Piano Music in D major

The character of D major

Triumphal and brilliant. The natural fanfare key of the Baroque and the obvious choice for many Mozart and Haydn keyboard sonatas.

For pianists, key choice is never accidental. Each tonality on the keyboard has its own physical fingerprint — the pattern of black and white keys under the hand, the resonance of open strings, the historical associations attached to it through three centuries of repertoire. Studying multiple works in D major alongside one another reveals how successive composers understood the key's possibilities, and how the conventions of each era shaped what a single tonality could be made to express.

The pieces below are sortable, downloadable as PDF scores, and free to perform, study, record, and re-engrave. Every entry links to the original IMSLP page, where you can compare editions, read editorial notes, and access alternative arrangements where they exist.