Tune of the Day: Stolta Stad!
“Stolta stad!” is one of Sweden's most famous 18th-century songs, written by the legendary poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman as Fredman's Epistle No. 33. The piece is a musical irony, setting a grand, rigid military march melody against a comedic, chaotic story about working-class citizens taking a rowboat ferry across Stockholm.
Bellman was primarily a master of parody, and rarely composed original melodies from scratch. The tune for “Stolta Stad!” was said by scholar Nils Afzelius to come from the aria “Regardez ces traits” in Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny's 1761 opera Le cadi dupé, but this claim has been actively disputed by musicologists such as James Massengale. Comparing the score to Monsigny's aria side-by-side with Bellman's Epistle 33, one finds that the phrasing, rhythm, and melodic contours do not match up cleanly enough to prove an indisputable direct influence.