E-flat major
Relative key | C minor |
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Parallel key |
E♭ minor enharmonic: D♯ minor |
Dominant key | B♭ major |
Subdominant | A♭ major |
Component pitches | |
E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭, C, D, E♭ |
The E♭ (E-flat) major scale consists of the pitches E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭, C, and D. Its key signature has three flats: B, E, A.
Its relative minor is C minor, and its parallel minor is E♭ minor (or enharmonically D♯ minor).
E-flat major is often associated with bold, heroic music, in part because of Beethoven's usage. His Eroica Symphony, Emperor Concerto and Grand Sonata are all in this key. Also Beethoven's (hypothetical) 10th symphony is in the key of E-flat major. But even before Beethoven, Francesco Galeazzi identified E-flat major as "a heroic key, extremely majestic, grave and serious: in all these features it is superior to that of C".[1]
Mozart chose E-flat major as the key of his slow movement for his two G minor symphonies: No. 25, and the famous No. 40.
Thus, three of Mozart's completed horn concerti and Joseph Haydn's famous Trumpet Concerto are in E-flat major, and so is Anton Bruckner's Fourth Symphony with its prominent horn theme in the first movement. Another famous heroic piece in the key of E-flat major is Richard Strauss's A Hero's Life. The heroic theme from the Jupiter movement of Holst's The Planets is in E-flat major. Mahler's vast and heroic Eighth Symphony is in E-flat, and his Second Symphony also ends in the key.
Ascending and descending scale in E-flat major
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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".[2] 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 E-flat major.[3]
For Mozart, E-flat major was associated with Freemasonry, "E-flat evoked stateliness and an almost religious character".[4]
Well-known compositions in this key
- Franz Schubert
- Isaac Albéniz
- Eritaña from Iberia
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Max Bruch
- Scottish Fantasy in E-flat major, Op. 46
- Second movement of Violin Concerto No. 1
- Anton Bruckner
- Frédéric Chopin
- Antonín Dvořák
- Joseph Haydn
- Niccolò Jommelli
- Requiem (1756)
- Gustav Mahler
- Felix Mendelssohn
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Overture to The Magic Flute, K. 620
- Piano Concerto No. 9, K. 271 "Jeunehomme"
- Piano Concerto No. 10 for two pianos, K. 365/316a
- Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482
- Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, K. 364/320d
- Sinfonia Concertante for oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, K. 297b (spurious)
- Symphony No. 39, K. 543
- Modest Mussorgsky
- The Great Gate of Kiev (Final movement of Pictures at an Exhibition)
- Franz Liszt
- Robert Schumann
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Jean Sibelius
- John Philip Sousa
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Richard Wagner
- Prelude to Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)
Notes
- ↑ Francesco Galeazzi, Elementi teorico-practici di musica (1796) as translated to English in Rita Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. University of Rochester Press (1996): 111
- ↑ Paul Griffiths, The String Quartet. New York: Thames & Hudson (1983): 29
- ↑ David Wyn Jones, "The Symphonies of Haydn" in A Guide to the Symphony, ed. Robert Layton. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- ↑ Robert Harris, What to Listen for in Mozart. Simon & Schuster (2002): 174
External links
- Media related to E-flat major at Wikimedia Commons
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The table indicates the number of sharps or flats in each scale. Minor scales are written in lower case. |