Folia
La Folia (also folies d'Espagne and spelled Follia) is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes, or primary material, generally melodic, of a composition, on record. The theme exists in two versions, referred to as early and late folias, the earlier being faster.
History
The epithet 'Folia' has several meanings in music. There is for instance a folk tune with the name "Folía" at the Canary Islands and a 'Folia de Reis' in Brazil is sung during a celebration brought to Brazil by African slaves in the 18th century and runs from December 24 to January 6.
In western-classical music there is an 'early Folia', which can take different shapes, and the better-known 'later Folia', which has been famous in serious music to the present day. This 'later Folia' is a standard chord progression (i-V-i-VII / III-VII-[i or VI]-V / i-V-i-VII / III-VII-[i or VI7]-V[4-3sus]-i) with a standard melody line in the theme. It is said that Jean-Baptiste Lully was the first composer to introduce the chord progression with the melody line.[3][4] This "Folia" can be considered as a structure to improvise on, as the 12-bar blues scheme with the flattened third in the melody line became famous in the 20th century. The melody line shows a remarkable similarity with the use in jazz nowadays. It is the introduction and the end of the variations to embrace the variations itself. Characteristic of that 'later Folia' (also known as "Follia" with double l in Italy, or "Folies d'Espagne" in France, "Faronel's Ground" in England) is that it is based upon a ground bass (passacaglia) while the melody line takes the shape of a slow sarabande in 3/4 meter. In the variations all sorts of meters and melody lines are accepted.
Structure
The framework of the 'Later Folia', in the key of D minor, the key that is most often used for the 'later Folia'; one chord per bar except for bar 15.
The basic 16-bar chord progression[1]:
| Dm | A7 | Dm | C | F | C | Dm | A7 |
| Dm | A7 | Dm | C | F | C | Dm A7 | Dm |
Historical significance
Over the course of three centuries, more than 150 composers have used it in their works. The first publications of this theme date from the middle of the 17th century, but it is probably much older. Plays of the renaissance theatre in Portugal, including works by Gil Vicente, mention the folia as a dance performed by shepherds or peasants. The Portuguese origin is recorded in the 1577 treatise De musica libri septem by Francisco de Salinas.
Jean-Baptiste Lully, in collaboration with Philidor in 1672, Arcangelo Corelli in 1700, Alessandro Scarlatti in 1710, Antonio Vivaldi in his Opus 1 No 12 of 1705, Francesco Geminiani in his Concerto Grosso Number 12, George Frederick Handel in the Sarabande of his Keyboard Suite in D minor HWV 437 of 1727, and Johann Sebastian Bach in his Peasants' Cantata of 1742 are considered to highlight this 'later' folia repeating theme in a brilliant way. Antonio Salieri's 26 variations, produced late in his career, are among his finest works.
In the 19th century, Franz Liszt include a version of the Folia in his Rhapsodie Espagnole, and Ludwig van Beethoven quoted it briefly in the second movement of his Fifth Symphony.[dubious – discuss]
La Folia once again regained composers' interest during the 1930s with Sergei Rachmaninov in his Variations on a theme by Corelli in 1931 and Manuel María Ponce and his Variations on "Spanish Folia" and Fugue for guitar.
Actually, the folia framework, (i)-V-i-VII-III-VII-i-V-(i), appeared in musical sources almost a century before the first documented piece called "folia". It emerged between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century in vocal repertory found both in Italian (“Canzoniere di Montecassino”, “Canzoniere di Perugia”, and in the frottola repertory) and Spanish sources (mainly in the “Cancionero Musical de Palacio”, and, some years later, in the ensaladas repertory). Even though the folía framework appeared almost at the same time in different countries with numerous variants that share similar structural features, it is not possible to establish in which country the framework originated. Anyway, recent researches suggest the origin of the folia framework lies in the application of a specific compositional and improvisational method to simple melodies in minor mode. Thus, it was not a specific theme or a fixed sequence of chords what was disseminated throughout Europe at the end of 15th century, but a compositional-improvisational process which could generate these sequences of chords.[7]
The folia melody has also influenced Scandinavian folk music. It is said[who?] that around half of the old Swedish tunes are based on la folia. It is possible to recognize a common structure in many Swedish folk tunes, and it is similar to the folia structure. Old folk tunes (19th century or older) which do not have this structure often come from parts of Sweden with little influences from upper classes or other countries.
See also
References
- ^ a b Hudson (1973). cited in Esses, Maurice (1993). History and Background, Music and Dance, p.572-73. ISBN 0945193084.
- ^ a b Simpson, Christopher (1665) cited in Esses (1993), p.572.
- ^ Paull, Jennifer (2007). Cathy Berberian and Music's Muses, p.263. ISBN 9781847538895. "One of the earliest known instrumental settings was Lully's ‘Air des Hautbois’, written in 1672 for the ‘Bande des Hautbois’."
- ^ Betty Bang Mather, Dean M. Karns (1987). Dance rhythms of the French Baroque: a handbook for performance, p.239. ISBN 9780253316066. "The earliest instrumental couplet with the standard form is the one that starts Lully's arrangement of 1670 for Louis XIV's ..."
- ^ Apel, Willi (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music, p.323. ISBN 9780674375017.
- ^ Randel, Don Michael (1999). The Harvard concise dictionary of music and musicians, p.236. ISBN 9780674000841.
- ^ Giuseppe Fiorentino (2009). Música española del Renacimiento entre tradición oral y transmisión escrita: el esquema de folía en procesos de composición e improvisación. Granada: Editorial de la Universidad de Granada. ISBN 978-84-692-1330-8. Template:Es
External links
- La Folia - A Musical Cathedral
- La Folia (1490–1701) - Jordi Savall et al. - Alia Vox 9805 [1]
- Altre Follie (1500–1750), Hespèrion XXI, Jordi Savall - Alia Vox 9844 [2]
- El Nuevo Mundo - Folias Criollas, Tembembe Ensamble Continuo, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Hespèrion XXI, dir. Jordi Savall - Alia Vox AVSA9876 [3]
- Possible origins of the Folía of the Canary Islands (in Spanish)
- A list of musical scores based on the Folia from the Petrucci Music Library