Boston Early Music Festival
presents

directed by Stephen Stubbs

La Folia

Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 8pm
First Church in Cambridge, Congregational
11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA

Program Notes

La Folia was a dance, and a chord pattern, that became extremely popular at the end of the 16th century. It came from Spain, and was known later in France as the folie d’espagne. The word seems always to have carried the double-meaning mad and empty-headed, as in the modern French folle and the modern English fool and folly. It served as the improvisational basis for a dance that whipped the dancers into a state of ecstasy or madness. Empty-headedness, the mind cleared of irrelevant thoughts, might refer both to the dancers—as they lose themselves to the syncopations of the dance—and the musicians—as they give in to the intoxication of improvised variation.

If the Folia stands as an emblem of 17th-century dance and improvisation, its counterpart in vocal music might be the lamento. At the turn of the century, humanist poets, theoreticians, and composers were very aware that they were creating a new kind of vocal music, which would give the singer all the necessary tools to move the emotions of the audience. This new recitational music was based not on the complexity of contrapuntal parts, but rather on the solo voice accompanied by harmonic instruments such as the harp, chitarrone, or guitar. At the beginning of the period, Monteverdi set a unique standard with his Lamento d’Arianna, the sole surviving piece of his otherwise lost opera Arianna of 1608. This visceral portrayal of a woman experiencing the throws of emotion as she realizes her abandonment was immediately recognized as the model for impassioned musical speech. Even instrumentalists like the virtuoso violinist Carlo Farina wanted to make their instruments lament in imitation of Monteverdi’s masterpiece.

The Folia, both in Spain and in Italy, provided a prime opportunity for the guitarist to display virtuosity. The earliest professional guitarists, such as Foscarini, committed to paper a large number of their improvisations; this tradition remained strongest in Spain where in the second half of the century, leading guitarists such as Santiago de Murcia and Gaspar Sanz and harpists such as Ruiz de Ribayaz and Fernando da Huete continued to write the great bulk of their compositions in quasi-improvisational variation form. The greatest of the Spanish songwriters, Jose Marin and Juan Hidalgo, always remained closer to the spirit of dance than their Italian contemporaries; if the Italians move our minds and hearts, the Spanish almost always move our bodies.

Although there is no documentary proof, most experts agree that Santiago de Murcia, the greatest Spanish guitarist of his generation, seems to have ended his days in the New World. The largest repository of Santiago’s music is a beautifully written manuscript discovered by the Mexican historian Gabriel Saldivar in Mexico in the late 20th century. Now known as the Codice Saldivar No. 4, this manuscript was prepared by Santiago around 1732 and seems to relate to his travels in the New World. The contents range from the traditional variation forms of Spain through the latest fashions in French dances and Italian sonatas and onward to Mexican and West African music. It is this latter content that makes the book so unique—like a snapshot of the New World captured with a camera of the old.

Naples was always the gateway between Italy and Spain. Andrea Falconieri was a Neapolitan lutenist and guitarist who found employment at various Italian courts before leaving for Spain in 1621. By 1628 he was back in Italy, but when he came to publish his major instrumental collection in 1650, the musical ideas gleaned in Spain (or in Spanish Naples) are clearly in evidence. The guitar itself (known both then and now as the “Spanish guitar”) was a purveyor of all the exotic elements streaming into Spain from the New World and onward through Naples to the Italian peninsula and beyond.

Nicola Matteis was another Neapolitan musician, guitarist, and violinist who made his mark in London during the Restoration. Matteis’ superbly crafted chamber music refers both in title and content to his knowledge of Italian and French styles, yet some of his most spirited music is in the Scottish vein.

Arriving in Restoration England brings us inevitably to its greatest musical genius, Henry Purcell. Just like Monteverdi at the beginning of the century with his unique Et e pur dunque vero, Purcell wrote only a single piece for the combination of solo voice and solo violin with basso continuo. By using a heart-rending chromatic bass and allowing the violin to vie with the voice in articulating the pain of abandonment, his O, let me weep brings the 17th century lament to its final fruition.

Listen to Folia Variations and Improvisations I

Read the Artist Biographies