How to Use atonal in a Sentence

atonal

adjective

• The atonal ethos of that film and the short video works Lynch has made since are present now in Twin Peaks.
  — Corey Atad, Esquire, 22 May 2017
• Most of the initial score's lyrics were from the Episcopal hymnal and the songs were atonal.
  — Mark Kennedy, Star Tribune, 10 May 2021
• But these faint traces of the familiar are swept away in the same current — subsumed by the atonal crush of the music.
  — Washington Post, 28 Jan. 2022
• The result is a distant, atonal film that feels more slippery than evocative.
  — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Oct. 2022
• Not unexpectedly, the horror films had a lot of harsh and atonal screams.
  — Rachel Ehrenberg, WIRED, 26 May 2010
• The trio ripped through their set, which also featured a Cline cameo, and brought an atonal, free-jazz element to their old-school punk pedigree.
  — Jonah Bayer, SPIN, 31 May 2022
• The episode lurched between the show’s typical style and scenes enhanced by atonal, suspenseful sounds and a shaky-cam effect.
  — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 19 June 2017
• When quirkily melodious new wave tried to make punk cute, the Bowery gobbled it all up and puked up atonal filth-art no wave.
  — Jonathan Rowe, Spin, 11 Aug. 2023
• The collection’s other works are atonal and process-driven.
  — Allan Kozinn, WSJ, 30 May 2018
• Too many scenes were undone by an aspiration to be both flimsy and profound: the comedy felt as atonal as the tragedy.
  — Hazlitt, 17 May 2023
• Blood, on the other hand, has the size and shape of an old-school Hollywood epic but also the anxious, atonal soul of something more contemporary.
  — A.a. Dowd, Chron, 10 Mar. 2023
• It’s on the verge of Neo romantic, very tuneful and melodic, whereas George Walker’s work is verging on atonal.
  — Julian Sancton, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 Apr. 2022
• Some have compared Benjamin’s music to an atonal Pelléas et Mélisande.
  — David Patrick Stearns, Philly.com, 10 Feb. 2018
• One afternoon, we were presented with an avant-garde, atonal work featuring, among other things, singers dressed as large, iridescent worms that writhed across the stage.
  — New York Times, 2 Jan. 2022
• The liveliness of the first movement returns in the atonal finale, with pitch slides and vocal gargling effects, fast tremolos in the cello and thwacking accents and flutter-tonguing for the clarinet.
  — Tim Diovanni, Dallas News, 21 Apr. 2021
• There are a lot of atonal, amelodic ways of being in it that were just wholly improvisational and textural.
  — Chris Willman, Variety, 21 June 2023
• But if the avant-garde nature of Cahill’s projects evokes fear of music that’s atonal, noisy or too experimental, down-to-earth Cahill explains that much of it is beautiful and accessible.
  — Martha Ross, The Mercury News, 16 Mar. 2017
• Amir ElSaffar has composed new music, an atonal jazz that Shepherd bangs out on keyboard when Pavel transitions into talky song.
  — Charles McNultytheater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 9 Feb. 2023
• Conservatives cherished him as a bulwark against atonal chaos.
  — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2022
• The serenade moves from traditional harmonies to atonal stylings.
  — Tim Diovanni, Dallas News, 21 Apr. 2021
• The sounds of the city — traffic, construction, voices, the muezzins’ calls to prayer — are deftly orchestrated and integrated with the exquisite, atonal soundtrack by Ali Helnwein.
  — Peter Keough, BostonGlobe.com, 24 Feb. 2021
• The opera, with its historical sweep and its mix of atonal passages, folk melodies, popular songs and electronic elements, is considered by some to be the great Canadian opera.
  — Michael Cooper, New York Times, 19 Apr. 2017
• The author jumps from one abstruse analysis to another, each chapter ending like a piece of atonal music, with no resolution or sense of closure.
  — Barton Swaim, WSJ, 22 Feb. 2019
• Toshio Hosokawa’s monodrama for mezzo-soprano and 12 players, probes deeply into the terror and loss of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem through a jagged, atonal setting that stretches the scansion out of its familiar rhythm.
  — Heidi Waleson, WSJ, 4 Oct. 2022
• Murky, atonal music swells into collections of chords that resembles human moans.
  — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 19 Sep. 2023
• Here, the atonal strings and pipes seem to conjure ghosts, with echoes of elemental and intergenerational human violence, and the jarring music is mixed with a murky soundscape to foster a growing sense of dread.
  — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 May 2022
• DeAngelis’s novel, in which Maren road-trips around 1980s America trying to stay ahead of the law and her own homicidal impulses, is appealingly atonal.
  — David Sims, The Atlantic, 30 Nov. 2022
• First came a short atonal improvisation, just because, Lang explained.
  — Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2019
• Loosely atonal, the piece is characterized by brooding passages and accented, Stravinskian rhythms.
  — Barbara Jepson, WSJ, 21 June 2022
• Inside these tender, atonal tracks are discreet, cryptic ruminations on growing a family, building a little colony of your own.
  — Sheldon Pearce, The New Yorker, 5 Oct. 2021

Last Updated: 15 Aug 2024