"Acoustic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... find in all language the elements out of which verse is made. Indeed, M. Jourdain, having recovered from his first shock on learning that he had actually been talking prose, must prepare for a second: that he has actually been talking potential verse. The three acoustic properties of speech—duration, intensity, pitch—modified by the logical and emotional content of which the sounds are symbolic, combine to produce an incredibly subtle and elastic medium which the poet moulds to his metrical form. In this process of moulding and adjustment, each ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... acoustic properties of the room are very perfect, and I have learned to throw my voice. Perhaps you may not know—in fact, how should you know?—but I have had the immense privilege of studying with Madame Marchesi in Paris, and of keeping up to the mark since by an occasional delightful ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... used by the Supreme Court, was admirably adapted for the deliberations of the forty-eight gentlemen who composed the upper house of the Nineteenth Congress. Modeled after the theatres of ancient Greece, it possessed excellent acoustic properties, and there was ample accommodation in the galleries for the few strangers who then visited Washington. The Senate used to meet at noon and generally conclude its day's work by three o'clock, while adjournments ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... past. Thus a short walk brought us from Cicero's villa to the ruins of three temples—those of Diana, Venus, and Mercury. Of the first, one side and a few little cells, called the "baths of Venus," alone remain. Part of Venus's temple stands in the rotunda. It was built on acoustic principles, so that any one who puts his ear to a certain part of the wall can hear what is whispered at the opposite extremity. A few fragments of the rotunda were the only trace left of the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... differ, but those vibrations only differ because the force makes them differ which is acting upon them. They don't generate tunes, but convey them. And the result, so far as our hearing is concerned, depends upon what are called the acoustic conditions under which the vibrations take place. Just so the brain possesses no generating function of its own; it deals with and transmits the ideas and emotions projected upon it according to the organic conditions by which it may be affected at the time, whether those ideas and emotions ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... hiring the place, I had to bear the cost of the requisite extension of the orchestra. The room, which was lined all round with theatrical scenery, was still extraordinarily unfavourable for sound. I hardly felt like running the risk of providing an acoustic wall and ceiling on my own account, however. Although the first performance on 26th December drew a large audience, it brought me in nothing but outrageously heavy expenses and great distress at the dismal effect of the orchestra owing to the bad acoustics. In spite of the dark outlook ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... yet remained to us. For no amount of them will satisfy one company, or even one squad, and we are always short. The rifles cleaned, we policed the tent, making it absolutely neat. Now such are the acoustic properties of these canvas dwellings that we can hear what goes on in our neighbors', and so it happened that we heard, from tent 6, Randall's controversy with the rest of his squad. It is seldom that one man will talk down seven, but we heard the whole of his obstinate defense, how ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... and, by the air of an acoustic instrument, enabled Beethoven to hear a few words of his compassion ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter |
