Beautiful Love Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

Analyzed excerpt

Section: A1 · Bars 1–4

Em7b5 | A7 | Dm7 | Dm7

This is a short excerpt quoted for analysis, not the full chart, and this composition is very likely still in copyright. Published versions and recordings disagree with each other about the rest of the tune, and often about these bars too.

The books behind this page

Every one of these tunes is assembled out of the same handful of harmonic resources. Jazz Harmony is those resources, explained in the order in which they build on each other.

Start here Project 03 · Harmony

Harmonic analysis

Key

D minor

Tonal center

D

Confidence

High

Chords analysed

4

Chord	Roman numeral	Function	What it is doing	Confidence
Em7b5	iiø	Predominant	Em7b5 is the iiø7 of Dm: the predominant of a minor key.	High
A7	V7	Dominant	A7 is the dominant of Dm. In a minor key it borrows its major third from harmonic minor — that raised note is the leading tone.	High
Dm7	i	Tonic	Dm7 is the tonic of Dm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High
Dm7	i	Tonic	Dm7 is the tonic of Dm. It is where the progression is at rest.	High

What the analyzer found in it

iiø - V7 - iEm7b5 - A7 - Dm7

A complete minor ii-V-i in Dm, with the half-diminished ii and a dominant that borrows its leading tone from harmonic minor.

High, medium and low next to each numeral are judgements about musical context, not probabilities. A low rating marks a bar that can honestly be read more than one way. How the ratings are decided →

Why this example matters

In D minor the excerpt reads iiø – V7 – i. Inside those 4 chords there is a complete ii-V-I. Play it slowly with only two voices — the third and seventh of each chord. In A7 those are Db and G, and watching where that pair goes next tells you more about the progression than the root movement does. The same device turns up in Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are and Tune Up, in other keys and at other tempos.

How the rest of Beautiful Love goes

The tune opens on the minor ii-V rather than approaching it, so the first sound is already tension and the tonic is an answer to a question the listener did not hear asked. Over thirty-two bars the harmony keeps circling that same cadence, moving briefly to the relative major and coming back, which gives the piece an unusually narrow harmonic range for a standard of its era. That narrowness is why it is a good first minor tune and also why it is hard to make interesting at length: the changes will not supply variety, so the player has to.

Beautiful Love on record

Published in 1931 with music credited to Victor Young alongside Wayne King and Egbert Van Alstyne, and a lyric by Haven Gillespie — a committee origin typical of the period. It was a dance-band number for two decades before jazz musicians took it seriously. Bill Evans recorded it on Explorations in 1961, and that version is the reason the tune is in the modern repertoire at all; nearly every subsequent reading is in conversation with it.

Analyze this progression

Take these bars into the analyzer and interfere with them. The fastest way to learn what a chord was doing is to remove it and read what the analysis says instead.

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Beautiful Love — Chord Progression & Harmonic Analysis

Chord progression

The books behind this page

Jazz Harmony

Harmonic Narrative

Jazz Guitar Comping

Harmonic analysis

What the analyzer found in it

Why this example matters

How the rest of Beautiful Love goes

Beautiful Love on record

Analyze this progression

Related

ii-V-I

Autumn Leaves

All The Things You Are

Tune Up

Jazz chord progressions