"Timbre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I crazy, am I arrogant, to feel as I do about my darling dwarf children? Look at their beloved bellies, so smooth, so elastic, so resonant! A tiny tap and I set vibrating millions of delicate, ethereal sounds, the timbre of which to my ears has color, form, substance, nuance, and thrills me even to my old marrow. Is it not delicious—that warm, velvety, dull percussion? Is it not delicious, I say? How it shimmers and senses about me! You have heard of drummed tears? I can make ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... wind, heavy with the odor of burnt oil, he bent to the wheel, every nerve alert and leaping. As the great car jumped to its limit of speed, he fell to singing an elaborate sketch of opera in an insolent, dare-devil voice of splendid timbre, the exhaust, unmuffled, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Mozart's specific quality of emotion and specific style of musical utterance, together with the contralto's interpretation of the character and rendering of the music, according to her intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice, have collaborated with the individuality of the hearer. Some of the constituents of the ever-varying product—a product which is new each time the part is played—are fixed. Da Ponte's Cherubino and Mozart's melodies remain unalterable. All the rest is undecided; the singer ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... The timbre of his voice was harsh and grating, yet it was a very interesting, even a seductive, voice, and, Domini thought, peculiarly full of vivid life, though not of energy. His manner at once banished her momentary ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and with a face that seemed to belong to a gamin, she presented on the whole a graceful enough ensemble. But there were two drawbacks—her rather large mouth was wreathed in a stereotyped smile, and when she opened it it gave utterance to a voice of somewhat unpleasant, strident timbre. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... declared himself to be completely recovered, but was still not allowed to put his foot to the ground, Miss Clay was asked to sing to them. Her voice, as has been said, was a very beautiful one, a clear, fine soprano, with a timbre rare in quality, and naturally thrilling. She had not been taught well enough to be a public success perhaps, but was much more accomplished ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... wheezy, solemn monotone, from which all elements of life and joy seemed to have been eliminated. His wife's voice, though softer in timbre, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... finger-tips touched his left ear, and smiled broadly, exposing a row of splendid, shining, green teeth. Then he spoke, a meaningless jumble of sounds. His voice, though light and thin, nevertheless seemed to be of powerful timbre. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... When he spoke his voice had the timbre of some softly played instrument, and a tremor ran through ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... breath of an unnerved woman no slightest sound could be heard in the court-room but Lane's quiet, steady voice. It went on evenly, clearly, dominating the crowded room by the drama of its undramatic timbre. ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... mere sound-quality or timbre, is accessible to people who never go any further in their aesthetic preference. Children, as every one knows, are sensitive to colours, long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes. And the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used to bring the house down in the days of our grandparents, just as the subtle orchestral blendings of Wagner entrance hearers incapable of distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... one side, or it may move only a short distance. That represents intensity. If either you or George had sung that note I should have been able to detect it, whatever its pitch or intensity, because your voices are as unlike as different musical instruments, and that is character, or timbre, as the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the voice, the bright tone, the ring of high placing, predominates. In somber timbre, the dark tone, low resonance, or low color, predominates. In medium tone both are heard or felt more equally. None of this coloring or reinforcing must be done by locally influencing form or placing. The voice must be perfectly free; and the result ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... I sat behind him during all the years of his divided and undivided directorship, and never failed of a pleasant greeting, no matter what the expression of The Tribune had been on the morning of the day. He accepted congratulations with a "Thank you!" which had cordiality in its timbre, and let the subject fall at once. He met expressions of condolence in the same unperturbed and uneffusive manner. Only once in all the years during which we sat neighbors can I recall that he volunteered a remark indicative of either satisfaction or disappointment. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hurled head over heels a foot away, snapped from their positions. The sound of the wings was almost too exact an imitation of the snarl of a starting plane—the comparison was absurd in its exactness of timbre and resonance. It was only a test, however, and the moment the queen became quiet the upset mechanics clambered back. They crawled beneath her, scraped her feet and antennae, licked her eyes and jaws, and went over every shred of wing tissue. Then again she buzzed, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a few moments speechless. The thing which she had half dreaded and half longed for—the low timbre of his caressing voice—was entirely absent. Yet, somehow or other, his simple, formal words were at least as disturbing. He leaned towards her, a quiet, dignified figure, anxious yet in a sense confident. He had the air of a man who has offered ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... principal reason for wanting the Parliament back was the loss of time, and also to get rid of the conversations in the train, which tired him very much. He never could make himself heard without an effort, as his voice was low, had no "timbre," and he didn't hear his neighbours very well in the noise of the train. He always arrived at the station at the last minute, and got into the last carriage, hoping to be undisturbed, and have a quiet half-hour with his papers, but ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... separate note has three distinct properties, or attributes. First, its intensity, or loudness, which is governed by the height, depth, amplitude—for these amount to the same thing—of the waves produced in the medium. Second, the timbre, or quality, which is regulated by the shape, or outline, of these waves. Third the pitch, high or low, which is controlled by the distance from crest to crest of the sound-waves—or, as we say, from node ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... for singing now came, and there was profound attention. Her voice, with its keen, searching fire, its penetrating vibrant quality, its "timbre" as the French have it, cut its way like a Damascus blade to the heart. It was the more touching from occasional rusticities and artistic defects, which showed that she had received no ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was a lady of strange manner. There was an odd timbre in her voice, a note of domination not often associated with the fair sex. But she had given earnest of her words by a couple of gold pieces, so he murmured a prayer to his favourite saint that the horse might not die until the ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... by the warriors. His voice had reached the falsetto timbre. Mungongo lost his head entirely and seizing Bakuma, began to drag her out of the tent. Birnier turned his head leisurely towards him. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the nearer mountains. Sunday all the mill operatives were free; and then groups of women and children added themselves to the men; dinners were taken along, lending a grotesque suggestion of picnicking to the work, a suggestion contradicted by the anxious faces, the strained timbre of the voices that called from group to group. But night brought the amateur searchers straggling home with nothing to tell. It should have been significant to any one who knew the mountain people, that information concerning Gray Stoddard within a week of his disappearance, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... keep their hearts up. Some day, perhaps, Gaspare would have to go. He was the eldest of his family, and had brothers. Maurice sang that song like a Sicilian lad. She thought, she began to think, that even the timbre of his voice was Sicilian. There was the warm, and yet plaintive, sometimes almost whining sound in it that she had often heard coming up from the vineyards and the olive groves. Why was she always comparing him with the peasants? He was not of their rank. She had met many Sicilians of the nobility ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... ebb-time, they turn, the eyes beneath the busbies are gone. But the blood has suspended its timbre, the heart from out of oblivion Knows but the retreat of the burning shoulders, the red-swift waves of the sweet Fire horizontal declining and ebbing, the ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... glimmered on The shining way he went. He whispered to the trees strange tales Of wondrous sweet intent, When, suddenly, his witching voice With timbre rich and rare, Rang through the woodlands till it cleft Earth's silent solitudes, and left A Dream ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... he placed his arm about her, and there was something very far removed from political economy in the timbre of his voice. ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... of solid wood, and Bell was absorbedly feeding a tiny smudge fire. The smoke was thick and choking, but it did keep off the plague of insects which make jungle travel much less than the romantic adventure it is pictured. Bell heard the heavy, thunderous buzzing from the town change timbre suddenly. A single note of it grew loud and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... cela que ca doit etre chante. Votre voix est delicieuse, le timbre que j'aime—mezzo-soprano, avec ces ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... saying—he had never heard those notes in her voice before: they were gold, gold flute notes to melt rock-hard self-control and touch the timbre of unknown chords within—"I don't suppose anything ever was accomplished without somebody being willing to fight a losing battle. Do you?" Wayland stretched out on the ground at ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... I felt as if my head had burst open. It was the hammer of the officiant, who, with a loud blow on the platform, adjudged No. 42 irrevocably to Signor Polizzi. Forthwith the pen of the clerk, coursing over the papier-timbre, registered that great fact in ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... by the vibration of the column of air contained within the bell or dome, the vibration being set up by the impact of a current of steam or air at a high pressure." It is probable that the metal of the bell is likewise set in vibration, and gives to the sound its timbre or quality. It is noted that the energy so excited expends its chief force in the immediate vicinity of its source, and may be regarded, therefore, as to some extent wasted. The sound of the whistle, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... makes the charm of a voice thus heard but once cannot be of this life. It is of lives innumerable and forgotten. Certainly there never have been two voices having precisely the same quality. But in the utterance of affection there is a tenderness of timbre common to the myriad million voices of all humanity. Inherited memory makes familiar to even the newly-born the meaning of tins tone of caress. Inherited, no doubt, likewise, our knowledge of the tones of sympathy, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... voice, whether speaking or musical, whether of the head or of the chest, are spoken of as having quality, or timbre, and the term is also used more generally in reference to the whole compass of utterance. The quality of the voice is its most distinguishing characteristic, and it is upon its cultivation and improvement that the greatest efforts of the student should be ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... 'timbre,' the characteristic of a sound determined by the number of partial tones (overtones), as richness, sweetness, thinness, stridency; hence sometimes applied to the musical quality of a verse or phrase, 6 ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... of the voice, which struck Louise as young-old in its timbre, were soft and kind with a refined and even plaintive quality albeit not cultured. Here was a good soul and a friend, she sensed at once. But could she suddenly have won her sight, Louise would have been astonished ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... and gestured more. Though his hair was turning gray, he seemed to have preserved all his vigor. His carriage, his glance, his large jaws, his herculean frame, gave him the air of a Roman patrician in disguise. Yet he seemed genial, and if the timbre of his voice was autocratic, his frank and merry laugh removed any disagreeable impression, so far even that one pardoned his appearing in the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal |
