plangency

The soft passages have fairy-tale delicacy; his outpourings, a robust plangency reminiscent of his more extroverted roles.

He sings with huskiness and nimbleness, plangency and viscosity — sometimes all of these at once.

But psychological acuity alone does not account for the novel’s effect on the reader, which depends more profoundly on the curious plangency of its style.

Individually, the voices belonged to wildly disparate worlds including heavy metal, punk, and the glassy plangency of Balkan folk singing.

For the moment, though, the clarity of the argument isn’t as important as its plangency.