BCUL in harmony with the Lausanne Bach Festival
This year, the music collections of the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire – Lausanne join forces with the Lausanne Bach Festival to celebrate Baroque Splendor! Between the pages of books and the staves of scores, we find all the brilliance of this teeming era: virtuosity, spectacularity, inventiveness.
Our shelves echo the festival concerts: biographies, recordings, DVDs and scores invite you to extend the musical experience, to rediscover it in a different way, in the calm of a reading or a listening session.
When words meet music, a whole heritage comes to life, and the library itself becomes a place of Baroque splendor.
Baroque splendor: a taste for the spectacular
Baroque is the art of dazzling, of splendor: a world where everything sparkles, resonates and swirls. The theme of this year’s Lausanne Bach Festival invites us to experience this spectacular and spiritual dimension of Baroque music.
Under the vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral, Bach’s Mass in B minor unfolds its sonic architecture: each fugue, each chorus, each aria is a stained-glass window of sound where faith meets human beauty. More than a prayer, it’s an experience of wonder.
With Handel and his Messiah, Baroque splendor goes beyond the liturgical framework and becomes spectacle: voices respond to each other, trumpets blare, “Alleluia” transport the listener into pure joy.
And then there’s the splendor of Venice, with its gold, reflections and canals, where the music of Vivaldi and other great composers resonates. In Venice, music becomes sound architecture, built to dazzle, seduce and surprise. Every note is a burst of light, every movement an invitation to celebrate.
The more intimate solo violin works of Biber and Bach reveal the other side of this splendor: virtuosity. These pages, daunting for the performers, celebrate human genius, the agility of gesture, the beauty of risk.
The Baroque marvels because it embraces everything: faith, the stage, passion, perfection. The Lausanne Bach Festival captures this spirit with verve: sumptuous concerts, majestic choirs, rare or revisited works, passionate performers. It’s all part of bringing to life this Baroque splendor in all its richness of styles and emotions.
And the library offers a bridge between the stage and the shelves: reading Bach’s biography, leafing through a Handel score, listening to a Baroque music record, all prolong the splendor. Through this partnership with the festival, we invite you to make the library a place where Baroque splendor blossoms – at your own pace, with curiosity and enthusiasm.
