Lexington Books
Pages: 256
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-1-4985-1992-2 • Hardback • October 2017 • $123.00 • (£95.00)
978-1-4985-1994-6 • Paperback • September 2019 • $50.99 • (£39.00)
978-1-4985-6802-9 • eBook • October 2017 • $48.00 • (£37.00)
Clive McClelland is associate professor of music at the University of Leeds, West Yorkshire
Chapter 1 Tempesta Music in Context
Chapter 2 Tonality (Opera)
Chapter 3 Harmony and Line (Opera)
Chapter 4 Tempo and Rhythm (Opera)
Chapter 5 Texture, Dynamics and Instrumentation (Opera)
Chapter 6 Case Studies in Opera
Chapter 7 Tempesta in Sacred Music
Chapter 8 Tempesta in Instrumental Music
Chapter 9 Towards Romanticism
This is an interesting survey of 18th-century musical topoi that fall under the rubrics of Sturm und Drang, ombra, and Empfindsamer Stil, among others. These topoi are characterized by the use of minor keys, rapid rhythmic pulsations, rapid changes in dynamics, and the attempted musical depiction of heightened emotional states and storms in instrumental, vocal, and musicodramatic forms. McClelland (Univ. of Leeds, UK) does a very good job of summarizing the work that has been done previously by American and Continental scholars. His main contribution to the expanding literature on this topic is to propose the term tempesta to replace Sturm und Drang and the other terms that have come to signify “stormy” music. . . the book has much to recommend it, in particular the careful analyses of little-known symphonies and operas from the 18th century.
Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.
— Choice Reviews
Clive McClelland’s study of ‘tempesta’ complements his analysis of ‘ombra’ scenes in dramatic music and the way in which they penetrate instrumental music. He effectively supersedes the theory of ‘Sturm und Drang’ with a more nuanced and far-reaching study of storms, literal and metaphorical, in music ranging from Lully to Beethoven; the range of examples is particularly impressive.— Julian Rushton, University of Leeds
Drawing upon innumerable examples of storms, floods, earthquakes and other cataclysms in operas as well as church and programmatic instrumental music, Clive McClelland establishes tempesta as a stylistic category of eighteenth-century music and paints a fascinating picture of its development in the light of the aesthetic categories of the time. Along with his earlier monograph on ombra, this book provides scholars, performers and listeners alike with an indispensable survey of musical representations of the supernatural in the eighteenth century and beyond. —Danuta Mirka, University of Southampton— Danuta Mirka, University of Southampton