United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
How this unique and curious effect, this vocal double-stopping, as a violinist might term it, is produced, is not certainly known; but it would seem that it must be by an arpeggio, struck with such consummate quickness and precision that the ear is unable to follow it, and is conscious of nothing but the resultant chord.
So away went the amorous musicians, favoured by the darkness, and talking in an undertone, and thinking more than they talked, while little Puddock, from under his cloak, scratched a faint little arpeggio and a chord, ever and anon, upon 'the inthrument. When they reached the ferry, the boat was tied at the near side, but deuce a ferryman could they see.
Sitting there within hail of the sea, the soft arpeggio of whose faint ripple on the shore seemed to harmonise with the louder instrumentation of the orchestra, which was just then playing a selection from Weber's "Oberon," the talk naturally drifted into a nautical channel; the old sailor dilating, to the delight of his listeners, on the charms of a life afloat and the divine beauty of the ocean, whether in storm or at rest.
This is a seed which, if well planted, will suggest the first principles of harmonizing melodies later. We must now work at the three chords carefully. Begin by making the class sing them in arpeggio, and in a definite rhythm, so as to get precision.
Then there are the down and up arm movements, for chords, and, of course, scale and arpeggio work, with coloratura touch. I generally expect pupils who come to me to go through a short course of preparatory study with my assistant, Miss Madeleine Prosser, who has been with me for years, and does most thorough work in this line.
The muscles of his face twitched like a fish on being taken from the hook. And as he cowered in this fashion, the poor girl pressed against his body, his shoulders lowered, past visions again arose from the depths of the sea. First he heard a ravishing arpeggio in A-flat major and above it, a majestic theme, commanding quiet, as it were, in sixteenth triads.
In singing the arpeggio the tones of the voice must be strictly staccato; but the movement of the hands and body must be very smooth, even, and continuous no short, jerky movements. The movement of the body is very slight, and at no time, in studying these first exercises, should the hands be raised above the level of the hips or of the waist line.
In another piece, inspired by the sight of carnations, they found that Mendelssohn intended certain arpeggio passages "as a reminder of the sweet scent of the flower rising up." Mozart, as many witnesses have testified, was especially attuned to composition by the sight of beautiful scenery.
The great wheel, which drove the whole machinery; the plash-mill, or, more properly, wauk-mill a word Robert derived from the resemblance of the mallets to two huge feet, and of their motion to walking with the water plashing and squirting from the blows of their heels; the beatles thundering in arpeggio upon the huge cylinder round which the white cloth was wound each was haunted in its turn and season.
It is an arpeggio of the chord of B-flat; it leaps up merrily, and has a characteristic delightful little twist at the end, and in the leap and in the twist lay possibilities of a kind that he made full use of only in his maturer style.
Word Of The Day