What's the difference between elegiac and threnodial?

Elegiac


Definition:

  • (a.) Belonging to elegy, or written in elegiacs; plaintive; expressing sorrow or lamentation; as, an elegiac lay; elegiac strains.
  • (a.) Used in elegies; as, elegiac verse; the elegiac distich or couplet, consisting of a dactylic hexameter and pentameter.
  • (n.) Elegiac verse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The novel's "elegiac strain lifts a personal story into a more intriguing one .
  • (2) He has taken various elements of the war, and translated their brutality into elegiac works, as with Freedom Qashoush Symphony, a delicate song which starts with rattled off gunfire, the symphony culminates in an urgent instrumental cry of freedom, inspired by Ibrahim al-Qashoush, an early symbol of rebel martyrdom.
  • (3) But recounting the story of one of the key experiences of European integration, the painter and decorator sounded elegiac, as if describing not current realities but those of a lamented past.
  • (4) The book partakes of the elegiac long before, even, the wrenching and brief final chapter, which in that distinctive calm prose acknowledges pain, the death that is coming, the fears of that death, and the therapeutic nature of what we have just read.
  • (5) Though the first Orange prize was not awarded until 1996, when the Canadian poet Anne Michaels won it for her elegiac Holocaust novel Fugitive Pieces , the founding committee celebrated its 20th birthday this year.
  • (6) A lament for the failed ideals of a group of 1960s Cambridge graduates who all too quickly swap their literary dreams for coffee table books and hack journalism, the play was an elegiac threnody for soiled friendship and a descent from intellectual rigour and seriousness to philistinism.
  • (7) Parking is near the elegiac ruins of Tintern Abbey, and from there one embarks upon a digestible but heart thumping climb up to the Devil's Pulpit, a rocky outcrop, affording fantastic views, where the evil doer himself supposedly used to preach temptation to the industrious monks scurrying below.
  • (8) The main thing that struck a chord was not the profligacy of supermarkets but the elegiac decay of the bagged salad: more than two-thirds of it thrown out, half by customers, half by stores.
  • (9) This footage of the remaining “red cars” (as the Pacific Electric’s fleet was commonly known) strikes an elegiac tone, especially to modern Angelenos.
  • (10) – elegiac, melodic, free from lyrics about shopping.
  • (11) Glue recycles some elements of Thorne’s past triumphs: the on-point indie soundtrack, the elegiac “last gang in town” feel, the tabloid-troubling teenage misdemeanours.
  • (12) For a poet to choose to document the moment of loss after finishing a novel may hint at mock-elegiac intentions.
  • (13) The elegiac mood around Mandela suggested that South Africans still find it easier to remember the long walk to freedom than to embark on a new journey.
  • (14) We in Afghanistan are suffering from the ugly side of globalisation, whether it is drugs, whether it is criminal networks or terrorism.” It is Cameron’s eighth trip as prime minister, and has an elegiac quality, even though it is a conflict he inherited and never wholly embraced.
  • (15) This corner of Berlin, remembered to such elegiac effect in Bowie's new work, is brighter, more prosperous and more efficient.
  • (16) Anderson told Screen International that it charts a watershed moment, narcotics-wise: “It’s that idea that when you’re smoking weed everything is OK, but as soon as heroin comes in everything is changed and everything is fucked, and that’s sad.” It’s more troubled and elegiac than Pynchon’s novel even , with less daffy musical interludes, more insistent harking-back to a lost Californian utopia – expressed through Doc’s search for his vanished “old lady” Shasta Fay Hepworth.
  • (17) In other ways excellent, the New York Times' piece had an elegiac tone, conveyed by the headline How the US Lost Out on iPhone Work .
  • (18) Rowan Williams , the Archbishop of Canterbury, in an elegiac, filmic farewell to the building – "a purpose-built factory for prayer" – and his job, is seen wandering through the enormous space from attics to crypts, turning the whole space into a valedictory sermon.
  • (19) Radiohead's much-trumpeted new single, their first in four years, a beautiful, intricately-wrought mesh of complex time signatures, keening vocals, elegiac strings and subtly disturbing audio effects called Pyramid Song, has been beaten to number one by Do You Really Like It?, by DJ Pied Piper and the Master of Ceremonies - perhaps the most unrepentantly stupid dance record since Jive Bunny hung up his tracksuit.

Threnodial


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A lament for the failed ideals of a group of 1960s Cambridge graduates who all too quickly swap their literary dreams for coffee table books and hack journalism, the play was an elegiac threnody for soiled friendship and a descent from intellectual rigour and seriousness to philistinism.
  • (2) And some of the detail of the piece is based on something that seems straight out of a sci-fi movie: Penderecki wired up psychiatric patients to encephalogram machines and played them an earlier piece of his, the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, and then translated the graphs of their brain-waves as they reacted to the music into the textures of Polymorphia .
  • (3) Polymorphia and Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima were written by Penderecki in the early 60s.
  • (4) But threnodies are not an argument, and memories are definitely not facts (Hobsbawm's pithy condemnation of oral history, delivered at a conference where I was due to speak, was terrifying).
  • (5) Even if you hear Penderecki's pieces on their own, away from the films, it's easy to understand the appeal of music such as Polymorphia or his Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima .
  • (6) But because of the complexity of what's happening – particularly in pieces such as Threnody and Polymorphia, and how the sounds are bouncing around the concert hall, it becomes a very beautiful experience when you're there.
  • (7) There's another side to the liberation in Penderecki's music: the visual impact of his scores, the physical material musicians use to play pieces such as Fluorescences or the Threnody.
  • (8) Greenwood's 48 Responses to Polymorphia is, as its title suggests, an orchestral "remix" of the earlier work, while Popcorn Superhet Receiver was inspired by Threnody.

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