F# Major - Research on Harmony

Four notes, and none of them the fifth. The opening study of the F# Major series is built from root and third alone: F#1 in the sub-bass, A#2 and A#3 through the lower-middle register, and F#4 at the top. Animé, mf, legato — an inverted bell that dips into darkness before returning. The phrase begins and ends on the root, the third filling the interior.

F#1 is near-black, the green of the root compressed to virtual silence at the bottom of the keyboard. The two A#'s carry deep violet — dark and muted in octave 2, softening slightly in octave 3. At F#4, the green emerges more clearly, the root reasserting itself in its characteristic color. The canvas is dark throughout, cool violet and deep green with no brightness to speak of.

This is F# Major reduced to two pitch classes and four tones — a nocturnal opening that establishes the key's cool temperament. No fifth, no warmth, no high register. Just green and violet conversing in the lower half of the keyboard.