Classical music's favourite chord progression

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La Folia is perhaps the most commonly used chord progression in classical music, particularly in baroque era music. But classical composers probably wouldn't even think about La Folia as a chord progression but instead as "ground bass".
SOURCES:
Nicola Benedetti, Introduction to La Folia: • Discover Baroque Music...
BBC, La Folia: www.bbc.com/culture/article/2...
Uses of Folia in cinema: folias.nl/html8a.html
Musica Universalis, La Folia: • Principles of Music: T...
And, an extra special thanks goes to Peter Keller, Douglas Lind, Vidad Flowers, Ivan Pang, Waylon Fairbanks, Jon Dye, Austin Russell, Christopher Ryan, Toot & Paul Peijzel
SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: / davidbennettpiano 🎹
0:00 La Folía
0:58 the chord progression
1:48 Examples
3:10 Film & TV themes
4:36 Vienna Power House
5:40 Ground bass
6:35 Other stylistic features of La Folía
7:45 Composing my own piece with La Folía

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Try Vienna Power House with a FREE demo version: vsl.co.at/davidbennett 🎶

[@TransportGeekery]

This means nothing to me

[@DavidBennettPiano]

@@TransportGeekery 😂 nice

[@R.Akerman-oz1tf]

The very beginning is almost Hotel CA. Veers off from there.@@DavidBennettPiano

[@minkahl1644]

That's great that one can offload the computers CPU and use the GPU for processing audio. Hopefully that will become an option/plugin for many audio production softwares.

[@GPUAUDIO]

BIG thank you for your support!

[@jacksonmouldycliff9613]

The Corelli/ Brittany Spears mashup is so well done!

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Thank you! It was quite awkward to do because the Corelli piece is in 3/4 but the Britney song is in 4/4 😅😅

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

It's as brilliant as it is hillarious.

[@ShadowhispersBand]

Sîmply brilliant. Never expected this

[@ITOLDUDA]

@@DavidBennettPiano You should upload the Britney mashup as a short so we could loop just that part. I'm obsessed with it!

[@adamev]

I too thought it was fantastic.

[@povilasl5383]

I want more classical chord progressions!!!!!!!!!!!

[@DavidBennettPiano]

I have another video planned actually on more classical chord progressions 😃😃

[@magdakos4690]

Check out the video about Canon chord progression!

[@1685Violin]

You need to be careful when understanding "chord" progressions in classical music since progressions back then were understood as sequences based on counterpoint, not harmonic functions, that is chords.

[@lxathu]

I didn't dare to be the first but frankly: the less pop the more interesting the material is.

[@ITOLDUDA]

@@1685Violin This is true, but it's also fun to hear what those composers did with same chords used today in pop music. Same chords, but much different result than today's "music." I lifted one of Mozart's chord progressions verbatim, preserving a great deal of the melody in one of my pop songs. It was quite nice even if it wasn't my work per se. Chords are chords no matter what arrangement is put over top of them whether it be reductive pop songs or classical masterpieces.

[@PurpleRevolutionMusic]

I wrote my bachelor thesis on the folia. It's actually much older than people know. First mention is an improvisational model by late medieval monk Guilielmus Monachus. It's a combination of bass and melody that builds the following interval in the same pattern: 8-10-8-10-8-10-8-10 (e.g. D-D, A-C#, D-D, C-E, F-F, C-E, D-D, A-C#). The first folia like we know today, however, was written by andrea falconieri around 1650, Jean-Baptiste Lully being a close second. What many people dismiss when talking about this model is that the melody, like Guilielmus Monachus observes, is actually most of the time just as important as the harmonic structure. It's extremely simple which is why it was used so often as a model for writing tons of variations, most famous by before mentioned Lully and of course Antonio Salieri. One of the best set of variations, in my opinion, was however written by C.P.E. Bach for Cembalo. A genius work EDIT: It's btw also used in Vamo'alla flamenco from Final Fantasy 9's soundtrack. Slightly different cadence but still the same focus on harmony and melody

[@ZonieMusic]

I'm interested in reading your thesis! Would you happen to know where I can find it?

[@PurpleRevolutionMusic]

@@ZonieMusic That was like 10 years ago and I didn't publish it anywhere. It's also in german

[@ZonieMusic]

@@PurpleRevolutionMusic Ah, its alright! Was just curious to know more

[@francescorighini9303]

There's at least an older one by a spanish keyboardist (Cabezon? Can't remember right now), but it starts o V instead of I.

[@NuisanceMan]

Melody is always MORE important than harmonic structure.

[@martinbagnall9708]

Richard Thompson has Oops I Did It Again as one of his songs in 1000 years of popular music. He mentions it's a baroque chord progression

[@xoxb2]

I was about to say he uses a Britney song, but I couldn't remember which one (since I don't know any of them). That's a great show, too.

[@martifingers]

Yes indeed. It seemed an odd choice but Mr Thompson is to be trusted.

[@Pwecko]

I was going to mention this too.

[@Pwecko]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGW6eKaDpdF6rrcsi=yOv46Fgh6FoRsxG7

[@pipertripp]

@@martifingers your comment sounds very much like a line from a spy movie.

[@josephcomfort1166]

Your chord progression videos have changed my life- I write them all on a notepad-thank you Bennett.

[@DavidBennettPiano]

😄😍😄

[@thegenius204]

That Corelli/Spears mashup got too deep too quickly. Love it!

[@benjamingeorg2027]

The Corelli/Spears mashup was extraordinarily impressive. Proving a thesis through antithesis - on point.

[@TheElectra5000]

Now we'll see how many pop artists/producers follow this channel by the surge of songs with this progression that will arise after this video's publication.

[@SuranyiOval]

Maybe it's my math-oriented brain, but I always loved that this progression is a palindrome! Has a kind of overarching forward-backward dynamics and I think this is one of the main reason why this progression works so well.

[@Luxedrina]

Oh, I love your observation! I'm going to try this out!

[@ignazfriedman5337]

1. Corelli’s and Vivaldi’s Follia is in D minor, not in C# minor. The musicians in the video are playing at A=415 Hz. 2. I found another Folia in “pop music”: Rare Bird’s “As your mind flies by”. 3. Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody receives his name also from a Jota it uses, a Spanish folk dance.

[@carlfranke5370]

Thank you :) The same applies to the aria from Bach's Peasant Cantata, which is in B minor and not in B-flat minor.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I guess this is a perfect example of how people sometimes say Mozart etc’s perfect pitch would be considered way off nowadays! Tuning systems are super fascinating honestly.

[@paavobergmann4920]

I know one from Folk music: The "Lamb´s Polka" from Karelia, as covered by the fusion band "Piirpauke"

[@julianbrelsford]

As someone who played La Folia (straight out of a Suzuki violin book) , I noticed this too. Relative to modern pitch, you could view this as being in written D minor, and Concert C# minor, on a "B" (key) instrument.

[@GoddessPallasAthena]

OMG I had to look up "As Your Mind Flies By." Thank you for this information.

[@TransportGeekery]

Your moog riff is progtastic. Made a good day even better!

[@maperspective6685]

Rachmaninoff composed wonderful variations on this "Theme of Corelli." I never noticed it in Beethoven's fifth, or nowhere else. Thanks for pointing it out.

[@LouiePlaysDrums]

Tangerine Dream used the La Folia progression in the last section of their piece "Force Majeure". Years later, they did a piece called "Archangelo Corelli's La Folia" which (you guessed it) is entirely based on La Folia.

[@somedaygibson6894]

I first heard this theme used in the score for Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon and it' has stuck in my head ever since.Thank you for this wonderful survey of its origins and continued use.

[@enriquesaldivar5636]

Exactly, it rang a bell! It is the Sarabanda by Haendel played in a very moving scene of Barry Lindon movie

[@francescorighini9303]

It isn't the same, despite the two first chords being I V in d minor.

[@EduNauta95]

Everyone should listen to the catalan legendary musician Jordi Savall’s Folias de España concert piece with his viola da gamba, one of the most famous pieces of early music on youtube.

[@stevieroach]

One of the most famous theme songs in the world, Doctor Who, is a sort of stretched out La Folia progression, although with a few extra chords in places.

[@richardwebb2348]

The theme is written in the E minor phrygian mode.

[@blaspayri]

this cord progression of la folia gives a renaissance touch even with your composition with electronic instruments. BTW, in Spanish it is *la folía* with a stress on the i. Some claim that due to its musical form, style and the etymology of the word, it is assumed that the melody emerged as a dance in the middle or end of the 15th century, in Portugal or in the former Kingdom of León (an area of Galician influence) or in the Kingdom of Valencia. Both in Portuguese and in Catalan/Valencian "la folia" is pronounced with a stress on the I, even if the accent is not written. Sorry for the pedantry 🥸

[@Swampod]

I was waiting for such a review of La Folia to come. Great job! Thank you!

[@JDLuty-oc5hk]

Do more content on classical music chord progressions, please!!

[@itiseragon]

Found the chord progression for my next piano piece. Thank you as always from one composer to another!

[@freepagan]

Absolutely brilliant presentation. I love your videos, please keep it up! Cheers from the US

[@Topcatyo.]

I absolutely love the background you give on this chord progression (ground bass), like its use in the Iberian peninsula, etc. I find all of this stuff extremely fascinating, and would never have thought to look these up on my own.

[@cdprince768]

"I could only find this classical chord progression in one pop song... ELP? Genesis? Yes? Rush? No, Britney Spears."

[@ImperatorGrausam]

To be fair none of these are pop songs. Though I wish he used examples of prog rock.

[@patepulkkinenvtec2403]

​​@@ImperatorGrausamGenesis released mostly pop rock stuff in the 80's and 90's though. Rush doesn't take that much influence from classical music anyway, the other three you mentioned do though quite some bit. Don't excpect to see that chord progression that much in ELP stuff because a lot of their music is... weird. Yes and Genesis are closer, but even they often want to variate from those typical choralesque chord progressions that are often the basics of their use of harmony.

[@Aquatarkus96]

The ending music sounds like something straight out of a yes album, I love it

[@ancienbelge]

Needs some Mellotron :)

[@ZeZapatiste]

If you're not that much into baroque music but more of a prog-rock/metal fan, I very highly recommand you the Vivaldi's Folia, especially its end and just realise how much of a precursor he was as he wrote them 320 years ago.

[@illegal_space_alien]

Kind of a tangent I was thinking of as well. There has to be plenty of examples of this chord progression in prog music.

[@Ketoswammy]

@@illegal_space_alien Are you saying Brittany isn’t progressive? 🤔

[@Luxedrina]

@@KetoswammyHer "Blackout" album has a lot of prog and weird moments!

[@growbear]

I've been listening to various renditions of La Folia. Never realized in how many more corners it has been lurking. Thanks!

[@philomelodia]

Loved your piece.. Absolutely beautiful. The whole video was wonderful. Baroque music happens to be my absolute favorite when it comes to western European art music. It was nice for this layman to get a glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes. I actually grabbed my guitar and started fiddling around with this progression. Very inspiring.

[@composer7325]

excellent video, David, thank you.

[@thegridlessheathen4627]

Thank you so much, can we get more videos like this? I would love to learn more about the more commonly used progressions we can pull from classical.

[@stubbsmusic543]

I really love how you superimposed those two pieces! Really well done!

[@mr88cet]

Really excellent survey of the literature! Thanks, David! Thanks for pointing out its association with Sarabands, for example.

[@thegothaunt]

Loved your piece at the end!

[@carbonmonoxide5052]

I literally started writing a Sarabande with the La Folía progression yesterday. Crazy how that works.

[@richardmclean7223]

Brilliant as always. Would love to know more about history of chord progression. What makes genres so instantly identifiable with their era? Not just classical but jazz and popular music too.

[@antmonk8537]

I think Terra's Theme from Final Fantasy 6 is a good match for this progression (or bassline, as you pointed out).

[@_girltype]

vamo' alla flamenco from final fantasy ix explicitly making the iberian connection, too

[@jarodivey9033]

My favorite VGM song of all time. So many hours grinding on the triangle island were spent to that tune.

[@agunlogisteam]

​@@_girltypeah... I've been wondering why this progression stuck in my head first time i saw this video. Looking for answers in comments, yes... All those hours spent digging with my chocobo 😂

[@nathanielholzgrafe5274]

@@_girltype Yes, this. Vamo alla Flamenco is a deliberate use of this progression that doesn't hide its influences.

[@Roberto-nn6kb]

Yooo love that game and tune

[@Poetslove]

Great stuff as always David. I loved your piece at the end!

[@formigamusicfactory6614]

my life is better for knowing your work, thanks!

[@gregonline6506]

Yep, that makes a lot of sense! Thx for putting together all that information!

[@Desirsar]

Thanks for the idea to work on this week, La Folia in harmonic minor with some slide parts but still mostly surfy with all the spring reverb.

[@user-vm9em2jr1y]

thanks David! if you want to do them, we'd love more classical music videos❤

[@thierryauves]

cheers from brasil, awesome content!

[@WarpRulez]

Damn, now every composition that uses this chord progression sounds like "Conquest of Paradise" to my ears. Can't unhear.

[@whatever2045]

Thank you! I've played La Folia variations in the past and always wondered about its popularity.

[@GilbertoAlbino]

Hi David, fantastic work. Love your ability to join the missing parts together!

[@SeanDagher]

The baroque pieces are played at A415 (instead of A440) so the Corelli is actually in Dm and the Bach is in Bm.

[@victorwilburn8588]

Now I know what "Oops, I Did It Again" sounded so at home in Richard Thompson's "1000 Years of Popular Music".

[@RavenclawNimbus]

I’m new to this channel and really loving this stuff! These are so interesting

[@petersage5157]

No wonder Richard Thompson chose "Oops! I Did It Again" to close out his _1000 Years of Popular Music._ IIRC he went into a baroque adaptation close to the end. A lot of these so-called "disposable artists" are better musicians than most people give them credit for.

[@SamChaneyProductions]

To be fair, Britney didn't write that song, her producer Max Martin did

[@markshveima]

So fascinating! And beautiful original composition! 👏👏👏

[@Mezilesialan]

Such a pleasure . Thank you.

[@user-ty9ho4ct4k]

Thank you! I have seen this progression before but I had no idea how important it was.

[@ActaeaMusic]

I found your own composition absolutely fantastic with that Moog sound!

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Thank you 😊

[@JDazell]

I adore this musical theme. So glas you did a video on this

[@StringsFrets-pe3mb]

Great video! Thanks David

[@diarmuidsutton6231]

Superb David. Thank you.

[@DalhartWX]

My new favorite chord progression. Love your vids:D

[@hamm0155]

Love what you did with the composition

[@martifingers]

Very informative and so well researched.

[@KarstenJohansson]

8:23 is the most appropriate ad placement I've ever seen. It makes you pay more attention to the sound of the composition, and likewise the product giving it reverb!

[@fortunefavorsthebold3459]

Awesome composition at the end!!

[@MikeFowlerguitars]

Very useful. Thank you for this.

[@LoffysDomain]

Thank you for creating and sharing this didactical masterpiece.

[@robertbourke7935]

Fantastic demonstration David

[@DavidBennettPiano]

Thank you 😊

[@OtixMilia]

Thanks for your great work. I love your content. ❤️

[@Mercenarus]

I'm glad you mentioned the Sarabande cause I had in the ear some of the Haendel's Sarabande (the one used in Barry Lyndon) half of the time :p Excellent video as usual ;)

[@jerominefelixcantoneros393]

Excellent Resource, thanks

[@MattB90]

So cool to nerd out over things like this after playing pieces such as these for so long

[@stephenraybrown]

Great stuff, David. I always learn something new from your videos, despite having studied guitar and pop/rock songwriting for 40 years. Cheers! (And BTW lovely composition.)

[@mackermaldrill2656]

Beautiful piece at the end.

[@mikescofield]

Very interesting and very well done. Thanks! I'm going to try this in a future composition.

[@robertkadar6856]

Brilliant! I was today years old when I learned about this persistent and intriguing progression. I’m definitely going to play with it and write a new melody for it!

[@ericmyrs]

I can see why this got so popular. It's a fantastic progression.

[@MrAboba69]

Thank you a lot for this very interesting video! Looking forward for more videos about classical/historical music, it is a nice contrast to content about pop music!

[@mariannamycroft2611]

That explaines so much!

[@timothyreynolds6255]

Thanks for another stimulating video. I'll be making my own LaFolia today.

[@victorwilburn8588]

It would be very interesting to see an exploration of alternative ways to harmonize the same ground bass to get different chord progressions.

[@murarikumarsinha]

Impressive and informative. Thanks

[@carolm.ferreira3699]

what awesome!!So nice!!

[@axlhyvonen461]

These are so good, great, how I simply love and love a lot watching these🙂🙃

[@michaelmeyer2725]

Your outro composition is awesome! I can so hear an orchestra performing it.

[@danthsmith]

Great food for thought. I'm trying i straight away on the guitar. Thanks

[@videogamevisuals2127]

After hearing it in Assassin's Creed Unity for the first time, Corellis La Folia became one of my favourite classical pieces. I didn't know this chord progression was so popular, this video was a really cool insight!

[@PaulP567]

Completely fascinating.

[@jwillied1326]

That ending piece was great, do you release stuff on spotify? Also these chord progression videos are super useful because I'm a freshman in college for Music Media Production and understanding all these things is wonderfully useful. Thank you

[@AdamKucharczyk]

Haaaaa, THANK YOU!!!! I asked for la folia some time ago, I cannot get free from this cord progression!

[@clawspirit]

One of my favorite progression for improvisation.

[@Rainrizzerr]

I swear I wasn't crazy when I immediately thought of Pirates of the Carribbean when I heard this progression

[@dansaber4427]

I am blown away

[@briancase6180]

Wow, I never realized that a pop song uses this progression! I know there are other classical music progressions that have made for big pop hits, but this one escaped me perhaps because of the tempo difference.... Thanks!

[@ThatElephantintheRoom]

Thank you!

[@VaggosWho]

AMAZING!!!!!

[@c.jhamblin5759]

Im surprised you didnt talk about how the VII III are less individual chords and more a temporary tonicization of the V I in the relative major, but other than that this was a great video

[@walfredswanson]

I was going to point that out, too. Seen that way, it is really a very simple but elegant idea: tonic, dominant, relative major with its dominant and back again. The VII - III analysis obscures things a bit.

[@mrewan6221]

Yep. I'm lucky enough to have done functional harmony, and the breaks down to quaite a simple progression: T D T D/Tr Tr D/Tr T D where T is tonic (i), D is the dominant (V), Tr is the tonic-relative (III), D/Tr is the dominant of the Tonic-relative (VII). Purists would probably write it as: t D t D/tR tR D/tR t D with loer-case showing minor.

[@LeTromboniste0]

This progression predates tonality by about 200 years. It's also not bass-based. It's not tonal harmony, so it's not super relevant to analyse it from the perspective of functional harmony.

[@mrewan6221]

@@LeTromboniste0 What an odd comment. Are you saying we shouldn't use a tool to examine something because that tool hadn't been invented when the something was created? Does that mean we shouldn't use a magnifying glass to look at the Dead Sea scrolls?

[@LeTromboniste0]

​@@mrewan6221 No, that's not what I said. You can use the tool, of course, to reconceptualise what you're studying, and in particular when the progression is used in an otherwise tonal context (and it might help qualify the tonal pull we feel towards the "III" chord) but it won't tell you either where it came from, or how it actually works, and so the relevancy of it is limited. All I'm saying is, since the language you're analysing is not the one this tool is meant for, there's no reason why "it's a temporary tonicization" would be any more accurate than saying "it's VII III VII". They're both valid, and also in some ways both incomplete. It's not as much that the tool had not been invented as the language was an entirely different one than what the tool is meant to be used for. Would you analyse Anglo-Saxon writings through the framework of modern english grammar? You can try, and maybe there's something interesting to be learned by doing it, but it definitely won't nearly give you all the information.

[@kenvives]

Like others, I would love more content with “classical” theory concepts as well as modern cinematic music!!!! Thanks so much for this!

[@georgerady9706]

One of the first pieces of “classical” (serious) music pieces I heard in my childhood and it has stuck with me as I used it when I finally got around to writing my first play based on British Restoration Period Theatre 🎭 Tradition!

[@yihechen2909]

I love the piece you created in the end, is it possible to have it as an individual short video? Cheers for the great work!

[@phoenixlandingstudio6594]

Great video, thank you.

[@lwdesign1544]

Great video as always, your chord progression videos are always like little treasure chests for me! One thing that I stumbled over, though, was, that if I remember correctly (I might be wrong and also completely wrong, since I'm relatively new to music theory), you usually relate the progressions back to the major key, right? So for example, wouldn't I then label the B in the Folia from Corelli as bVII instead of VII, or am I missing anything?

[@SephBentos]

It’s incredibly similar to Vamo' Alla Flamenco from Final Fantasy IX. The only real difference is the ending uses a VI-V-i instead of a i-V-i

[@dwdei8815]

No mention of Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme by Corelli? Based on La Folia, in Dm. Gorgeous. You should give it a peek, it's busting with harmonic ideas.