Composition (often improvised) for a solo instrument (especially solo organ) and not a regular part of a service or performance

Usage examples of voluntary.

The Christians sometimes supplied by their voluntary declaration the want of an accuser, rudely disturbed the public service of paganism, and rushing in crowds round the tribunal of the magistrates, called upon them to pronounce and to inflict the sentence of the law.

That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy.

On the way they overtook the patriarch, without attendance and almost without apparel, riding on an ass, and reduced to a state of apostolical poverty, which, had it been voluntary, might perhaps have been meritorious.

Nevertheless, he was correct in thinking that our voluntary imposition of a meaningless notation upon an object apprehended is the way in which at least some words must acquire their meaning.

Some physiologists suppose that the cerebellum is the source of that harmony or associative power which co-ordinates all voluntary movements, and effects that delicate adjustment of cause to effect, displayed in muscular action.

Protesting shrilly and brandishing an expensively plated and engraved pistol, it was clear that his presence in the Rolls was by no means voluntary.

Edinburgh to improve, enlarge, and adorn the avenues and streets of that city, according to a concerted plan, to be executed by voluntary subscription: a third, allowing the exportation of wool and woollen yarn from Ireland into any port in Great Britain: and a fourth, prescribing the breadth of the wheels belonging to heavy carriages, that the high roads of the kingdom might be the better preserved.

Scots, after maintaining for ages the dignity of an independent kingdom, have multiplied, by an equal and voluntary union, the honors of the English name.

The misconception as to the relation of voluntary attention to interest is seen in an illustration often given as an example of non-voluntary attention.

The paralytic agent appears to be affecting the voluntary muscle groups, which means most people should not be at risk of death.

Their want of experience detained them twelve years longer the obscure and voluntary pupils of a minister, who extended his reign by persuading them to indulge the pleasures of youth, and to disdain the labors of government.

She had just returned from duty with the team informing the largest of the human primitivist communities of their imminent relocation, and trying to secure their voluntary cooperation.

Affirming that the Supreme Court is not concluded by the finding of a jury in a State court that a confession in a murder trial was voluntary, but determines that question for itself from the evidence, the Justices unanimously declared that the Constitution proscribes lawless means irrespective of the end, and rejected the argument that the thumbscrew, the wheel, solitary confinement, protracted questioning, and other ingenious means of entrapment are necessary to uphold our laws.

He could by a voluntary effort suspend the action of his heart for a considerable period, during which he lay like one dead, pulseless, and without motion.

As one consequence of this pattern, the significant armies have continued to be small and usually based on voluntary recruitment, intended for deployment outside their native systems.