Key profile · minor key
F Minor: Scale, Key Signature and Chords
F minor has four flats. Scale: F G A♭ B♭ C D♭ E♭. Chords, staff, sound and real-song counts: 42 of 1,462 art songs, 16th of 24 keys.
Short answer
F minor has four flats (B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭). Its scale is F – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭ – E♭. Its relative major, A♭ major, uses the same key signature; its parallel major, F major, starts on the same note. In the 1,462 art songs of the OpenScore Lieder corpus, 42 are in F minor (2.9% of the corpus), which makes it the 16th most common of the 24 keys.
- F1
- G2
- A♭3
- B♭4
- C5
- D♭6
- E♭7
- 4♭key signature: B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭
- 42of 1,462 Lieder songs are in F minor (16th of 24 keys)
- 34of 1,974 Mutopia scores (15th 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 F minor scale, its notes and its chords
The natural minor scale is built from the steps whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole. In F minor the two half steps fall between the 2nd and 3rd degrees (G and A♭) and between the 5th and 6th 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 | F | Tonic | i (Fm) | F – A♭ – C | Fm7 (F – A♭ – C – E♭) |
| 2 | G | Supertonic | ii° (Gdim) | G – B♭ – D♭ | Gm7♭5 (G – B♭ – D♭ – F) |
| 3 | A♭ | Mediant | III (A♭) | A♭ – C – E♭ | A♭maj7 (A♭ – C – E♭ – G) |
| 4 | B♭ | Subdominant | iv (B♭m) | B♭ – D♭ – F | B♭m7 (B♭ – D♭ – F – A♭) |
| 5 | C | Dominant | v (Cm) | C – E♭ – G | Cm7 (C – E♭ – G – B♭) |
| 6 | D♭ | Submediant | VI (D♭) | D♭ – F – A♭ | D♭maj7 (D♭ – F – A♭ – C) |
| 7 | E♭ | Subtonic | VII (E♭) | E♭ – G – B♭ | E♭7 (E♭ – G – B♭ – D♭) |
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 | F – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭ – E♭ | the key signature only |
| Harmonic minor | F – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – D♭ – E | 7th raised: E♭ becomes E |
| Melodic minor, going up | F – G – A♭ – B♭ – C – D – E | 6th and 7th raised: D♭ → D and E♭ → E |
| Melodic minor, going down | F – E♭ – D♭ – C – B♭ – A♭ – G – F | 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 = C major (C – E – G). The chord on the 7th degree becomes diminished: vii° = E diminished (E – G – B♭). The seventh chords change with them: on the 5th degree it is C7, a dominant seventh chord (C – E – G – B♭), and on the raised 7th degree it is Edim7, a diminished seventh chord (E – G – B♭ – D♭). 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, E, a half step below the tonic.
The key signature of F minor
The key signature of F minor is four flats: B♭, E♭, A♭ and D♭. 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; F minor takes the first four flats. The same signature belongs to A♭ 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.
F minor on the staff, and how it sounds
The staves show the three forms of the scale one octave from F. The buttons play the scale, the tonic chord (Fm) and the cadence i–iv–V–i, which in this key is Fm → B♭m → C → Fm. Sound is made in your browser; nothing is downloaded. Without scripts the notes are listed under each staff.
F G A♭ B♭ C D♭ E♭ F
F G A♭ B♭ C D♭ E F
F G A♭ B♭ C D E F
F E♭ D♭ C B♭ A♭ G F
Tonic chord: Fm = F – A♭ – C. Cadence i–iv–V–i: Fm (F – A♭ – C) → B♭m (B♭ – D♭ – F) → C (C – E – G) → Fm.
musictheoryprint.com/keys/f-minor/ — F minor, four flats
F 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. 42 of them are in F minor: 2.9% of the corpus and 9.2% of the 456 songs estimated to be minor, which makes it the 16th most common of the 24 keys by song count. Of the 128 songs whose key signature is four flats, 42 were estimated to be in F minor and 86 in A♭ major.
Free scores. The Mutopia Project has 1,974 scores with a readable key; 34 are in F minor (1.7%, 15th of 24 keys). Most of them are for piano (27), voice or choir (7) and harpsichord / clavichord (5), and the styles listed in the library are mainly romantic (12), classical (11) and baroque (9).
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 | 42 | 2.9% | 16th |
| Mutopia Project | free scores; key from MIDI or LilyPond source | 34 | 1.7% | 15th |
| MusicBrainz, Key attribute | catalogued works; key entered by editors | 326 | 2.4% | 15th |
| MusicBrainz, key in title | catalogued works; key read from the English title | 134 | 2.5% | 14th |
| Open Opus | works by 77 composers; key read from the work title | 90 | 2.5% | 15th |
| AcousticBrainz | recordings; machine-estimated key (strength 0.6 or more) | 3,575 | 5.7% | 8th |
The corpus has no composition dates, so songs are grouped by the composer’s birth year. The group where F minor takes the largest share is composers born before 1770 (7.8%).
| Composer group | Songs in the corpus | In F minor | Share of the group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Composers born before 1770 | 64 | 5 | 7.8% |
| Born 1770–1809 | 224 | 6 | 2.7% |
| Born 1810–1839 | 509 | 10 | 2.0% |
| Born 1840–1869 | 499 | 16 | 3.2% |
| Born 1870 or later | 159 | 5 | 3.1% |
Songs written in F 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 F minor
- Ach, wende diesen Blick Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)from 8 Lieder und Gesänge, Op.573/4 · 42 bars · voice E♭4–G5 · melody begins on the 5th (C), ends on the 1st (F)
- Coronach, D.836 Franz Schubert (1797–1828)from Op.5212/8 · 17 bars · voice B♭3–F5 · melody begins on the 5th (C), ends on the 5th (C)
- Durch Carthago's Trümmerhallen Johanna Kinkel (1810–1858)from 6 Lieder, Op.193/4 · 51 bars · voice A♭3–F5 · melody begins on the 5th (C), ends on the 1st (F)
- Untreu Peter Cornelius (1824–1874)from 6 Lieder, Op.13/4 · 17 bars · voice F4–F5 · melody begins on the 3rd (A♭), ends on the 1st (F)
- When Young Love Comes Knocking Liza Lehmann (1862–1918)from Songs of Love and Spring6/8 · 25 bars · voice C3–F4 · melody begins on the 1st (F), ends on the 1st (F)
- Sonnet Georges Bizet (1838–1875)from Feuilles d'album6/8 · 73 bars · voice E♭4–F5 · melody begins on the 5th (C), ends on the 1st (F)
- An Laura Corona Schröter (1751–1802)from 25 Lieder3/4 · 4 bars · voice E4–F5 · melody begins on the 3rd (A♭), ends on the 1st (F)
- Barcarolle Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)from 3 Songs, Op. 76/8 · 42 bars · voice E♭4–F5 · melody begins on the 5th (C), ends on the 1st (F)
Chosen from 42 songs in F 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 F minor do
The 42 songs in F 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 33 of them (it exists for 1,156 of the 1,462 songs in the whole corpus).
53.6% of the 28 songs in F 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 F minor is below the corpus average. 85.7% 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.
Only 26 of the analysed F minor songs have F minor as their longest key section, too few to count key changes, so that statistic is left out.
The vocal line of the median song in F minor runs from D4 up to F5 (42 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.
F minor in catalogues and recordings
MusicBrainz. Editors have entered a key for 13,669 catalogued works (parts and arrangements excluded); 326 of them are in F minor, 2.4% of those works and 15th of 24 keys. Reading the key from the English work title instead (“… in F minor”) finds 134 of 5,340 titles in F minor (14th of 24).
Open Opus. 90 of the 3,587 Open Opus work titles that name a key are in F minor (15th of 24 keys). Of the works that the editors flagged as popular, 3 are in F minor; of the works they recommend, 11.
Recordings. Software that estimates the key of commercial recordings (AcousticBrainz, high-confidence estimates only) puts 3,575 of 63,124 recordings in F minor (8th 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 F 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 F minor | Share | Rank in the type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Songs | 2,241 | 72 | 3.2% | 14th |
| Sonatas | 1,693 | 43 | 2.5% | 13th |
| Quartets | 578 | 21 | 3.6% | 13th |
| Masses | 102 | 1 | 1.0% | 13th |
Among the 49 best-catalogued composers; shown when F 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 F minor | Share | Rank of the composer’s keys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Александр Николаевич Скрябин | 55 | 7 | 12.7% | 1st |
| Elfrida Andrée | 42 | 6 | 14.3% | 1st |
| Anton Bruckner | 62 | 5 | 8.1% | 4th |
| Johannes Brahms | 58 | 5 | 8.6% | 3rd |
| Ferdinand Ries | 55 | 3 | 5.5% | 7th |
| Johan Helmich Roman | 59 | 3 | 5.1% | 7th |
What Wikipedia says about F 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.
F minor
Music in F minor
Famous pieces in the key of F minor include Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2, Ballade No. 4, Haydn's Symphony No. 49, La Passione and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
Glenn Gould once said if he could be any key, he would be F minor, because "it's rather dour, halfway between complex and stable, between upright and lascivious, between gray and highly tinted... There is a certain obliqueness."
Hermann von Helmholtz once described F minor as harrowing and melancholy. Christian Schubart described this key as "Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave".
Notable compositions
- Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
- Stabat Mater
- Antonio Vivaldi
- "Winter" from The Four Seasons, RV 297
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Harpsichord Concerto No. 5, BWV 1056
- "Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ", BWV 639
- Joseph Haydn
- Symphony No. 49 ("La Passione")
- Variations in F minor
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Aria "L'ho perduta, me meschina" from The Marriage of Figaro, act 4
- Adagio and Allegro in F minor for a mechanical organ, K. 594
- Jan Ladislav Dussek
- Piano Sonata No. 28 in F minor "L'invocation", Op. 77
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Egmont, Op. 84: Overture in F minor
- Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 2/1
- Piano Sonata No. 23 (Appassionata), Op. 57
- String Quartet No. 11 "Serioso", Op. 95
- Felix Mendelssohn
- String Quartet No. 6
- Organ Sonata, Op. 65, No. 1
- Carl Maria von Weber
- Clarinet Concerto No. 1
- Konzertstück in F minor
- Frédéric Chopin
- Ballade No. 4, Op. 52
- Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49
- Trois nouvelles études, No. 1
- Étude Op. 10, No. 9
- Étude Op. 25, No. 2 "Bees"
- Prelude Op. 28, No. 18 "Suicide"
- Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 21
- Nocturne in F minor, Op. 55 No. 1
- Mazurka, Op. 63 No. 2
- Mazurka, Op. 68 No. 4 (Posthumous)
- Charles-Valentin Alkan
- Prelude, Op. 31, No. 2 (Assez lentement)
- Symphony for Solo Piano, 2nd movement: Marche funèbre
- Franz Liszt
- Funérailles
- Transcendental Étude No. 10 "Appassionata"
- Trois études de concert, No. 2 "La leggierezza"
- Franz Schubert
- Fantasia in F minor
- Impromptu No. 1, Op. 142
- Impromptu No. 4, Op. 142
- Robert Schumann
- Piano Sonata No. 3
- Johannes Brahms
- Piano Quintet, Op. 34
- Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 5
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Symphony No. 4
- The Tempest
- Anton Bruckner
- Mass No. 3
- Alexander Borodin
- String Quintet
- Paul Dukas
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice (L'apprenti sorcier)
- Ralph Vaughan Williams
- English Folk Songs
- Symphony No. 4
- Tuba Concerto in F minor
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Symphony No. 1
- String Quartet No. 11, Op. 122
- Max Reger
- Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 114
- Johann Pachelbel
- Chaconne in F minor
E-sharp minor
E-sharp minor is a key based on the musical note E♯, consisting of the pitches E♯, F𝄪, G♯, A♯, B♯, C♯ and D♯. Its key signature has eight sharps, requiring one double sharp and six single sharps. Because E-sharp minor requires eight sharps, including the F𝄪, it is almost always notated as its enharmonic equivalent of F minor, with four flats.
Source: Wikipedia, “F minor” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-06-18.
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 F 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 F 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.
- A♭ major Relative major (III) 4♭ · same signature as this key 86 Lieder songs
- B♭ minor Down a fifth (iv, the subdominant key) 5♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 10 Lieder songs
- C minor Up a fifth (v, the minor dominant key) 3♭ · 1 step sharper on the circle 44 Lieder songs
- D♭ major Submediant major (VI) 5♭ · 1 step flatter on the circle 49 Lieder songs
- E♭ major Subtonic major (VII) 3♭ · 1 step sharper on the circle 127 Lieder songs
- F major Parallel major (same tonic) 1♭ · 3 steps sharper on the circle 130 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 F minor it is No. 12: Prelude and Fugue in F minor, BWV 857. 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 (14)
- scale spelling checked: seven different letter names in order, every note agrees with the key signature (four flats)
- the scale has seven notes
- songs in F minor (42) 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 (2.8727770177838576 vs 2.87)
- spelling variants add up to the key total
- Mutopia pieces in F minor (34) 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 (33) do not exceed the songs in the key (42)
- ending types add up to the 28 songs with a readable ending
- first and last note counts add up to the 35 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 (1220)
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.