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

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

His capriccio on the departure of a friend, with its differently labelled parts, comes distinctly under the above denomination.

From Masters of French Music by Arthur Hervey

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

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

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

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

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

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

Style in Curtis is closer to old-fashioned capriccios than to surrealism.

From Time Magazine Archive

Hoby had evidently alarmed, by some sprinklings of Italianisms—some capriccios of “new-fangled” words—the chaste ear of our Anglican purist.

From Amenities of Literature Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature by Isaac Disraeli