The Tears in Rain held second

Two notes for the whole figure: the key’s third and its second, a semitone below it, both above middle C. Nothing else is played and nothing moves.

Bring the upper note in first and hold it alone for two bars. Then bring the lower one in underneath and leave both down. Pressing them together is the same two pitches and a different piece: a cluster struck is a chord, a cluster arrived at is a texture.

Play both as quietly as the patch lets you and give it the slowest attack it has. A semitone this close is only a shimmer while it is quiet; loud, it is two wrong notes.

Keep them up there. The same pair two octaves down is a clash and always will be, which is worth playing once so the register does the explaining.

The chord changes under you at the halfway point and you do nothing. Over the first chord the pair is the ninth and the third; over the second it is the seventh and the sixth. The harmony resolves the tension and the hand never does.

Two bars from the end, let the upper note go and leave the lower one alone. It is the sixth of the chord underneath by then, and the note that was the dissonance is the one left standing.

Never raise the key’s seventh. One raised seventh turns eight bars of held colour into something that wants to end.