C Major9 - Research on Harmony - Variation 4

Four notes — C2, D3, D4, D5 — and the ninth owns the chord. D appears in three consecutive octaves while the root sits alone at C2. No third, no fifth, no seventh — the major ninth reduced to root and ninth only, the ninth insisting across three registers. Played Lent, mp, legato, in four, the arch rising from C2 to D5 at the crest.

Black at C2, then orange warming through three registers: dark orange at D3, brighter at D4, yellow-orange at D5. The canvas is a gradient of a single warm hue — the ninth's orange modulated only by octave, each step lighter and more saturated than the last. The root is barely present, a thin dark anchor.

The most reduced étude in the series — two pitches, one color dominant, the major ninth chord implied by the barest interval. Orange climbing from darkness in three steps, the root a single stroke of black beneath.