Minor scale based on the accidentals of the "natural" minor scale, not on those of the harmonic or melodic minor scales. For example, a piece in E minor will have one sharp in its key signature because the E natural minor scale has one sharp (F). Major and minor keys that share the same key signature are "relative" to each other. For instance, F major is the relative major of D minor since both have key signatures with one flat. Since the natural minor scale is built on the 6th degree of the major scale, the tonic of the relative minor is
E-flat major in E-flat major. Mahler's vast and heroic Eighth Symphony is in E-flat and his Second Symphony also ends in the key. This is not to say that, in the Classical period, E-flat major was only for bombastic music with brass. "E-flat was the key [Joseph] Haydn chose most often for [string] quartets, ten times in all, and in every other case he wrote the slow movement in the dominant, B-flat." Or "when composing church music and operatic music in E-flat major, [Joseph] Haydn often substituted cors anglais for oboes in this period", and also in the Symphony No. 22 in