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What, for example, is the most popular tune ever? The melody is usually played with 3 beats in the bar, but I have also included a 4/4 version which may be more comfortable for jazz players. At the same time, the growth of cinema has opened another door. La Folia The tune is quite short, so I have made versions of the backing track where it repeats 3 times and 5 times. Based on the famous anonymous thema ('La Folia', the sheet), also used by Rachmaninov and others.
Its roots go back to the 16th century.
It would remain a major challenge for numerous composers up to the present day; ranging from a part of a famous Bach Cantata to a popular film tune in the hit charts by Vangelis. Like modern hits, it was first diffused by word of mouth. Just a few clicks will take you to Ed Sheeran and his 72 million monthly listeners. Corelli's ability to develop new music from this existing harmony might remind you of the way jazz musicians freely borrow today. Another striking feature is the variety of instruments used to play the theme in a completely natural way. It is not a technically difficult violin piece.
Even today, you have to hunt around to learn that a cantata by Bach and a keyboard piece by Handel both used the theme. But for all that, the internet can’t tell you everything.
“The singers and musical directors were Spanish.
This is to introduce her parents, visiting from Taiwan, to us and to keep our musical practices alive.I have chosen “La Folia”, arranged by Suzuki as a violin solo piece. The melody and harmony have been used by numerous composers, most frequently as a basis for variations. Its roots go back to the 16th century. Apart from recording classic Folias, modern musicians are adapting the theme in striking new ways.
The flexibility of the theme to incorporate and adapt features of new musical styles is not only amazing but also essential for its survival. What if the key to La Folia lies not in the score, or imperial nostalgia, but in the human mind?
Its name – ‘folly’ or ‘madness’ in Italian – refers to the frenzied way peasants twirled to the music.
Musicologists divide the history of the tune into the "early" Folia and the "later" Folia. Margulis then played the original Berio and her edit to volunteers. No wonder aspiring violinists were once expected to learn Corelli’s Folia before they did anything else.
Why? The numbers elsewhere are even more astounding. After loading the work into a digital editing programme, she artificially added repetition.
It is not a technically difficult violin piece. “La Folia has been used in films a lot of times before in different ways,” Adam Grannick, a film-maker and Folia devotee, tells BBC Culture. Simply searching for ‘La Folia’ is not enough. Not only that.
Here is a performance from Miho Hakamata 袴田美穂（バイオリン), one of the best performances on this piece.La Folia (pronounce as ‘lah foh-LEE-ah’), literally meaning madness, folly, or empty-headedness is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of music.
In the film 1492, the main theme is a version of La Folia.”A version of La Folia appeared in The Addams Family, the 1991 film starring Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia (Credit: Alamy)Grannick is something of an expert on the interplay between La Folia and cinema. That may have been a factor in its spread.” It helped, too, that Spain then ruled southern Italy, making cultural exchange between the two countries easier.A century after it was created, La Folia spread to Spain and then across the Mediterranean (Credit: Getty)At the same time, musicians began bending La Folia to fit changing tastes.
It would remain a major challenge for numerous composers up to the present day; ranging from a part of a famous Bach Cantatato a popular film tune in the hit charts by Vangelis. The results were intriguing. Why did this humble tune, first conjured by medieval farmers, grab so many artists and never let go? It originated in the dance music of Portugal.
“It turned out that people liked the [altered] excerpts more, and thought they were more interesting,” she tells BBC Culture. In Santiago de Murcia’s Codice Saldivar No 4, Renaissance writer Covarrubias describes La Folia as ‘very noisy’ while another highlights its ‘vivacity and fire’, its dancers ‘making gestures that awaken voluptuousness’.La Folia’s distinctive chords came out of the folk music of late 15th-Century Portugal (Credit: Getty)This ‘voluptuousness’ was apparently popular. Carole Koenig
Quote from the same Web Site (above).CHAMBER ARTISTS ORCHESTRA (CHAARTS), a relatively new Ensemble in Switzerland, played “La Folia” using modern instruments and baroque bows on 416 HZ pitch. 91500 Humans are naturally suspicious of new ideas, but frequent contact can change that. A simple search on the word 'Folia'(or 'Follia', Folies d'Espagne or Folias) in the classical genre will result in some nice acoustic examples to listen to.
In this Web Site, “La Folia, A Musical Cathedral“, the author labeled “La Folia” as the most lasting and famous tune in western music. An Ensemble of professional and amateur musicians pursue excellence in Chamber MusicI-Ling invited our members to her home for a family concert. How about bassoon, bird-organ, brass quintet, carillon, clavichord, English handbells, mandolin, nyckelharpa, rebab, salterio, sitar and ukulele to name a few? Checking the pop charts today is simple. The "early" Folia is the ostinato progression that appears in
But when a composer picks up a theme and plays with it, toying with the harmonies or the instruments, we fall under its spell.
La Folia is surely proof of this: it has been passed down and used by countless musicians in their own way, like a family cookbook where everyone adds their own recipe. “There were a lot of Spanish musicians that worked in Italy, for instance at the Vatican,” explains Alexander Silbiger, Professor Emeritus of Music at Duke University. In part, this phenomenon is an example of the ‘mere exposure’ effect.