"Lo Fiolairé" (occitan la fialaire, the spinner) is a traditional Occitan song, from the region of Aurillac and Haute-Auvergne, composed by an anonymous author in the Occitan language.

History and content

The piece was recovered by the composer Joseph Canteloube between 1923-1930 and inserted in the collection Chants d'Auvergne (Songs from Auvergne),^[1] where he transcribed it with arrangement for soprano and orchestra. In 1964 Luciano Berio transcribed the piece in turn, with an arrangement for voice (mezzo-soprano), flute, clarinet, harp, percussion, viola and cello. The musical piece was included in the song cycle Folk Songs collection and was recorded by his Armenian wife, Cathy Berberian.^[2][3]

It is a canso, a poetic composition, composed of twelve lines (four triplets, the rhymes are identical in all the stanzas; there is also the rima estamp, which is found in the same place from verse to verse (coblas unisonans).

The song tells the story of a shepherdess who remembers that when she was very young, while she was looking after the flock, she also had a stick to spin and had called a shepherd to help her, but he in return asked him for a kiss and she, who was not an ungrateful one, he gave her two.^[4]

Other versions

• Arleen Auger
• Sara Macliver
• Netania Davrath
• Sarah Davis
• Albena Kechlibareva
• Orna Arania
• Dawn Upshaw
• Véronique Gens

Discography

• 1964, Luciano Berio, Folk Songs
• 2005, Osvaldo Golijov in the CD Ayre, with Dawn Upshaw & The Andalucian Dogs, Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg^[5]

References