Ab Major - Research on Harmony - Variations 13

Six notes played Animé, mp, legato, in four — an inverted bell plunging from Ab1 to the middle registers before rising to C6. No third anywhere in the chord. The red heart of Ab Major is missing entirely, replaced by blue at the roots, blue-violet at the fifth, and the orange accent at D5. Five octaves, and not a single C among them.

Blue toward black fills the bass at Ab1, vast and dark. The middle opens into blue-violet at Eb4 and blue at Ab4 — the root and fifth side by side in cool, close harmony. Orange glows at D5, the visitor's warmth the only departure from the blue-violet spectrum. Ab5 adds steel-blue above, and C6 at the summit brings the first and only hint of the third's red, pale and vanishing at the very top.

A frozen architecture. Without the third, Ab Major loses its warmth entirely — all blue, all violet, all steel, the orange visitor the sole warm presence in a landscape of ice.