How to Use nocturne in a Sentence

nocturne

noun
  • Wright's early portraits on one wall bear little resemblance to the dark blue nocturnes on another wall.
    — Susan Dunne, courant.com, 25 Sep. 2017
  • The experience is no less expansive than seeing the ocean or hearing a Chopin nocturne for the first time.
    — New York Times, 22 Feb. 2022
  • As Cai grew old in the 1980s, his son, Cai Wanghuai, played the nocturne to comfort him.
    — The Economist, 18 Dec. 2019
  • Varone makes a rare appearance to perform a retrospective of his career in two solos set to Chopin nocturnes.
    — Lauren Warnecke, chicagotribune.com, 30 Jan. 2018
  • Sitting at his Petrof piano in his penthouse, Martins reels off Frédéric Chopin’s nocturnes with aplomb.
    — Washington Post, 23 Jan. 2020
  • This made the opening nocturne feel more contained, less disquieting, than when a soloist and conductor dig deeper into its brooding depths.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 9 Mar. 2018
  • The first wistful notes of the fourth movement nocturne coincided with the first drops of a sudden rainstorm, which sent some lawn listeners to the exits early.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 2 Aug. 2021
  • Pace and space We are always told that baseball is the shut-in's friend, the faithful companion of the elderly, the summer nocturne of our golden years.
    — Bill Livingston, cleveland.com, 22 June 2017
  • What’s more irritating than straining to hear the delicate notes of a Chopin nocturne while the man next to you takes an eternity to extract a lozenge from its crinkly cellophane wrapper?
    — Matthew J. Palm, orlandosentinel.com, 23 Aug. 2021
  • Across the gallery from those nocturnes are impressionist en plein air landscapes, wildly colored like the fauvists, dominated by cotton-candy pink and canary yellow.
    — Susan Dunne, courant.com, 25 Sep. 2017
  • The Field nocturnes and the active noise canceling of the headphones flattened all of life’s native sound and replaced it with thematically suggestive music.
    — Literary Hub, 14 Oct. 2025
  • After this, Connie Hegarty, piano, explores the development of the nocturne in her performance.
    — courant.com, 2 Dec. 2019
  • Moran's pianism — by turns as melodic as a nocturne by Chopin and as explosive as a solo by Cecil Taylor — proved consistently gripping.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 3 June 2017
  • All evening, Wyeth had been listening to an album of nocturnes by the composer John Field, performed by the pianist Benjamin Frith.
    — Literary Hub, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Roberts made a jazz nocturne of the slow middle movement, his complex chords and original themes catapulting a Roaring ’20s work directly into the 21st century.
    — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 6 Dec. 2019
  • The back-to-back solos, each set to a Chopin nocturne and choreographed 30 years apart, serve as the choreographer’s memoir, a gaze at his whole career and signature movement aesthetic in less than 10 minutes.
    — Lauren Warnecke, chicagotribune.com, 9 Feb. 2018
  • The second of two great septuagenarian pianists passing through New York this week brings with him an all-Chopin program, featuring two sets of nocturnes, a couple of ballades, a scherzo, a berceuse and the third of the composer’s sonatas.
    — David Allen, New York Times, 18 May 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'nocturne.' 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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