D Minor

D minor, on the other hand, introduces the tense scale of D Major to its two mysterious minor cousins, sloe-eyed nymphs out for trouble, and suddenly the high-collar button-down formal dress of D is flirting with the disaster of D minor. Speaking like a graphic designer, the change is a visual one. On the printed page, the sharps have simply been replaced with one lone mellow, melancholy flat, whose D minor despair is enough to cancel out those bouncing Bobbsey twins the two sharps of D Major.

    Mozart and Rachmaninoff's great concerti, Chopin's final prelude, Bach's phantasmic Toccata and Fugue, all dig deep into the dank D Minor well of death for their immense structure, as if that lone flat demands darkness, desolation, and who among us dare fly in the face of such a depressing tradition. Happiness is simply not tonally possible in a minor key, and definitely not in D minor. The resonance of history cries out for blood.