See also: D minor

**D major** is a major scale based on D. Its key signature has two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor.

D major is good for violin music because of the structure of the instrument, which has its four strings tuned to G D A E. The open strings resonate with the D string, producing a special rich sound.

Because of this, many classical composers chose to write violin concertos in D major. Examples include Mozart's (No. 2, 1775, No. 4, 1775); Ludwig van Beethoven's (1806); Paganini's (No. 1, 1817); Brahms's (1878); Tchaikovsky's (1878); Prokofiev's (No. 1, 1917); Stravinsky's (1931); and Korngold's (1945).

It is also suitable for guitar music, with drop tuning for the lowest string making two Ds as open strings.

For some beginning wind instrument students, however, D major is not a very good key, because it transposes to E major for B flat instruments. E major has four sharps, which is harder for new learners to play.

Still, the clarinet in B-flat is often used for music in D major. It is probably the key with the most sharps that it can play well. However, when some composers write a piece in D minor with B-flat clarinets, they change to clarinets in A if the music changes to D major.

Most tin whistles are in D, because they are often used in music with fiddles.

In the Baroque period, D major was seen as "the key of glory"; so many trumpet pieces were in D major. Examples include concertos by Fasch, Gross, Molter (No. 2), Leopold Mozart, Telemann (No. 2), and Giuseppe Torelli; sonatas by Corelli, Franceschini, Purcell, Torelli; and "The Trumpet Shall Sound" and the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's *Messiah*.

After the valve trumpet was invented, composers began to write for trumpet in keys with more flats, so Haydn wrote his famous trumpet concerto in the key of E-flat major.

23 of Haydn's 104 symphonies are in D major, making it the most often used main key of his symphonies. A great number of Mozart's unnumbered symphonies are in D major, namely K. 66c, 81/73, 97/73m, 95/73n, 120/111a and 161/163/141a. The symphony came from the overture, and "D major was by far the most common key for overtures in the second half of the eighteenth century."

Scriabin saw D major as golden in color and when he talked to Rimsky-Korsakov, he gave an example from one of Rimsky-Korsakov's own operas where a character sang in D major about gold.

| * v
* t
* e
Diatonic Scales and Keys |
| --- |
| Circle of fifthsCircle of fifths | 

|  | Flats | Sharps |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Major | minor | Major | minor |
| 0 | **C**, **a** |
| 1 | **F** | **d** | **G** | **e** |
| 2 | **B♭** | **g** | **D** | **b** |
| 3 | **E♭** | **c** | **A** | **f♯** |
| 4 | **A♭** | **f** | **E** | **c♯** |
| 5 | **D♭** | **b♭** | **B** | **g♯** |
| 6 | **G♭** | **e♭** | **F♯** | **d♯** |
| 7 | **C♭** | **a♭** | **C♯** | **a♯** |
| 8 | **F♭** | **d♭** | **G♯** | **e♯** |

 |
| The table shows the number of sharps or flats in each scale. Minor scales are written in lower case. |

Citations
---------

1. ↑  Rita Steblin: A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Rochester, University of Rochester Press: 1996) p. 124 "The key of triumph, of Hallelujahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing."
2. ↑  Rice, John (1998). *Antonio Salieri & Viennese Opera*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 124.

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