portamento

[pawr-tuh-men-toh, pohr-, pawr-tah-men-taw]

noun

Music.

plural

portamenti, portamentos 

1. a passing or gliding from one pitch or tone to another with a smooth progression.

portamento

/ ˌpɔːtəˈmɛntəʊ /

noun

1. music a smooth slide from one note to another in which intervening notes are not separately discernible Compare glissando

Word History and Origins

Origin of portamento¹

1765–75; < Italian: fingering, literally, a bearing, carrying. See port ⁵, -ment

Word History and Origins

Origin of portamento¹

C18: from Italian: a carrying, from Latin portāre to carry

Example Sentences

Treating the solo part as something in a Romantic-era concerto of yore, she was all sentiment all the time, including lots of emotive vibrato and startling portamento leaps in the slow movements.

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The recordings he made with the Vienna Philharmonic then, with their portamento and their way of easing lyrically into the beat, have a tragic quality, and some of them — a mournful Brahms First; the turbulent Mahler Ninth captured live weeks before the Anschluss in 1938 — seem understandably burdened with the outside world.

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Figure 1.87: The notation for scoops and fall-offs has not been standardized, but either one will look something like a portamento or slur with a note on one end only.

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Alongside Weinrib at his drum kit, some crying alto sax figures from Noah Becker inspired beautiful portamento lines from Griffin’s viola, as well as the entry of both bassoonists playing brooding long tones at first, before turning to peppery, explosive bursts.

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The Cavatina of Opus 130 is steeped in unaffected Old World style, with throaty portamento slides from note to note.

Read more on The New Yorker