Ombra

Ombra is the musical language employed when a composer wishes to inspire awe and terror in an audience. Clive McClelland's Ombra: Supernatural Music in the Eighteenth Century explores the large repertoire of such music, focusing on the eighteenth century and Mozart in particular. He discusses a wide range of examples drawn from theatrical and sacred music, eventually drawing parallels between these features and Edmund Burke's 'sublime of terror,' thus placing ombra music in an important position in the context of eighteenth-century aesthetic theory.