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Updated: May 14, 2025
One of them rushes to the bed to stab her, but falls back awe-stricken as she murmurs her prayer and sinks to rest again. The trio which marks this scene, sung pianissimo, is quaint and simple and yet very dramatic. The noise of the carbineers returning outside interrupts the plan of the robbers. They conceal themselves in the closet again. Zerlina rises and dresses herself.
Mr Sankey has a fairly good voice, which he used in what is called "an effective" manner, singing certain lines of the hymn pianissimo, and giving the recurrent line, "What are you going to do, brother?" forte, with a long dwelling on the monosyllable "do."
This Vorspiel, like that to "Lohengrin," is short and delicate. It begins ravishingly with flutes and clarinets and four violins, pianissimo, followed by a blare of brass.
There is a crash as Frederick rushes in to be instantly killed; a bass passage tears down the scale to the depths; and the horns sustain two pianissimo chords, two notes in each; then silence, broken only by soft drum-beats to make the silence felt.
"There's a train for Chicago at 8.30, isn't there?" he asked. "Yes," said the clerk. "Do you want to take it?" There was another pianissimo interlude, at the end of which the clerk was given to understand that he should order the 'bus for that train. Then the Judge went back for his chair, but it was occupied by a little girl who was just too old to be asked to sit somewhere else.
Now, winking with intense rapidity, and going through the muscular motions of an excitable person resolutely pulling out an obstinate and inexplicable drawer from somewhere about his knees, he produced sustained and mournful notes, as of canine distress in the backyard; anon, with eyes nearly closed and the straw nimbus sliding still further back, his manipulation was that of an excessively weary gentleman slowly compressing a large sponge, thereby squeezing out certain choking, snorting, guttural sounds, as of a class softly studying the German language in another room; and, finally, with an impatient start from the unexpected slumber into which the last shaky pianissimo had momentarily betrayed him, he caught the untamed instrument in mid-air, just as it was treacherously getting away from him, frantically balanced it there for an instant on all his clutching finger-tips, and had it prisoner again for a renewal of the weird symphony.
Examine his first study for confirmation of this. His wrist was very supple. Stephen Heller said that "it was a wonderful sight to see Chopin's small hands expand and cover a third of the keyboard. It was like the opening of the mouth of a serpent about to swallow a rabbit whole." He played the octaves in the A flat Polonaise with infinite ease but pianissimo.
The magic perfume of the melody for the horns was now shed over the PIANISSIMO indicated in the score for the strings. The Violoncellos similarly reduced the usual heavy accent, which was now heard above the tremolo of the violins like the delicate sigh it is intended to be, and which finally gave to the fortissimo that follows the crescendo that air of desperation which properly belongs to it.
After a hundred such tense yet clinging chords, the sustaining calm was illustrated, not broken, by a serpentine phrase of one lone oboë, pianissimo over the piano-surface, which it crisped not, but on and above which it breathed like the track of a sunbeam aslant from a parted cloud.
And as she let the chords go on sounding more and more softly till they died away in a pianissimo, great tears were falling upon the instrument. "You are in some need, my poor, pretty child," said Euchar, in the tone which comes only from a deeply moved heart.
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