A-flat minor
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A-flat minor is a minor scale starting on A♭. Its key signature has seven flats.
Its relative major is C-flat major, and its parallel major is A-flat major. Its enharmonic equivalent is G-sharp minor.
A-flat minor is rarely used as the main key of a piece of music. More often, pieces in a minor mode that have A♭ as the tonic are written in the enharmonic key, G-sharp minor, because it has a simpler key signature. Because of this, there are few works in A-flat minor.
In some scores, the A♭ minor key signature in the bass clef is written with the flat for the F on the second line from the top.
In classical music
- 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)
- Johannes Brahms's Fugue for organ (c. 1857)
- 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
- Isaac Albéniz's La Vega (c. 1897)
- Leoš Janáček uses it for his violin sonata and the organ solo of his Glagolitic Mass.
- Moritz Moszkowski used it for his piano étude, opus 72 number 13.
- Also Polonaise in A-Flat Minor, Chopin
In popular music
A-flat minor 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.
Another example of popular music in A-flat minor is Walkin' on the Sun by Smash Mouth.