Key profile · minor key
E♭ Minor: Scale, Key Signature and Chords
E♭ minor has six flats. Scale: E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C♭ D♭. Chords, staff, sound and real-song counts: 14 of 1,462 art songs, 22nd of 24 keys.
Short answer
E♭ minor has six flats (B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, C♭). Its scale is E♭ – F – G♭ – A♭ – B♭ – C♭ – D♭. Its relative major, G♭ major, uses the same key signature; its parallel major, E♭ major, starts on the same note. It sounds the same as D♯ minor, which is written with six sharps. In the 1,462 art songs of the OpenScore Lieder corpus, 14 are in E♭ minor (1.0% of the corpus), which makes it the 22nd most common of the 24 keys.
- E♭1
- F2
- G♭3
- A♭4
- B♭5
- C♭6
- D♭7
- 6♭key signature: B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, C♭
- 14of 1,462 Lieder songs are in E♭ minor (22nd of 24 keys)
- 6of 1,974 Mutopia scores (22nd 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 E♭ minor scale, its notes and its chords
The natural minor scale is built from the steps whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. In E♭ minor the two half steps fall between the 2nd and 3rd degrees (F and G♭) and between the 5th and 6th degrees (B♭ and C♭); 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 | E♭ | Tonic | i (E♭m) | E♭ – G♭ – B♭ | E♭m7 (E♭ – G♭ – B♭ – D♭) |
| 2 | F | Supertonic | ii° (Fdim) | F – A♭ – C♭ | Fm7♭5 (F – A♭ – C♭ – E♭) |
| 3 | G♭ | Mediant | III (G♭) | G♭ – B♭ – D♭ | G♭maj7 (G♭ – B♭ – D♭ – F) |
| 4 | A♭ | Subdominant | iv (A♭m) | A♭ – C♭ – E♭ | A♭m7 (A♭ – C♭ – E♭ – G♭) |
| 5 | B♭ | Dominant | v (B♭m) | B♭ – D♭ – F | B♭m7 (B♭ – D♭ – F – A♭) |
| 6 | C♭ | Submediant | VI (C♭) | C♭ – E♭ – G♭ | C♭maj7 (C♭ – E♭ – G♭ – B♭) |
| 7 | D♭ | Subtonic | VII (D♭) | D♭ – F – A♭ | D♭7 (D♭ – F – A♭ – C♭) |
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 | E♭ – F – G♭ – A♭ – B♭ – C♭ – D♭ | the key signature only |
| Harmonic minor | E♭ – F – G♭ – A♭ – B♭ – C♭ – D | 7th raised: D♭ becomes D |
| Melodic minor, going up | E♭ – F – G♭ – A♭ – B♭ – C – D | 6th and 7th raised: C♭ → C and D♭ → D |
| Melodic minor, going down | E♭ – D♭ – C♭ – B♭ – A♭ – G♭ – F – E♭ | 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 = B♭ major (B♭ – D – F). The chord on the 7th degree becomes diminished: vii° = D diminished (D – F – A♭). The seventh chords change with them: on the 5th degree it is B♭7, a dominant seventh chord (B♭ – D – F – A♭), and on the raised 7th degree it is Ddim7, a diminished seventh chord (D – F – A♭ – C♭). 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, D, a half step below the tonic.
The key signature of E♭ minor
The key signature of E♭ minor is six flats: B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭ 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; E♭ minor takes the first six flats. The same signature belongs to G♭ 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. E♭ minor is the same key as D♯ minor on the keyboard, written with six sharps instead of six flats.
E♭ minor on the staff, and how it sounds
The staves show the three forms of the scale one octave from E♭. The buttons play the scale, the tonic chord (E♭m) and the cadence i–iv–V–i, which in this key is E♭m → A♭m → B♭ → E♭m. Sound is made in your browser; nothing is downloaded. Without scripts the notes are listed under each staff.
E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C♭ D♭ E♭
E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C♭ D E♭
E♭ F G♭ A♭ B♭ C D E♭
E♭ D♭ C♭ B♭ A♭ G♭ F E♭
Tonic chord: E♭m = E♭ – G♭ – B♭. Cadence i–iv–V–i: E♭m (E♭ – G♭ – B♭) → A♭m (A♭ – C♭ – E♭) → B♭ (B♭ – D – F) → E♭m.
musictheoryprint.com/keys/e-flat-minor/ — E♭ minor, six flats
E♭ 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. 14 of them are in E♭ minor: 1.0% of the corpus and 3.1% of the 456 songs estimated to be minor, which makes it the 22nd most common of the 24 keys by song count. The key appears under 2 spellings in the files: 13 songs are written in E♭ minor (six flats), out of 27 songs with that signature; 1 songs are written in D♯ minor (six sharps), out of 14 songs with that signature.
Free scores. The Mutopia Project has 1,974 scores with a readable key; 6 are in E♭ minor (0.3%, 22nd of 24 keys).
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 | 14 | 0.96% | 22nd |
| Mutopia Project | free scores; key from MIDI or LilyPond source | 6 | 0.30% | 22nd |
| MusicBrainz, Key attribute | catalogued works; key entered by editors | 70 | 0.51% | 23rd |
| MusicBrainz, key in title | catalogued works; key read from the English title | 21 | 0.39% | 23rd |
| Open Opus | works by 77 composers; key read from the work title | 12 | 0.33% | tied 21st |
| AcousticBrainz | recordings; machine-estimated key (strength 0.6 or more) | 1,047 | 1.7% | 23rd |
Songs written in E♭ 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 E♭ minor
- Liebestreu Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)from 6 Songs, Op.34/4 · 35 bars · voice E♭4–A♭5 · melody begins on the 2nd (F), ends on the 1st (E♭)
- Lied aus dem Gedicht 'Ivan' Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)from 6 Songs, Op.34/4 · 48 bars · voice E♭4–G5 · melody begins on the 1st (E♭), ends on the 1st (E♭)
- Schwermut Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)from 8 Lieder und Gesänge, Op.584/4 · 32 bars · voice D4–F5 · melody begins on the 5th (B♭), ends on the 1st (E♭)
- Oraison Ernest Chausson (1855–1899)from Serres chaudes, Op.242/2 · 44 bars · voice E♭4–G5 · melody begins on the 5th (B♭), ends on the 3rd (G♭)
- Le Désir Augusta Mary Anne Holmès (1847–1903)from Les Sept Ivresses4/4 · 66 bars · voice E♭4–B♭5 · the key signature changes during the song
- Letzter Wunsch Clara Mathilda Faisst (1872–1948)from 5 Lieder, Op. 33/4 · 38 bars · voice A3–F5 · the key signature changes during the song
- Ich hab' im Traum geweinet Robert Schumann (1810–1856)from Dichterliebe, Op.486/8 · 39 bars · voice D♭4–E5 · melody begins on the 5th (B♭), ends on the 1st (E♭)
- Tränen Robert Franz (1815–1892)from 6 Gesänge, Op.62/4 · 54 bars · voice E♭4–A♭5 · melody begins on the 3rd (G♭), ends on the 1st (E♭)
Chosen from 14 songs in E♭ 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 E♭ minor do
Only 14 songs in this corpus are in E♭ minor (written E♭ minor: 13 and D♯ minor: 1). That is too few for ending, chord or melody statistics (the threshold on this site is 30 songs), so none are shown. The pages for the commoner keys carry them; for this key the evidence is the dataset counts above and the catalogue figures below.
E♭ minor in catalogues and recordings
MusicBrainz. Editors have entered a key for 13,669 catalogued works (parts and arrangements excluded); 70 of them are in E♭ minor, 0.5% of those works and 23rd of 24 keys. Reading the key from the English work title instead (“… in E♭ minor”) finds 21 of 5,340 titles in E♭ minor (23rd of 24). Among the 49 composers with the most keyed works in MusicBrainz, none has E♭ minor among the eight commonest keys.
Open Opus. 12 of the 3,587 Open Opus work titles that name a key are in E♭ minor (tied 21st of 24 keys). Of the works that the editors flagged as popular, 0 are in E♭ minor; of the works they recommend, 1.
Recordings. Software that estimates the key of commercial recordings (AcousticBrainz, high-confidence estimates only) puts 1,047 of 63,124 recordings in E♭ minor (23rd 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.
What Wikipedia says about E♭ 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.
E-flat minor
E-flat minor is a minor scale based on E♭, consisting of the pitches E♭, F, G♭, A♭, B♭, C♭, and D♭. Its key signature consists of six flats. Its relative key is G-flat major (or enharmonically F-sharp major) and its parallel key is E-flat major. Its enharmonic equivalent, D-sharp minor, contains six sharps.
Music in E-flat minor
In the 24 canonic keys, most of the composers preferred E-flat minor, while Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Lyapunov, and Manuel Ponce preferred D-sharp minor.
In Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach, Prelude No. 8 is written in E-flat minor while the following fugue is written in D-sharp minor. In Book 2, both movements are in D-sharp minor.
Haydn's Piano Trio No. 41, H. XV.31 in two movements, composed in 1794/95, one of the "London Trios", is in E-flat minor.
Beethoven applied E-flat minor to the slow introduction in the sixth (last) movement of his Septet Op. 20 by adding accidentals while bearing the key signature of E-flat major (three flats). The "Introduction" to his oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives is also in this key, but with the full six-flat signature.
The fifth of Schubert's 6 Grandes Marches, D. 819 is in this key.
The final piece in Brahms' Klavierstücke, Op. 118, No. 6, is in E-flat minor. The piece, like many pieces in this key, is dark and funereal, being based on the Dies irae chant. Schubert ended his Impromptus No. 2, D. 899, in E-flat minor, the parallel key to its opening E-flat major, and so did Brahms in his Rhapsody No. 4, Op. 119. Another impromptu by Schubert in this key is the first from D. 946. His march No. 5 from 6 Grandes marches, D. 819 is likewise in E-flat minor. Chopin wrote his Etude No.6, Op. 10, his Polonaise No. 2, Op. 26, and his Prelude No. 14, Op. 28 in E-flat minor.
Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is a sonata form in E-flat minor framed by an extended introduction and a long coda, both in E-flat major.
Janáček's Piano Sonata, 1. X. 1905, arguably his best-known work for the piano, is in E-flat minor.
Earlier piano sonatas in the key are the Grand Sonata, Op. 3/1 by George Pinto and the Piano Sonata by Paul Dukas.
Alkan composed the final movement for Symphony for Solo Piano in E-flat minor, as well as the final etude from his Trois morceaux dans le genre pathétique.
The slow movement from the Clarinet Sonata Op. 167 by Camille Saint-Saëns is in E-flat minor.
Source: Wikipedia, “E-flat minor” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-23.
D-sharp minor
D-sharp minor is a minor scale based on D♯, consisting of the pitches D♯, E♯, F♯, G♯, A♯, B, and C♯. Its key signature has six sharps.
Its relative major is F-sharp major (or enharmonically G-flat major). Its parallel major, D-sharp major, is usually replaced by E-flat major, since D-sharp major's two double-sharps make it generally impractical to use. Its enharmonic equivalent, E-flat minor, has six flats.
Music in D-sharp minor
D-sharp minor is infrequently used as the principal key of pieces in the Classical era. More common is notation in E-flat minor, which is a relatively manageable key for many brass instruments and woodwinds. In the 24 canonic keys, most of the composers preferred E-flat minor, while Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Lyapunov, and Manuel Ponce preferred D-sharp minor.
From Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, the eighth fugue from Book 1 and the eighth prelude and fugue from Book 2 are in D-sharp minor; both fugues end with a Picardy third, requiring an F𝄪 in the final D-sharp major chord.
The second of Lyapunov's 12 Transcendental Études ("Ronde des Fantômes") is also in D-sharp minor.
Alexander Scriabin's Etude Op. 8, No. 12 is in this key, perhaps the most famous example.
Source: Wikipedia, “D-sharp minor” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-23.
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 E♭ 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 E♭ 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.
- G♭ major Relative major (III) 6♭ · same signature as this key 27 Lieder songs · G♭ major sounds the same as F♯ major; the link goes to that page
- A♭ minor Down a fifth (iv, the subdominant key) 7♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 6 Lieder songs · A♭ minor sounds the same as G♯ minor; the link goes to that page
- B♭ minor Up a fifth (v, the minor dominant key) 5♭ · 1 step sharper on the circle 10 Lieder songs
- C♭ major Submediant major (VI) 7♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 40 Lieder songs · C♭ major sounds the same as B major; the link goes to that page
- D♭ major Subtonic major (VII) 5♭ · 1 step sharper on the circle 49 Lieder songs
- E♭ major Parallel major (same tonic) 3♭ · 3 steps sharper on the circle 127 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 E♭ minor it is No. 8: Prelude and Fugue in E♭ minor, BWV 853. The prelude’s time signature is 3/2; the fugue has 3 voices and is written in D♯ minor, the same key spelled with sharps instead of flats.
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 (11)
- scale spelling checked: seven different letter names in order, every note agrees with the key signature (six flats)
- the scale has seven notes
- songs in E♭ minor (14) 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 (0.957592339261286 vs 0.96)
- spelling variants add up to the key total
- Mutopia pieces in E♭ minor (6) equal the merged key counts of mutopia-keys-meter.json
- songs with a chord analysis (11) do not exceed the songs in the key (14)
- Wikipedia excerpts contain only allowed tags and no markup residue
- title is at most 60 characters (44)
- the page’s own text (short answer, introductions and paragraphs; no Wikipedia, captions, tables or method) is at least 400 words (1108)
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.