John Scott wrote:

>there seems to be very little use of B Major as the tonic.  Is this unique
>to only the baroque period or (as I suspect) the entire "classical" milieu,
>and why?

I think you are right, and perhaps the main reason is the fact that
the "natural' keys for the strings are those for the "open strings" eg,
G, D, A, E for the violin, Those are the most easy to play in tune.
Also the winds had difficulty playing in out of the way keys because they
instruments lacked keys for the semi-tones, all had to be done by often
complicated fingering.  Try playing a scale in B major on a recorder for
instance.  In the classical time pieces in more than three flats (Eflat
major) or sharps (A major), are rare.  Mozart and Haydn rarely use keys
further than A major or Eflat major.  There is one well known example, the
slow movwment of one of Haydn" stringquartets has six sharps, Fsharp major,
and it is properly nicknamed the cemetery largo.

Peter Wisse, The Hague
Holland