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F-sharp minor is sometimes used as the parallel minor of G-flat major, especially since G-flat major's real parallel minor, G-flat minor, would have nine flats including two double-flats. For example, in the middle section of his seventh Humoresque in G-flat major , Antonín Dvořák switches from G-flat major to F-sharp minor for the middle ...
Its relative minor is E-flat minor (or enharmonically D-sharp minor). Its parallel minor, G-flat minor, is usually replaced by F-sharp minor, since G-flat minor's two double-flats make it generally impractical to use. Its direct enharmonic equivalent, F-sharp major, contains six sharps. The G-flat major scale is:
A-flat minor, its enharmonic, has seven flats, whereas G-sharp minor only has five sharps; thus G-sharp minor is sometimes used as the parallel minor for A-flat major. (The same enharmonic situation occurs with the keys of D-flat major and C-sharp minor, and in some cases, with the keys of G-flat major and F-sharp minor).
In the key of C major, these would be: D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, and C minor. Despite being three sharps or flats away from the original key in the circle of fifths, parallel keys are also considered as closely related keys as the tonal center is the same, and this makes this key have an affinity with the original key.
F-sharp major is the key of the minuets in Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony and of the String Quartet No. 5 from his Op. 76, of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 24, Op. 78, Verdi's "Va, pensiero" from Nabucco, Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony, Korngold's Symphony Op. 40, and Scriabin's Fourth Piano Sonata.
Its parallel minor, A-flat minor, is usually written instead as the enharmonic key of G-sharp minor, since A-flat minor, which contains seven flats, is not normally used. Its enharmonic, G-sharp major , with eight sharps , including the F , has a similar problem, and so A-flat major is often used as the parallel major for G-sharp minor.
Claude Debussy's Suite bergamasque does this: in the third movement "Clair de lune" the key shifts from D-flat major to D-flat minor (eight flats) for a few measures but the passage is notated in C-sharp minor (four sharps); the same happens in the final movement, "Passepied", in which a G-sharp major section is written as A-flat major.
Although the enharmonic key of A-flat major is preferred because A-flat major has only four flats as opposed to G-sharp major's eight sharps (including the F), G-sharp major appears as a secondary key area in several works in sharp keys, most notably in the Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp major from Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1.