"La folia" in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Vienna

Revised and expanded version of an article published in Festschrift Otto Biba,  ed. Ingrid Fuchs, Tutzing, 2006. 

Updated PDF (October 2015): https://www.academia.edu/7023803/_La_folia_in_Late_Eighteenth-_and_Early_Nineteenth-Century_Vienna

Several writers have commented on the fact that the minor-mode variation in the Andante con moto of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (mm. 167–74) shares its harmonic foundation with the first half of the melody known as Les folies d’Espagne, or La folia (or follia) d’Espagna.[1] (MUSIC) Whether Beethoven expected listeners to recognize the passage as an allusion to La folia, and what such an allusion might signify, is the subject of debate. Certainly the passage stands out. Although the dotted rhythm and the rising 5–1–3 melodic contour allow us to recognize it as the beginning of a variation of the movement’s main theme, the new harmonic context (especially the replacement of the theme’s I–IV opening gesture with i–V) and the mechanical repetition of a single rhythmic motive convey a sense of this passage having been inserted into the movement from somewhere else—almost as if it were a quotation. By interrupting the variation after only eight measures Beethoven seems to be saying that this was only a false start, a failed experiment, or perhaps even a joke.

            Many in Beethoven’s audience knew La folia. Viennese music lovers had plenty of opportunity to hear the tune and its distinctive harmonic framework in published and manuscript instrumental music and in opera. From the inventories and catalogues of the Viennese music dealer Johann Traeg we know that the celebrated Sonatas for Violin and Basso continuo of Archangelo Corelli’s Opus 5, presumably including the Variations on La folia (op. 5, No. 12), were available in Vienna from the mid 1790s.[2] Traeg published C.P.E. Bach’s keyboard Variations on La folia in 1804.[3] In Luigi Cherubini’s opéra-comique Hôtellerie portugaise (Paris 1798), performed seventeen times (under the title Der portugisische Gasthof) in the court theaters during 1803 and 1804, the overture’s slow introduction immediately establishes the opera’s Iberian setting with a chordal progression corresponding to the first half of La folia and a long, solemn fugato on a theme derived from the beginning of the Folia tune.

            This paper briefly considers several other appearances of La folia in Vienna between 1780 and 1820, three of which are in works written for performance in Vienna. The only complete sources known to me for two of these works, Conti’s duet “Va pure in malora” and an anonymous orchestration (which I attribute to Joseph Eybler) of Corelli’s variations on La folia from Opus 5, are preserved in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, under the erudite care of the man to whom this article is dedicated.

La folia in opéra-comique

The allusions to La folia in Cherubini’s Hôtellerie portugaise exemplify an association between La folia and opéra-comique that goes back to the early history of the genre, when its musical component consisted largely of timbres: melodies familiar to the audience, to which the dramatist attached new words. La folia was sung in one of the very first opéras-comiques, Alain-René Lesage’s Arlequin roi de Sérendib (1713); the same author called for it again in Les Couplets en procès (1729–30).[4] When opéra-comique came to Vienna La folia came with it. Christoph Gluck’s Le Diable à quatre (Vienna 1759) uses the tune twice.[5]

            Le Diable à quatre represents a stage in the history of opéra-comique when it was moving away from a dependence on timbres and toward newly composed scores. But some of the old tunes survived. André Modeste Grétry’s L’amant jaloux (Versailles 1778) takes place in Spain, and it was probably for local color that the composer used La folia in a very brief duet, “Le mariage est une envie.” The Viennese court theaters’ Singspiel troupe presented L’amant jaloux (under the title Der eifersüchtige Liebhaber) nineteen times between 1780 and 1787.[6]

            Lopez, a rich merchant, tells his widowed but still very young daughter Léonore that it would be folly to marry again; his advice is immediately repeated by Jacinte, Léonore’s suivante (VIDEO):

            Le mariage est une envie

            Qu’une fois dans la vie

            On peut bien se passer,

            Mais ce serait une folie

            Que de vouloir recommencer.

The word folie in the text nicely mirrors the music, which consists of a sixteen-measure melody (sung by Lopez) over the Folia bass and a repetition of the second half of the melody (sung by Lopez and Jacinte in octaves). Violins, flute, and bassoons two octaves lower accompany the singers with a decorated version of the Folia melody. After the duet Jacinte comments sarcastically: “Voilà une belle pensée, et tout-à-fait neuve.” The brevity and simplicity of this number, its emphasis on octave textures and its complete absence of development, is very much in keeping with the traditional uses of popular tunes in opéra-comique.

Conti’s “Va pure in malora”: La folia in opera buffa

It was again as a duet that La folia made a rare appearance in Viennese opera buffa, this time however not only as a melody and a harmonic plan but as the basis for variations. The duet “Va pure in malora” brings together two traditions associated with La folia—the quotation of it in opera and the variation of it in instrumental music—to produce a piece that is both a set of variations and an operatic quarrel.

            Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi’s La pastorella nobile was first performed in Naples in 1788. Its title character, Eurilla, is a shepherdess with whom a nobleman, Marchese Astolfo, has fallen in love. Astolfo’s financée Donna Florida comes for a visit; finding herself jilted, she explodes with anger and indignation. The local governor, the bombastic Don Polibio, and his charming but ne’er-do-well son Calloandro (who at one point is forced to impersonate Astolfo) provide plenty of comic relief.

            When performed in Vienna in 1790 La pastorella nobile was subject to thorough revision, probably under the supervision of Lorenzo da Ponte, one of whose main responsibilities as the Burgtheater’s theatrical poet was the adaptation of operas brought to Vienna from elsewhere. One purpose of these changes was to increase the importance of the role of Donna Florida, first sung in Vienna by Da Ponte’s mistress Adriana Ferrarese, who a few months earlier created the role Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte.[7]

            La pastorella nobile reached the stage of the Burgtheater on 14 May 1790. We do not know the complete cast of the Viennese production, a cast that in any case evolved during more than two years of performances in Vienna. But we do know that during 1790 —in addition to Ferrarese in the role of Florida—Francesco Benucci (the first Guilelmo in Così fan tutte) sang Polibio and Gasparo Bellentani sang Calloandro.[8] Vincenzo Calvesi (Ferrando in Così fan tutte) also sang in La pastorella nobile, probably in the role of Astolfo that he created two years earlier in Naples.[9]

            Act 2, Scene 5, of La pastorella nobile, as performed in Naples in 1788, was a very brief conversation (only twelve lines in all) between Donna Florida, her brother Astianatte, and Polibio, in which they comment on their success in making Marchese Astolfo believe (incorrectly) that Eurilla has fallen and hurt herself. Then all three leave the stage. In Vienna the scene was radically expanded as part of the strategy to increase the importance of Florida’s role. Only Astianatte leaves the stage. Florida and Polibio remain, and she blames him for having caused her troubles. Her accusations give rise to a quarrel and a duet in which Florida and Polibio trade insults. This duet, “Va pure in malora,” is a set of variations on La Folia.

            The dramatic situation here, with a basso buffo and a noble soprano on stage together, resembles the scene in Don Giovanni in which Leporello tells Donna Elvira about his master’s “non picciol libro.” Also reminiscent of that scene, and suggestive of Da Ponte’s authorship of this dialogue, is the fact that Polibio twice addresses Florida as “Madamina.” If the scene reminds us vaguely of Don Giovanni, it may have reminded its Viennese audience of Così fan tutte, since it brought together again the singers who had recently created the roles of Guilelmo and Fiordiligi, giving them an opportunity denied them in Così: to sing a duet.

            “Va pure in malora” is preserved in at least two sources: a keyboard reduction published in 1790 by Artaria and a manuscript full score from the Wenzel Sukowaty workshop in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (signature VI 553 [Q 2824]).[10] The Artaria print attributes the duet to “Sigr. Conti.”[11] The Sukowaty manuscript contains the attribution “Del Sigre. Conte,” which has been corrected to “Conti,” with the following added in darker ink: “Carlo?” (in reference to Carlo Conti, 1796–1868). “Va pure in malora” has also been attributed to Giacomo Conti (1754–1805), concertmaster in the Burgtheater orchestra during the 1790s, and a member of the Tonkünstler-Sozietät from 1796.[12]

            But “Va pure in malora” is the work of neither Carlo nor Giacomo Conti. A much earlier musician, Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (1682–1732), who served the Habsburg court as theorbist from 1701 and as composer from 1713, used La folia to help establish the Spanish setting of Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena (Vienna 1719), a tragicommedia on a libretto by Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Pariati.[13] At the end of act 2, a quarrel between Sancio and Maritorne, a waitress at the inn where he is staying, reaches its climax in the duet “Va pure in buon’ora.” (Performance of "Va pure in buon'ora). It was this duet that Benucci and Ferrarese brought back to life more than eighty years after its first performance.[14]

            Antonio Salieri, Hofkapellmeister and music director in the court theaters, was responsible for the revision of “Va pure in buon’ora” and its insertion in Guglielmi’s La pastorella nobile. We know this from a letter from Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, the Viennese music historian and collector of old music, to the scholar and lexicographer François-Joseph Fétis, dated Vienna, 10 August 1829, from which we also learn that Salieri was a keen admirer of Cont's music. Kiesewetter referred to "le charmant duo 'Va pure in malora' adopté autrefoix par feu Salieri (admirateur enthousiaste du génie de Conti) dans je ne sais quelle opera buffa représentée aux théâtres de la Cour vers l'an 1790, duo alors souvent répété, devenu favori et publié avec accompagnement de clavecin par Artaria" (François-Joseph Fétis, Correspondance, ed. Robert Wangermée, Sprimont, 2006, 55). 

        Probably in collaboration with the court theater's house poet Lorenzo Da Ponte, Salieri replaced the first eight lines of text, but left almost entirely intact the delightful series of insults that follow. He omitted Conti’s orchestral introduction and added a cadential passage for orchestra at the end of the duet. He also shortened the duet by changing Conti’s da-capo structure (A–B–A) into a two-part form by omitting the repetition of the first part.

            Accompanied by strings alone, “Va pure in malora” consists of La folia, eight variations, and some cadential material. In some variations (for example, Variation 1) a fresh accompanimental figure in the orchestra constitutes the main novelty; in others (Variations 5–8) a single bass-line recurs almost unchanged under evolving vocal parts.

        “Va pure in malora” differs from a normal set of variations not only in its tonal instability (D minor – A minor – D minor – G minor) but in ending in a key different from the one in which it began. The tonal instability is Conti’s; the tonal asymmetry is the result of the decision to omit the second A-section from Conti’s A–B–A structure. The succession of tempos—Allegro moderato, Presto, Largo, Presto—and the strong cadential material at the end of both Presto passages encourages us to hear “Va pure in malora” in two parts: the Allegro moderato/Presto begins and ends in D minor, the Largo/Presto is in G minor throughout. In both parts the poetry moves from senari piani to quinari sdruccioli, and from a slow-paced dialogue in which Florida makes complete statements before Polibio answers to rapid-fire repartee. The text below differs a little from that of Viennese libretto of La pastorella nobile; it is based on the musical sources (except for the words in square brackets, which I have taken from the libretto in order to make complete poetic lines).

Part 1

Florida             Va pure in malora,                         Allegro moderato, 3/4, mm. 1–32

                        Vecchiaccio insolente,                    Theme, D minor, mm. 1–16

                        Non curomi niente            

                        Degl’altri o di te.

Polibio            Voi giudici faccio,                         Variation 1, A minor, mm. 17–32

                        Buonissima gente,

                        Quant’essa è imprudente

                        Cogl’altri e con me.

Florida            Odimi, [odimi],                              Presto, 3/4, mm. 33–86, D minor

                        Villan più sordido,                         Variation 2 (first half), mm. 33–40

                        Villan più ruvido,

                        Villan più critico

                        Villan più rustico,

                        Più detestabile,

                        Più bastonabile,

                        Mai non vi fu.

Polibio            Sentimi, [sentimi],                         Variation 2 (second half), mm. 41–51

                        Più falsa femmina

                        Più asututa femmina

                        Più doppia femmina,

                        Più ardita femmina,

                        Più insoportabile

                        Più staffilabile

                        Mai non vi fu.

    Variation 3: Florida and Polibio together,

    singing the same words as Variation 2,

    mm. 52–67

                                                             Codetta: Florida and Polibio together,

                                                             mm. 67–79

                                                             Orchestral postlude, mm. 79–86

Part 2

Florida            Mostrar ben potresti                      Largo, 3/4, G minor, mm. 87–102

                        Col sesso gentile                         Variation 4 (first half), mm. 87–94

                        Umor più civile

                        E men di livor

Polibio            Capir ben dovresti                         Variation 4 (second half), mm. 95–102

                        Che donna incivile

                        Non merta altro stile

                        Da un uomo d’onor.

Florida            Seguita, seguita,                             Presto, 2/4, G minor, mm. 103–185

                        Balordo bufalo,                             Variation 5, mm. 103–118

                        Villan ridicolo,

                        Vivo sproposito,

                        La vera immagine

                        Della goffagine

                        Per me sei tu.

Polibio            Termina, termina,                         Variation 6, mm. 119–134

                        Razza di zingari,

                        Schiuma di diavoli,

                        Lingua di vipera,

                        Donzella equivoca,

                        La vera immagine

                        Di sfacciataggine

                        Per me sei tu.

                                                                         Variation 7: Florida and Polibio together,

                                                                         singing same text as Variation 6, mm. 135–150

                                                                         Variation 8: Florida and Polibio together,

                                                                         singing last 3 lines of text, mm. 151–166

                                                                         Coda: Florida and Polibio together,

                                                                         singing last line of text, mm. 166–180

                                                                        Orchestral postlude, mm. 180–185

            Although La pastorella nobile was one of the operas most frequently performed in Vienna during the early 1790s, “Va pure in malora” did not apparently survive the entire run. With the departure from Vienna of Da Ponte and Ferrarese in early 1791, a new prima donna arrived at Vienna. Irene Tomeoni Dutillieu had created the role of Eurilla in Naples in 1788, and in Vienna she restored the primacy of the title role vis-à-vis that of Donna Florida. “Va pure in malora” probably fell victim to Tomeoni’s triumph as Eurilla. At the end of one copy of the Viennese libretto that includes “Va pure in malora” a printed note informs us that, among other changes made to the opera, the duet had been replaced with a big aria for Polibio, “La sposina s’attendeva.”[15] The manuscript full score of La pastorella nobile used in the court theaters during rehearsals and performances (A–Wn, KT 388) does not include “Va pure in malora.”

Eybler’s orchestration of Corelli’s Variations from Opus 5

Empress Marie Therese, second wife of Emperor Franz II (I) and one of Vienna’s leading patrons of music at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, organized and participated in many private concerts at court.[16] The performing materials used in these concerts came largely from her own enormous music library, most of which survives in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek and the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Although most of the concerts whose contents she recorded in the musical diary that she kept during the years 1801–1803 were dominated by excerpts from Italian operas, she devoted several concerts (especially during Lent) to sacred music and instrumental music. Two Viennese composers who performed frequently with the empress, Paul Wranitzky and Joseph Eybler, wrote much of her instrumental repertory.

            On 18 July 1802 Marie Therese took part in a concert that, quite unusually, included music of all three categories. After operatic ensembles by Tarchi and Mayr, the concert continued with Michael Haydn’s Dixit Dominus, a sonata for orchestra that Albrechtsberger had written especially for the empress, a Laudate pueri and a secular chorus by Eybler, and, finally, “Die Follia di Spagna mit allen Instrumenten von Eybler.”[17]

            Eybler is not known to have written orchestral variations on La folia. Hildegard Herrmann’s thematic catalogue of Eybler’s works mentions no such composition.[18] But two manuscript inventories that document the dispersal of Marie Therese’s library show that among the items that ended up in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde was Follia con Variazioni by Corelli.[19] That work is probably the arrangement for full orchestra of Corelli’s variations on La folia preserved in a set of manuscript parts in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde under the signature XIII 29392. The title page reads as follows:

Follia di Correlli / a / Due Violini / Due Viole / con Basso / Due Flautti / Due Oboi / Due Clarinetti / Due Fagotti / Due Corni / Due Clarini / Tympani / con Organo.

The arrangement is anonymous. But it is almost certainly the work that Marie Therese performed in her concert of 18 July 1802. Since she was in a good position to know who created the arrangement, we can with some confidence attribute to Eybler the work preserved in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.

            One of the odd aspects of Eybler’s orchestration is the organ part, which suggests the possiblity that he conceived his arrangement for performance in church. The organ part consists mostly of a figured bass. Eybler focussed listeners’ attention on the organ by saving its appearance as solo instrument—a florid run of sixteenth-note arpeggiation, accompanied by pizzicato bass—until the second-to-last variation.

            The organ solo constitutes the culmination of a long series of solos through which Eybler demonstrated the sonorities of almost every instrument in his orchestra, individually or in pairs. Thus in Variation 3 he arranged Corelli’s dialogue between violin and bass as a dialogue for two flutes. Variation 6 became a solo for oboe, Variation 7 a solo for bassoon, and Variation 15 a solo for horn.

            The lyrical character of Corelli’s Variation 13, in 12/8 meter, inspired Eybler to make it a cello solo, with the rest of the orchestra silent save for pizzicato bass. This is the first of three solos for strings, the others being for violin (Variation 18) and viola (Variation 20, the remarkable variation in which Corelli suddenly broke away from the theme’s tonal plan and 8+8 measure structure and replaced it with a binary structure with repeats, the first half of which ends in the relative major).

            By making his arrangement largely a series of solos, Eybler made sure that his use of full orchestra in Corelli’s final variation, and in the short codetta that follows, would strongly reinforce the climactic effect that Corelli intended to convey in music that represents the end not only of this set of variations but of Opus 5 as a whole.

The Power of Music: Salieri’s Venticinque Variazioni sull’aria detta La Follia di Spagna

The autograph manuscript of Salieri’s orchestral variations on La folia, dated December 1815, originally carried the title Ventisei Variazioni sull’aria detta La Follia di Spagna.[20]The manuscript contains twenty-six variations, but Salieri cancelled the twenty-first variation (an Allegretto with solos for bassoon and flute) and changed the title to take account of the omission, crossing out “sei” and writing another number, presumbably “cinque” above it. A later trimming of the page cut off the new number. Salieri’s early biographer Ignaz von Mosel miscounted the variations, describing the work as Vier und zwanzig Variationen für das Orchester, über das Thema, La folia di Spagna genannt.[21] This erroneous title still appears in some recent books on Salieri, while in at least two recordings the cancelled variation is played, resulting in a total of twenty-six variations.[22]

Detail of the first page of the autograph score of Salieri's Variazioni sull'aria della La Follia di Spagna, showing the composer's signature and the date of composition. The other inscriptions, partially cut off, read "durano u[n] quarto d'ora" (they take a quarter of an hour to perform) and "NB. La dop[pia] armonia suonerà soltanto nel forte" (The doubled wind instruments will play only in the forte passages).