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Bach   /bɑk/   Listen
Bach

verb
1.
Lead a bachelor's existence.  Synonym: bachelor.



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"Bach" Quotes from Famous Books



... balanced, always preoccupied with beauty. The singular myth of a Chopin decadent, weary, erratic, mournful, hysterical, at odds with fate, was completely dissipated; and we perceived instead the grave artist nourished on Bach and studious in form, and the strong soul that had dared to look on life as it is, and had found beauty everywhere. Ah! how the air trembled and glittered with visions! How melody and harmony filled every corner of the hall with the silver and gold of sound! How the world was changed ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... for my somewhat childish indignation by letting myself loose upon the organ then. The flood of Bach and Beethoven brought back the sense of proportion. It proved, however, at the same time that there had been this growth of distortion in me, and that it had been provided apparently by my closer contact—for the first time—with that funereal personality, the woman who, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood

... year gave a prize to the school, but this year it was to be finer than usual, and her Majesty had sent to Herr Bach and requested him to choose five of his best boys, each of whom was to compose a piece of his own. No one was to see it until the end of three weeks, when they were to play it at a grand concert, ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... boy, I was very fond of music, and I am so now; and it so happened that I had the opportunity of hearing much good music. Among other things, I had abundant opportunities of hearing that great old master, Sebastian Bach. I remember perfectly well—although I knew nothing about music then, and, I may add, know nothing whatever about it now—the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in listening, by the hour together, to Bach's fugues. It ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... such a happy kind; he draws—I mean he scores like an amateur who has not made a very profound study of harmony, and sings his pretty song to his simple accompaniment with so sweet and true a natural voice that we are charmed. It is the magic of nature, whereas Keene is a very Sebastian Bach in his counterpoint. There is nothing of the amateur about him; his knowledge of harmony in black and white is complete and thorough; mere consummate scoring has become to him a second nature; each separate note of his voice reveals ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier

... conquered the world now, but only in his old age. Think of Beethoven, of Schubert, of Wagner, and of all the rebel musicians of to-day. But in the past the great artists, Michelangelo, Titian, even the great innovator Giorgione; Mozart, Bach, Handel; none of these were thought of as rebels. They had not to conquer the world against its will. They came into the world, and the world knew them. So, we may be sure, the decadent artists of the Graeco-Roman world were not rebels. There they were like Michelangelo and Raphael, ...
— Progress and History • Various

... of the enclosure is about ten acres—more suited to a Roman garrison than to a lord marcher of the twelfth century. That the castle was difficult to guard is shown by the success of Ivor Bach's bold dash, c. 1153-1158. Ivor ap Meyric was Lord of Senghenydd, holding it of William of Gloucester, the Lord of Glamorgan, and, perhaps, had his headquarters in the fortress above the present Castell Coch. ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... rational evenings, where history is the lightest subject admitted, and geology and the sanitary condition of the metropolis form the general themes of conversation. Mrs. Brumby plays finely on the bassoon, and has evenings dedicated to Sebastian Bach, and enlivened with Handel. At Mrs. Maskleyn's they are mad for charades ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that instead of causing the strings to vibrate by means of a plectrum held in the hand, the plectrum was set in motion by the mechanism of the claves or keys. The system of fingering employed in playing the harpsichord, up to 1700, did not make use of the thumb. J.S. Bach, F. Couperin, and J.P. Rameau were the pioneers in this matter. The first published work on piano technique and fingering was that ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... Spur!" I said not a word; but during supper it became really too bad. "What may it have cost? three ducats? must you have permission to wear it? Do you pay extra for leave to do so? We really must get one just like it." An officer there of the name of Bach, said, "For shame! what would you do with the cross?" That young ass, Kurzen Mantl, winked at him, but I saw him, and he knew that I did. A pause ensued, and then he offered me snuff, saying, "There, show that you don't care a pinch of snuff for it." I still said nothing. At length ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... enthusiasm of the "Salve Regina," the sorrow of the "Miserere," and the "Stabat Mater," the majestic omnipotence of the "Te Deum"? Artists of genius have set themselves to translate the sacred texts: Vittoria, Josquin de Pres, Palestrina, Orlando Lasso, Handel, Bach, Haydn, have written wonderful pages; often indeed they have been uplifted by the mystic effluence, the very emanation of the Middle Ages, for ever lost; and yet their works have retained a certain pomp, and in spite of all are pretentious, as opposed to the humble magnificence, the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... remembered to have seen before. If there had been one seat to be filled, and, say, three candidates, I should have found out enough about one candidate at least to give a more or less independent vote; and the local party committees would have known that I and others would do so. Bach party would then have circulated a portrait and a printed account of their candidate and of his principles, and would have had a strong motive for choosing a thoroughly reputable person. But I could not give the time necessary for forming a real opinion on fifteen candidates, who volunteered no ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... and yet I don't decently envy the rich. I'm an old bach. I make enough money for a stake, and then I sit around by myself, and shake hands with myself, and have a smoke, and read history, and I don't contribute to the wealth of Brother ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... holds up an ideal. It plasters its walls with busts of Walt Whitman and Blake; it hangs bad reproductions of Botticelli round the walls; it sings songs to Freedom; it rhapsodises about Beethoven and Bach. The children of the Crank Schools are, I rejoice to say, not cranks. They leave the boredom of Bach and seek the jazz record on the gramophone; they ignore the pictures of Whitman and Blake and study The Picture Show or Funny Bits. Many of them think more highly of Charlie Chaplin ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... large house at the end of this street, looking into the square, was formerly called Carlisle House. In 1770 it was purchased of Lord Delaval by the elder Angelo; who resided in it many years, and built a large riding-school at the back. Bach and Abel, of "Concert" notoriety, resided in the adjoining house. Carlisle Street was then ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various

... The origin of synagogue melodies was attributed to remoter and remoter periods; the most soulful hymns were adapted to frivolous airs. Later still, at a time when German music had risen to its zenith, when Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven flourished, the Jewish strolling musician Klesmer, a mendicant in the world of song as in the world of finance, was wandering through the provinces with his ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... a characteristic of all those who are greatest among men: of Goethe, for instance, of Bach, or Kant: namely, the correspondence of intense personality and the most highly developed objectivity; for the greatest personality ceases in the end to distinguish between itself and the world, has eradicated everything paltry, selfish and subjective and has become entirely objective, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... masters had composed. It is true that very few of these had come in her way. One somewhat mutilated copy of Handel's "Creation," a copy of Haydn's "Messiah," and a few fragments of an old book of Bach's Fugues and Preludes. Many of these she could not play at all, but others she had managed to pick out. A visit from a cousin who lived in Boston and told of the concerts given there by the Handel and Haydn Society had served to strengthen ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... Dorten, an dem Bach alleine Badet sich die schne Elfe; 10 Arm und Nacken, wei und lieblich, Schimmern in ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... things did not advance much. It was necessary in order that music should be purified inside the Church that the great secular musical movement should begin with the Italian Monteverde, with the Frenchman Rameau, and with the Germans Sebastian Bach and Handel; what splendid times, Gabriel! And just think what genius followed: Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Mehuel, Boieldieu, and, above ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... or something smart," and says he, "I can't afford it." He was rather near or so, you know, was my poor Griffey; but I never was letting him rest day or night, and the only thing he wasn't liking was being much talked over. So says I, "Come you, Jinkins, bach,"—he liked to be called by his sirname—"if you do larn Howel well, he'll be making his fortune some day," for he do say so, he do be always saying, "I'll be a great man, and get as much money as father." I eused to put in the last words of myself, for Howel never was taking to making money, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... drinkin', an' allers gets stubborn in direct proportion to what licker he tucks onder his belt—'all the same, Dan, as to this yere spellin', I proposes to ask for kyards. Even if I ain't no Bach'lor of Arts, so long as the Doc don't fire nothin' at me worse'n words of one syllable, an' don't send 'em along faster than two at a clatter, your Uncle Monte'll get thar, collars creakin', chains ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... in Schubert's time the sway he holds to-day. Our minds reel to think that by a mere accident were recovered the Passion of Bach and the symphonies of Schubert. Or must we prayerfully believe that a Providence will make the best prevail? And, by the way, the serious nature of this appreciation appears when we see how it was ever by the greatest of his time that the future ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... without rancour. "I wonder where they're taking him? He used to bach with Nebraska Jones, didn't he? I guess that's where they're taking him to. Yep, they've gone round the corner of the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... 8. Mozart's Symphony Concertante for violin and viola,—Bach's Passacaglia,—and Schumann's overture to "Die Braut von Messina" given in New York City ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... is the further development of the beautiful idea which appears in 'Tannhaeuser,' of associating a certain instrument or group of instruments with one particular character. The idea itself, it may be noticed in passing, dates from the time of Bach, who used the strings of the orchestra to accompany the words of Christ in the Matthew Passion, much as the old Italian painters surrounded his head with a halo. In 'Lohengrin' Wagner used this beautiful idea more systematically than in 'Tannhaeuser'; Lohengrin's utterances are almost ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... nothing he had ever experienced served to quiet him so much as these end-of-the-week concerts. They were not too long, an hour and a half at the utmost; and, above all, except now and then, when the conductor would take a flight into the world of Bach, he found he followed him with at least a moderate degree of intelligence; certainly with personal pleasure ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... this seen on earth or in heaven. Mr. Anisfeld's scenery explodes like a succession of medieval skyrockets. A phantasmagoria of sound, color and action crowds the startled proscenium. For there is no question but that the proscenium, with the names of Verdi, Bach, Haydn and Beethoven chiseled ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... avail the seed-bearing Bach and his fugues—emotional mathematics, all of them! Of what avail the decorative efforts of tonal fresco painters, breeders of an hour's pleasure, soon forgotten in the grave's muddy disdain! Had not the stage lowered music to the position ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... 'Musicians' upon 'nationality' and 'method,' we get what is called a Cross-division, thus 'German Musicians.' 'Not-German,' 'Classical,' 'Not-Classical;' for these classes may overlap, the same men sometimes appearing in two groups—Bach in 'German' and 'Classical,' Pergolesi in 'Not-German' and 'Classical.' If, however, we divide Musicians upon these attributes successively, cross division will be ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... the last three centuries from the perception of the individual parts to the perception of the whole. We find the same phenomena in the case of historical painters, and no less in that of the poets, musicians, and scholars. A Bach suite, just like a Breughel landscape, has been, as it were, worked out under the microscope, and nowadays it is easier to find a hundred philosophers of history who are capable of constructing history as a "work of art"—exceedingly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... which front the University and several other public buildings. A chain of beautiful promenades encircles the city, on the site of its old fortifications. Following their course through walks shaded by large trees and bordered with flowering shrubs, I passed a small but chaste monument to Sebastian Bach, the composer, which was erected almost entirely at the private cost of Mendelssohn, and stands opposite the building in which Bach once directed the choirs. As I was standing beside it, a glorious choral, swelled by a hundred voices, came through ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... in full splendor, and that at a single bound he placed himself at the head of the dramatic composers of his age. This was not true of Hasse, Mozart, Gluck, Cherubini, Weber, in dramatic composition; nor of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, in other branches of the musical art. However great a man's genius may be, he must live and learn. To attain the highest excellence, long continued study is necessary; and Handel, as we believe, was no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... mind is balanced between the two views of its being a crow or a magpie. I am content myself to be in harmony with France and Italy, in my 'Merula,' and with Germany in my Torrent-Ouzel. Their 'bach' (as in Staubbach, Giesbach, Reichenbach) being essentially a mountain waterfall; and their 'amsel,' as our Damsel, merely the Teutonic form of the Demoiselle or Domicilla—'House-Ouzel,' as it were, (said of a nice girl)—Domicilla again being, I think, merely the transposition ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... his blood by struggling to confine his turbulent spirit within the trim mould of the sonnet. Pindar, the most passionate of poets, drove and pressed his feelings through the convolutions of the ode. Bach wrote fugues. The master of St. Vitale found an equivalent for his disquieting ecstasies in severely stylistic portraits wrought in an intractable medium. Giotto expressed himself through a series ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... you got mighty familiar," said Obed in a jocular tone. "She didn't tell me what her name was. I suppose she looked upon me as a dried-up old bach." ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... more recalcitrant at musical chores. The Bach "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 ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... lace. "That's it. Girls nowadays think 't fine clothes 'll make 'em happy. An imported waist costs more'n one made in Waloo an' it keeps a girl strong enough to work for the silk stockin's she's got to have," she said with scorn. "I don't wonder there's so many bach'lors when I figure how much money it costs now to dress ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... that Bach, "immortal though many of his works are," was fettered by his servitude ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... than eight private concerts during those six weeks, and heard the same new ballad, and the same latest gavotte in C minor, at everyone of them. She was taken to pianoforte recitals in fashionable squares and streets, and heard Bach and Beethoven till her heart ached with pity for the patient labour of the performers, knowing how poorly she and the majority of mankind appreciated their efforts. She went to a few dances that were rather amusing, and waltzed to her ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... (better), without fire of any kind to warm us. On the first of these expeditions, 1846-7, my little party, there being no officer but myself, surveyed seven hundred miles of coast of Arctic America by a sledge journey, which Parry, Ross, Bach, and Lyon had failed to accomplish, costing the country about L70,000 or L80,000 at the lowest computation. The total expense of my little party, including my own pay, was under fourteen ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... firm of Simpson & Rackham, Norwich.—115. Bon jour: read "Bonjour . . . ! bien des chases de ma part a Monsieur Peyrecourt or Pierrecourt". "Expressions" in this sense (kind regards) is the Spanish expresiones, disguised as French.—118. Bwa Bach: The "little hunchback". See p. 114.—119 to 125. Parkinson the poet: This character, who appears for the first time among the inedited episodes of Lavengro, was a real one, although his true name (Parkerson) ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... criticism will turn, if not a blind, at any rate a short-sighted eye towards a great composer's occasional realistic escapades, which, however irritating they may perhaps be to others, are to him only a part of the general background of his texture; after all, in their different media, Bach and most of the other giants have occasionally allowed themselves similar little flings. It is a question not of rights, but of powers. The poet and the painter and the novelist, not to mention all the non-human agents in the universe, are bound to do a good many things ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... thrilling effect of simple beauty. O - it's first-rate. I am quite mad over it. If you find other books containing Lully, Rameau, Martini, please let me know; also you might tell me, you who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found. I write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five; write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the piano till I go to bed. This is a fine ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... poetry and the fine arts I am very susceptible, and I have given a great deal of time to this study. I am devoted heart and soul to music, which is more and more to me every year I live. Trivial or light music I cannot endure, but of Beethoven, Bach, Haendel, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and Wagner I should never hear enough. Here, too, my sympathies, are very catholic, and I delight in McDowell, Debussy, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... real love of art and did not understand it. I went to concerts, but the only part of a sonata or symphony which took hold of me was that which was melodious. The long passages with no striking theme in them conveyed nothing to me, and as to Bach, excepting now and then, his music was like a skilful recitation of nonsense verses. The Marseillaise on a barrel-organ was intelligible, but gymnastics on strings—what did they represent? With pictures the case ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... child in this part of the country that doesn't. I guess it won't be Fisbee or Sherwood either very long. She can easy get a new name, that lady! And if she took a fancy to Boswell, why, I'm a bach——" ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... universal. It takes all sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be celibate. But the fact that I have no appreciation of the celibates, I accept like the fact that I have no ear for music. The best human experience is against me, as it is on the subject of Bach. Celibacy is one flower in my father's garden, of which I have not been told the sweet or terrible name. But I may ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... Bach, Anglesey, in 1818, and I am sixty-five years old. I got the little education I have, when a boy. Owen Owen, who was a cousin of my mother's, kept a school at a chapel in the village of Dwyrain, in Anglesey. It was said of Owen that he never had more than a ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... in art. The instantly popular tune is unendurable in six months, the instantly popular novel or poem is totally forgotten in a year or two. No one perceives the whole greatness of St. Paul's Cathedral, or Sansovino's Library at Venice, or the music of Bach, or the poetry of Milton, at the first sight or hearing. No competent eye, ear or mind fails to perceive more and more of it at each renewed experience. Whatever be the art, a picture, a piece of sculpture, a book, the test is the same: the cheap, the sentimental, {194} the sensational, the merely ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... and was playing a grave prelude and fugue of Bach's. The three older people joined the children in the balcony, and sat quietly listening till ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... the classical stuff may do for those who like it well enough to stand it, but the domestic article suits me. I like the kind of beer that this man Bach turned out in the spring of the year, but I don't seem to be able to care much for his music. And so far as Chopin is concerned, I hope you'll all do your ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... kindly, as the storm subsided, directed the awakening impulse for order and system in his musical studies. This was Theodore Weinlig, who had been cantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, since 1823 and was therefore, so to speak, bred in the spirit and genius of the great Sebastian Bach. He possessed that attribute of a good teacher which leads the scholar imperceptibly into the very heart of his study. In less than a year the young scholar had mastered the most difficult problems of counterpoint, ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... semi-social, semi-intellectual, and monotonous in its very variety, for Althea had come to feel change as monotonous; or there was spinsterhood in England established near her friend, Miss Buckston, who raised poultry in the country, and went up to London for Bach choir practices and Woman's Suffrage meetings. Althea couldn't see herself as taking an interest in poultry or in Woman's Suffrage, nor did she feel herself fitted for patriotic duties in Boston. There was nothing for it, then, but to continue her present nomadic life. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... think was here last week? Why, Ben Warren, Hettie's bach' uncle. He stayed all night, an' occupied yore room. He says he's got two thousand acres in his plantation over the mountain, and the finest residence in the State—keeps a dozen hosses an' all the old niggers that his daddy used to own. He's thirty-five, an' ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... infinite capacity for doing without them. Like Wagner, you know. Well, I wish to be the Bach sort—the kind of thing that anyone ought to be able to do—only ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... have to rise when anyone wished to pass in front of him. He liked to arrive a few minutes before the concert commenced, and one of us would read the program to him. He had an excellent memory for music, and his taste was broad enough to embrace almost everything good from Bach to Wagner. He was a keen critic of a performance, and in the intervals between the pieces he criticized the playing from the standpoint of ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... does Cecilia play. You listen, and the song which you knew seems to sing itself, but enveloped with a richness and fulness of flowing accompaniment which is like the harping of aerial choirs. Then with others she plays the great music, concerted Bach or Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, or Wagner, Weber or Mendelssohn; now an old gavotte, now a quaint fantasia, and why not a toccata of Galuppi Baldassero? It is more than a hint or a reminiscence, although ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... egotistical moods which are of the essence of romantic singing, is what we employ. There is a great deal of truly religious music, austere in tone, breathing restraint and reverence, quietly written. The anthems of Palestrina, Anerio, Viadana, Vittoria among the Italians; of Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart among the Germans; and of Tallis, Gibbons and Purcell among the English, are all of the truly devout order. Yet how seldom are the works of such men heard in our churches, even where they employ professional singers at ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... Drew, complacently displaying his boasted knowledge of public men in minute detail, "is the Honorable Archer Converse, whose father was General Aaron Converse, the war governor of this state. Lawyer, old bach, rich, just as crisp in talk as he is in looks, just as straight in his manners and morals and honesty as he is in his back, arrives every night at the Mellicite Club for his dinner on the dot of eight"—Citizen ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... wife, and himself gave birth to Athene. The notion of swallowing a hostile person, who has been changed by magic into a conveniently small bulk, is very common. It occurs in the story of Taliesin.(2) Caridwen, in the shape of a hen, swallows Gwion Bach, in the form of a grain of wheat. In the same manner the princess in the Arabian Nights swallowed the Geni. Here then we have in the Hesiodic myth an old marchen pressed into the service of the higher mythology. The apprehension which Zeus (like Herod and King Arthur) ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... remembrance of "this wonder of God," as he called the child. At London, old Mozart says, they were received, on April 27th, by King George III. and Queen Caroline, at the palace, and remained from six to nine o'clock. The king placed before the boy compositions of Bach and Handel, all of which he played at sight perfectly; he had also the honor of accompanying the queen in a song. "On leaving the palace," the careful father says, "we received a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... we run little risk of ship-wreck through too great an amount of science. Scarlatti and Bach would laugh at the efforts styled 'canon' and 'fugue,' by the aspiring tyros of the present age. Our difficulties arise, not from musical complexity, but from want of suitableness, adaptation, and characterization, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... thousand Banshees, but Barney didn't mind it all wan copper, bein' glorified wid the dhrink he'd had. So the hay niver enthered the head av him, but in he wint an' tumbled in bed an' was shnorin' like a horse in two minnits, for he was a bach'ler, God bless him, an' had no wife to gosther him an' ax him where he'd been, an' phat he'd been at, an' make him tell a hunderd lies about not gettin' home afore. So it came on to thunder an' lighten like as all the avil daymons in the univarse were fightin' wid cannons in the shky, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... the day of month, and the year are written in figures; the rest, in words. Bach important word begins with a capital letter, each item is set off by the comma, and the whole closes with ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... mentioned above it is significant that so little has been attempted in the way of alteration or improvement, and it is still more so that of that little such a small proportion is worthy of a second thought. As Bach stands in relation to the fugue, as Beethoven to the symphony and Stradivari to the violin, so is Tourte to the bow. Superior alike to his predecessors and successors, he stands high poised upon the pedestal of ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... this year is of peculiar interest because of the attempt made by J. S. Bach to become acquainted with him. Forkel's biography of Bach (1802) is the only authority for this story. Bach in 1719 was in the service of the Prince of Anhalt-Coethen; hearing that Handel was in the neighbourhood, ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... him so rudely before. He wondered awhile and went to the piano. She had gone out of the room very rudely. Now he was free to do what he liked, and what he liked most was to play Bach. The sound of the piano would reach her bedroom! Well, if it did—he had not played Bach for four weeks and he wanted to play Bach. Yes, he was playing Bach to please himself. He knew the piano would annoy her. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... are who have done good service to American letters and whose work is outranked only by the men we have already mentioned—John Bach McMaster, whose "History of the People of the United States" is still uncompleted; James Ford Rhodes, who has portrayed the Civil War period with admirable exhaustiveness and accuracy; Justin Winsor, Woodrow Wilson, William M. Sloane, and John Fiske. John Fiske's work, which deals wholly with ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... structure at every turn. This, however, is rendered possible and interesting by the fact that the passages in such counterpoint are separated by episodes and are free to appear in different keys. Many fugues of Bach are written throughout in multiple counterpoint; but the possibility of this, even to composers such as Bach and Mozart, to whom difficulties seem unknown, depends upon the freedom of the musical design which allows the composer to select the most effective permutations and combinations of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... claiming he caught the Chink making passes over the chowder-pot with his thumb. Can you believe it, Ridgeway—in this very cabin here?" Then he went on with a suggestion of haste, as though he had somehow made a slip. "Well, at any rate, the disease seems to be catching. Next day it's Bach, the second seaman, who begins to feel the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... I should ha' took; for nothin' could ha' made that seem right to me, arter all had come and gone. But I jest thought how James was a dretful handy man about the house, an' I knew he set by Cap'n Fuller. The Cap'n 'ain't no real home, you know, an' I thought they'd admire to bach ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... passion, refined and swelling, in the curves of this most eloquent composition. It is Chopin at the supreme summit of his art, an art alembicated, personal and intoxicating. I know of nothing in music like the F minor Ballade. Bach in the Chromatic Fantasia—be not deceived by its classical contours, it is music hot from the soul—Beethoven in the first movement of the C sharp minor Sonata, the arioso of the Sonata op. 110, and possibly Schumann in the opening of his C major Fantaisie, are as intimate, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... one of Herne's company of players in Shore Acres, had no home to break up, but he said, "I'm going to get some sort of headquarters in New York. If you'll come on we'll hire a little apartment up town and 'bach' it. I'm sick of theatrical ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... long and gradual processes, became habitable, and man upon it through uncounted ages grew out of an unknown past into his present estate. Everything within man's life has grown, is growing, and apparently will grow. Music developed from crude forms of rhythmic noise until now, by way of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, our modern music, still developing, has grown to forms of harmony at first undreamed. Painting developed from the rough outlines of the cavemen until now possibilities of expression ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... was Bach, a Dane by nation, mounted guard every fourth day, and was the terror of the whole garrison; for, being a perfect master of arms, he was incessantly involved in quarrels, and generally left his marks behind him. He ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... walks with Richard Ford when Richard was home in his vacations, and long walks by himself when Richard was at Cooper's Hill. He often went to Wychford Rectory, where he learnt to enjoy Schumann and Beethoven and Bach and Brahms. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... much melody, and of which the very proportions and colour seem to teach respect and attention, shed the protection of its illuminated cornice, this winter, upon no faces more intelligently upturned than those of the young women for whom Bach and Beethoven only repeated, in a myriad forms, the idea that was always with them. Symphonies and fugues only stimulated their convictions, excited their revolutionary passion, led their imagination further in the direction in which it was always ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... think again. Tommy ain't so old; and it seems to me every man's a bach-e-lor until he gets married. Now, you'd think Tommy'd be fairly bustin' with joy, and maybe he is; I don't know. But he goes around singing all them mournful songs, and, say, you'd ought to hear him singing. Oh, gee! Honest, ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... of March 1809). His father, of French origin, born at Nancy in 1770, had married a Polish lady, Justine Krzyzanowska. Frederic was their third child. His first musical education he received from Adalbert Ziwny, a Czech musician, who is said to have been a passionate admirer of J.S. Bach. He also received a good general education at one of the first colleges of Warsaw, where he was supported by Prince Antoine Radziwill, a generous protector of artistic talent and himself well known as the composer of music to Goethe's Faust and other works. His musical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... more idiotic? Then Cotton Mather was a greater man than Johann Sebastian Bach. Then the average college critic of the arts, with his balderdash about inspiration and moral purpose, is greater than Georg Brandes or Saint-Beuve. Then Eugene Brieux, with his Y. M. C. A. platitudinizing, is greater than Moliere, with ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... evening. This was a circumstance now, alas! sufficiently uncommon, for he had nearly all his meals served for him in his own rooms. Constance, who was once more downstairs, sat playing at the pianoforte, performing chiefly melodies by Scarlatti or Bach, of which old-fashioned music she knew her husband to be most fond. A later fashion, as you know, has revived the cultivation of these composers, but at the time of which I write their works were much less commonly known. Though she was more than a passable ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... Anyhow, it's bad for you because it causes sterility." Many doctors lent themselves to a campaign against coffee, one of their favorite arguments being that women using the beverage must forego child-bearing. Bach's Coffee Cantata[64] (1732) was a notable protest in music against ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... le preindreins et ensint estoit fait s^{r} quoi le bataille se prist la surveile de seint Matheu et loiez ent soit dieux les enemys estoient desconfitz et pris le Roi et son fitz et tot plein des aut's g'ntz pris et mortz si come n're Tresch' ame bach'r Mons^{r} Neel Loereng n're chaumberlein port^{r} de cestes qu ent ad assetz pleine conisance vous sav'a plus pleinement dire a monstre come nous ne vous purroins escrire A qi voilletz pleine foi et credence doner Et n're seign^{r} ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... that a man does not do real work for money. That which he takes for his labour is but the incident of bread and hire, but the real thing he puts into a fine task, must be given. One after another, for many decades, workmen had given their best to perfect this thing that charmed me. Every part from Bach's scale to the pneumatic boxes in the making of a piano and player had been drawn from the spirit of things by men who made themselves ready to receive. They had toiled until they ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... musical readers of all ages. Students of piano, violin or other instruments need to know how the great composers lived their lives. In every musical career described in this book, from the old masters represented by Bach and Beethoven to the musical prophets of our own day, there is a wealth of inspiration and practical guidance for the artist in any field. Through their struggles, sorrows and triumphs, divine melody and harmony came into being, which will ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... From its poetry Cowper, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning would catch the divine afflatus; from its statesmanship Burke, Romilly, and Bright would learn how to create and redeem institutions; from its melodies Handel, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven would write oratorios, masses, and symphonies; from its declaration of divine sympathy Wilberforce, Howard, and Florence Nightingale were to emancipate slaves, reform prisons, and mitigate the cruelties of war; from its prophecies Dante's hope of a united Italy was ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... the girls; but often in an evening, after we had seen him wending his way across the garden with his lantern from la grande maison, where he had been spending the evening with Madame, did we hear Monsieur playing on his organ glorious "bits" of Cherubini and Bach. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... universally popular. His list of compositions for orchestra is also very large, and includes such popular pieces as the "Saltarello," "Funeral March of a Marionette," and the Meditation, based on Bach's First Prelude, which is accompanied by a soprano solo. He was elected a member of the ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... stay away. You needn't fear being shocked." At the end of the hall was a little partitioned-off room. Few enough personal goods could be taken along, but she had made this place hers, a painting, a battered Shakespeare, the works of Anker, a microplayer. Her tapes ran to Bach, late Beethoven and Strauss, music which could be studied endlessly. She took hold of a stanchion and nodded, all at ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... back when a strange sound suddenly arrested his steps. It was a concert of voice and instruments, which in this lost solitude seemed to him like a dream, or a miracle. The music was good-even excellent. He recognized a prelude of Bach, arranged by Gounod. Robinson Crusoe, on discovering the footprint in the sand, was not more astonished than Camors at finding in this desert so ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... friend and musician, and he arranged their midnight programme for them. Always sure of finding their professor awake and at work at that hour, they stationed the musicians before the house, and as the last stroke of twelve sounded, the succeeding stillness was broken by men's voices singing a Bach choral. When Agassiz stepped out to see whence came this pleasant salutation, he was met by his young friends bringing flowers and congratulations. Then followed one number after another of the well-ordered selection, into which was admitted here and there a German student song ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... from Bach to Beethoven and from Beethoven to Wagner—yes, even to Richard Strauss—but enthusiasm with discipline? German music has been our mobilization; it has gone on just as in a partitur by Richard Wagner—absolute rapture with ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... round drinks and sandwiches, and Josephine was making tea, Robert played Bach on the piano—the pianola, rather. The chairs and lounge were in a half-circle round the fire. The party threw off their wraps and sank deep into this expensive comfort of modern bohemia. They needed the Bach to take away the bad taste that Aida had ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... get the ablest lawyers in the state to defend him. Will Young, matchless orator of Rowan County, was not able to clear Beach on the first trial. On the second, however, aided by the legal skill of Governor William O. Bradley, D. B. Redwine, J. J. C. Bach, Sam H. Kash, and Thomas L. Cope, Beach was sentenced to the penitentiary for life instead ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... me some studies by Dussek, Cramer, the Inventions of Bach, etc., but before long the fascination of playing beautiful pieces was so great that he found it hard to keep me ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... soon as possible to the fountainheads of this literature in the works of a few great masters who have set the pace and established the limits for all the rest. In the line of purely instrumental music this has been done by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. The latter, who exercised a vast influence upon the manner of developing a musical thought and in the selection of the orchestral colors in which it can be expressed advantageously, ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... the keys gently and his sorrows and his temptations faded from him. He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his fingers moving almost of themselves, his eyes half ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... difficult task to provide words even more suitable and kind than the original German, which seldom observes an intelligent, dignified and consistent mood. These chorales should be sung very slow indeed, and will admit of much accompaniment. Bach's settings, when not too elaborate or of impossible compass in the parts, may be well used where the choir is numerically strong. He has made these chorales peculiarly his own, and, in accepting his interpretation ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... old bach heart jumps at the thought of having the kiddies in the house. I'll bet ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... if it be for thy pleasure and comfort. Thou shouldst be proud, instead of denying that all the Sidi does is for thee. My mistress would tell thee so, and many women would be dying of envy, daughters of Aghas and even of Bach Aghas. But perhaps, as thou art a Roumia, thou ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... up the huge Hebrew tome on the piano and puts it down with a slight smile as if overwhelmed by the weight of alien antiquity. Then she goes over to the desk and picks up the printed music.] Mendelssohn's Concerto, Tartini's Sonata in G Minor, Bach's Chaconne... [She looks up at the book-rack.] "History of the American Commonwealth," "Cyclopaedia of History," "History of the Jews"—he seems very fond of history. Ah, there's Shelley and Tennyson. [With surprise] Nietzsche next to the Bible? No Russian books apparently—— ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... and no doubt attributes the perfidy of England to the popularity of our works. And as we have to take the Kaiser as we find him, and not as the Hohenzollern legend glorifies him, I have to take the Tsar as I find him. When we fight the Kaiser we are not fighting Bach and Wagner and Strauss, to whom we have just joyfully surrendered without a blow at the battle of Queen's Hall, but all the forces in Germany that made things hard for Wagner and Strauss. And when we fight for the Tsar ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... twelve semitones of our chromatic scale, was not developed and accepted until after the acoustical reforms of Rameau, and the system of tuning keyed instruments embodied in that work called the Well-tempered Clavichord of Sebastian Bach. Both these men published their discoveries about ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... left between the tip of the tongue and the upper teeth two consonant sounds can be produced, one without the aid of the voice—th (hard) as in that; the other with the aid of voice—th (soft) as in thunder. Ch is a guttural produced near the front of the mouth, e.g. in Christ, or near the back as in Bach. ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... to what it can be compared? A fugue of Bach's. There was something fulminating but abundant, uninterruptedly abundant, and often so gentle; but there was this great difference, that he often groped for a word, changed it, altered it again, and yet it was incessant, and reverberant in spite of it all—that ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... listening to, though his range of words is limited and his sentences are crude and halting, A grown man, having acquired the trick of language, may talk fluently and say nothing. In our endeavor to understand a work of art, a poem by Chaucer or by Tennyson, a picture by Greco or by Manet, a prelude by Bach or a symphony by Brahms, we may ask, Of that which the artist wanted to say, how much could he say with the means at his disposal? With a sense of the artist's larger motive, whether religious sentiment, or a love of sheer beauty of color and form, or insight into human character, we are aided ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... imagination. His art is perpetual creation, not repetition of a thing created once and for all. The art that is lived, howsoever imperfect, has an advantage over the most finished art that is merely repeated. Next after the music of, as one might say, superhuman creative force—like Bach's and Beethoven's—comes this kind, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... village is Elhalten; it lies in a green valley, rich with many flowers; a lovely little brook runs through it, disappearing suddenly under houses to reappear again triumphant farther down the road. This brook is called the Silber Bach or Silver Brook, on account of the clearness of its water. On either side of the valley rise up steep mountain-slopes with wild woods and rough pathways. One good road joins the village with Vockenhausen, and so with the ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... put Gwion Bach the son of Gwreang of Llanfair in Caereinion, in Powys, to stir the cauldron, and a blind man named Morda to kindle the fire beneath it, and she charged them that they should not suffer it to cease boiling for the space of a year and a day. And she herself, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... choirmaster and musical director at St. Thomas's Church, held at that time this important and ancient post which was afterwards occupied by Schicht, and before him by no less a person than Sebastian Bach. By education he belonged to the old Italian school of music, and had studied in Bologna under Pater Martini. He had made a name for himself in this art by his vocal compositions, in which his fine manner of treating the parts was much praised. He himself told me one day that a Leipzig publisher ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... three Saturdays at the Opera have been prodigious. and a new opera by Bach(748) last night, was so crowded, that there were ladies standing behind the scenes during the whole performance. Adieu! my dear lord: as this goes by a private hand, you may possibly receive its ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... these two dumb critters here, and nary human face To make the house a home agin, same as it used ter be While mother lived, for she was 'bout the hull wide world ter me. My bein' all the son she had, we loved each other more— That's why, I guess, I'm what they call a "bach" at forty-four. It's hard fer me to set alone, but women folks—'t ain't right, And it must be mighty lonesome fer ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... their new, we are likely to remain in happy and contented ignorance of mesalliances between music and score, until they are pointed out by too curious critics or confessed by the author. What is present habit was former custom to which no kind or degree of stigma attached. Bach did it; Handel did it; nor was either of these worthies always scrupulous in distinguishing between meum and tuum when it came to appropriating existing thematic material. In their day the merit of individuality and the right ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... of the height or upward progress of an architectural design. The analogy is here very close. A less close analogy may also be felt between an architectural and a musical composition regarded as a whole. A fugue of Bach's is really a built-up structure of tones (as Browning has so finely put it in his poem, "Abt Vogler"), in accordance with certain ideas of relation and proportion, just as a temple or a cathedral is a built-up structure of lines and spaces in accordance with ideas ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... lived? That will teach you Germany, too. The bud of their dream was opening then; and what flower, even in the magnificence of its full-blowing, is so lovely? Albrecht Durer, with his deep, patient eyes, and his patient hands with their unerring stroke; or Bach, with the fugue flowing from his brain through his quick fingers, making stars—stars fixed forever in the heaven of harmony! Don't tell me that there is anything in the world more wonderful! We may have invented a few more instruments, we may have experimented ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... musicians and their families, but I remember very few instances indeed, where the son of a distinguished musician was a great musician himself. If the children take to music at all they may become very fair musicians, but never anything extraordinary. The Bach family may be quoted against me, but music, before Sebastian Bach, was almost like a profession, and could be ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... a small square piano without frame or legs. The strings were of brass, struck by a wedge made of the same metal which was called a tangent. It was capable of soft tones only, but they were very sweet and melancholy. The elder Bach loved this instrument. He did not take kindly to the piano which was about to supplant his beloved clavichord. One regrets that he could not have lived to have seen it perfected. In playing the music written by Bach we must remember that he wrote entirely for the clavichord. ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover

... a technique, but of a civilization, and indeed of a culture. One might as well demand of a music-hall orchestra which plays ragtime all the year round that once in the year, and once only, on Good Friday, it should pull itself together to give an adequate performance of the Passion Music of Bach. ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... and figures in the boldest relief. In the centre a richly ornamented arch contains the niche for the key-boards and stops. A colossal mask of a singing woman looks from over its summit. The pediment above is surmounted by the bust of Johann Sebastian Bach. Behind this rises the lofty central division, containing pipes, and crowning it is a beautiful sitting statue of Saint Cecilia, holding her lyre. On each side of her a griffin sits as guardian. This centre is connected by harp-shaped compartments, filled with pipes, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... artistic delight of these spiritual exercises that were conducive to worship. The organist was in love with the old masters and on holidays celebrated masses by Palestrina and Orlando Lasso, psalms by Marcello, oratorios by Handel, motets by Bach; he preferred to render the sweet and facile compilations of Father Lambillotte so much favored by priests, the "Laudi Spirituali" of the sixteenth century whose sacerdotal beauty had ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... family was of importance in the history of music for nearly two hundred years. Four branches of it were known at the beginning of the 16th century, and in 1561 we hear of Hans Bach of Wechmar who is believed to be the father of Veit Bach (born about 1555). The family genealogy, drawn up by J. Sebastian Bach himself and completed by his son Philipp Emanuel, describes Veit Bach as the founder of the family, a baker and a miller, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... a given art work, we know very well, though we do not always admit it, that not all productions are equally intractable to transference. A Chopin etude is inviolate; it moves altogether in the world of piano tone. A Bach fugue is transferable into another set of musical timbres without serious loss of esthetic significance. Chopin plays with the language of the piano as though no other language existed (the medium "disappears"); ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... alteration. Not seldom the concert is preceded by a rehearsal, which the Emperor attends and which itself has been carefully rehearsed beforehand, as the Emperor expects everything to run smoothly. At these rehearsals he will often cause an item to be repeated. Bach and Handel are his prime favourites. He is no admirer of Strauss. Wagner he often listens to with pleasure, and especially the "Meistersinger," which is his pet opera. Of Italian operas Verdi's "Aida" and Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" are those he is most ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... Worms, and Oppenheim, passed the Rhine in the beginning of June, and posted himself on the east side of that river, above Franckfort. The earl of Stair advanced towards him, and encamped at Killen-bach, between the river Maine and the forest of d'Armstadt; from this situation he made a motion to Aschaffenburgh, with a view to secure the navigation of the Upper Maine; but he was anticipated by the enemy, who lay on the other side of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... it might be thought, Germany had already vindicated its spiritual liberty. One and another of those North-german towns were already aware of the youthful Sebastian Bach. The first notes had been heard of a music not borrowed from France, but flowing, as naturally as springs from their sources, out of the ever musical soul of Germany itself. And the Duke Carl was a ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... dramatist speaks about himself he plays a part: this is inevitable. When Wagner speaks about Bach and Beethoven he speaks like one for whom he would fain be taken. But he impresses only those who are already convinced, for his dissimulation and his genuine nature are far too violently ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... pianoforte to Beethoven, the latter found written at the bottom of the last page, "Finis, with God's help." Beethoven immediately wrote underneath, "O man! help thyself!" This was the motto of his artistic life. John Sebastian Bach said of himself, "I was industrious; whoever is equally sedulous, will be equally successful." But there is no doubt that Bach was born with a passion for music, which formed the mainspring of his industry, and was the true secret of his success. When a mere youth, his elder brother, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... instinct. Man is only what he becomes—profound truth; but he becomes only what he is, truth still more profound. What am I? Terrible question! Problem of predestination, of birth, of liberty, there lies the abyss. And yet one must plunge into it, and I have done so. The prelude of Bach I heard this evening predisposed me to it; it paints the soul tormented and appealing and finally seizing upon God, and possessing itself of peace and the infinite with ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... jungles. After we had proceeded for some time quietly, the animals stopped short and remained as if fixed to the ground, and began to tremble; their fear soon communicated itself to my people, who shouted, without intermission, the words "Bach! bach!" which means "Tiger! tiger!" I ordered them to continue making as much noise as possible, in order to scare away the animals if they really were near. I had some jungle grass gathered and made a fire, which I kept constantly ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... Stories of Great Artists, which briefly recounts the careers of famous musicians; among them Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner. Many of the illustrations are ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... was about grown. He came back six years ago, and located over there at the foot of Tailholt Mountain, and started his Four-Bar-M iron; and, one way or another, he's managed to get together quite a bunch of stock. You see, his expenses don't amount to anything, scarcely. He and Joe bach in an old shack that somebody built years ago, and they do all the riding themselves. Joe's not much force, but he's handier than you'd think, as long as there's somebody around to tell him what to do, and ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... what is called the Lex Antiqua, or Vetustior in which many German words are mingled with the Latin, has no claim to superior antiquity, and may be suspected to be more modern. M. Wiarda has been opposed by M. Fuer bach, who maintains the higher age of the "ancient" Code, which has been greatly corrupted by the transcribers. See Guizot, Cours de l'Histoire Moderne, vol. i. sect. 9: and the preface to the useful republication of five ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... 'cordin' to my notion, is somethin' so small in comparison that it hardly counts in the manifest. Married folks ought to be friends, sartin sure; but they ought to be a whole lot more'n that. I'm an old bach, you say, and ain't had no experience. That's true; but I've been young, and there was a time when I made plans.... However, she died, and it never come to nothin'. But I know what it means to be engaged, the right kind of engagement. It means that you don't count yourself ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... suppose that Handel may have tried one or more of these four instruments during the stay he made at Florence in 1708. But it is not likely that he was at all impressed with the potentialities of the invention any more than John Sebastian Bach was in after years when he tried ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... body, and finally came to the wise conclusion that everyone who loved music was not a composer. Returning from one of Mozart's grand operas, splendidly performed at the Royal Theatre, he looked over his own, played a few of the best parts, sat staring at the busts of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Bach, who stared benignly back again. Then suddenly he tore up his music sheets, one by one, and as the last fluttered out of his hand, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... conviction, and the work that one man would give his all to possess would not find hanging space upon the wall controlled by another. But before Velazquez even artists forget their controversies; he stands, like Bach and Beethoven in the world of music, respected even by those who do not understand. No controversy rages round him; he has marched unchallenged to the highest place in ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan

... Americans," he said, "shall have learned the supreme value and glory of the orchestra, . . . then I look to see America the home of the orchestra, and to hear everywhere the profound messages of Beethoven and Bach to men." And again: "All the signs of the times seem to point to this country as the scene of the future development of music. . . . It only needs direction, artistic atmosphere, and technique in order to fill the land with such orchestras as the world has never heard. When ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... pretty lyric for the dinner-table. The Great Adventure, in short, is just this passionate pursuit of the soul of harmony in things, great and small, spiritual and material. We are all in the quest and our captains are those who lead us to the highest peaks of revelation—Bach fashioning that immortal Concerto for Two Violins that takes us out like unsullied children into fields of asphodel; Wordsworth looking out over Tintern Abbey and capturing ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... play Beethoven, Bach, or Meyerbeer, ach, I seem to live in another country. I hear music in everything, in the leaves, the ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... is nothing but idle and frequently fatuous hearsay to repeat of these early years, save this only, that Richard did not show the slightest musical precocity. Nor need this surprise us. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven were brought up in households where music was as the daily bread; their ears must have been filled with it while they were in their cradles. It is true that Handel's father dreaded music as a disease and a musician as a vagabond; ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... he has this. He thinks the musician's life the highest life. He says those to whom the revelations of God were committed were musicians. As David and Isaiah received inspiration to the strains of the harp, so, he says, have Bach and Mozart, Handel and Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. And where, indeed," she continued, in a musing tone, half soliloquizing, "where, indeed, can man rise so near heaven as when he listens to the inspired strains ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... great a part of him now constitute his real self, besides being for ever inscribed upon the roll of eternal remembrance. So the great musicians still live on, and when we claim that such-and-such an interpreter gives us the spirit of Bach, we may be saying more truly than we realise. There is no limit to the range of thought save the intrinsic nature of the thought itself. All thoughts seek their own, by the law of sympathy: like to like, fine to fine, and gross to gross. "Not all of us give due credit to the anomalous ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt



Words linked to "Bach" :   Johann Sebastian Bach, music, John Bach McMaster, composer, bachelor, organist, live



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