It dates at least to 1583, when a "ballo furlano" called L'arboscello was published in Pierre Phalèse the Younger’s Chorearum molliorum collectanea and in Jakob Paix’s organ tablature book, though its chief popularity extended from the late 1690s to about 1750.
[2] The furlana is a fast dance, in duple-time 68, though one exceptional example proves to be in quintuple meter, underlining the Slavonic associations also suggested by its title, Polesana, which in Italian can mean "a woman from Pola" (a city in Istria, neighbouring Friuli and a part of Italy until 1947), or may be from the Croatian word "polesa", meaning "rural", or "from the back woods".
[citation needed] Giovanni Battista Vitali, a 17th-century composer, included a Furlana in 6/8 time in his "Partite sopra diverse Sonate per il Violino.
Maurice Ravel recalled the baroque usage in his piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, though his Forlane is a rather plaintive piece in moderate time.
Another forlane occurs at the end of Ernest Chausson's piano suite Quelques Danses (Some Dances)—this one far livelier and featuring an alternation between triple and sextuple rhythms.