Hey Nonnie! Yes absolutely lullabies can be in a major key! Tons of the most famous ones are, after all! This tune came to me in a minor key, is all 🙂

Yeah, sure! Here we go, a long answer/ramble on turning the main tune of the Cradle-Song from D Minor to D major. Not sure how much notation you can read, so I’m gonna go with pictures, and solfa, and sorry in advance if I am wordy and a bit of a drag.

The original key was D minor. It has just the one flat, right there in the key signature. The scale goes like this.

D  E  F  G  A  Bflat  C  D

The flat means that the note has been lowered by a step (a semitone).

D Major, however, has two sharps. F# and C#. 

D  E  F#  G  A  B  C#  D

A sharp means that the note is RAISED by one step (a semitone). 

IDK if Solfa helps you more, but here’s another way of looking at it for you. In Solfa, these two notes would be here, in D Major (the ones that are bolded):

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do

(We’d also have to raise ‘La’ a step, jsyk – it was the previously-flattened b-flat in the Dmin scale, but that’s not applicable to this tune bc I don’t use it!!)

So, if you raise ALL the ‘Mi’s and ‘Ti’s in the song by one step, you end up with something that looks like this:

(yes yes, musos, I know I could have put them in the key sig instead, but this is more visual I guess. I dunno. It’s easier to see the sharps!)

Now, lets throw the words back on top of that. 

And that sounds like this:

Broadbeam Cradle-Song – D Major (mp3)

Ta-raaaaaah!