"Nocturne" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again. This time the resemblance between her and 'Chopin' struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon. Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in that music. A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and dispersed. 'So we go out!' he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... itself a noble, thoughtful, rapt expression,—his wild eyes softened,—his furrowed, frowning brow smoothed,—and, meeting the grave, rare blue eyes of Thelma, he smiled. His touch grew more and more delicate and tender—from the prelude he wandered into a nocturne of plaintive and exceeding melancholy, which he played with thrilling and exquisite pathos—anon, he glided into one of those dreamily joyous yet sorrowful mazurkas, that remind one of bright flowers growing in wild luxuriance over lonely and forsaken ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Hatzfeldt got up. Liszt seated himself at the piano, played two or three bits of songs, or waltzes, then, always talking to Hatzfeldt, let his fingers wander over the keys and by degrees broke into a nocturne and a wild Hungarian march. It was very curious; his fingers looked as if they were made of yellow ivory, so thin and long, and of course there wasn't any strength or execution in his playing—it was the touch of an old man, but a ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... which would most puzzle Titian redivivus—"Little cold tooties," or a blue-gray wash with a point or two of yellow, bearing some imaginary resemblance to the Thames with its gaslights, and called a "Nocturne in Blue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... 30. Henri Rabaud's symphonic poem, "La Procession Nocturne" played by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Frank van ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... for Beethoven," the professor is saying. "Young people find such melody in 'Songs without Words.' But I want you to listen to this nocturne of Chopin's, though it is not ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... friend, you are too narrow-minded there,—you make a mistake: taste must come of itself, from much playing and with years. Your Cecilia played the two new waltzes, and the Nocturne of Chopin, and Beethoven's trio very nicely. But then that was all drilled into her: we could tell that well enough by hearing ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... the occupations and pleasures of the summer Jacques kept as near as he could to Serena. If he learned a new tune, by listening to the piano—some simple, artful air of Mozart, some melancholy echo of a nocturne of Chopin, some tender, passionate love-song of Schubert—it was to her that he would play it first. If he could persuade her to a boat-ride with him on the lake, Sunday evening, the week was complete. He even learned to know the more shy and delicate forest-blossoms that she preferred, and would ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... within the walls of his skull, that he saw—his mundane surroundings did not disturb his visions. And the waves of dolour swept over his consciousness. A mingling of tuberoses, narcissus, attar of roses, and ambergris he detected in the air—as triste as a morbid nocturne of Chopin. This was followed by a blending of heliotrope, moss-rose, and hyacinth, together with dainty touches of geranium. He dreamed of Beethoven's manly music when whiffs of apple-blossom, white rose, cedar, and balsam reached him. Mozart passed roguishly ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... silence descended, but only for a few seconds. Then softly it was dispelled, as through it there stole the tender, passionate-sweet harmonies of a Chopin nocturne. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... flowers, for Madame Darbois and Esperance, who was at the piano when he came into the room. The Count entered with Madame Darbois, whom her husband had just presented to her, and they stopped silent to listen to Mendelssohn's beautiful nocturne, "Song of a Summer Night." When the last echoes of the last phrase had died away, discreet applause was wafted to her. She swung quickly on her stool and found herself before the young man who was bowing, and taking the hand she held out to him. She had not yet overcome ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... rocking," in which the mockingbird plays a part. The poet's treatment of the bird is entirely ideal and eminently characteristic. That is to say, it is altogether poetical and not at all ornithological; yet it contains a rendering or free translation of a bird-song—the nocturne of the mockingbird, singing and calling through the night for its lost mate—that I consider ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Valse, mazurka, and nocturne, prelude and polonaise Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air, Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days, Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care. And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away, The radiant hands light up the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Italian beauty,—a nocturne in flesh and blood, if I may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no longer shut off from all relations with the social life of my race. An hour ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... does," replied the young man. He really gazed admiringly at the older woman, who made, under the glimmering shadows of the oaks, a charming nocturne of elderly womanhood. The faint pink on her cheeks seemed enhanced by the pink seen dimly through the ashen shimmer of her gown; the creamy lace harmonized with her yellow-gray hair. She was in her own way as charming ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... not beyond the bounds of speculation that he was acquainted with their work, had read the Poet's verses in one of the minor magazines, had stumbled upon some sketch of the Painter's while bargain-hunting among the dealers of the Quartier St. Antoine, been struck by the beauty of the Composer's Nocturne in F heard at some student's concert; having made enquiries concerning their haunts, had chosen this method of introducing himself. The young men made room for him with feelings of hope mingled with curiosity. The affable Stranger called for liqueurs, and handed round his cigar-case. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the same year married Miss Jessie McDonald, of Montreal, Canada. Mr. Aiken's first volume of poetry, "Earth Triumphant", was published in 1914, and has been followed by "Turns and Movies", 1916; "Nocturne of Remembered Spring", 1917; and "The Charnel Rose", 1918. Mr. Aiken is a keen and trenchant critic, as well as a poet, and his volume on the modern movement in poetry, "Skepticisms", is one of the finest and most stimulating contributions to the subject. [Conrad ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... took on a touch of something supernatural from the magic of moonlight and soft shadow and the man slipped his arm about her, while they looked off across the tempered nocturne of the hills and heard the lullaby of the night ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a great deal of music,' she said, 'and of every symphony, every sonata, every nocturne I have a separate and distinct picture, an impression of shape and colour, of a figure, a group, a landscape, so that each of my favourite compositions has a name corresponding to the picture;—for instance, the Sonata of the Forty Daughters-in-law of Priam; the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... in which he frequently played the flute or piano, while members of the family accompanied him. "Memory pictures," says one of his admirers, "that frail, slender figure at the piano, touching with white, shapely hands the chords of Chopin's 'Nocturne'." "He was a frequent visitor to our house," says another, "and would often play for us on his beautiful silver flute. The image of him standing in his rapt passion, while he poured forth the entrancing sound, I remember ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Clementi ever afterward spoke with admiration. Moreover, from this meeting he himself endeavored to put more music and less show into his own compositions. Clementi was soon back in England, where he remained until 1802, when he took his promising pupil, John Field, inventor of the nocturne, upon a tour of Europe, as far as St. Petersburg, where they were received with unbounded enthusiasm. In 1810 he returned to London and gave up concert playing in public. He wrote symphonies for the London Philharmonic Society, published very many sonatas for piano (about 100 in all), and ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... excitedly. "It's something of Chopin's, a nocturne, I think. Girls, I know where I heard that selection played just that ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... the "Nocturne," and that was his affair. If Ruskin did not think it beautiful, that was his affair; but when Ruskin went one step further and accused the painter of trying to hoodwink the world for a matter of guineas, attacking ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... religious serenity; that of the wood thrush for the musing, melodious thoughts of twilight; the song sparrow's for simple faith and trust, the bobolink's for hilarity and glee, the mourning dove's for hopeless sorrow, the vireo's for all-day and every-day contentment, and the nocturne of the mockingbird for love. Then there are the plaintive singers, the soaring, ecstatic singers, the confident singers, the gushing and voluble singers, and the half-voiced, inarticulate singers. The note of the wood pewee is a human sigh; the chickadee has a call ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the adorable Angela was receiving a friend. Hilary Meredith, spotlessly garbed, was lounging in the drawing-room, drinking in the strains of a Chopin Nocturne. Not only were his ears gladdened by romantic music, but his eyes were equally exercised by the radiant figure of Angela, bending over the piano, with the red-shaded lights throwing her bare shoulders into perspective and turning her ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... in a level cornice-line, converging vistas, malls of trees, "civic centres," of what use to tell him that there may be a beauty as well of non-conformity, when the magic veil of twilight wraps the city round, and twinkling lamps climb unbelievable heights and all the town is a mighty nocturne in blue and gold? We would not be thought to say that New York is always beautiful, or that a great deal of it is not much of the time ugly beyond hope. But there is not a street of it from end to end but has some point of pictorial charm, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... months had swift glided away, Again at the instrument seated, Miranda a nocturne had just ceased to play, When old ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... most abused pictures in the whole Exhibition—the 'colour symphonies' of the 'Great Dark Master,' Mr. Whistler, who deserves the name of '[Greek] as much as Heraclitus ever did. Their titles do not convey much information. No. 4 is called Nocturne in Black and Gold, No. 6A Nocturne in Blue and Silver, and so on. The first of these represents a rocket of golden rain, with green and red fires bursting in a perfectly black sky, two large black smudges on the picture standing, I believe, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... as she had finished the nocturne, a sad, low sweet strain, she came back to the parlor. Not even for the pleasure of giving John the delight of the music he loved would she stay where she could not see ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... weakness to an exasperated sense of volatile colour and evanescent light. It is hardly possible to doubt that this is so when we look on these canvases, where, in all the stages of her repose, the night dozes and dreams upon our river—a creole in Nocturne 34, upon whose trembling eyelids the lustral moon is shining; a quadroon in Nocturne 17, who turns herself out of the light anhungered and set upon some feast of dark slumber. And for the sake of these gem-like pictures, whose ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... of Chopin: the weird, stormy opening in the principal key may claim kinship with the opening of the Polish composer's "Polonaise" in the same key; while a certain strain in the melodious second subject brings to one's mind a Chopin Nocturne, also in F sharp minor; in neither case, however, is there anything amounting to plagiarism. The exposition section is not repeated. The development is clever, though, perhaps, somewhat formal. Again here, ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... away with an effect of showing how quickly she could get through the nocturne. I am not musical in the accepted meaning of the term, and in those days I was even less so than I am now, perhaps, but I was always fond of music, and had a discriminating feeling for it. At all events, I knew enough to realize that my would-be fiance was playing ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan |
