plangent ˈplan-jənt adjective
: loud and resounding
_________
The word plangent has appeared in 20 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Nov. 25 in the theater review “In ‘All Is Calm,’ Thrilling Song in the Trenches” by Alexis Soloski:
A caroling session in a melancholy key, Theater Latté Da’s “All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914” is a World War I documentary musical describing a brief ceasefire.
In 1914, with the war just five months old, enlisted men on both sides emerged from their no-man’s-land trenches on Christmas Day to bury their dead and exchange small gifts. Also, they sang, and if you had been standing in the mud and the cold near Ypres, Belgium, you could have heard those voices joined in “Auld Lang Syne” before the shells began to wail again.
… The plangent tenors, lush baritones and rumbling basses are in excellent voice, and when they come together, the sensation is tremendous and the musical chill effect engulfing. I can’t have been the only person who spent the evening in a pretty much constant state of horripilation. The show is a lesson, if any were needed, in music as a vehicle for emotion. More than the story, it is the music that moves.
_________
