Since A-flat major was rarely chosen as the main key for orchestral works of the 18th century, passages or movements in the key often retained the timpani settings of the preceding movement.

Charles-Marie Widor considered A-flat major to be the second best key for flute music.

[1] A-flat major was the flattest major key to be used as the home key for the keyboard and piano sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, with each of them using the key for two sonatas: Scarlatti's K. 127 and K. 130, Haydn's Hob XVI 43 and 46, and Beethoven's Op.

It was also the flattest major key to be used for the preludes and fugues in Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, as flatter major keys were notated as their enharmonic equivalents.

Felix Mendelssohn, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, John Field, and Friedrich Kalkbrenner each wrote one piano concerto in A-flat (Mendelssohn's being for two pianos); they had the horns and trumpet tuned to E-flat.