Foote and Spalding, Modern Harmony (1905) (1)

With this post, I leap ahead nearly to the end of the long 19th century. The point is to make a quick comparison with the various books up to 1850 discussed so far, before going back to survey the period from 1850-1900.

So far, the dominant ninth chord has been in a strange limbo, "invented" on the one hand as a result of Rameau's sub-posing a third below the fundamental of a seventh chord—as at (a) below—but, on the other hand, in form of the figure "9" at least, well established in thorough-bass (and therefore in the everyday activity of continuo playing)—"9", however, normally meant as at (b) below. The sub-posed third was already abandoned by Sorge in favor of the super-posed third that gave rise to the category of extended chords still found in textbooks today—as at (c), but a peculiar tension remained, given that the V9 chord was not a regular part of compositional practice (before popular genres like dances and dance-songs beginning in the first quarter of the 19th century), so that the viiø7 was recommended as the V9 without its root!—see at (d). The figures at (e1) and (e2) appear regularly in treatises when the dominant ninth chord is introduced, as we have seen, but though well recognized, and usually given its own chapter, the dominant ninth chord is then almost entirely ignored in exercises and assignments. In the few cases where it does show up, it is in form of the internal resolution of (e2), very rarely the fully independent harmony of (e1).

Arthur Foote and Walter Spalding published Modern Harmony in its Theory and Practice in 1905. Both were trained at Harvard. Foote spent his career as an organist in Boston, Spalding spent his as a member of the Harvard faculty.

Foote and Spalding follow the Weber/Richter tradition of Roman numeral labels but, like Richter, use figured bass for exercises. (Indeed, their volume overall shows a considerable debt to Richter's Harmonielehre.) Their employment of Roman numeral labels is exceedingly sparing, however, even in the chapters on modulation and even in analyses. On the dominant ninth chord, we note first of all that they give it considerable attention: a chapter of fifteen pages. (Eleventh and thirteenth chords are given their own chapter of five pages.) The dominant ninth chord is generated by adding a third to the seventh chord. Ninth chords can be built on other scale degrees, but Foote and Spalding dismiss those, saying they are really created by melodic figures such as suspensions (p. 153). "The dominant chord of the ninth is the one chiefly employed, and properly used is productive of admirable results" (p. 154).

Here are their first examples (p. 154). Note that under (1) & (2) they include the borrowed chord viiº7 in the major key (they refer to it as chromatic alteration, not borrowing or modal mixture). Under (3) & (4), they show ascending resolutions of the ninth without comment.

About Example 8, they say only that this resolution happens "not infrequently."

Like those of many other authors, their resolutions are a mixture of internal and external, as for instance in Example 8 above and in nos. 5-7 that precede it:

Foote and Spalding even allow downward leaps away from the ninth, thus showing their familiarity not only with earlier salon music but also with concert waltzes (such as those of the Strausses, Waldteufel, and others), comic opera, and operetta.

Although I have not made much of it in previous posts, all textbook authors give some space to chord voicings, in relation to the positioning of the ninth and usually in the context of discussing inversions. Foote and Spalding's comments are not unusual in this regard—for example, they reject the fourth inversion for the same reasons as earlier authors: the sound is harsh and/or the root of the chord must always be below the ninth. As a footnote, they praise one treatment by Wagner (p. 158):

The entire passage, which the authors call "splendid," is as follows (p. 137). It is meant to illustrate voicing in a sequence of seventh chords. As the boxed bars show, the ninth is internal to chord movements over a sustained cadential dominant.

I will reproduce and comment on additional examples in the next post.

Reference:
Arthur Foote and Walter Spalding, Modern Harmony in its Theory and Practice (1905). Source: Internet Archive; digital facsimile of a copy in the UCLA library.