands on a keyboard above, and the light, Merry voice of the lady who lived opposite, The air intertwined in a tangled sound ball, And flung straight at her ear through the court ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... "Inventions" were weary digital gyrations against the slow-moving hands of the alarm clock perched directly in her line of vision. Czerny, too, was punctuated with quick little forays between notes, into a paper bag of "baby pretzels" at the treble end of the piano, often as not lopping over on the keyboard. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... The first proper name ever set by this new keyboard was William Shakspeare. I set it at the above hour; & I perceive, now that I see the name written, that I either misspelled it then or I've ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... time it is tuned. The hammers need occasional and careful attention to preserve original tone quality and elasticity. Never allow the piano to be beaten or played hard upon. This is ruinous to both the action and tuning. When not in use the music rack and top should be closed to exclude dust. The keyboard need never be closed, as the ivory needs both light and ventilation and will eventually ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... the very end, then rose, bowed from where he stood, stared round at the empty hall—a dreadful, strained, defiant smile stiffening upon his face—and sinking back upon his stool, laid his arms across the keyboard with a crash of notes, burying ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... on to it like a whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as if she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked her wrists and her hands, to limber 'em, I suppose, and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the keyboard, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those two hands of hers made a jump at the keys as if they were a couple of tigers coming down on a flock of black-and-white sheep, and the piano gave a great howl as if its tail had been trod on. Dead stop—so ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... travels," Harry Morgan thought to himself. He tapped out the number on the keyboard of the phone and waited for the panel to light up. When it did, it showed a man in his middle fifties with a lean, ascetic face and graying hair, which gave him a look ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... coffee, liqueurs and cigars, he was ready to answer any call. And thus it was that Thayor, amid general applause, led—or rather dragged—Jack triumphantly to the new grand piano, finally picking him up bodily and depositing him before the keyboard, where he held him on the stool with the grip of a sheriff, until this best of fellows raised his hands hopelessly and smiled to ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... drain-pipes than a reporter has of a knowledge of the structural mysteries of his typewriting machine. The office mechanic fixes all that for him, and, so far as his efficiency as a reporter is concerned, an investigation of his faithful keyboard's internal arrangements would be in most cases an amiable ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... over to the piano, sat carelessly, sidewise, on its stool, and, thrumming at the keyboard, fell to humming in a slurring, reminiscent fashion, the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... sixth century, was the text used. Music entered into so many activities of the Church that much naturally was made of it. The organ, too, is an old instrument, going back to the second century B.C., and the organ with a keyboard to the close of the eleventh century. This instrument added much to the value of the music course, and the hymns composed by Christian musicians form an important part of our musical heritage. [11] The cathedral school at Metz and the monastery at Saint Gall became famous ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... she was, and her face deep lined with dust and trouble and labour. She wore a dirty cap that was all askew. She took Lewisham up into a threadbare room on the first floor, "There's the use of a piano," she said, and indicated an instrument with a front of torn green silk. Lewisham opened the keyboard and evoked a vibration of broken strings. He took one further survey of the dismal place, "Eighteen shillings," he said. "Thank you ... I'll let you know." The woman smiled with the corners of her mouth down, and without ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword." Near the desk are rows of nickel-plated tubes, about six feet in height and two feet in diameter; the lids or covers to these tubes are opened by means of a keyboard in front of the editor. The tubes themselves contain the heads of the departments of the State and ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... and, walking flat-footed, had returned softly to the very spot on the bridge he had occupied before. A slow, lingering grin exposed his set of big white teeth: they gleamed evenly in the shade of the awning like the keyboard of a ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... easy, least of all the art of letters. Apply the musical analogy once more to the instrument whereon literature performs its voluntaries. With a living keyboard of notes which are all incessantly changing in value, so that what rang true under Dr. Johnson's hand may sound flat or sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, some falling mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless permutations and combinations, each ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... could not be struck without this little far western note vibrating in sympathy? Very faintly; not in a manner to be heard clearly by the world; because in historical times the Celtic note has been as it were far up on the keyboard, and never directly under the Master-Musician's fingers. And when you add to it all that this Celtic note has come in the minds of literary critics rather to stand as the synonym for Natural Magic—you all know what is meant by that term;—and that now, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs. Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... easily and comfortably attained middle tones shall again be universally perceived. At the present moment our instrumental art has, in this particular, fallen under the tyranny of piano manufacturers and makers of wind instruments. When the keyboard of the grand piano has been made longer by a few keys, the composers think they are remaining "behind the times" if they do not immediately introduce these new high treble tones into their next work, and when the wind instruments have been enriched by several new valves and regulators ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... had been struck by an old recollection. My sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano had stood in the great drawing-room. It had been carted away during those dreadful weeks and her music all burned; but the vision of her graceful figure bending over the keyboard was one not to be forgotten even by a thoughtless child. Could it be—oh, heaven! if this voice were hers! Her future was certain; she had ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... required a strong man to ring them, these can be rung from an electric keyboard, and even when rung by hand require but little muscular power to manipulate them and call forth all the purity and sweetness of their tones. The quality of tone is something superb, being rich and mellow. The tubes ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... lower room, Captain Folsom saw the singer seated at a great square piano, a giant of a man with a huge shock of dark brown hair and ferocious mustaches, while a coal black negro, even huger in size, lolled negligently at one end of the keyboard, his red lips parted wide in a grin of enjoyment and ivory white teeth showing between, and at the other end of the piano, with his elbows planted on the instrument and his head pressed between his hands, stood ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... achieved in the soft, shimmering liquidity of the music. Then there are two abrupt, but soft, short chords that will represent, to the imaginative, the quick fixing of the eagle's heart on some prey beneath; and there follows a sudden precipitation down the keyboard, fortississimo, that represents the thunderous swoop of the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... only discover afterwards and by accident their almost incredible brevity. May we not—must we not—infer from this that the body is an organ of many stops and more than one keyboard, and that in sleep it gives forth this richer music. The theory of a higher-dimensional existence during sleep accounts in part for the great longing for sleep. "What is it that is much desired by man, but which they know not while possessing?" again asks ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... writer lady! No more interviews with actresses! No more slushy Sunday specials! No more teary tales! Oh, my! When may I begin? To-morrow? You know I brought my typewriter with me. I've almost forgotten where the letters are on the keyboard." ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... intelligence, and, besides being a great musician, he made organs of lead with his own hand. In S. Domenico he made one of cardboard, which has ever remained sweet and good; and in S. Clemente there was another, also by his hand, which was placed on high, with the keyboard below on the level of the choir—truly with very beautiful judgment, since, the place being such that the monks were few, he wished that the organist should sing as well as play. And since this Abbot loved his Order, like ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... the Lord's Prayer. The orphan recited it, while the rich child gazed at her eagerly. Then, as if in obedience to an inspiration, she went to the piano to play; but her hands trembled; she threw herself on one side, with her elbow on the keyboard and her head hanging, unable to conceal her agitation any longer. Her soul was seeking to satisfy its yearning; nothing could give her peace but the one thing those who loved her wished to withhold from her. Her heart was still alive and eager: ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those of a table. The piano was just a box ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... fit themselves to his purpose, and he learns to transfer the stress from his throat to his lungs as easily and quickly and instinctively as the pianist passes his fingers from the treble to the base notes on the keyboard. ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... should be willing to accept the lady's statements, for she was present and really the only one in possession of the facts, excepting, of course, Chopin, and he was not a writer. He could express himself only at the keyboard, and the piano is no graphophone, for which let us all be duly thankful. So we are without Chopin's side of the story. We, however, have some vigorous writing by a man by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... followed him as he turned out the kerosene lamp, which was sputtering, and flung fresh logs upon the hearty fire. Overhead the rain droned, like monotonous fingers upon a keyboard, and beside her Sandy slept ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... curtain, and played an accompaniment to the music box on the guitar. We could see plainly the movements of the hand, arm, and fingers, as it manipulated the strings of the instrument. It did not appear necessary to finger the strings on the keyboard, although the air was in a key that made it impossible to tune the guitar so that an accompaniment could be performed WITHOUT fingering. However, but one hand was visible, and it was picking the strings. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... at Whitestone Hall sat Pluma Hurlhurst, running her white, jeweled fingers lightly over the keyboard of a grand piano, but the music evidently failed to charm her. She arose listlessly and walked toward the window, which opened out upon the wide, cool, ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... for this revolution Is plain; the keyboard, though its tones are cold, Viewed as a means of rapid "execution" Endears itself to Turks both ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... there. There was none of the accumulation of property that would fit any permanent residence. He went out of the bedroom, passing the typewriter desk. The typewriter was an old, standard Olympia—a German machine he'd refitted with the Dvorak keyboard which he had learned for greater efficiency. He was sure nobody else ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... set type on it who can read—and can do it after only 15 minutes' instruction. The operator does not need to leave his seat at the keyboard; for the reason that he is not required to do anything but strike the keys and set type—merely one function; the spacing, justifying, emptying into the galley, and distributing of dead matter is all done by the machine without anybody's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... art—to give life to abstractions and significance and charm to facts. In the meanwhile, let him dwell much among his fellow-craftsmen. They alone can take a serious interest in the childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, this dull and literal painting of dull and insignificant subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will say, "Why do you not write a great book? paint a great picture?" If his guardian angel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gay glances at some of the other girls, she walked over to the piano and seated herself. Then, with some more smiles at the girls, she cold-bloodedly attacked the keyboard ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the hand and led him to the keyboard of the organ, at which the young fellow seated himself prettily, after the manner of women. "Ah! sweet coz," cried Bertha, as soon as the first notes tried, the lad turned his head towards her, in order that they might sing together. "Ah! sweet coz you have a wonderful ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the most melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. How many monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowing what a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the chap I was speaking to you about," said Captain Bob, pointing to a wounded Highlander, whose head was enveloped in a bandage. "He's a regular genius on the keyboard; that is why there are such a lot of chaps here to-night. He only blew in a couple of days ago from the brigade on our right when he heard we were lucky enough to ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... face grows thin, and one day they come to him where he sits before the keyboard of his many enterprises, and tell him she is dying. He comes and stands beside the bed, and the child's eyes open and turn towards him; and, as he draws nearer, her little arms stretch out towards him, pleading dumbly. But the man's face never ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... sheet of paper with printed characters in bold Roman type. The transmitter has a keyboard, on which are marked letters, signs, and numbers; also a type-wheel, with the characters on its circumference, rotated by electricity. The receiver contains mechanisms for rotating another type-wheel synchronously—that is, in time—with the ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... and a lamp-shade half finished. A woman's magazine printed in a city four thousand miles away lay open at the fashion plates. There were other magazines, and many books, and open music above the white keyboard of the piano, and vases glowing red and yellow with wild-flowers and silver birch leaves. He could smell the faint perfume of the fireglow blossoms, red as blood. In a pool of sunlight on one of the ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the house, driven by her energy, like sea-foam on a spring gale; and the day, so discordantly begun for Miss Betty, grew musical with her own laughter, answering the husky staccato of the vivacious newcomer. Nelson waited upon them at table, radiant, his smile like the keyboard of an ebony piano, and his disappearances into the kitchen were accomplished by means of a surreptitious double-shuffle, and followed by the cachinnating echoes of the vain Mamie's reception of the visitor's sallies, which Nelson hastily ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Hinton; "it's a little machine I got before I came down, with raised letters on the keyboard. If I progress at the rapid pace I have started, I'll be an expert before long. Mrs. Gusty was able to read five words out of ten ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... of words which some genius had devised for the fingering practice it gave one on the keyboard, and Joe Harned had written it hundreds of times before, just as thousands of others had done, without giving a thought to its meaning, or the significance that the substitution of a single word ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... wet flakes, drifting down as idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at the piano—large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... am quite stunned," said the Count as he left the house. "A child dancing on the keyboard ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... glass dome. It looked rather like a groundhog and had seven fingers on each of its six limbs. But it was larger and hairier than the glass one he had seen at the gift store. With four of its limbs it tapped on an intricate keyboard ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... whereby he can add together a long row of figures placed in a sequence he never saw before, and having a sum he never attained before. Or a pianist, having acquired the mastery of the technic of the keyboard and the ability to read music, can sit down before a piano he never sat at before and play off instantly a piece of music ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Gutenberg; but his invention abolished at one stroke composition and distribution; introduced for the first time the line, instead of the letter, as the unit of composition; brought into the art the idea of automatically and instantly producing by a keyboard solid lines of composed and justified type, to be once used and then melted down; rendered it possible to secure for each issue new and sharp faces; abolished the usual investment for type; cheapened the cost of standing matter; removed all danger of "pieing," and at the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... line or so. The worst of it is, that Whitman must have known better. The man is a great critic, and, so far as I can make out, a good one; and how much criticism does it require to know that capitulation is not description, or that fingering on a dumb keyboard, with whatever show of sentiment and execution, is not at all the same thing as discoursing music? I wish I could believe he was quite honest with us; but, indeed, who was ever quite honest who wrote a book for a purpose? ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Suppose, when entirely ignorant of music, I decide to learn to play the piano. Evidently it will require the minutest watchfulness. Approaching the strange instrument with some uneasiness, I try to secure exactly that position on the stool which will allow my arms their proper range along the keyboard. There is difficulty in getting my sheet of music to stand as it should. When it is adjusted, I examine it anxiously. What is that little mark? Probably the note C. Among these curious keys there must also be a C. I look up ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... this, and he began to toss his arms wildly about. Haydn tried every way he could think of to represent the ocean, but Kurz was not satisfied. At last he flung his hands down with a crash on each end of the keyboard and brought them together in the middle. "That's it, that's it," cried the manager and embraced the youth excitedly. All went well with the rest of the opera. It was finished and produced, but did not make much stir, a fact which was not displeasing to the composer, as he was not proud ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... the names and spellings from the Chiefs of State link on the CIA Web site. The World Factbook is prepared using the standard American English computer keyboard and does not use any special characters, symbols, or most diacritical markings in its spellings. Surnames are always spelled with capital letters; they may appear ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Verkan Vall snapped on the code-index, found the symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. "Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall," he identified himself. "Speaking from office of Tortha Karf, Chief Paratime Police. I want a complete hypno-mech on Venusian nighthounds, emphasis on wild ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... many computer margins), and the entire original edition we received in all caps was over 800,000 chars in length, including line enumeration, symbols for caps and the punctuation marks, etc., since they were not available keyboard characters at the time (probably the keyboards operated at baud rates of around 113, meaning the typists had to type slowly for the keyboard ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... transmutations are the necessary form of experience, and it is the possibility of transmutation upon an internal and subjective impulse which makes possible the formation of synthetical judgments a priori. It is as if the organ were not only responsive to impressions upon its keyboard from without, but were also automotive and could originate harmonies in its own notes; and as if, moreover, it were endowed with consciousness so as to receive an intuition of both classes of music. The former would correspond to sensations, the latter to ideas; and we might ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... pride was the vocoder circuit with which he had terminated his link, originated because a teletype system similar to that used at the control console would have been too obvious; and his nimble fingers got all tangled up on a keyboard anyhow. ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... on the piano-stool, Montgomery pushed his glasses high up on his beak-like nose, and demanded an opinion. But before Dick could say a word a kick of the long legs brought the musician again face to the keyboard, and for several minutes he crashed away, occasionally shouting forth an explanatory remark, or muttering an apology when he failed to reach the high soprano notes. The lovesong, however, was too much for him, and, laughing at his own breakdown, he turned from the piano and consented to resume ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... to her, jerked out my guns, and reached around both sides of her to the pianner. I run the muzzles up and down the keyboard two or three times, and then shot out half a ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... he devoured her with his eyes, from the golden crown of her rigidly motionless head to the heels of her shoes, the line of her shapely shoulders, the curves of her fine figure swaying a little before the keyboard. She had on a light dress; the sleeves stopped short at the elbows in an edging of lace. A satin ribbon encircled her waist. In an access of irresistible, reckless hopefulness he clapped both his hands on that waist—and then the irritating music ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Seth, and a solitaire ring next to her wedding ring, with a locket containing her children's hair, accented her position as a proper wife and mother. At a quarter to nine she had finished tidying the parlor, opening the harmonium so that the light might play upon its polished keyboard, and bringing from the forgotten seclusion of her closet two beautifully bound volumes of Tupper's "Poems" and Pollok's "Course of Time," to impart a literary grace to the centre table. She then drew a chair to the table and sat down before it with a religious magazine in her lap. The wind roared ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Conferences with Renowned Masters of the Keyboard, Presenting the Most Modern Ideas upon the Subjects of Technic, Interpretation, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... in a long chair close at hand. The moment was propitious. The artist's profile silhouetted itself against the shade of a light that burned at the side of the organ, and that gave light to the keyboard. And on this keyboard, full in the reflection, lay his long, slim hands. They were the only things that moved in the room, and the chords and bars of Mendelssohn's "Consolation" seemed, as he played, to flow, not from the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... little while she could shift the ribbon or flip a sheet of paper in and out with the ease of an expert. Then she began studying the keyboard, to learn the position of the letters, and after that it was only a question of practice to gain speed. Fingers that had learned nimbleness and accuracy of touch in other fields, did not lag long here. Hour after hour she sat at the ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... displayed. Then as to technique, we find here octaves and large chords comparatively rare,[61] while scale passages are more restricted. Like Beethoven, Emanuel Bach seized hold of additional notes to the keyboard. In 1742 his highest ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... Kangaroo didelfo. Keel kilo. Keen (sharp) akra. Keep teni, gardi. Keep silence silentigxi. Keeper gardanto. Keepsake memorajxo. Keg bareleto. Kennel hundejo. Kernel kerno. Kettle bolilo. Key sxlosilo. Key (of piano, etc.) klavo. Keyboard klavaro. Keystone cxefsxtono. Kick piedfrapo. Kid kaprido. Kidnap forsxteli. Kidney reno. Kill mortigi. Kill (animals) bucxi. Kilogramme kilogramo. Kilolitre kilolitro. Kilometre kilometro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... admiration fell from many lips. For an instant Helen Young's hands poised above the keyboard, then descended; and as spontaneously as a bird begins its love song to the blue, so Tessibel Skinner ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... hung with mirrors and containing a piano, a perfect room for banquetting. The lieutenant opened the piano with his sword, and before Theodore knew where he was, he was sitting on the music-stool, and his hands were resting on the keyboard. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... design, and form exaggerated and irrational expectations?" That merely means that the playwright does not know his business, or, at any rate, does not know his audience. It is his business to play upon the collective mind of his audience as upon a keyboard—to arouse just the right order and measure of anticipation, and fulfil it, or outdo it, in just the right way at just the right time. The skill of the dramatist, as distinct from his genius or inspiration, lies in the correctness of his ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the scenes of childhood. Walk of Sepoy colonel, ditto, ditto. And in the midst of the Sepoy colonel (which was an excellent assumption, although inconsistent with the style of his make-up), his eye lighted on the piano. This instrument was made to lock both at the top and at the keyboard, but the key of the latter had been mislaid. Michael opened it and ran his fingers over the dumb keys. 'Fine instrument—full, rich tone,' he observed, and ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... must be spelled out in the ardois, as they require more than four elements, which is the limit of the ardois keyboard. ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... discord mars our harmonies: Our strings are snapped by selfish strain, And harsh hands break our keys. But God meant music; and we may, If we will keep our lives in tune, Hear the whole year sing roundelay, December answering June. God ever at his keyboard plays, Harmonics, right; and discords, wrong: "He that hath ears," and who obeys, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... had dropped on the keys with the lightness of a feather. They rose and flashed and twinkled, and ran along the keyboard with swift, steel-like touch. The door at the end of the room opened softly. A tall man entered. He looked inquiringly at the grotesque green-and-white figure seated before the piano, then his glance met his wife's, and he sank into a big chair by the door, a pleased look on his ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... I felt that I should nevertheless test her more closely still, and so I told my experiences to a friend, a woman composer of great professional distinction. This lady was both interested and surprised, and seating herself at the piano, she struck some notes. I placed myself so as not to see the keyboard and tried to guess their pitch, yet I have no "ear" in this way. I had in 1915 attended a course of Delcroze lessons (given at Stuttgart by Fraeulein Steiner) and had tried to acquire the faculty to distinguish the basic tone of any chord ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... accomplished, he returned A lonely pilgrim to the twilit shrine Of first beginnings and his father's youth. There, in the Octagon Chapel, with bared head Grey, honoured for his father and himself, He touched the glimmering keyboard, touched the books Those dear lost hands had touched so ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... New, Swell to Great, Great to Pedal, Swell to Pedal, Choir to Pedal, Swell to Choir. New keyboards. New Pedal keyboard. New Drawstop knobs. New additional bellows. Five new Composition Pedals (three to Great organ, and two to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms, sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant mutter of the basses. The celesta, an instrument with keyboard and bell tone, contributes fascinating effects, and the xylophone is used;—utterances that are lascivious as well as others that are macabre. Dissonance runs riot and frequently carries the imagination away completely ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... three years ago as a means of obtaining strictly comparable objective data concerning the problem-solving ability of various types and conditions of animals. The method was first tried with human subjects in the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, with a crude keyboard apparatus which, however, proved wholly satisfactory as a means of demonstrating its value. It has since been applied by means of mechanisms especially adapted to the structure and activities of the organisms, to the ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... and started across the room with great strides. My secretary's eyes were glued to the magic portrait. His fingers, looking like claws, hung suspended over the keyboard of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone," there came a shifting of attention. Here was a man gifted with that quality of voice without which there can be no oratory; endowed with that magic of force under which human emotion is a keyboard responsive to the touch; commanding that power which can sway its hearers at will between smile and tear. His reputation was already known to them, but within five minutes after his voice sounded reputation had become ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... other hand, seemed never to concern himself [se preuccuper] about the public, and to listen only to the inner voices. He was unequal; but when inspiration took hold of him [s'emparait de hit] he made the keyboard sing in an ineffable manner. I owe him some poetic hours ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks |
