Key profile · major key
D Major: Scale, Key Signature and Chords
D major has two sharps (F♯, C♯). Scale: D E F♯ G A B C♯. Chords, staff and sound, and how often real songs use it: 99 of 1,462 art songs, 4th of 24 keys.
Short answer
D major has two sharps (F♯, C♯). Its scale is D – E – F♯ – G – A – B – C♯. Its relative minor, B minor, uses the same key signature; its parallel minor, D minor, starts on the same note. In the 1,462 art songs of the OpenScore Lieder corpus, 99 are in D major (6.8% of the corpus), which makes it the 4th most common of the 24 keys.
- D1
- E2
- F♯3
- G4
- A5
- B6
- C♯7
- 2♯key signature: F♯, C♯
- 99of 1,462 Lieder songs are in D major (4th of 24 keys)
- 195of 1,974 Mutopia scores (3rd 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 D major scale, its notes and its chords
The major scale is built from the steps whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. In D major the two half steps fall between the 3rd and 4th degrees (F♯ and G) and between the 7th and 8th degrees (C♯ and D); 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 | D | Tonic | I (D) | D – F♯ – A | Dmaj7 (D – F♯ – A – C♯) |
| 2 | E | Supertonic | ii (Em) | E – G – B | Em7 (E – G – B – D) |
| 3 | F♯ | Mediant | iii (F♯m) | F♯ – A – C♯ | F♯m7 (F♯ – A – C♯ – E) |
| 4 | G | Subdominant | IV (G) | G – B – D | Gmaj7 (G – B – D – F♯) |
| 5 | A | Dominant | V (A) | A – C♯ – E | A7 (A – C♯ – E – G) |
| 6 | B | Submediant | vi (Bm) | B – D – F♯ | Bm7 (B – D – F♯ – A) |
| 7 | C♯ | Leading tone | vii° (C♯dim) | C♯ – E – G | C♯m7♭5 (C♯ – E – G – B) |
The key signature of D major
The key signature of D major is two sharps: F♯ and C♯. Sharps are added to a signature in the order F, C, G, D, A, E, B and flats in the order B, E, A, D, G, C, F; D major takes the first two sharps. The same signature belongs to B minor, 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.
D major on the staff, and how it sounds
The staves show the scale one octave from D. The buttons play the scale, the tonic chord (D) and the cadence I–IV–V–I, which in this key is D → G → A → D. Sound is made in your browser; nothing is downloaded. Without scripts the notes are listed under each staff.
D E F♯ G A B C♯ D
D C♯ B A G F♯ E D
Tonic chord: D = D – F♯ – A. Cadence I–IV–V–I: D (D – F♯ – A) → G (G – B – D) → A (A – C♯ – E) → D.
musictheoryprint.com/keys/d-major/ — D major, two sharps
D major 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. 99 of them are in D major: 6.8% of the corpus and 9.8% of the 1,006 songs estimated to be major, which makes it the 4th most common of the 24 keys by song count. Of the 136 songs whose key signature is two sharps, 99 were estimated to be in D major and 37 in B minor.
Free scores. The Mutopia Project has 1,974 scores with a readable key; 195 are in D major (9.9%, 3rd of 24 keys). Most of them are for guitar (61), voice or choir (60) and piano (49), and the styles listed in the library are mainly classical (65), baroque (49) and romantic (38).
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 | 99 | 6.8% | 4th |
| Mutopia Project | free scores; key from MIDI or LilyPond source | 195 | 9.9% | 3rd |
| MusicBrainz, Key attribute | catalogued works; key entered by editors | 1,556 | 11.4% | 1st |
| MusicBrainz, key in title | catalogued works; key read from the English title | 586 | 11.0% | 1st |
| Open Opus | works by 77 composers; key read from the work title | 395 | 11.0% | 2nd |
| AcousticBrainz | recordings; machine-estimated key (strength 0.6 or more) | 3,773 | 6.0% | 7th |
The corpus has no composition dates, so songs are grouped by the composer’s birth year. The group where D major takes the largest share is born 1810–1839 (8.1%).
| Composer group | Songs in the corpus | In D major | Share of the group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Composers born before 1770 | 64 | 3 | 4.7% |
| Born 1770–1809 | 224 | 16 | 7.1% |
| Born 1810–1839 | 509 | 41 | 8.1% |
| Born 1840–1869 | 499 | 34 | 6.8% |
| Born 1870 or later | 159 | 3 | 1.9% |
Songs written in D major
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 D major
- Junge Lieder II Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)from 9 Lieder und Gesänge, Op.636/4 · 41 bars · voice C♯4–G5 · melody begins on the 1st (D), ends on the 1st (D)
- An die Musik Franz Schubert (1797–1828)2/2 · 23 bars · voice C♯4–F♯5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 1st (D)
- L'éternelle idole Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (1847–1903)from 20 Mélodies3/4 · 52 bars · voice D4–A5 · melody begins on the 3rd (F♯), ends on the 1st (D)
- An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust Robert Schumann (1810–1856)from Frauenliebe und Leben6/8 · 41 bars · voice D4–F♯5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 1st (D)
- Abschied Josephine Lang (1815–1880)from 6 Deutsche Lieder, Op.113/4 · 32 bars · voice B3–F♯5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 1st (D)
- Liebesfrühling Robert Franz (1815–1892)from 6 Gesänge, Op. 142/4 · 27 bars · voice D4–E5 · melody begins on the 6th (B), ends on the 5th (A)
- "War hinaus gezogen, lustig singend, wälderwärts" [untitled] Johanna Kinkel (1810–1858)from 6 Lieder, Op.154/4 · 23 bars · voice C4–D5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 1st (D)
- Bleus Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944)4/4 · 36 bars · voice A3–E5 · melody begins on the 3rd (F♯), ends on the 1st (D)
Chosen from 99 songs in D major 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 D major do
The 99 songs in D major 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 82 of them (it exists for 1,156 of the 1,462 songs in the whole corpus).
67.1% of the 76 songs in D major close with a perfect authentic cadence, V→I with both chords in root position; over all analysed songs the figure is 57.6%, so D major is above the corpus average. 100.0% 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.
The number of songs that contain the progression at least once in a major-key passage (the analysis labels each passage with its own key, so a song that visits another major key adds to the count). Chords are Roman numerals; sevenths and inversions count as the same chord.
| Chord progression | Songs in D major | Share of its 82 analysed songs | Share over all 1,156 analysed songs |
|---|---|---|---|
| V–I | 81 | 99% | 87% |
| I–V–I | 75 | 91% | 72% |
| IV–V–I | 33 | 40% | 29% |
| I–IV–V–I | 21 | 26% | 17% |
| ii–V–I | 46 | 56% | 43% |
| I–IV–V | 25 | 30% | 21% |
In 32% of these 77 songs the analysis finds a section of at least 8 bars in some other key; with a 4-bar threshold the figure is 66%. 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 D major runs from D4 up to F♯5 (99 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.
D major in catalogues and recordings
MusicBrainz. Editors have entered a key for 13,669 catalogued works (parts and arrangements excluded); 1,556 of them are in D major, 11.4% of those works and 1st of 24 keys. Reading the key from the English work title instead (“… in D major”) finds 586 of 5,340 titles in D major (1st of 24).
Open Opus. 395 of the 3,587 Open Opus work titles that name a key are in D major (2nd of 24 keys). Of the works that the editors flagged as popular, 10 are in D major; of the works they recommend, 24. By genre, D major is among the eight commonest keys for orchestral (154 of 1,045 orchestral works), chamber (119 of 1,059 chamber works), vocal (15 of 139 vocal works) and keyboard (107 of 1,349 keyboard works).
Recordings. Software that estimates the key of commercial recordings (AcousticBrainz, high-confidence estimates only) puts 3,773 of 63,124 recordings in D major (7th 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 D major 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 D major | Share | Rank in the type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Songs | 2,241 | 150 | 6.7% | 3rd |
| Concertos | 2,051 | 278 | 13.6% | 1st |
| Sonatas | 1,693 | 166 | 9.8% | 2nd |
| Symphonies | 1,098 | 172 | 15.7% | 1st |
| Quartets | 578 | 42 | 7.3% | 7th |
| Suites | 373 | 39 | 10.5% | 2nd |
| Cantatas | 345 | 50 | 14.5% | 1st |
| Masses | 102 | 14 | 13.7% | 2nd |
Among the 49 best-catalogued composers; shown when D major 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 D major | Share | Rank of the composer’s keys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Johann Sebastian Bach | 683 | 80 | 11.7% | 2nd |
| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | 536 | 78 | 14.6% | 3rd |
| Antonio Vivaldi | 548 | 68 | 12.4% | 2nd |
| Joseph Haydn | 336 | 68 | 20.2% | 1st |
| Georg Philipp Telemann | 212 | 36 | 17.0% | 1st |
| George Frideric Handel | 347 | 36 | 10.4% | 4th |
What Wikipedia says about D major
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.
D major
D major is a major scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F♯, G, A, B, and C♯. Its key signature has two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor and its parallel minor is D minor.
Characteristics
D major is well-suited to violin music because of the structure of the instrument, which is tuned G D A E. The open strings resonate sympathetically with the D string, producing a sound that is especially brilliant. This is also the case with all other orchestral strings.
Thus, it is no coincidence that many classical composers throughout the centuries have chosen to write violin concertos in D major, including those by Mozart (No. 2, 1775, No. 4, 1775); Ludwig van Beethoven (1806); Paganini (No. 1, 1817); Brahms (1878); Tchaikovsky (1878); Prokofiev (No. 1, 1917); Stravinsky (1931); and Korngold (1945).
The key is also appropriate for guitar music, with drop D tuning making two D's available as open strings. For some beginning wind instrument students, however, D major is not a very suitable key, since it transposes to E major on B♭ wind instruments, and beginning methods generally tend to avoid keys with more than three sharps.
Even so, the clarinet in B♭ is still often used for music in D major, and it is perhaps the sharpest key that is practical for the instrument. There are composers however who, in writing a piece in D minor with B♭ clarinets, will have them change to clarinets in A if the music switches to D major, two examples being Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in the fourth movement.
The vast majority of tin whistles are in D, since they are often used in music with fiddles. It is a common key for pub session playing.
History
In the Baroque period, D major was regarded as "the key of glory"; hence many trumpet concertos were in D major, such as those by Johann Friedrich Fasch, Gross, Molter (No. 2), Leopold Mozart, Telemann (No. 2), and Giuseppe Torelli. Many trumpet sonatas were in D major, too, such as those by Corelli, Petronio Franceschini, Purcell, and Torelli. "The Trumpet Shall Sound" and the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's Messiah, and his coronation anthem Zadok the Priest are in D major. In addition, Bach's Mass in B minor has D major as the relative major, and most of the major choruses in this key (Gloria, Cum Sancto Spiritu, Sanctus, Hosanna) make extensive use of trumpets.
Source: Wikipedia, “D major” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-18.
Relative key
In music theory, relative keys are the major and minor scales that have the same key signatures (enharmonically equivalent), meaning that they share all of the same notes but are arranged in a different order of whole steps and half steps.
Source: Wikipedia, “Relative key” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-11.
Closely related keys
The five keys closest to D major 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 D major 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.
- A major Up a fifth (V, the dominant key) 3♯ · 1 step sharper on the circle 74 Lieder songs
- G major Down a fifth (IV, the subdominant key) 1♯ · 1 step flatter on the circle 118 Lieder songs
- B minor Relative minor (vi) 2♯ · same signature as this key 37 Lieder songs
- E minor Supertonic minor (ii) 1♯ · 1 step flatter on the circle 58 Lieder songs
- F♯ minor Mediant minor (iii) 3♯ · 1 step sharper on the circle 26 Lieder songs
- D minor Parallel minor (same tonic) 1♭ · 3 steps flatter on the circle 52 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 D major it is No. 5: Prelude and Fugue in D major, BWV 850. The prelude’s time signature is 4/4; 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 (15)
- scale spelling checked: seven different letter names in order, every note agrees with the key signature (two sharps)
- the scale has seven notes
- songs in D major (99) 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 (6.771545827633379 vs 6.77)
- spelling variants add up to the key total
- Mutopia pieces in D major (195) 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 (82) do not exceed the songs in the key (99)
- ending types add up to the 76 songs with a readable ending
- progression song counts do not exceed the analysed songs
- first and last note counts add up to the 84 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 (1141)
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.