A-flat minor
A-flat minor is a minor scale based on A♭, consisting of the pitches A♭, B♭, C♭, D♭, E♭, F♭, and G♭. Its key signature has seven flats. Its relative major is C-flat major (or enharmonically B major), its parallel major is A-flat major, and its enharmonic equivalent is G-sharp minor.
 | |
| Relative key | C-flat major enharmonic: B major |
|---|---|
| Parallel key | A-flat major |
| Dominant key | E-flat minor enharmonic: D-sharp minor |
| Subdominant | D-flat minor enharmonic: C-sharp minor |
| Enharmonic | G-sharp minor |
| Component pitches | |
| A♭, B♭, C♭, D♭, E♭, F♭, G♭ | |
The A-flat natural minor scale is:
Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The A-flat harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are:
Music in A-flat minor
Although A-flat minor occurs in modulation in works in other keys, it is only rarely used as the principal key of a piece of music. Some well-known uses of the key in classical and romantic piano music include:
- The Funeral March in Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 12, Op. 26.
- An early section of the last movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31, Op. 110 (although the key signature of this section uses only 6 flats, not 7).
- The first piece "Aime-moi" ("Love me") from Charles-Valentin Alkan's Trois morceaux dans le genre pathétique
- Max Bruch's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 88a (although at least one two-piano transcription of this uses a 6-flat signature, similarly to the Op. 110 Beethoven example).
- The Evocación from Book I of Isaac Albéniz's Iberia.
- Leoš Janáček uses it for his Violin Sonata and the organ solo of his Glagolitic Mass.
- The opening of Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird.
- Franz Liszt's original version of "La campanella" from Grandes études de Paganini, which was subsequently rewritten in G-sharp minor.
- In Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony, there is a particularly aggressive restatement of the introduction of the third movement in A-flat minor.[1]
It is also used in Frederick Loewe's score to the 1956 musical play My Fair Lady; the Second Servants' Chorus is set in A-flat minor (the preceding and following choruses being a semitone lower and higher respectively).
More often, pieces in a minor mode that have A-flat's pitch as tonic are notated in the enharmonic key, G-sharp minor, because that key has just five sharps as opposed to the seven flats of A-flat minor.
In some scores, the A-flat minor key signature in the bass clef is written with the flat for the F on the second line from the top.[nb 1]
Notes
- An example of this is the bass clef staff of the harp parts in the Jupiter movement of Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets.[2]
References
- Mahler, Gustav. Symphony No. 9 in Full Score, Dover, ISBN 0-486-27492-6 (1993), pp. 116-119.
- Holst, Gustav. The Planets in Full Score, Dover, ISBN 0-486-29277-0 (1996), p. 109.