Spectrum, Seven Preludes for Piano, was inspired by a work by the American artist, Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923). The composer writes, "When I was a freshman in college, I saw his work entitled Spectrum at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work consisted of thirteen large panels, and each contained a different color or shade of color. The first panel was yellow and the last was yellow. To me this work was a visual representation of a chromatic scale played one full octave up the piano keyboard. Five years after the magnificent sighting at the Met, I decided that I wanted to make an audio representation of the seven colors of the rainbow, each represented by a different tonality or pitch center: A being red, B orange, C yellow, D green, E blue, F indigo, and G violet."
Spectrum abandons the use of the conventional major-minor key
systems and instead uses a scale which the composer invented called the
Castellonian Mode. In its original form the scale is spelled C D E F G G# (or
Ab) A Bb C. The sound of this new tonal system exhibits both major and
minor-like qualities and yet has a new sonority of its own. The Castellonian
Mode was invented in the summer of 2004 and has served as the basis of many of
her tonal compositions.
Spectrum is published by, and can be ordered from, Imagine Music in Medina, NY.
| 1 | Red | 1:30 | Castellano, J. |
| 2 | Orange | 1:40 | Castellano, J. |
| 3 | Yellow | 1:30 | Castellano, J. |
| 4 | Green | 1:53 | Castellano, J. |
| 5 | Blue | 0:57 | Castellano, J. |
| 6 | Indigo | 0:52 | Castellano, J. |
| 7 | Violet | 1:44 | Castellano, J. |
