A Major - Research on Harmony - Variation 3

The arch lands on the root. Most bell-shaped études in this series climb toward the third (C#) at their crest. Variation 3 is different: the line rises from A1 to A5 — the root in the fifth octave, a warm yellow-orange — rather than reaching for C#. The arch turns on the root's own color, the crest and the bass sharing the same pitch-class.

Six notes, Lent, four beats, mp. The étude has a settled, even quality — the palette is narrowed by the absence of extreme high registers, and the arch's peak is warm rather than pale or luminous. Blue-green from E and C# fills the middle; the two A's anchor top and bottom in yellow-orange.

No tensions, no accents. Pure A Major from A1 to A5. The arch is self-contained, beginning and ending in the same harmonic territory — root to root, dark to warm.