The fourth movement Sarabande of George Frideric Handel’s Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437) for solo harpsichord achieved modern popularity when an orchestrated version was used by Stanley Kubrick for his 1975 film Barry Lyndon. Later, Brian De Palma featured the same orchestration as the overture for his 2007 film Redacted. Also, in another direct reference to Barry Lyndon, Michael Winterbottom included this sarabande in A Cock and Bull Story in a new arrangement by Michael Nyman. It was also used in the BBC series Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’.
Classic orchestra version
Andres Segovia Guitar version
The Theme of Handel’s Sarabande is a variation of La Folia, one of the oldest remembered European musical themes on record.
La Folia’s history
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, 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.
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.
A. Corelli – ” La Follia ” op.5 n°12 Gustav Leonhardt
Francesco Geminiani – Concerto grosso n.12 in re minore “La follia”
J.S.Bach : Folie d’Espagne (cantate des paysans)
If you want more you can also enjoy Antonio Salieri 26 variations on ‘La Follia di Spagna’ on youtube.
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