The familiar Nokia cellphone ringtone was created by which of the following composers?

Perhaps the most recognizable ringtone of all time, Nokia’s ‘Grande Valse’ (Great Waltz) dates all the way back to 1902. It is a four-bar phrase from a solo guitar piece called ‘Gran Vals’, written by Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega, a Spanish guitarist of the Romantic period, who is often nicknamed ‘the father of classical guitar’.

When Nokia was looking for a soundbite, Tárrega’s four-bar ditty was deemed perfect. It was simple, elegant, and (importantly) under European law, which makes music available to the public 70 years after the composer’s death, its copyright had expired. The company first used the tune in a 1992 ad for the Nokia 1011, and it soon became the phone company's flagship ringtone.

Although the tune has always been credited to Tárrega, the Spanish composer had an inspiration of his own. ‘Grande Valse’, the name of the ringtone, is also the name of a piece of music by Frédéric Chopin. And there’s a moment in Chopin’s composition, which sounds remarkably like the Nokia startup theme.

Nokia has released several different versions of the ringtone over the years, from its first tinny chime, to a piano version in 2004 and an extended guitar-based version in 2008. In 2009, a report revealed that the tune is heard worldwide an estimated 1.8 billion times per day. That works out to approximately 20,000 times per second.