How to Use glissando in a Sentence

glissando

noun
Definition of glissandonext
  • So the seals do a long glissando, the longer the better.
    — Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 31 Jan. 2014
  • Her glissandos were nimble, and her fleet, 32nd-note riffs had the playfulness of a kitten swatting a ball.
    — Barbara Jepson, WSJ, 25 Oct. 2017
  • Whose soul doesn’t soar at the sound of that remarkable opening, with its clarinet glissando?
    — Will Friedwald, WSJ, 21 Aug. 2018
  • This inspired some of the others to cry out as well, until the room rang with the crisscrossing glissandos of primate music.
    — Andrew Liptak, The Verge, 18 Oct. 2018
  • Scales fly up and down, one impeccable glissando at a time, pausing briefly before climbing to the next half-step.
    — Paul Klenk, New York Times, 2 July 2018
  • The Western flexatone was a metal plate struck with beaters that added a clang to eerie, unstable glissandos.
    — Alan G. Artner, chicagotribune.com, 24 June 2017
  • Some of these events recurred, like glissandos, playing on the bridge, and furiously bowed tremolos.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Aug. 2019
  • The waves rolling into the shore make cascades of sound, sometimes regular rhythms and sometimes duples and triples and offbeat syncopations—all set against the arpeggios and glissandos of the birds.
    — Alan Hirshfeld, WSJ, 6 Apr. 2018
  • This time around, the 1924 masterpiece opened as written, with the celebrated, ascending clarinet glissando heard 'round the world.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 13 May 2017
  • The effect is cross between a Monet waterlily panorama and a visual glissando, like someone zipping a finger rapidly across the keys of an organ.
    — Steven Litt, cleveland.com, 17 Feb. 2018
  • Impressionistic string arpeggios, along with other rapid figures, moody thick chords and glissandi pervade much of the piece.
    — Mark Swed, latimes.com, 16 Apr. 2018
  • Its 30-second countdown has become synonymous with any deadline pressure, with a wood block timekeeper and a harp glissando finish as well as pizzicato strings at the very end.
    — New York Times, 8 Nov. 2020
  • The eight-minute soundpiece draws on elements of the Polish composer’s early, avant-garde manner — here, tremolo glissandos in the strings and dense nine-part chords in the low brass — but uses them more subtly and poetically.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 29 Sep. 2017
  • Particularly striking is the third movement, packed with eerie string glissandos that set off the orgiastic climaxes that follow.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 15 June 2018
  • Roberts threw in a few of Monk’s signature eccentricities – some stretched out, exaggerated glissandos and skittering fills – with a Latin tinge supplied by drummer Bryan Carter.
    — Dan Emerson, Twin Cities, 16 May 2017
  • That sound was the central element of the work, written for string quartet, and Merivale kept it interesting by continually varying the nature, tempo, range and instrumentation of each glissando.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 8 Oct. 2019
  • In the score, these processes of obliteration are mimicked in distortions of instrumental voices: coarse attacks, underblown and overblown notes, tongue slaps, glissandos, all manner of scraping and scrubbing sounds in the percussion.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 27 Apr. 2020
  • Weilerstein kept her listeners on tenterhooks, braced for the next bout loosely symbolizing marital tension or the next soaring glissando installing a sense of calm, yearning, or loneliness.
    — Zachary Lewis, cleveland, 15 Oct. 2021
  • The thickening textures that Lev-Ari built into the final pages recalled similar methodology in Goodman’s oeuvre, Cohen’s very hot solo topped off with an ascending glissando that has become a signature for her.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 8 Oct. 2017
  • Kim works within a musical philosophy that views every note and every individual articulation as alive, with glissando, attack, shape and tone as a unique and living embodiment of the music/life essence.
    — John Adamian, courant.com, 7 Apr. 2018
  • Players were often asked to abandon the standard twelve pitches: glissandos, microtones, whistling harmonics, and other breathy noises proliferated.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2017
  • The ending of the first movement makes clear Britten’s awareness of this aesthetic dichotomy, with a cello glissando ascent through the harmonic series, an acoustic phenomenon literally at the core of western ideas of musical consonance and harmony.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 25 Apr. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'glissando.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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