At 11:51 AM 9/22/2005, David Raleigh Arnold wrote: >It isn't a theme and variations, formally. It fits the progression >well enough, especially considering that Coste could have considered >the bass progression or the chord progression or both. The main thing >is that there could have been no doubt whatever in the author's mind >that his theme was La Folia. > >If you don't want to consider it because it's not strictly a theme and >variations, fine, but the theme itself is plenty close enough IMO.
Yes it is close, and I would be happy to consider it as La Folia whether it was a set of variations or not (even a singular statement of the theme by another composer in yet another work is another variation, eh?). Consider Liszt's Rhapsodie Espagnole; this is not solely a theme and variations, but very clearly uses the established La Folia progression. Unfortunately, the Liszt work has nothing at all to do with guitar. I did explore the notion of Coste's op. 38 with a bit of anticipatory glee when you introduced it. The opening couple bars of no. 24 do fit, but that's it. This just isn't a variation or a fantasy on La Folia, and I have never heard it stated anywhere else that it might be. That it is in d minor and opens on a d minor chord with a melody that sounds similar to some past treatments of La Folia isn't even enough to conclude with any degree of certainty that it was inspired by La Folia unless Coste himself wrote on the topic. I'm not aware that he did. I did get a very thoughtful reply on why there is no La Folia setting for guitar in this time span via the classical guitar history list: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Best, Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
