How to Use contrapuntal in a Sentence

contrapuntal

adjective

• Our careers flowed in contrapuntal sign-waves, one of us up while the other was down.
  — Todd Robinson, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Aug. 2023
• One of the main challenges of the suites involves projecting the music’s contrapuntal textures.
  — Anthony Tommasini, BostonGlobe.com, 10 Aug. 2019
• Nina Lee reveled in the nuances of their contrapuntal lines.
  — Tim Diovanni, Dallas News, 27 Apr. 2021
• Throughout the book, there are contrapuntal poems that reflect these conflicts or two selves: self and mirror self as well as self and shadow self.
  — Alejandra Oliva, refinery29.com, 26 Oct. 2021
• Aimaq uses this confrontation to set up a contrapuntal narrative between the lives of Daniel and Taj.
  — Paul Sedan, The Christian Science Monitor, 13 Jan. 2021
• Variation 3, for example, is the first of the periodic contrapuntal canons in the score, with one line followed a couple of beats later by its echo.
  — Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, 4 Oct. 2020
• By freeing the cello from having to always play the bass line, Dvořák was able to deploy it in a more contrapuntal manner against the upper strings, even allowing the cello to join or supplant them.
  — Christian Hertzog, sandiegouniontribune.com, 10 Aug. 2017
• But these contrapuntal beats are too infrequent, and the director, Urie, hasn’t worked enough nuance into the more antic sections.
  — Celia Wren, Washington Post, 15 July 2019
• Their contrapuntal skills and choral writing inspired Mozart.
  — San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 June 2019
• In my seat, Gerstein’s immaculate contrapuntal flights were buried in the winds’ primary-colored blocks of sound.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 2 Aug. 2021
• But contrapuntal elaboration works its way down through the string sections.
  — Scott Cantrell, Dallas News, 31 Oct. 2020
• Its arrangements are lean and contrapuntal, uncushioned, making every note earn its place both as a melodic line and a rhythmic push.
  — The New York Times, New York Times, 27 Oct. 2022
• The song becomes a study of contrapuntal motion between his left and right hands, framing his familiar, luminous melody.
  — Larry Blumenfeld, WSJ, 14 Sep. 2022
• The zooms in and out also establish a crucial, contrapuntal rhythm between doctors and patients, and also between the physical and the abstract.
  — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 27 Apr. 2023
• But the overly broad performances, especially in the zippy courtroom scenes, drain the movie of nuance and blunt its realism, and the contrapuntal his-and-her flashbacks add little.
  — Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2017
• The strings are divided into two groups and operate in contrapuntal dialogue, building a universe in sound from the lowest notes.
  — Los Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2022
• The tracks are 30 contrapuntal variations beginning and ending with an aria.
  — Virginia Heffernan, Wired, 17 June 2021
• By the time a few dozen women are dancing in circles around a maypole, even the camerawork — with its sinuous flow and contrapuntal push-ins and pullouts — seems to be tightening its grip on the visitors.
  — Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 2 July 2019
• Andsnes and Hamelin brought lift to the rhythms, definition to the spiky contrapuntal textures, of music that can easily sound aridly academic in lesser hands.
  — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 2 May 2017
• On Saturday, secondary parts or contrapuntal inner voices struggled to come through or were lost completely in the overall sound.
  — Christian Hertzog, sandiegouniontribune.com, 10 Dec. 2017
• The production by Matt Pierson gives the group a fuller, deeper sound, more like a rock band, and looping and other electronics effects allow the musicians to add bass lines, contrapuntal parts, and textures that weren't there when the group began.
  — Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, 9 Feb. 2018
• Drawn to the most extreme position, Judd eschewed any sort of contrapuntal or hierarchical arrangements of shapes and marks on a surface.
  — David Salle, The New York Review of Books, 17 Dec. 2020
• Its obsession with contrapuntal display makes the middle registers (the octaves around middle C on the piano) sound clogged and overcrowded.
  — Russell Platt, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2017
• Eugenides writes slowly, so Fresh Complaint feels almost like a sap to the readers who are waiting for another contrapuntal masterpiece.
  — Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, 4 Oct. 2017
• Not a single image of the orchestra at work has a visual melody or a contrapuntal density, and the filming of performance seems borrowed from any DVD of a symphony orchestra.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2022
• Then there are the vocal harmonies, full-on chorale-like sections incorporating as many as eight voices at a time, with contrapuntal lines and distinctive harmony choices that have long been the hallmarks of his sound.
  — Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times, 13 Sep. 2019
• During more intense episodes, the instruments align into softly pungent chords or a bit of contrapuntal interplay.
  — Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, 25 Jan. 2018
• Folksy melodies exchanged between the violin and piano in the second movement recall Bartok, while the violin’s contrapuntal lines in the opening of the third movement were reminiscent of a Bach partita.
  — Tim Diovanni, Dallas News, 20 Oct. 2020
• Voices of a surveyor, a geologist, a nurse, a government official and a writer intertwined as though contrapuntal voices in a Bach fugue or suite.
  — Los Angeles Times, 22 Apr. 2020
• But Hersch still draws on his classical training, in his contrapuntal playing and his more structured compositions.
  — Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 Sep. 2017

Last Updated: 27 Jun 2024