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Mahony?" he said genially. And so Mary obliged him by laying aside the MORCEAU she had chosen, and setting up instead a "battle-piece," that was a general favourite. "Aha! that's the ticket," said Henry Ocock, and rubbed his hands as Mary struck up, pianissimo, the march that told of the enemy's approach. And: "Boompity-boomp-boomp-boomp!"
It is at this point that the symphonic thought begins, which at the first bar calls to mind celestial harmonies. Here we have the tone-figure, as in the Lohengrin Prelude, given by the violins and flutes in the highest register, beginning in faintest pianissimo.
It was then Chopin told Sand of his pupil, Georges Mathias, "c'est une bonne caboche." Thalberg took his revenge whenever he could. After a concert by Chopin he astonished Hiller by shouting on the way home. In reply to questions he slily answered that he needed a forte as he had heard nothing but pianissimo the entire evening! Chopin was never a hearty partisan of the Romantic movement.
Blangini was a petit maître as well as a singing master; always attired in the height of the fashion, and in manner and appearance much more of a Frenchman than an Italian. He was mercilessly satirical on the failures of his pupils, to whom (having reduced them, by the most ridiculous imitation of their unfortunate vocal attempts, to an almost inaudible utterance of pianissimo pipings) he would exclaim, "Ma per carit
To be able to use it anywhere, of course, requires a long time and much practice. If the larynx has acquired the habit properly, the trill can be carried on into a piano and pianissimo and prolonged almost without end with crescendi and decrescendi, as the old Italians used to do, and as all Germans do who have learned anything.
Everybody has heard of the vulgar circus tricks performed by the most famous of the sopranists, Farinelli how at one time he beat a famous German trumpeter in prolonging and swelling his notes, and how, at another time, he began an aria softly, swelled it by imperceptible degrees to such an astounding volume, and then decreased it again in the same way to pianissimo, that the public wildly applauded him for five minutes.
Those were happy days for the drama, when a scoundrel was a scoundrel and wore a silk hat to prove it, and a hero was a two-fisted man, as anybody could tell by a glance at his marcelled hair and his open-at-the-throat shirt. Tum tum tum tum taaaa-tum. Pizzicato pianissimo, says the direction on the score. So we are all set for a melodrama. Here is the Great City back-drop.
Farrar: "A thing that is mastered must be really perfect. To master vocal art, the singer must have so developed his voice that it is under complete control; then he can do with it what he wishes. He must be able to produce all he desires of power, pianissimo, accent, shading, delicacy and variety of color."
'No, no, said Johnston Smyth, hushing the voices with a pianissimo movement of his hands, 'it is not humour on Mr. Selwyn's part, but gratitude. In return for Christopher Columbus discovering America, this gentleman is going to repay the debt of the New World to the Old by discovering England. 'SHALL WE HAVE SOME PORT? said Lady Durwent, opening the sluice-gates of her vocal production.
My episodical remarks are for the benefit of young Dolce Pianissimo, who has taken, I am sorry to say, to gin, shirt-collars prodigious, and the minor magazines, and whose friends are standing aghast and despairing at his lunacy.
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