A little-known nineteenth century classical guitarist is the composer of arguably the most-played piece of music in history.

The ‘Nokia Tune’ was being played 1.8 billion times a day at its peak in 2010 – 20,000 times a second – after it debuted on a pioneering Nokia handset in 1994.

But its creator remains almost unknown.


The ‘Nokia tune’ is based on a 19th-century guitar work called Gran Vals by Francisco Tartego – and can be heard about 10 seconds in.

It was first played in a Nokia advert, but then the tune was included with the ground-breaking Nokia 2210 in 1994.

Nokia’s Head of Sound Design, Tapio Hakanen – who now works at Microsoft, which acquired the company says, ‘The first product that came out with it was in 1994; the Nokia 2110. It was monophonic, meaning it played just one note at a time. It worked perfectly with the music”

The 2210 was the successor to Nokia’s first-ever phone which ran on the GSM network (the old, pre-3G network, which Nokia helped to design).