The concept of imitative principle in music as one of the "Fine Arts" in French Classicist aesthetics
Abstract
Against the background of the development of French Classicist aesthetics, which has been based, since the mid-17th century, mainly on the Aristotelian and Horatian traditions, the paper focuses on the way in which music becomes also part of the contemporary debates about the principles of classical doctrine, after the first period poetics primarily devoted to poetry, drama and painting. The study reveals how both authors attempted to clarify the sense of a musical artwork based on the basis of the principles of classicist aesthetics, which was primarily formed as a poetics, according to which the main task of the artist was in the idea prodesse aut delectare (to teach and delight), but also movere (to move); an idea that could be realized only by the principle of imitation.