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The Art of Fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach is in D minor. Michael Haydn's only minor-key symphony, No. 29, is in D minor. According to Alfred Einstein, the history of tuning has led D minor to be associated with counterpoint and chromaticism (for example, the chromatic fourth), and cites Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, in D minor. [1]
Baroque music written in minor keys often was written with a key signature with fewer flats than we now associate with their keys; for example, movements in C minor often had only two flats (because the A ♭ would frequently have to be sharpened to A ♮ in the ascending melodic minor scale, as would the B ♭).
In modern notation, the key signature for music in a minor key is typically based on the accidentals of the natural minor scale, not on those of the harmonic or melodic minor scales. For example, a piece in E minor will have one sharp in its key signature because the E natural minor scale has one sharp (F ♯).
Its key signature has six sharps. Its relative major is F-sharp major (or enharmonically G-flat major). Its parallel major, D-sharp major, [2] is usually replaced by E-flat major, since D-sharp major's two double-sharps make it impractical to use. Its enharmonic equivalent, E-flat minor, has six flats. The D-sharp natural minor scale is:
D-flat minor is usually notated as the enharmonic key of C-sharp minor, as in the second and third measures of Amy Beach's Canticle of the Sun. [1] However, unusually, two of Verdi's most well-known operas, La traviata and Rigoletto, both end in D-flat minor (although written with the five-flat key signature of the parallel major).
The resulting scale is, however, minor in quality, because, as the D becomes the new tonal centre, the F a minor third above the D becomes the new mediant, or third degree. Thus, when a triad is built upon the tonic, it is a minor triad. The modern Dorian mode is equivalent to the natural minor scale (or the Aeolian mode) but with a major sixth.
Baroque and Classical symphonies in D minor usually used 2 horns in F (whereas for most other minor keys 2 or 4 horns were used, half in the tonic and half in the relative major). Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 29 in D minor is notable for using two trumpets in D (the horns are in F but change to D for the coda of the finale). In the Romantic era ...
When a musical key or key signature is referred to in a language other than English, that language may use the usual notation used in English (namely the letters A to G, along with translations of the words sharp, flat, major and minor in that language): languages which use the English system include Irish, Welsh, Hindi, Japanese (based on katakana in iroha order), Korean (based on hangul in ...