Mimesis

The present recording continues Laterna Magica’s exploration over the past 15 years of the rich repertoire of the Baroque era, focussing on great composers such as Handel and Bach, whose vocal and instrumental works invite adaptation by performers to different soundscapes. Since their exciting album Exercitium, devoted to Bach’s trio sonatas, which appeared in 2005, Laterna Magica, faithful to their work of musical transcription, has appropriated the process of imitation in accordance with the practice of Johann Sebastian Bach, who was so skilful in the art of “mimesis”, a concept we can trace back to Greek antiquity. Platonic mimesis responds to a desire to come close to nature or to reality, linking pictorial art to the supreme ideal of beauty. More nuanced, the Aristotelian approach extends this term to “representation” in a more theatrical sense. Both converge towards the idea of imitatio, which links them, but without assimilating them to the identical reproduction of a model. It is in this spirit that the artistic “imitation” of the famous Cantor of Leipzig, who was always drawing upon earlier repertoire, can be understood as an inventive recomposition. Whether based on forms in several separate movements, on ornamental and melodic formulae, his music offers a synthesis with Italian jubilation, the “charme galant” of French music, and the german art of counterpoint.