Key profile · minor key
A Minor: Scale, Key Signature and Chords
A minor has no sharps or flats. Scale: A B C D E F G. Chords, staff and sound, and how often real songs use it: 89 of 1,462 art songs, 7th of 24 keys.
Short answer
A minor has no sharps or flats. Its scale is A – B – C – D – E – F – G. Its relative major, C major, uses the same key signature; its parallel major, A major, starts on the same note. In the 1,462 art songs of the OpenScore Lieder corpus, 89 are in A minor (6.1% of the corpus), which makes it the 7th most common of the 24 keys.
- A1
- B2
- C3
- D4
- E5
- F6
- G7
- 0key signature: no sharps or flats
- 89of 1,462 Lieder songs are in A minor (7th of 24 keys)
- 120of 1,974 Mutopia scores (5th of 24)
Counts come from open datasets: OpenScore Lieder is a library of mostly 19th-century European art songs, so the statistics describe that repertoire (plus the Mutopia scores and the catalogues named below), not music in general. Major or minor is an estimate for the Lieder; the key signatures are read exactly. Details are under “How this was counted”.
The A minor scale, its notes and its chords
The natural minor scale is built from the steps whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. In A minor the two half steps fall between the 2nd and 3rd degrees (B and C) and between the 5th and 6th degrees (E and F); every other neighbouring pair is a whole step.
Every chord is built from the notes of the scale by stacking thirds, so the spellings follow the key signature.
| Degree | Note | Name | Chord on it | Triad notes | Seventh chord |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A | Tonic | i (Am) | A – C – E | Am7 (A – C – E – G) |
| 2 | B | Supertonic | ii° (Bdim) | B – D – F | Bm7♭5 (B – D – F – A) |
| 3 | C | Mediant | III (C) | C – E – G | Cmaj7 (C – E – G – B) |
| 4 | D | Subdominant | iv (Dm) | D – F – A | Dm7 (D – F – A – C) |
| 5 | E | Dominant | v (Em) | E – G – B | Em7 (E – G – B – D) |
| 6 | F | Submediant | VI (F) | F – A – C | Fmaj7 (F – A – C – E) |
| 7 | G | Subtonic | VII (G) | G – B – D | G7 (G – B – D – F) |
The raised notes are accidentals: they are written next to the notes and are not part of the key signature.
| Form | Notes | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Natural minor | A – B – C – D – E – F – G | the key signature only |
| Harmonic minor | A – B – C – D – E – F – G♯ | 7th raised: G becomes G♯ |
| Melodic minor, going up | A – B – C – D – E – F♯ – G♯ | 6th and 7th raised: F → F♯ and G → G♯ |
| Melodic minor, going down | A – G – F – E – D – C – B – A | same notes as natural minor |
With the raised 7th of the harmonic form, two chords change. The chord on the 5th degree becomes major: V = E major (E – G♯ – B). The chord on the 7th degree becomes diminished: vii° = G♯ diminished (G♯ – B – D). The seventh chords change with them: on the 5th degree it is E7, a dominant seventh chord (E – G♯ – B – D), and on the raised 7th degree it is G♯dim7, a diminished seventh chord (G♯ – B – D – F). Composers use the major V in minor much more often than the minor v of the pure scale, because the raised 7th gives a leading tone, G♯, a half step below the tonic.
The key signature of A minor
A minor has no sharps and no flats in its key signature: the scale uses only the notes without accidentals (the white keys of the piano). The same signature belongs to C major, so a piece with this signature can be in either key; the last chord and the notes the melody leans on decide which. The key signature chart shows all 15 signatures.
A minor on the staff, and how it sounds
The staves show the three forms of the scale one octave from A. The buttons play the scale, the tonic chord (Am) and the cadence i–iv–V–i, which in this key is Am → Dm → E → Am. Sound is made in your browser; nothing is downloaded. Without scripts the notes are listed under each staff.
A B C D E F G A
A B C D E F G♯ A
A B C D E F♯ G♯ A
A G F E D C B A
Tonic chord: Am = A – C – E. Cadence i–iv–V–i: Am (A – C – E) → Dm (D – F – A) → E (E – G♯ – B) → Am.
musictheoryprint.com/keys/a-minor/ — A minor, no sharps or flats
A minor in real scores
Everything below was counted from open collections of real music, not written from memory. The Lieder are the main source because their key signatures are read directly from the notation.
Art songs. The OpenScore Lieder corpus holds 1,462 songs, nearly all from the 19th century. 89 of them are in A minor: 6.1% of the corpus and 19.5% of the 456 songs estimated to be minor, which makes it the 7th most common of the 24 keys by song count. Of the 184 songs whose key signature is no sharps or flats, 89 were estimated to be in A minor and 95 in C major.
Free scores. The Mutopia Project has 1,974 scores with a readable key; 120 are in A minor (6.1%, tied 5th of 24 keys). Most of them are for piano (48), guitar (26) and organ (22), and the styles listed in the library are mainly baroque (47), classical (31) and romantic (18).
Keys are merged by sound, so F♯ major and G♭ major are one key here. An even split over 24 keys would be 4.2% each. Rank 1 is the key with the most items in that dataset.
| Dataset | What is counted | In this key | Share | Rank of 24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | art songs; key signature plus estimated mode | 89 | 6.1% | 7th |
| Mutopia Project | free scores; key from MIDI or LilyPond source | 120 | 6.1% | tied 5th |
| MusicBrainz, Key attribute | catalogued works; key entered by editors | 775 | 5.7% | 9th |
| MusicBrainz, key in title | catalogued works; key read from the English title | 335 | 6.3% | 8th |
| Open Opus | works by 77 composers; key read from the work title | 164 | 4.6% | 11th |
| AcousticBrainz | recordings; machine-estimated key (strength 0.6 or more) | 5,018 | 7.9% | 2nd |
The corpus has no composition dates, so songs are grouped by the composer’s birth year. The group where A minor takes the largest share is composers born 1870 or later (14.5%).
| Composer group | Songs in the corpus | In A minor | Share of the group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Composers born before 1770 | 64 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Born 1770–1809 | 224 | 16 | 7.1% |
| Born 1810–1839 | 509 | 26 | 5.1% |
| Born 1840–1869 | 499 | 24 | 4.8% |
| Born 1870 or later | 159 | 23 | 14.5% |
Songs written in A minor
The line under each song gives its time signature, its length, the lowest and highest note of the vocal line and how the melody begins and ends. Song titles are the corpus’s own; the composer names link to the composer pages of this site.
8 songs written in A minor
- Anklänge Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)from 6 Songs, Op.73/4 · 44 bars · voice E4–G5 · melody begins on the 3rd (C), ends on the 1st (A)
- Am Feierabend Franz Schubert (1797–1828)from Die schöne Müllerin (D.795)6/8 · 89 bars · voice C4–G5 · melody begins on the 5th (E), ends on the 1st (A)
- In der Fremde (II) Robert Schumann (1810–1856)from Liederkreis, Op.392/4 · 39 bars · voice E4–F5 · melody begins on the 5th (E), ends on the 1st (A)
- Abendfeier Johanna Kinkel (1810–1858)from 6 Gedichte, Op.812/8 · 34 bars · voice C4–E5 · melody begins on the 1st (A), ends on the 1st (A)
- Chanson Groënlandaise Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944)2/4 · 66 bars · voice A3–E5 · melody begins on the 5th (E), ends on the 5th (E)
- Die Nonne Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn) (1805–1847)from 3 Lieder3/8 · 30 bars · voice E4–E5 · melody begins on the 5th (E), ends on the 1st (A)
- Zum Ossa sprach der Pelion Peter Cornelius (1824–1874)from 6 Lieder, Op.54/4 · 37 bars · voice C4–D♯5 · melody begins on the 5th (E), ends on the 5th (E)
- Lied aus Bosnien Clara Mathilda Faisst (1872–1948)from 5 Lieder, Op.42/4 · 39 bars · voice D♯4–A5 · melody begins on the 5th (E), ends on the 1st (A)
Chosen from 89 songs in A minor by a fixed rule: songs where the automatic chord analysis agrees with the estimated mode and whose signature never changes come first, then composers with a page on this site, then the composers best represented in the corpus, one song per composer.
What the songs in A minor do
The 89 songs in A minor were looked at as a group: how they end, how their melodies begin and end and how high and low the voice goes. The chord analysis covers 61 of them (it exists for 1,156 of the 1,462 songs in the whole corpus).
47.1% of the 51 songs in A minor close with a perfect authentic cadence, V→I with both chords in root position; over all analysed songs the figure is 57.6%, so A minor is below the corpus average. 88.2% of the endings land on a tonic chord (I or i). The chord labels are software output, and a “cadence” here is just the last pair of chords: no phrase structure is detected.
In 29% of these 42 songs the analysis finds a section of at least 8 bars in some other key; with a 4-bar threshold the figure is 64%. The result depends strongly on the threshold, so treat it as a rough picture rather than a measurement.
The vocal line of the median song in A minor runs from D4 up to G5 (89 songs measured); across all 1,458 songs the medians are D4 and F♯5. A singer’s voice, not the key, mostly decides the range: editors and composers chose the key to fit it, so this tells you what these songs asked of the voice, not what the key demands.
A minor in catalogues and recordings
MusicBrainz. Editors have entered a key for 13,669 catalogued works (parts and arrangements excluded); 775 of them are in A minor, 5.7% of those works and 9th of 24 keys. Reading the key from the English work title instead (“… in A minor”) finds 335 of 5,340 titles in A minor (8th of 24).
Open Opus. 164 of the 3,587 Open Opus work titles that name a key are in A minor (11th of 24 keys). Of the works that the editors flagged as popular, 6 are in A minor; of the works they recommend, 16.
Recordings. Software that estimates the key of commercial recordings (AcousticBrainz, high-confidence estimates only) puts 5,018 of 63,124 recordings in A minor (2nd of 24 keys). Estimates like this are known to lean to some keys, so use the figure only as a rough comparison with the written music.
Only work types with at least 100 keyed works, and only where A minor is among the keys listed for the type in mb-work-keys.json (the file keeps the 8–14 commonest keys per type).
| Work type (MusicBrainz) | Works with a key | In A minor | Share | Rank in the type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Songs | 2,241 | 114 | 5.1% | 7th |
| Concertos | 2,051 | 114 | 5.6% | 9th |
| Sonatas | 1,693 | 97 | 5.7% | 9th |
| Symphonies | 1,098 | 33 | 3.0% | 13th |
| Quartets | 578 | 45 | 7.8% | 3rd |
| Suites | 373 | 29 | 7.8% | 6th |
| Cantatas | 345 | 19 | 5.5% | 9th |
Among the 49 best-catalogued composers; shown when A minor is one of the eight commonest keys in that composer’s keyed works. Six at most, most works first.
| Composer | Works with a key | In A minor | Share | Rank of the composer’s keys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Johann Sebastian Bach | 683 | 58 | 8.5% | 5th |
| Louis Couperin | 133 | 20 | 15.0% | 2nd |
| Jean Sibelius | 171 | 18 | 10.5% | 2nd |
| Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach | 202 | 15 | 7.4% | 6th |
| Georg Philipp Telemann | 212 | 15 | 7.1% | 5th |
| Johann Pachelbel | 138 | 13 | 9.4% | 4th |
What Wikipedia says about A minor
Excerpts from the English Wikipedia articles, quoted unchanged (references, tables and images removed). Statements about the character or history of the key are Wikipedia’s, not this site’s; follow the article links for the full text and its authors.
A minor
A minor is a minor scale based on A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Its key signature has no flats or sharps. Its relative major is C major and its parallel major is A major.
Well-known compositions in A minor
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- English Suite No. 2, BWV 807
- Sonata No. 2 in A minor, BWV 1003
- Partita in A minor, BWV 1013
- Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041
- Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 33
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Violin Sonata No. 4, Op. 23
- String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132
- Bagatelle in A minor, "Für Elise"
- Johannes Brahms
- String Quartet No, 2, Op. 51/2
- Double Concerto, Op. 102
- Clarinet Trio, Op. 114
- Max Bruch
- Romance for violin and orchestra, Op. 42
- Serenade for violin and orchestra, Op. 75
- Frédéric Chopin
- Étude Op. 10, No. 2
- Étude Op. 25, No. 4
- Étude Op. 25, No. 11, Winter Wind
- Mazurka Op. 17, No. 4
- Mazurka Op. 59, No. 1
- Boléro, Op. 19
- Prelude No. 2 in A minor, Op. 28/2
- Waltz in A minor, B. 150
- Antonín Dvořák
- String Quintet No. 1, Op. 1
- String Quartet No. 6, Op. 12
- String Quartet No. 7, Op. 16
- Violin Concerto, Op. 53
- Alexander Glazunov
- Violin concerto, Op. 82
- Edvard Grieg
- Piano Concerto, Op. 16
- Cello Sonata, Op. 36
- Johann Nepomuk Hummel
- Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 85
- Franz Liszt
- Transcendental Étude No. 2, Fusées
- Gustav Mahler
- Symphony No. 6
- Piano Quartet
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Symphony No. 3, Scottish
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Piano Sonata No. 8, K. 310
- Rondo, K. 511
- Niccolò Paganini
- Caprice No. 24
- Sergei Rachmaninoff
- Isle of the Dead, Op. 29
- Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
- Symphony no. 3, Op. 44
- Maurice Ravel
- Piano Trio
- Sonata for Violin and Cello
- Camille Saint-Saëns
- Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28
- Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 33
- Franz Schubert
- Piano Sonata, D 537
- Piano Sonata, D 784
- String Quartet No. 13, D 804 Rosamunde
- Piano Sonata, D 845
- Arpeggione Sonata, D. 821
- Clara Schumann
- Piano Concerto, Op. 7
- Robert Schumann
- Three Romances for Oboe and Piano, Op. 94
- Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 105
- Piano Concerto, Op. 54
- Cello Concerto, Op. 129
- Jean Sibelius
- Symphony No. 4, Op. 63
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 99
- Georg Philipp Telemann
- Fantasia for Solo Flute No. 2
- Fantasia for Solo Violin No. 12
- Ralph Vaughan Williams
- Oboe Concerto
- Antonio Vivaldi
- Concerto for violin, Op. 3/6 RV 356
- Concerto for two violins, Op. 3/8 RV 522
- Concerto for violin, Op. 4/4 RV 357
- Concerto for violin, Op. 7/4 RV 354
- Concerto for violin, Op. 9/5 RV 358
Source: Wikipedia, “A minor” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2025-05-20.
Parallel key
In music theory, a major scale and a minor scale that have the same starting note (tonic) are called parallel keys and are said to be in a parallel relationship.
Source: Wikipedia, “Parallel key” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-02-02.
Closely related keys
The five keys closest to A minor share most of its notes: they are the keys on the other degrees of the scale whose chords are major or minor, and they differ from A minor by at most one sharp or flat. The sixth entry is the parallel key, which starts on the same note but has a different key signature. Counts are Lieder songs in each key.
- C major Relative major (III) no sharps or flats · same signature as this key 95 Lieder songs
- D minor Down a fifth (iv, the subdominant key) 1♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 52 Lieder songs
- E minor Up a fifth (v, the minor dominant key) 1♯ · 1 step sharper on the circle 58 Lieder songs
- F major Submediant major (VI) 1♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 130 Lieder songs
- G major Subtonic major (VII) 1♯ · 1 step sharper on the circle 118 Lieder songs
- A major Parallel major (same tonic) 3♯ · 3 steps sharper on the circle 74 Lieder songs
Bach’s prelude in this key
In The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Bach wrote one prelude and fugue in each of the 24 keys. For A minor it is No. 20: Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 865. The prelude’s time signature is 9/8; the fugue has 4 voices.
Played by Kimiko Ishizaka, a free (CC0) recording; small mono mp3, nothing loads until you press play. Hear the fugue and see all 24 keys · About the recordings
How this was counted
- Note names. Computed by a script from the step pattern of the scale with the rule “one letter name per degree”, then checked against the circle-of-fifths formula for the key signature, the pitch pattern and the chord qualities. Nothing is copied from a table.
- Lieder. The key signature is the first key signature of the melody part, read directly from the MusicXML. The corpus does not record major or minor, so the mode is estimated with the Krumhansl–Schmuckler method on the notes under the opening signature; where an automatic harmonic analysis exists, the two agree on 977 of 1,023 songs (95.5%).
- Same sound, one key. Spellings are merged by pitch: F♯ major and G♭ major, D♭ major and C♯ major, E♭ minor and D♯ minor and so on are counted together, in every dataset, as on the page Most common keys in music.
- Chord analysis. Endings, progressions and key changes come from the automatic Roman-numeral analyses (AugmentedNet v1.9.1) of 1,156 of the songs. The analyses have not been corrected by people; the ending is the last pair of different chords, and a key change is a section of at least 8 bars (4 bars where stated).
- Melody and range. The first vocal line of each song whose key signature never changes; the first and last sounding notes, named relative to the tonic of the key. The lowest and highest notes are the extremes of the vocal line.
- Other datasets. Mutopia: the first key signature of the MIDI made from the LilyPond source, or the first
\keyin the source. MusicBrainz: the editor-entered Key attribute, and keys parsed from English titles. Open Opus: keys named in work titles. AcousticBrainz: machine estimates with a key strength of 0.6 or more, totals only. - Samples. A statistics block appears only when at least 30 songs back it; the sample size is printed with every block.
Data used
- OpenScore Lieder Corpus — 1,462 art songs, mostly 19th-century and European, transcribed to MusicXML by volunteers. CC0 1.0
- The Mutopia Project — 2,129 free scores (LilyPond sources and MIDI); only counts are shown. per piece: public domain, CC BY or CC BY-SA
- MusicBrainz (core data) — The open music database; counts of works by key. CC0 1.0
- Open Opus — A catalogue of 13,014 works by 77 composers. public domain (project README)
- AcousticBrainz — Machine key estimates for commercial recordings; totals only, no titles or artists. CC0 1.0
- Wikipedia — Excerpts of the key articles, quoted unchanged. CC BY-SA 4.0
What these numbers cannot tell you
- The Lieder are 19th-century-centred European art songs transcribed by volunteers, not a sample of all music. Nothing here measures pop, rock, jazz, film music or music from other traditions.
- A count of keys in scores and catalogues is not a count of listening: it does not say how often people hear each key.
- Major or minor in the Lieder is an estimate; the key signature (the number of sharps or flats) is exact. A piece with a given signature can be in the major or the relative minor.
- The MusicBrainz key field is filled in by volunteers for the works they care about, and leans to Baroque, Classical and Romantic instrumental music. Titles that spell the key in another language (for example “C-Dur”) are not read.
- AcousticBrainz keys are machine estimates and known to favour some keys; they are shown only for rough comparison.
- Chord analyses were produced by software and not checked by people; key changes depend strongly on the length threshold.
Checks run each time this page is rebuilt (14)
- scale spelling checked: seven different letter names in order, every note agrees with the key signature (no sharps or flats)
- the scale has seven notes
- songs in A minor (89) equal the merged byKey counts of lieder-keys.json
- all 1,462 songs are assigned to one of the 24 keys
- Lieder share equals keys-across-corpora.json (6.087551299589603 vs 6.09)
- spelling variants add up to the key total
- Mutopia pieces in A minor (120) equal the merged key counts of mutopia-keys-meter.json
- composer birth groups do not exceed the number of songs
- songs with a chord analysis (61) do not exceed the songs in the key (89)
- ending types add up to the 51 songs with a readable ending
- first and last note counts add up to the 72 songs analysed
- Wikipedia excerpts contain only allowed tags and no markup residue
- title is at most 60 characters (39)
- the page’s own text (short answer, introductions and paragraphs; no Wikipedia, captions, tables or method) is at least 400 words (1213)
Data: OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0 1.0); The Mutopia Project (per-piece licences; counts only); MusicBrainz (CC0 1.0); Open Opus (public domain); AcousticBrainz (CC0 1.0); Wikipedia (excerpts) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Computed for this site on 2026-10-03; the numbers are counts or shares from the datasets named above, not estimates for music in general. Licences and credits for everything used on this site are on the credits page.