C Octaves - Reflexions 23

Three Cs sustained — C2, C3, C4 — and the hand lifts. The score asks for one note in three octaves, nothing more. Everything above the trunk is unplayed; it belongs to the strings.
A red column holds the bass: three stacks of the same hue, dark and slightly less dark. Above it, the air fills with what C alone produces. Yellow-orange first — G, the third harmonic, doubled and then tripled across the registers. Then orange high up where D arrives, and blue-violet for the slightly flat Bb. Between them, E and A take their fixed places on the scale, while the seventh, eleventh, and thirteenth harmonics — Bb too low, F# halfway to F, A too flat — fall into intervals the painted scale cannot hold.
Played sostenuto, ppp, pedal down — a single gesture, a held breath, a chord no finger touched. The painting is mostly accent, but nothing was chosen except the root. Every color in the upper canvas was already inside C.