F minor

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F minor
Relative key A major
Parallel key F major
Dominant key C minor
Subdominant B minor
Component pitches
F natural minor scale ascending and descending. About this sound Play 
F harmonic minor scale ascending and descending. About this sound Play 
F melodic minor scale ascending and descending. About this sound Play 

F minor is a minor scale based on F, consisting of the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, and E. The harmonic minor raises the E to E. Its key signature has four flats.


F minor is a key often associated with passion[citation needed]. Two famous pieces in the key of F minor are Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, and Haydn's Symphony No. 49 in F minor, La Passione.

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."[1]

In the Baroque period, music in F minor was usually written with a three-flat key signature,[citation needed] and some modern editions of that repertoire retain that convention.

Notable compositions[edit]

E-sharp minor[edit]

E minor
Relative key G major
enharmonic: A major
Parallel key E major
enharmonic: F major
Dominant key B minor
enharmonic: C minor
Subdominant A minor
enharmonic: B minor
Enharmonic F minor
Component pitches

Enharmonic with F minor is E-sharp minor, based on the musical note E-sharp and consisting of the pitches E, Fdouble sharp, G, A, B, C and D. In the harmonic minor, the D is raised to Ddouble sharp. Its key signature has six sharps and one double sharp.

For clarity and simplicity, E-sharp minor is usually notated as F minor. However, E-sharp minor could be used on a local level, such as a brief passage in Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Prelude and Fugue No. 3 in C-sharp major. (E minor is the mediant minor key of C major.)


  1. ^ Cathering Meng, Tonight's the Night (Apostrophe Books, 2007): 21

External links[edit]

Media related to F minor at Wikimedia Commons