"Plectrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... play were the organ, the guitar, the syrinx or panpipe, and the lyre, which she struck not with her fingers, but a plectrum represented beside it. Observe, between the lyre and the banjo her little satchel of music-books, and below the syrinx a lamb and palm. This is the only sign on the monument that could in the least lead to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... with coloured handkerchiefs. Three of the elder geisha in plain grey kimonos squatted behind the dancers, strumming on their samisens. But there was very little music either in the instrument or in the melody. The sound of the string's twang and the rattle of the bone plectrum drowned the sweetness of the note. The result was a kind of dry clatter or cackle which is ingenious, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... present it without danger of just or rational offense. For evidence of this truth we need look no further than the pastorals of Virgil and Theocritus. But under the dirty clumsy paws of a harper whose plectrum is a muck-rake any tune will become a chaos of discords, though the motive of the tune should be the first principle of nature—the passion of man for woman or the passion of woman for man. And the unhealthily demonstrative and obtrusive animalism of the Whitmaniad is as unnatural, as ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... guitar, has four keys and is played with a plectrum, and the Kermanche, Cynthour, Tchogor, the Tchaminioho—the latter, a circular instrument covered by a skin, with one metal and two gut strings, on a long metal stand, is played with a bow;—the dumbuk (drum), with only one skin pasted round its single ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of glorious Leto fares harping on his hollow harp to rocky Pytho, clad in his fragrant raiment that waxes not old, and beneath the golden plectrum winsomely sounds his lyre. Thence from earth to Olympus, fleet as thought, he goes to the House of Zeus, into the Consistory of the other Gods, and anon the Immortals bethink them of harp and minstrelsy. And all the Muses together with sweet voice in antiphonal chant replying, sing of the imperishable ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang |
