How to Use glissando in a Sentence

glissando

noun
  • Whose soul doesn’t soar at the sound of that remarkable opening, with its clarinet glissando?
    — Will Friedwald, WSJ, 21 Aug. 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
  • Two minutes in, the tab starts to hit and a kaleidoscope of harp glissandos whoosh us into an interlude as twinkly as the stars above.
    — Lily Goldberg, Pitchfork, 26 Feb. 2026
  • 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
  • Some of these events recurred, like glissandos, playing on the bridge, and furiously bowed tremolos.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Aug. 2019
  • When the orchestra came in, led by a harp glissando that was like a leap out of the void, the texture was rich and decadently sensual.
    — Los Angeles Times, 13 Jan. 2023
  • 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
  • Lauer contrasted that with an ascending glissando on his Wurlitzer in the middle of the bridge.
    — Tom Roland, Billboard, 18 June 2025
  • The notes, and the glissando connecting them, signal a pattern of tones for the musician to develop.
    — Olivia Giovetti, Harpers Magazine, 27 Jan. 2026
  • 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
  • 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
  • The album opens with a pair of love songs that practically shimmer with jazzy keyboard glissandos and dainty folk-pop fingerpicking.
    — Jude Noel, Pitchfork, 13 Jan. 2026
  • May contributes harp glissandos, which somehow don’t come off as a precocious affectation.
    — Ed Masley, AZCentral.com, 21 Nov. 2025
  • Mazzoli piles unstable harmonies on top of that fractured foundation; trombone glissandos add a demonic sneer.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • In the chromatic glissando, which Liszt picked up from his student Carl Tausig, one right-hand finger sweeps across the white keys while the left hand races just behind, on the black keys.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2023
  • 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
  • Each key was associated with a particular note, but the pitch of the note could be tuned by rolling back and forth on the key, similar to how a violinist might produce a vibrato or glissando.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 1 Feb. 2024
  • 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 two violinists beautifully etched a winter of stark stillness; a gusty, indecisive spring; a summer of slumping glissandos and whirring bugs; and a pouncing autumn, crisp and scrubby.
    — Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 4 Dec. 2023
  • Josh is a skeptic who gets itchy whenever actors burst into song; Melissa is a believer who longs for a romance so transcendent that it can be expressed only in an airy glissando, opted up an octave.
    — Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker, 30 Apr. 2026
  • Textures and gestures, such as upward glissandos or pizzicato arpeggios are similarly indicated.
    — Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Nov. 2023
  • 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 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
  • Double-bass glissandos hint at hands grubbing in the earth, while abrupt moments of concerted action—notably, an accordion wheezing out an F-sharp-minor chord—suggest flickering signals and transmissions.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 18 May 2026
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

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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