capriccio

Finally, Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos appeared and gave the downbeat, and the perplexed audience settled down to the first U.S. performance of Ferruccio Busoni's "theatrical capriccio," Harlequin.

From Time Magazine Archive

He trembled lest he should have been the plaything of a whim, for he had heard what a capriccio might mean in an Italian.

From Albert Savarus by Ellen Marriage

The stillness returned, save for the little voices of the night—the owl's recitative, the capriccio of the crickets, the concerto of the frogs in the grass.

From Roads of Destiny by O. Henry

But presently I did begin a capriccio, which I like very much, and it do go ever louder and louder; and I forgot that it was midnight and that everybody was asleep.

From Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous by Sarah K. Bolton

This is not the kind of prelude to pass from one key to another, but merely a capriccio to try over a piano.

From The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Volume 01 by Ludwig Nohl

Artists like Pannini and Piranesi specialized in composite views of ancient buildings, and these architectural fantasies, or capricci, enjoyed an immense vogue.

From Time Magazine Archive

The celebrated twenty-four violin capricci, written early in Paganini's career, have been rendered familiar by their transcriptions to the pianoforte by Schumann and Liszt.

From A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Volume Two (of Three) by Edwin Emerson

Both these artists were much celebrated for those capricci, or fancy pieces, which afterwards fell into disuse.

From The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. IV (of 6) from the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century by Luigi Antonio Lanzi

Only the crudest works of plastic art, capricci and arabesques, have no intellectual content; and even these are good in so far as they convey the playfulness of fancy.

From Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, First Series by Horatio Robert Forbes Brown

Others he retrofitted into capriccios of the multifaith city, whose inhabitants worshiped a collection of Babylonian, Phoenician and Greek gods.

From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2017

Between are alternately dreamy and lively capriccios by both; all is played with style, flair and velvety touch by Mr. Wosner, given spirited support by Mr. Collon and the Danes.

From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2016

Mr. Rose was at his most varied and flexible in the Fantasy Pieces, in which his assertive renderings of the outgoing capriccios were offset by graceful, richly detailed playing in the more subtle intermezzos.

From New York Times ● Jul. 18, 2011

In later life, painting steadily until his death in 1768, Canaletto essayed fanciful variations on his theme with almost surreal capriccios, whose brooding ruins bespoke the ancient grandeur that dissolved in carnival.

From Time Magazine Archive

Ah! they ought to allow for the capriccios of what is, after all, but a better sort of goblin.

From The Fortunes of Nigel by Sir Walter Scott