How to Use ostinato in a Sentence

ostinato

noun

• The song describes a man obsessing about the girl who lives in the apartment above him over a clanging ostinato piano note.
  — Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 28 Apr. 2021
• And the film’s storytelling is as free as jazz — or, in fact, a then-unknown band named Earth, Wind & Fire, who lay down a funk ostinato topped by a snaky, blaring sax.
  — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 23 Sep. 2021
• The first movement is powered by ostinato figures, and the HSO brass played the opening in dark colors with fierce, menacing sound.
  — Jeffrey Johnson, courant.com, 10 Mar. 2018
• Though Oh opened this reflection on the art of mime Marcel Marceau with a simple ostinato on stand-up bass, the plot thickened as each instrument joined the music-making.
  — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 18 June 2017
• On the Pittsburgh recording of the Seventh, the ostinato rhythm in the second movement takes on a distinctive vocal contour, with changing inflections from one note to the next.
  — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2020
• The sound of buildings going up is the city’s ostinato—its thrumming, hammering heartbeat.
  — Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker, 23 Nov. 2020
• With nary a pause, Helfer plunged into an up-tempo boogie, hammering staccato notes in the stratosphere of the keyboard while his bass-note ostinatos kept rolling along, like a train rattling down the tracks.
  — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 14 Feb. 2018
• On the final one, a two-note ostinato creates a chugging momentum, quickly joined by a racing, jittery theme.
  — Joshua Barone, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2019
• Today — some three decades onward — the same basso ostinato is becoming strongly audible for the third time.
  — Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, 27 Apr. 2017
• There are stretches in the first movement in which frenetic marimba volleys skirt atop jittery string ostinatos that break into cresting harmonic waves.
  — Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, 12 June 2016
• Dolnick has not just a journalist’s fondness for narrative color but also an affection for England that plays, like a basso ostinato, beneath his text.
  — The New Yorker, 22 Nov. 2021
• The song’s iconic four-note ostinato dates back to pre-Christian folklore, and was arranged into its classical musical form by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovich in 1916.
  — Micah Hendler, Forbes, 31 Jan. 2022
• The piece is dominated by the florid, fancy piano part: Whole stretches seem like a virtuosic piano concerto, with the violin supplying the equivalent of solo lines or ostinato figures in the orchestra.
  — Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, 13 Jan. 2017
• For the super-structure that Marsalis and friends built on that lovely tune featured multiple sections, including a magical, extended passage in which Marsalis improvised over a softly stated ostinato from bassist Shaw.
  — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 26 Jan. 2018
• For stretches, this amalgamation of styles held together uneasily, but toward the end, a blend of ostinato propulsion and astringent harmony created a memorable vibe.
  — Seth Colter Walls, New York Times, 10 Dec. 2017
• Perlman and De Silva struck a similar balance in their interpretation, reveling in the ostinatos and spare, almost Hindemithian harmonies without overstating them or concealing the work’s classical bones.
  — Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register, 23 Jan. 2017

Last Updated: 22 Oct 2024