Traditional music and dance
As early as the tenth century there are nursery rhymes, lullabies and liturgical songs in Friulian. But it is only around the 15th century that the most singular tradition of the region spreads: the villotta. This polyphonic song with three or four voices is based on a short poetic text and often does not hesitate to resort to improvisation to make the song last as long as possible
The themes are classics of popular music: the things of love, nature and war without forgetting to address the native land
The 1970s marked a turning point for Friulian popular music, with the figure of the Italian solo singer gradually replacing the small folk groups. A change of form more than of substance, since folk music changed but did not disappear, simply adopting the codes of genres from here and elsewhere, such as American folk, blues, pop or hip hop, to sing Friulian poetry in a more modern way. This wave, a real folk revival called Nuova Musica Friulana "new Friulian music", later gave birth to local prides such as Lino Straulino, who exploded in the 1990s experimenting a lot with the Friulian language
As for dance, the local treasure is the well named "forlane". Fast, in two beats, it is practiced in couples, with jumps quite similar to a jig. It was one of the national dances until the 18th century and even became a court dance in France. Some music lovers may have already noticed it in compositions by François Couperin(QuatrièmeConcert Royal in 1722), Jean-Philippe Rameau(Les Indes galantes, 1737) or even Mozart in Bastien et Bastienne (1768). In France, the forlane became a furlane at the beginning of the 20th century, but due to a lack of success it did not survive the First World War.
Classical music
Friuli has not seen the birth of any major composer, but has benefited from the influence of the neighboring region, Veneto, where the musical history is particularly copious. For, as in painting, music has also known a Venetian school. From the beginning of the 16th century, Venice became a major city in European musical life, taking over from Rome, whose attractiveness to artists declined after its sack in 1527. A prosperous city, led by a stable government, Venice quickly became a major player in the publishing of musical scores. Composers flocked from all over Europe to benefit from this innovation, particularly from Flanders. This explains why the first representatives of this Venetian school were Flemings, Jacques Buus and especially Adrian Willaert, who imported the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school to Venice
But it was really three decades later that the city would reach the height of its prestige with the birth of a violin prodigy and world-renowned composer of the Baroque period: Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1742). A contemporary of Vivaldi but still in his shadow, Tomaso Albinoni is the other great Venetian composer of the Italian Baroque. Among contemporaries, the Serenissima also gave birth to a great name: Luigi Nono (1924-1990). At the forefront of new music, the composer traversed serialism, aleatoric music, concrete or electronic music without ever becoming a prisoner of a style
Somewhere between contemporary classical and research music, we find an absolutely interesting native of Udine: Giancarlo Toniutti. A composer of free electroacoustic improvisations and a lover of the analog sound of the synthesizer, his talent has allowed him to collaborate with great names such as Conrad Schnitzler.
