number of different folk dances characterized by a fast upbeat tempo From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Tarantella is a very fast dance in 6/8 time. The name comes from the town of Taranto in Italy. People used to believe that if someone was bitten by a tarantula spider they needed to do this dance in order to drive out the poison. The dancer would get more and more excited until he (or she) seemed mad.
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Some people think that maybe these people never really believed this, but that it was an excuse to dance at a time when the church said that dancing was not allowed. The spider is, in fact, only a little bit poisonous.
Some composers enjoyed writing fast pieces in 6/8 time which they called "Tarantella". Mendelssohn wrote one as the last movement of his Symphony no 4 (the Italian). Chopin and Liszt also wrote Tarantellas.
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