Bb Minor - Research on Harmony - Variation 6

Nine notes — the densest étude in the early variations. G3 and G4 stack a non-chord tone in two octaves, red-orange heat dominating the middle of the phrase. F4 and F5 flank them with the fifth's red-violet, lighter reds on either side of the warm intruders. Db6 gives the minor third its only appearance — cool blue-green fading toward white, isolated at the top while the canvas below burns. Lent, mp, legato, bell contour, four beats.

The painting is a study in red. Red-orange from the two G's, red-violet from the two F's, the root holding neutral gray-violet at Bb4 and Bb5 — a gray skeleton inside warm flesh. The single high Db6 sits above like a cool signal, the only blue-green in a field of reds.

The bell arch rises through this red interior and crests at D5's orange before folding back toward the bass. Among the Lent études, Variation 6 is the most populated and the most chromatically warm.