La Folia Folio

Description

Originally a raucous dance from Portugal played out on tambourines and various other instruments by women wearing masks and men dressed like women, by the 17th century the Folia had attained certain musical characteristics for which it became universally identified with, these features being that it was performed in a minor key, usually D minor, and following a standard chord progression. This progression has been used extensively over the centuries in various instrumentations by the likes of Lully, Marais, Corelli, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, C. P. E. Bach and of course for guitar by Sor, Giuliani, Sanz and Manuel Ponce whose composition Theme, 20 Variations and Fugue sur «Folias de Espana« remains one of the longest single-movement compositions for classical guitar.

The American guitarist/composer Bryan Johanson received a commission from Harold Micay (of the Canadian Guitar Trio) to compose a substantial work which, as he puts it, he could «splash around in«. Using the Folia harmonic progression as a framework Johanson has gone ten variations more than Ponce did and written 30 variations on this «theme«.