Harpsichord Quotes & Sayings

Someday we may have as many followers as the harpsichord. — Eddie Condon

The man was not wholly evil; he loved flowers (I have been told) and sweet music (he was himself no mean performer on the harpsichord); — J.M. Barrie

There used to be a certain condescension to Mozart. His music was regarded as pleasant. He was a porcelain figure playing a porcelain harpsichord. — Peter Shaffer

Do not think to swim below. The ocean is already pushing into ears, sinuses, temples, the softness of eyes, and the harpsichord strings behind the kneecaps. — J.M. Ledgard

Oh, well,' Mrs. Zender continued, 'Mother always said that Mr. Zender had other talents. He was good looking, and I think Mother put looking good right up there with the harpsichord, an instrument that has limited performance time and requires a great deal of maintenance. — E.L. Konigsburg

The harpsichord was actually ideologically considered a very questionable instrument in that period, much like I think it's ideologically considered suspect today in some circles. — Mahan Esfahani

I decided I wanted to be a musician when I saw the movie 'Amadeus' around 1987. I was five years old, so it was a good time to start piano lessons after seeing Tom Hulce who played Mozart play the harpsichord on his back with his hands crossed. Such a great movie to inspire a five-year-old. — Mark Salling

Your friend Mr. Tulip would perhaps like part of your payment to be the harpsichord?" said the chair.
"It's not a
ing harpsichord, it's a
ing virginal," growled Mr. Tulip. "One
ing string to a note instead of two! So called because it was an instrument for
ing young ladies!"
"My word, was it?" said one of the chairs. "I thought it was just of sort of early piano! — Terry Pratchett

As long as there's a place for sundials and gardening and beautiful things, there's a place for the harpsichord. I completely reject the idea that harpsichord is old. And I reject the idea that something old is therefore not good or not popular. Lots of things are old. Lots of traditions are old - cooking, art. I like it because it's beautiful. — Mahan Esfahani

Well, harpsichord is kind of a big guitar, isn't it? I mean, it is plucked, after all. — Mahan Esfahani

The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks. — Thomas Beecham

I mean, already in the French Revolution, the harpsichord becomes identified with the aristocracy, with the ancien regime. Plus, hey, you know, I mean, harpsichord is a really easy target, isn't it? I mean, it's - it's just how it is. — Mahan Esfahani

I mean to me, the harpsichord has a huge dynamic range. And I always say to people, come and listen to it. You know, come and listen. Come and actually experience this and realize there's good harpsichord playing, there's bad harpsichord playing. By the way, I am fun outside of this context. — Mahan Esfahani

Silken strings composing the harpsichord of life accommodate a score of emotional tidings. An orchestra of linked heartbeats strumming the melodious prose of our collective intones gives rise to sonnets of melancholy, producing an illimitable libretto stretching from the milky dawn of newborn's amaranth life to the speckled sunsets of gentle souls whom we cherish. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy. — David Russell

The feeble clavichord did not carry far; the harpsichord was only a little stronger; but Cristofori in Italy was working at these defects; he built a machine he called clavicembalo piano e forte - a keyboard instrument to play "soft and loud." Contrary to all experience, we now call it simply "a soft. — Jacques Barzun

The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper. — Elizabeth Goudge

For a fleeting moment, Adam could imagine it: the brocade curtains in decaying flames, the decorated consorts screaming from beneath the harpsichord, Ronan standing among it all saying Fuck Washington. — Maggie Stiefvater

Pressing a note on the harpsichord's keyboard would, via an elaborate mechanical action, — Music Sales

Say what you want about fairies, but you haven't rocked out until you've heard Smoke on the Water played on a harpsichord. ~Harlow — Red Tash

I know what I wish. I wish some Day that I might live by a River - one that is strong of current & silent; & above it, in the Pines, the Hawks shall call; & I shall live there in a small House of one Room & play the Violin, & Someone Else shall play the Harpsichord, & we will be far from all Human Habitation. We shall walk by the Banks of that River, & listen to the Buzzing of the Rushes, & that alone shall be our Company. — M T Anderson

The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them. — Charles Dickens

I'm glad she's so smitten with her new huntsman boyfriend and all, but venison-wurst? Gag me with a harpsichord. — Nicki Elson

Gorecki, you know, there's a kind of personal thing there for me. I had, you know, kind of become obsessed with that sort of Soviet Bloc period. And actually, a lot of composers in the Soviet Bloc - Gorecki's not the only one - are writing for the harpsichord as a sort of reaction against enforced Soviet realism, expressionism, sort of enforced modernism. — Mahan Esfahani

Sound is the most absorbent medium of all, soaking up histories and philosophical systems and physical surroundings and encoding them in something so slight as a single vocal quaver or icy harpsichord interjection. — Geoffrey O'Brien

One of the tracks that I have is Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - by the way, that's Bach's second son - Emanuel Bach's variations on "Le Folie." You'll definitely hear - I mean, I think if we listen to, say, the last couple of minutes of that track, there's a wide range of colors that the harpsichord is capable of. And I think, you know, that gives lie to the assumption that it doesn't have that kind of variety. And I think it very much speaks for itself. — Mahan Esfahani

I played piano. I've always liked piano. My father played piano. Actually, to be fair, the sound of the harpsichord did annoy him a bit, and I thought, how can I annoy Dad? I'll play the harpsichord. — Mahan Esfahani

He looked up and saw her and his breath stopped in his throat. His hands stopped too, still spread above the keyboard. Harpsichord notes do not carry, and in the sudden quiet of the drawing room they both heard him take his next breath. — Thomas Harris