Nanopublication — Chromesthetic Translation of a D Major9 Spread Voicing
Claim 1: Chromesthetic Translation of a D Major9 Spread Voicing
In this étude, I translate a D Major9 chord voicing into color and spatial form through my chromesthetic system. The voicing unfolds across seven notes from bass to treble: D1 anchors the composition in near-black — orange at the root, swallowed by the depth of the lowest register. F#2, the major third, should appear green, but in this low register green cannot hold its hue; it dissolves into gray, present as a joker — the interval is voiced but chromatically neutralized by darkness. E3, the ninth, surfaces as a muted olive yellow. From D4 upward the chord opens into warmth: orange at the root, yellow-orange at the fifth, A4 through A6 bleaching progressively from goldenrod to tan to wheat as the fifth ascends through the upper registers toward light. The composition is the voicing. What the eye reads as color gradient — from near-black at the bottom to pale cream at the top — is the chord distributed across the full span of the keyboard.
Context
This painting belongs to the Synesthetic [4] Explorations series, an ongoing practice of translating piano voicings into visual compositions through my chromesthetic codex. The codex maps the twelve pitch classes to the color wheel following the circle of fifths, with register governing brightness: lower octaves converge toward darkness, higher octaves bleach toward light.
D Major9 is a four-note chord (root, major third, fifth, ninth: D, F#, A, E). The voicing here is a wide spread, distributing chord tones across six octaves — an approach common in jazz piano that opens the harmony into space. On the piano, this creates resonant distance between the bass and the upper voices; on paper, it becomes a vertical gradient from shadow to luminosity.
The gray zone — F#2 — is structurally significant. Green is the chromesthetic color of F#, but green at octave 2 falls into the low-register darkness where hue identity collapses. The major third is present in the voicing but invisible as color, resolved as a joker. The chord's major quality is implied rather than stated — a condition the painting documents faithfully.
References
[1] Arnaud Quercy (2024). D Major9 - Research on Harmony — Catalog raisonné. https://arnaudquercy.art/en/catalogue-raisonne/AQC0520.html
https://arnaudquercy.art/fr/catalogue-raisonne/AQC0520.html
[2] Quercy, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2662-7790
[3] Quercy, A. (2024). D Major9 - Research on Harmony (AQC0520). Art Quam Anima. https://artquamanima.com/en/artworks/2024/01/d-major9-research-on-harmony_5ug.html
[4] Quercy, A. Synesthetic Explorations — Collection. Art Quam Anima. https://artquamanima.com/en/collections/2025/01/synesthetic-explorations-cpj.html
[5] Quercy, A. Circle of Fifths → Color Wheel Mapping. Multimodal Institute. [URL to be added]
Epistemic profile
| Claim type | artistic statement |
|---|---|
| Voice | first person |
| Epistemic status | direct practice knowledge |
| Methodology | chromesthetic system |
| Certainty | high |
Checksum (SHA-256)
9a883706a6b1aea383e99f971d504332cf6e27f57a041622bcc95cc61100c506