Key profile · minor key
D Minor: Scale, Key Signature and Chords
D minor has one flat (B♭). Scale: D E F G A B♭ C. Chords, staff and sound, and how often real songs use it: 52 of 1,462 art songs, 13th of 24 keys.
Short answer
D minor has one flat (B♭). Its scale is D – E – F – G – A – B♭ – C. Its relative major, F major, uses the same key signature; its parallel major, D major, starts on the same note. In the 1,462 art songs of the OpenScore Lieder corpus, 52 are in D minor (3.6% of the corpus), which makes it the 13th most common of the 24 keys.
- D1
- E2
- F3
- G4
- A5
- B♭6
- C7
- 1♭key signature: B♭
- 52of 1,462 Lieder songs are in D minor (13th of 24 keys)
- 112of 1,974 Mutopia scores (7th 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 minor scale, its notes and its chords
The natural minor scale is built from the steps whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. In D minor the two half steps fall between the 2nd and 3rd degrees (E and F) and between the 5th and 6th degrees (A and B♭); 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 (Dm) | D – F – A | Dm7 (D – F – A – C) |
| 2 | E | Supertonic | ii° (Edim) | E – G – B♭ | Em7♭5 (E – G – B♭ – D) |
| 3 | F | Mediant | III (F) | F – A – C | Fmaj7 (F – A – C – E) |
| 4 | G | Subdominant | iv (Gm) | G – B♭ – D | Gm7 (G – B♭ – D – F) |
| 5 | A | Dominant | v (Am) | A – C – E | Am7 (A – C – E – G) |
| 6 | B♭ | Submediant | VI (B♭) | B♭ – D – F | B♭maj7 (B♭ – D – F – A) |
| 7 | C | Subtonic | VII (C) | C – E – G | C7 (C – E – G – B♭) |
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 | D – E – F – G – A – B♭ – C | the key signature only |
| Harmonic minor | D – E – F – G – A – B♭ – C♯ | 7th raised: C becomes C♯ |
| Melodic minor, going up | D – E – F – G – A – B – C♯ | 6th and 7th raised: B♭ → B and C → C♯ |
| Melodic minor, going down | D – C – B♭ – A – G – F – E – D | 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 = A major (A – C♯ – E). The chord on the 7th degree becomes diminished: vii° = C♯ diminished (C♯ – E – G). The seventh chords change with them: on the 5th degree it is A7, a dominant seventh chord (A – C♯ – E – G), and on the raised 7th degree it is C♯dim7, a diminished seventh chord (C♯ – E – G – B♭). 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, C♯, a half step below the tonic.
The key signature of D minor
The key signature of D minor is one flat: B♭. 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 minor takes the first flat. The same signature belongs to F 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.
D minor on the staff, and how it sounds
The staves show the three forms of the scale one octave from D. The buttons play the scale, the tonic chord (Dm) and the cadence i–iv–V–i, which in this key is Dm → Gm → A → Dm. 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 E F G A B♭ C♯ D
D E F G A B C♯ D
D C B♭ A G F E D
Tonic chord: Dm = D – F – A. Cadence i–iv–V–i: Dm (D – F – A) → Gm (G – B♭ – D) → A (A – C♯ – E) → Dm.
musictheoryprint.com/keys/d-minor/ — D minor, one flat
D 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. 52 of them are in D minor: 3.6% of the corpus and 11.4% of the 456 songs estimated to be minor, which makes it the 13th most common of the 24 keys by song count. Of the 182 songs whose key signature is one flat, 52 were estimated to be in D minor and 130 in F major.
Free scores. The Mutopia Project has 1,974 scores with a readable key; 112 are in D minor (5.7%, 7th of 24 keys). Most of them are for piano (46), voice or choir (20) and harpsichord / clavichord (19), and the styles listed in the library are mainly baroque (59), romantic (20) and classical (20).
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 | 52 | 3.6% | 13th |
| Mutopia Project | free scores; key from MIDI or LilyPond source | 112 | 5.7% | 7th |
| MusicBrainz, Key attribute | catalogued works; key entered by editors | 856 | 6.3% | 5th |
| MusicBrainz, key in title | catalogued works; key read from the English title | 437 | 8.2% | 4th |
| Open Opus | works by 77 composers; key read from the work title | 233 | 6.5% | 8th |
| AcousticBrainz | recordings; machine-estimated key (strength 0.6 or more) | 4,061 | 6.4% | 6th |
The corpus has no composition dates, so songs are grouped by the composer’s birth year. The group where D minor takes the largest share is composers born 1870 or later (5.0%).
| Composer group | Songs in the corpus | In D minor | Share of the group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Composers born before 1770 | 64 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Born 1770–1809 | 224 | 8 | 3.6% |
| Born 1810–1839 | 509 | 17 | 3.3% |
| Born 1840–1869 | 499 | 19 | 3.8% |
| Born 1870 or later | 159 | 8 | 5.0% |
Songs written in D 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 D minor
- Denn es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)from 4 Serious Songs, Op.121 (Vier ernste Gesänge)4/4 · 98 bars · voice A2–F4 · melody begins on the 1st (D), ends on the 5th (A)
- Der stürmische Morgen Franz Schubert (1797–1828)from Winterreise, D.9114/4 · 19 bars · voice C♯4–E5 · melody begins on the 1st (D), ends on the 1st (D)
- La Haine Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (1847–1903)from Les Sept Ivresses4/4 · 63 bars · voice D4–A5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 1st (D)
- Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen Robert Schumann (1810–1856)from Dichterliebe, Op.483/8 · 85 bars · voice C4–F5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 3rd (F)
- Chanson de neige Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944)4/4 · 43 bars · voice B♭3–E5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 1st (D)
- Das Heimweh Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn) (1805–1847)from 3 Songs4/4 · 24 bars · voice C♯4–F5 · melody begins on the 1st (D), ends on the 1st (D)
- Rose d'Amour Georges Bizet (1838–1875)from Feuilles d'album4/4 · 62 bars · voice A3–E5 · melody begins on the 1st (D), ends on the 1st (D)
- Unfall Hugo Wolf (1860–1903)from Eichendorff-Lieder4/8 · 31 bars · voice D4–G5 · melody begins on the 5th (A), ends on the 1st (D)
Chosen from 52 songs in D 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 D minor do
The 52 songs in D 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 44 of them (it exists for 1,156 of the 1,462 songs in the whole corpus).
47.4% of the 38 songs in D 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 D minor is below the corpus average. 89.5% 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 59% of these 32 songs the analysis finds a section of at least 8 bars in some other key; with a 4-bar threshold the figure is 91%. 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 minor runs from C♯4 up to F5 (51 songs measured); across all 1,458 songs the medians are D4 and G♭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 minor in catalogues and recordings
MusicBrainz. Editors have entered a key for 13,669 catalogued works (parts and arrangements excluded); 856 of them are in D minor, 6.3% of those works and 5th of 24 keys. Reading the key from the English work title instead (“… in D minor”) finds 437 of 5,340 titles in D minor (4th of 24).
Open Opus. 233 of the 3,587 Open Opus work titles that name a key are in D minor (8th of 24 keys). Of the works that the editors flagged as popular, 10 are in D minor; of the works they recommend, 23. By genre, D minor is among the eight commonest keys for orchestral (76 of 1,045 orchestral works), chamber (64 of 1,059 chamber works), vocal (8 of 139 vocal works) and keyboard (85 of 1,349 keyboard works).
Recordings. Software that estimates the key of commercial recordings (AcousticBrainz, high-confidence estimates only) puts 4,061 of 63,124 recordings in D minor (6th 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 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 D minor | Share | Rank in the type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Songs | 2,241 | 91 | 4.1% | 10th |
| Concertos | 2,051 | 136 | 6.6% | 7th |
| Sonatas | 1,693 | 108 | 6.4% | 8th |
| Symphonies | 1,098 | 69 | 6.3% | 7th |
| Quartets | 578 | 58 | 10.0% | 1st |
| Suites | 373 | 45 | 12.1% | 1st |
| Cantatas | 345 | 25 | 7.2% | 6th |
| Masses | 102 | 10 | 9.8% | 4th |
Among the 49 best-catalogued composers; shown when D 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 D minor | Share | Rank of the composer’s keys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Johann Sebastian Bach | 683 | 51 | 7.5% | 7th |
| Antonio Vivaldi | 548 | 37 | 6.8% | 7th |
| George Frideric Handel | 347 | 36 | 10.4% | 4th |
| Louis Couperin | 133 | 27 | 20.3% | 1st |
| Jean Sibelius | 171 | 19 | 11.1% | 1st |
| Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach | 202 | 14 | 6.9% | 7th |
What Wikipedia says about D 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.
D minor
D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B♭, and C. Its key signature has one flat. Its relative major is F major and its parallel major is D major.
Music in D minor
Of Domenico Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas, 151 are in minor keys, and with 32 sonatas, D minor is the most often chosen minor key.
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. Mozart's Requiem is written primarily in D minor, as is the famous Queen of the Night aria, "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen". D minor is also used prominently in Don Giovanni, most notably in the start of the overture and the scene where the statue of the Commendatore shows up at Don Giovanni's villa. Of the two piano concertos that Mozart wrote in a minor key, one of them is in D minor: Piano Concerto No. 20, K. 466. Furthermore, his String Quartet No. 13, K. 173, and String Quartet No. 15, K. 421, and the overture of Betulia liberata are also in D minor.
The only chamber music compositions in D minor by Ludwig van Beethoven are his Piano Sonata No. 17 and the Largo of the Ghost Trio Op. 70/1. Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden) is in D minor. A number of Gabriel Fauré's chamber music works are written in D minor, including the Piano Trio Op. 120, the First Piano Quintet Op. 89, and the First Cello Sonata Op. 109. Arnold Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht is in D minor, as is his String Quartet No. 1.
Since D minor is the key of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Anton Bruckner felt apprehensive about writing his own Symphony No. 9 in the same key. As well as Bruckner's First Mass and Third Symphony, multiple other post-Beethoven symphonies are in D minor, including Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4, the only Symphony written by César Franck, Dvořák's Seventh Symphony and Symphony No. 3 by Gustav Mahler.
Jean Sibelius often reserved the key of D minor for compositions he saw as being of a noble character; the Violin Concerto, the Sixth Symphony, and the string quartet Voces intimae are each in the key.
Source: Wikipedia, “D minor” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-05-31.
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 D 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 D 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.
- F major Relative major (III) 1♭ · same signature as this key 130 Lieder songs
- G minor Down a fifth (iv, the subdominant key) 2♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 63 Lieder songs
- A minor Up a fifth (v, the minor dominant key) no sharps or flats · 1 step sharper on the circle 89 Lieder songs
- B♭ major Submediant major (VI) 2♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 70 Lieder songs
- C major Subtonic major (VII) no sharps or flats · 1 step sharper on the circle 95 Lieder songs
- D major Parallel major (same tonic) 2♯ · 3 steps sharper on the circle 99 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 minor it is No. 6: Prelude and Fugue in D minor, BWV 851. The prelude’s time signature is 4/4; the fugue has 3 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 (one flat)
- the scale has seven notes
- songs in D minor (52) 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 (3.556771545827633 vs 3.56)
- spelling variants add up to the key total
- Mutopia pieces in D minor (112) 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 (44) do not exceed the songs in the key (52)
- ending types add up to the 38 songs with a readable ending
- first and last note counts add up to the 39 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 (1266)
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.