Work Text:
Our Whims Have Consequences:
La Folia and Related Music in Our Flag Means Death Season Two
Introduction
Like many Our Flag Means Death fans, I watched each episode of season two the day it was released in a fog of under-slept, adrenaline-fueled anticipation. While my mind mostly rode a wave of chaotic gut reactions during those first watches, my music-theory-teaching professional self occasionally entered my consciousness, timidly raising their hand and saying, “sorry to bother at a time like this, but did we just hear a La Folia?”
Yes, professor self: we did! La Folia, a chord progression (or more accurately, a “ground bass,” explanation forthcoming) that has been in use in European and European-influenced music for literal centuries, makes several appearances in Our Flag Means Death’s second season - in both the Classical needle-drops and original soundtrack numbers by show composer Mark Mothersbaugh. In the weeks since those wild first watches, I’ve had a chance to consume the season more lucidly, to consider scenes where La Folia is heard, and to think about the themes and interpretations it suggests. Here’s what I currently think: La Folia’s musical characteristics and historical tradition are deeply resonant with central themes of Our Flag Means Death, including facing the consequences of one's whims and the difficulty of change. The specific placements of La Folia in the show also connect it to the theme of fantasy vs. reality, and tie it to Stede. Finally, other musical numbers in the show that are musically related to La Folia can shed additional light on Stede, and on the arcs of other characters, when analyzed through a La Folia-informed lens. If this sounds intriguing, read on for an in-depth analysis!
Note: the following contains some music theory. I’ll do my best to explain things in ways that don’t require prior music theory knowledge, but I am going to include some nuggets for folks who have that background. These will mostly be in parentheses, or prefaced with something like “music theory facts” or “music theory moment,” and can be skipped if that is not your jam.
What is La Folia?
Woo, it’s defining terms time!
La Folia is a chord progression that emerged as a trope in Western European music in the Baroque era, and subsequently spread into other regions of the world via commerce, colonization, etc. Baroque composers (that is, European composers and composers educated in a European style from roughly 1600-1750) used it fairly frequently, and associated it with Spain, though its origins are not completely clear and likely precede the Baroque era. La Folia developed and changed over the course of the Baroque period, but by 1717, when OFMD takes place, it was fairly standardized and well-known - retro, even! - across Western Europe and beyond. Here are some music theory facts about La Folia: it is in a minor key and is sixteen measures long. Those sixteen measures are broken into two eight-measure phrases. These two phrases contain almost exactly the same chords, but the first phrase ends with a half cadence (that is, a final chord that feels more open-ended) and the second ends with an authentic cadence (a final pair of chords that feel more conclusive.) In other words, both repetition and variation are built into the structure of La Folia.
La Folia was part of a larger trend in Baroque music of improvising or composing variations on a “ground bass” - a standardized bassline that repeats cyclically, while different melodic and textural variations are played over each bass cycle. Variations on popular ground basses were one way musicians could show their creativity, somewhat similarly to how jazz musicians today can demonstrate creativity by soloing over the familiar chord changes of an old standard. In Baroque ground bass practice, these recurring basslines would usually be harmonized with the same chords, and often had stock melodies or melodic cliches associated with them that could be ornamented and varied. But Baroque musicians thought of chords as outgrowths of basslines, so in their terms, “variations on a ground bass” meant roughly the same thing as “variations over a repeated chord progression” means to us today. La Folia was one of the most popular ground basses of the Baroque era, and remains emblematic of the balance between the historical endurance of these unchanging basses and the creativity and uniqueness of individual pieces and performances based upon them.
Another point that is relevant for Our Flag Means Death is that pieces using the La Folia chord progression often contain rhythms associated with the Sarabande. The Sarabande was a dance, and pieces of music written to accompany or to convey the vibe of that dance exhibit rhythmic tropes that loosely reflect its steps. Sarabandes are relatively slow and counted in three, with emphasis on beat two. In Our Flag Means Death, one hears quintessential Sarabande rhythms in the opening number of the original soundtrack, conveniently titled Sarabande. The first two notes of that track are beats one and two of the measure, and the second beat is more heavily emphasized than the first. (one, TWOOO and one, TWOOOO…or, in music theory terms, beat two is accented agogically - that is, in duration - and through articulation.) Most of the clear La Folia examples in Our Flag Means Death S2 share these Sarabande rhythms.
I’m not going to go through every chord in the La Folia progression here (see the Wikipedia article on La Folia if you want that; it’s what they call the “later Folia.”) But it’s worth mentioning a few things about the chords that can help us think about La Folia’s role in the show. First, each phrase contains a balance between its home minor key and the relative major - which we could think of as a balance between shadow and sun, or weight and lightness, or however you like to think about the qualitative differences between minor and major keys. The phrases start in minor, allude to major in the middle, and fall back into minor. (Music theory moment for those who want more: La Folia’s two phrases each start with a minor i-V-i, then move to VII and III, which are also V and I of the relative major - that is, a tonicization of the relative major. The phrases then head toward their respective cadences using harmonic cliches that affirm the home minor key). Those of us who are familiar with the common cultural associations of minor=sad and major=happy might hear this progression as opening somberly, reaching for hope/happiness/etc, then inevitably falling back into the somber as the progression cycles back to its minor origin. This feeling of always cycling back to minor, falling back into it, is important for the scenes it accompanies in the show.
Finally, a note on the name “La Folia.” You might see it spelled Follia, Folies, Follies, etc. in the titles of pieces that use La Folia, depending on the European language region the piece comes from. But across languages, the name of the progression translated at the time to something like “folly” or “madness,” which starts tying it pretty clearly to themes explored in Our Flag Means Death. Most pieces that use the La Folia chords admittedly don’t have lyrics or an accompanying story that explicitly link the music to these meanings of the title, but some do - in a fairly on-the-nose modern example, Britney Spears’ “Oops I did it again” makes heavy use of La Folia.
Lyrically, “Oops I did it again” also invokes the theme of repeating one’s follies (or whims, if you will), as well as the idea that those whims have consequences for oneself and others. The musically repetitive, cyclical nature of La Folia is an apt match for a song exploring the pitfalls of repeating toxic old behavior patterns - a theme that is, of course, also relevant for Our Flag Means Death S2. To really drive home these thematic connections, let’s recap: La Folia is a harmonic pattern or trope that balances variation and repetition, tradition and innovation, minor and major, weight and lift. It is typically repeated in the context of musical pieces, inevitably cycling back onto its minor beginning. It was a well-established European musical tradition in 1717, and still used as such today. It often uses Sarabande rhythms that themselves encode a slow, insistent, repetition. Its name invokes folly and madness. In short, it is a perfect musical trope to place in a show about Baroque-era characters struggling with and against their long-held personal demons, entrenched behavior patterns, and hegemonic social institutions in midlife, and asking whether and how change is possible, even as those old patterns assert their pull.
La Folia in Our Flag Means Death S2
Let’s talk about where La Folia occurs in Our Flag Means Death S2!
I promise I’ll do that after this paragraph. But first, a quick note on the method I used to locate these instances. I combed through multiple fan-made playlists (URLs in endnotes) that include some or all of the Classical needle drops, as well as the original soundtrack by Mothersbaugh, listening for La Folia and related music. Then using a combination of my memory, internet searches, and good old trial and error in the Max player, I verified the identifications of pieces containing La Folia as best I could, and located the spots in S2 where those pieces occur. BUT - I have not verified the identity of every Classical needle drop in S2, and have not yet rewatched S2 with the exclusive goal of aurally analyzing for La Folia references. If I had unlimited time and were going to publish this essay IRL, I would do those things; I'd also extend my interpretive methodology and info about La Folia beyond what already exists in my own brain, invoking various bodies of academic work with all the requisite citations. But this essay does not lay claim to that level of academic rigor. I'm writing this as a fan with some relevant professional knowledge, and this here is a fan site and this archive *slaps roof of Ao3* can fit soooo much speculative meta in it! So, I’m going to talk about the examples that I feel pretty confident about at this point, but I may have made mistakes or missed instances of La Folia! If you find any I haven’t covered, or think I’ve gotten something wrong, let me know.
Ok, here we go! I am aware of four clear instances of La Folia in Our Flag Means Death S2:
Ep 1
Sarabande (Mark Mothersbaugh)
Location: opening scene - dream Stede fights with dream Izzy.
Notes: this is technically not the La Folia progression, but is a clear variation of it; it uses the same characteristic chords in a slightly different order, with the characteristic Sarabande rhythms. This appears to be an arrangement of Handel’s keyboard suite in D minor, HWV 437, third movement, which is a Sarabande.
Trio Sonata, Op. 1/1, RV 63, “La Follia” (Antonio Vivaldi)
Location: the indigo stealing scene, from Swede giving Jackie a massage through Ricky derailing the heist and Jackie discovering the crew outside.
Notes: this version of La Folia also has characteristic Sarabande rhythms.
Ep 3
La Folia Theme (arranged by Fredric Sans)
Location: Stede realizes the ship Auntie is reporting found to Zheng is the Revenge; he jumps into the ocean to get to Ed.
Notes: this appears to be a pre-existing arrangement of La Folia with classic Sarabande rhythms by prolific film and TV composer and arranger Fredric Sans. I would not be surprised if Mothersbaugh was thinking of this track, and the ways its orchestration and production give La Folia the “epic” vibe of much modern film music, while working on the Sarabande arrangement for the Ep 1 opening scene.
Ep 7
Follia di Spagna (Bruno Battisti D’Amario)
Location: end of episode - the music fades in as ships burn, Zheng reacts, and Stede lies there. Music continues into credits.
Notes: I have not yet confirmed the exact recording of this piece used in the show, but it sounds to me like the music and sound team subtly edited this track so that it repeats D’Amario’s first statement of the La Folia progression, which uses the Sarabande rhythmic figures, rather than continuing into the ensuing variations, which have different rhythms. It’s subtle, but to my ear there’s a slightly odd cut point in this cue after which they repeat material we’ve just heard. Let me know if you hear this too, I’m holding back because it’s a sidebar but I wanna talk about it!
So, what can we say about these four Folias, taken together? First, I think the music/sound team likely wanted to make sure these four tracks to sound connected: they selected parts of existing La Folia-based pieces that use the same Sarabande-style rhythmic figures and similar melodic treatments of La Folia, and located or created arrangements and recordings whose sound worlds are reasonably similar (string-forward arrangements, slightly anachronistic Baroque performance practice, and audio production that balances crispness with resonance and warmth.) I would be surprised if these relationships were an accident, and think we're probably being invited to hear these tracks as related, or as different versions of the "same" thing.
Second, the locations of La Folia in the show tie it to Stede. La Folia is the soundtrack to his fantasies (the opening dream, his expectation of reuniting with Ed on the Revenge in Ep 3) and his greatest moments of hubris (partnering with Ricky in the Ep 1 heist, taking on Zheng in a fight). And one could argue that his fantasies are also moments of hubris, and vice versa! Our main man would not have met his wonderful found-family crew or the love of his life if he hadn’t acted on his hubris-filled fantasy of becoming a pirate - so I can’t fault him for that! - but La Folia appears at moments in which it is clear Stede’s whims can have negative consequences. His fantasies seek easy absolution from the reality that he hurt Ed badly. He’s skeptical of Ricky in Ep 1, but still too ready to accept his ego-stroking, which entangles Stede, his crew, Jackie and Zheng with the now-evil Ricky. At the end of Ep 7, the consequences of engaging with Ricky and of embracing the very piratical fame Ricky used to flatter him in S1 come home to roost for Stede: his crew begins to defect, Ricky blows up Zheng’s fleet, Ed has left.
Finally, there’s a formal resonance between the musical repetition inherent in La Folia and the S2 plot. As I’ve said above, for me, the way La Folia’s repetition always circles back around to its minor start has a feeling of inevitability - and when it appears at the end of Ep 7, I feel the inevitability of the consequences that Stede’s follies set in motion many episodes ago. La Folia underscores Ricky’s villain origin story in Ep 1 (for which Stede opened the door), and one of the most dire consequences of that story: Ricky's attack on Zheng’s fleet in Ep 7. There’s also a parallel between La Folia’s cyclic repetition and S2’s formal mirroring between the Ep 1 opening dream sequence and Ep 8, each of which feature Ed and Stede reuniting on a beach and an Izzy death scene. Similarly, La Folia introduces Stede’s dream in Ep 1, and La Folia ends Ep 7, acting as a musical transition to or frame for Ep 8 if one watches the episodes consecutively.
UPDATE: Many thanks to Ao3 user hoc_voluerunt for pointing out in a comment below that there is a La Folia I missed in S2 Ep 4! It plays while Ed angrily takes his leave from the Revenge after being banished (the "don't you want your sammie" scene). Neither of us have identified the exact piece this is yet, but hopefully someone will! We also discussed various interpretive angles on the presence of La Folia in this scene in the comment thread - so check out the comments for more!
Other Folia-adjacent musical moments in S2
There are five additional musical moments in Our Flag Means Death S2 that I hear as Folia-adjacent. One of these - Mothersbaugh’s Escape the Basket from Ep 4 - actually contains some of the Folia harmonic progression. The others are reminiscent of the larger musical category La Folia belongs to: the Baroque tradition of variations over a repeated “ground bass.” Over time, this idea morphed into the musical forms known as “passacaglia” and/or “chaconne.” Definitions of these terms have shifted across time and place, but both broadly refer to the same kind of thing: pieces of music built on relatively short, cyclically repeating basslines and/or chord progression. For me, hearing a ground bass, or a passacaglia/chaconne in an Our Flag Means Death musical number makes that number Folia-adjacent; that adjacency is strengthened if the music also uses Sarabande rhythms, Baroque-era instrumentation, or other features that link it sonically with the four La Folias discussed above. Other listeners may hear some of the other Baroque selections in the show as Folia-adjacent too, due to their instrumentation, tempo, key, mood, or general Baroque style. But for me, because La Folia is defined by being a harmonic object from the ground bass tradition, harmonic similarity or the presence of a ground bass make for the strongest, most immediate sense of musical kinship. I’ll go through each of these Folia-adjacent pieces in the order they appear in the show.
Ep 2: Symphony No. 7 in A, II. Allegretto (Ludwig van Beethoven)
CW: murder/suicide proposal, off-screen suicide attempt, suicidality
The “funeral march” from the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony underscores the scene in which Ed proposes to Izzy that he should take them both out in a murder/suicide. It continues as Ed leaves the room and hears Izzy fire the gun, and ends as Ed steers the ship into the oncoming storm.
This famous section of a famous piece uses rhythms associated with funeral marches - so, it’s definitely not a Sarabande. It’s also harmonically not a Folia. But it does contain repeated rhythmic figures and a repeated minor harmonic progression, sometimes referred to as a passacaglia - so that sense of baleful inevitability, and the enactment of established patterns and tropes, exists here, too. Like the Folias in S2, its instrumentation is string-focused.
I don’t think there’s much deeper meaning to be unlocked here other than to say that the qualities this piece shares with La Folia emphasize how appropriate it is for the scene. Ed’s most troubled and troubling old patterns are escalating, and careening toward (what he believes is) their inevitable end in death.
Ep 3 - Stede Stede (Mark Mothersbaugh)
This number from the original score is kind of an example of a ground bass. There’s a repeating bass figure and Baroque-ish instrumentation. There’s not a lot of musical texture, so it’s more of a suggestion of a ground bass than a full manifestation of the concept. But its placement in the story - as Stede questions the Revenge crew about Ed’s whereabouts - links it to the La Folia occurrences. Stede is still hoping to be reunited with Ed at this point - though he’s worried, his fantasy is still alive. It makes sense for elements of the music that underscores his fantasies to be present here.
Ep 4 - Escape the Basket (Mark Mothersbaugh)
I love this one so much, y’all.
Escape the Basket underscores the beginning of Buttons’ transformation scene, including the iconic line, “to love the sea as she must be loved requires change.” Musically, this number doesn’t have much in common with the other La Folias - it’s sparse, ghostly; it doesn’t contain much repetition; its rhythms, sound world, and style are not very Baroque. BUT - its first few arpeggiated chords outline, ever so subtly, the first few chords of La Folia. But then it…CHANGES. It departs from the old pattern. One could say that it takes another shape, harmonically. And by the time Buttons’ transformation is underway, that ghostly La Folia is completely gone. It’s such a beautiful way to illustrate how Buttons shifts Ed’s belief in his own ability to change, to exist in reality rather than the Gravy Basket (another fantastical space), and to break away from his own old patterns. It’s so subtle - one might not notice this musical detail if one were not nerdily combing the soundtrack for La Folia references - but I see what you did there, Mark Mothersbaugh, and it’s beautiful and I love it.
Ep 7 - Say Mercy (Mark Mothersbaugh)
Say Mercy underscores the fight between Zheng and Stede. It begins with the ominous clock shot on Zheng’s ship, continues through the fight, and ends with a bang as the ships explode. This number opens with a repeated bassline, and contains Sarabande rhythms and harmonic allusions to La Folia; its instrumentation includes Baroque-coded strings and harpsichord. It weaves these Folia-reminiscent elements in with Blackbeard’s theme, escalating along with the fight toward the dramatic explosion of Zheng’s fleet. This isn’t a Folia, but it’s related - and it underscores a scene full of Stede’s folly. It also immediately precedes Ep 7’s actual La Folia, priming us for the return of that musical trope after several episodes without it. (For more on Blackbeard’s and other characters’ themes, see the wonderful work of amuseoffyre on tumblr - URL in the endnotes!)
Ep 8 - Back to the Revenge (Mark Mothersbaugh)
CW: canonical character death
As the crew dashes across the beach to the dinghies, escaping the English, and it becomes clear that Izzy is badly injured, we hear this number. While it isn’t a La Folia, it is a repeating, cyclic harmonic trope common in Baroque music: a “falling fifths” sequence in minor. It features Baroque-style string writing and harpsichord. Rhythmically, it’s faster and has more forward propulsion than the La Folias - appropriate for the scene’s action of running for safety - but for me, it recalls Baroque style and the ideas of ground bass and harmonic inevitability enough to feel connected to the La Folias.
I have no intention or desire for this essay to enter the conversation about whether or not Izzy’s death was a good narrative choice. I am writing about this moment to explore how the music that precedes Izzy's death links his death to other musical and plot events of S2 in my hearing, and to consider possible interpretations of those connections. For me, Back to the Revenge sparks many potential interpretations. It invokes an even more common Baroque musical trope than La Folia, as the crew run for their lives disguised in British uniforms, which makes me think about how these characters’ lives are shaped by the entangled, lethal institutions of piracy and empire. As a cyclic progression, the minor falling fifths sequence shares La Folia’s sense of inevitability, and I feel that infuse the action here too - the crew are playing their assigned roles in the ongoing fight between these two bloody institutions, and can’t fully escape those larger societal cycles of violence. It also, for me, subtly links Izzy’s death to Stede’s fantasies and whims, which has encouraged me to wrestle with the question of where to assign responsibility for Izzy's demise, and the extent to which some of that responsibility belongs to Stede. This, in turn, makes me think more broadly about Stede, Ed, and Izzy, and the many interconnected ways they’ve shaped one another’s fates, for better and for worse. Of all the characters in Our Flag Means Death, as the three older protagonists who undergo unique but parallel transformations, this trio most embodies the simultaneous entrenchment (in pattern, in culture, in tradition) and possibility (of renewed hope, of innovation, of variation) encapsulated by La Folia.
Final Thoughts
Wow. If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading! This got long. I hope you’ve gotten something out of it that will enrich your watching of and thinking about Our Flag Means Death.
I think it’s worth noting here that at least so far, I haven’t identified any instances of La Folia or adjacent music in Episodes 5 and 6. That makes sense to me - these are arguably the happiest episodes of the season, in which the crew is mostly doing their best to heal and grow. Our romantic heroes acknowledge, however imperfectly, that their whims have consequences, and attempt to change their behavior. Ned Low’s visit interrupts all that, and helps catalyze events that culminate in the La Folia at the end of Episode 7, but Ned Low showing up is a consequence of Ed’s actions, not Stede’s, and as we’ve established, La Folia is mostly Stede-coded. That said, as I continue to rewatch, maybe I’ll find things I missed and update this essay! Similarly, if I have time and energy down the road, I’d love to embed some audio in this text so folks can immediately hear what I’m writing about.
One of my favorite things about music is that it resists fixed meanings. Music presents us with sonic information, which is potentially meaningful, but it doesn’t provide a roadmap for how we should parse that collection of sonic information to derive meaning. Nor should it! We all hear music through the filter of our own experiences, educations, and cultures, and interpret its signifiers through those unique perspectives. That’s a beautiful thing. It allows the same piece of music to be personal to many people in many ways.
All this is to say that the interpretive thoughts I’ve offered in this essay are not in any way trying to be a “correct” or authoritative interpretation of what La Folia “means” in the context of the show, nor are they a statement of what I think the creators intend to “say”. Even when I write things like “I see what you did there, Mark Mothersbaugh,” it’s tongue-in-cheek: I can speculate, but unless I ask him, I can’t actually know if Mothersbaugh intentionally put a ghostly La Folia in Escape the Basket, or if that happened subconsciously. But my delight in that moment remains, no matter what he was thinking.
Our Flag Means Death is a multimedia text in which music is but one part of the whole. I’ve tried here to provide some background information on a small, but important element of that part of the text, and a window into the kinds of interpretive richness that music theory and history can sometimes provide. If my interpretive thoughts resonate with you, fantastic - and if not, no worries! Our Flag Means Death is now our text - so go make your own meanings of it!
Fin