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The first Folia that I ever encountered is the one by Robert deVisée, one of the King Louis XIV's favorite musicians, actually “Guitar Master of the King”. It is the sarabande of the renown Suite in D min.
The whole suite is too much. Here I put the sarabande after the prelude, that sets the theme and before the bouree, the natural consequence, that releases the tension, so that games can continue.
I skipped the allemande, the courante, the gavotte, the menuets and the gigue, very beautiful as they are.
My attention is on the sarabande, the equivalent of a slow in to day ballroom dancing. So it was danced. In the feasts of that hellish and paradisaic place that was Versailles, where the King Sun lured and kept the nobility and provided every luxury and occasions of libertinage while he and his ministers did what they had to do with the kingdom.
What touched me, and still does, is how the tender gracefulness of the music is weaved with a melancholic thread, sad, almost bitter. That I interpret as the longing for something that has been lost and that is never to be found again. The innocence, the candor, the purity, wasted in the senseless and indecent fasts of the court. Dickens picked this very well in the Tale of Two Cities. With good peace of Stravinsky that thought music cannot represent anything except itself. Ah Ah. Maybe he was right.
I choose this performance, although not the most accomplished, because here, that thread is still perceivable to my ears. Other performances are more interesting and less scholarly. But either the sound is poor like Segovia's, or unavailable on YouTube like Michael Shaeffer's, probably the highest, on the lute.
Prelude
Sarabanda with the Folia's theme
Bourree
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