(Fr. forlane).
A lively north Italian folk dance, associated particularly with Venice; it became an aristocratic French court dance and instrumental air, flourishing from about 1697 to 1750. It was an energetic courtship dance from the Italian province of Friulia, a Slavonic region controlled by the Venetian republic, and therefore may have had its roots in Slavonic dances. According to Carlo Blasis (The Code of Terpsichore, 1828) it was a lusty, but graceful, dance of flirtation. One or more couples performed at once, the partners moving towards and away from each other, touching hands and feet, turning and beating the air with their arms. It was accompanied by mandolins, castanets and drums, and was popular with gondoliers and ‘street people’.
References to the forlana appear in music as early as 1583 in Phalèse’s Chorearum molliorum collectanea, which includes a ‘ballo furlano’, L’arboscello. This piece, which also appears in Jakob Paix’s organ tablature book of 1583 as L’arboscello, ballo furlano, is in duple time and shows the characteristic repeated phrase segments of the forlana (ex.1).
The popularity of the forlana in French court life seems to have been established with its use in Campra’s opéra-ballet L’Europe galante (1697) and comédie lyrique Le carnaval de Venise (1699). The latter includes two forlanas, the first used as a dance entry for a troupe of Slavs, Armenians and Gypsies. The illustration shows the first strain of the second forlana, which exhibits several characteristics of the music: balanced, four-bar phrase structure, 6/4 or 6/8 metre in a moderate tempo, frequent repetition of phrase segments, an upbeat of a crotchet or quaver (depending on the time signature), simple harmonies, and an implied drone bass. The rondeau form prevailed, beginning and ending with a short refrain usually eight bars in length and containing one or more longer couplets.
14 forlana choreographies are extant in the Beauchamp-Feuillet notation; six of them are for theatre dances (including some in Campra’s ballets) and the others are for social dancing (Little and Marsh, 159). The steps of the choreography generally fall two to a bar, corresponding to dotted minims in the music, and where there are three steps to the bar the rhythm is minim–crotchet–dotted minim. These steps include the more lively patterns of French court dancing, such as the pas de rigaudon, pas de sissone, pas de bourrée and assemblé – that is, steps using many leaps, hops and jumps. Since no choreographies exist for the Venetian forlana it is hard to make a comparison, but it is probable that much of the original lustiness was discarded in the French court versions. In England and France the forlana was also popular as a contredanse.
Music for danced forlanas, in addition to those already mentioned, may be found in Campra’s Les fêtes vénitiennes (1710) and Les âges (1718), and in stage works by Mouret, Lalande and Rameau. Stylized forlanas were composed by François Couperin (the fourth of the Concerts royaux, 1722), Bach (First Orchestral Suite bwv1066), William Corbett (Concerto no.6 in Le bizzarie universali, 1728) and G.J. Werner (Der wiennerische Tändelmarckt, c1750). A number of other pieces appear to be forlanas even though they are not designated as such: examples are the third movement of Mondonville’s Trio Sonata op.2 no.2 (1734), the second movement of Leclair’s Violin Sonata op.9 no.3 (1743) and the third movement of his Trio Sonata op.4 no.3 (c1731–3). Chausson included a forlana in his Quelques danses pour piano op.26 (1896), and there is also one in Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin (1914–17). The third movement of Elliott Carter’s Sonata for flute, oboe, cello and harpsichord (1952) is a forlana, according to the composer, although it is not so called. Other 20th-century composers of forlanas include Tailleferre, Pierre Ferroud and Claude Arrien.
The forlana is still found as a folk dance in many regions of Italy and in Italian communities in other countries.
MGG2 (‘Furlana’; M. Cofini)
E. Giraudet: La furlana, danse vénitienne extraite de la Gioconda de A. Ponchielli (Paris, c1905)
P. Molmenti: ‘ La furlana et les anciennes danses vénitiennes’, Revue sud-américaine, ii (1914), 13–21
J. Ecorcheville: ‘La forlane’, BSIM, x/4 (1914), 11–28
P. Nettl: ‘Notes sur la forlane’, ReM, no.139 (1933), 191–5
P. Nettl: The Story of Dance Music (New York, 1947/R), 185ff
G. Pinna and M. Dalla Valle, eds.: Dalla furlana al valzer (Rovigo, 1989)
M.E. Little and N. Jenne: Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach (Bloomington, IN, 1991), 185–93
M.E. Little and C.G. Marsh: La danse noble: an Inventory of Dances and Sources (Williamstown, MA, 1992)
M. Cofini: ‘La furlana, “ballo del Papa”’, Strenna dei romanisti (Rome, 1995), 127–46
MEREDITH ELLIS LITTLE
