"In our times new generations of musicians have picked up the torch of Early Music and with the aid of period instruments and the application of historical playing techniques have revealed its original sound and meaning. Nevertheless, although it was completely natural for musicians of the 17th and 18th centuries to compose, to improvise and create variations ad infinitum, and to perform their own works, these creative endeavours have yet to be fully actualized in Early Music today.

        Would you not agree therefore, that we may also honour the heritage of the great masters - its inherent sublimity, the semantics of its symbolism, the clarity of its sonorities, the wealth of its spontaneous ornamentation, the swaying rhythms of its dances and the evocative gestures of its pantomimes - by composing anew in the musical language they held dear.

        To honour this rich European musical heritage by embracing again this wonderful integrality, which in our time is still current in most musical genres the world over, represents for me a logical and necessary evolution in the authenticity movement in Early Music to which I have contributed throughout my career as soloist, accompanist, conductor, educator, and since sixteen years, as improviser and composer of  new baroque and classical music."
                                  Hendrik Bouman