Schoenberg in Hull, Modern Harmony

A. E. Hull reproduces the famous fourth inversion of the dominant ninth chord from Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (1897).

The example is Schoenberg's own, no. 267 (p. 418):

Hull mistakenly assumes that example 273, below, is from Halm, but it is actually Schoenberg's rewriting of Halm's Ex. 97 (for that, see the previous post). Recall that Halm's position on the ninth chord was somewhat more conservative than most textbooks in the second half of the 19th century: the dominant ninth chord is a proper harmony, but may only appear as V9 and only in root position. Schoenberg ridicules the inconsistent and un-argued assertions about inversions of the ninth chord in textbooks, especially the ban on the fourth inversion as "harsh" (or, as Halm does, banning them all). Schoenberg turns this around, saying that what was ugly yesterday may be considered beautiful today and noting that his sextet was rejected for performance but then was premiered two years later and nobody noticed that there was a fourth inversion ninth chord (1912/22, 418-419). He also refers to multiple instances in Richard Strauss's Salome.

Extended, detailed discussions of Verklärte Nacht may be found in Swift 1977 and Lewin 1987. Swift notes that the longer progression of which the dominant ninth is a part is "more than a linking passage, for it returns at two crucial structural points. First, it is the harmonic scaffolding for the recapitulation of the first group sentence (mm. 181-87), and is in part responsible for the ambiguity and uncertainty of that return. Second, this 'uncatalogued dissonance' returns in the first part of the coda as part of a succession of important motives from the composition" (10-11). Lewin's exceedingly detailed discussion weighs a variety of potential analyses and implied progressions. He focuses particularly though on the chord-pair together as occupying the functional space of a leading-tone diminished seventh chord, a hearing one can recognize if one expands the context to include the subsequent chords:

At the asterisks are two enharmonically equivalent diminished seventh chords (see Lewin 52-53, for the derivation of the first one, where the chord tone is the Ab3 and A-natural3 is understood as a passing tone). Ultimately he settles for the idea of the functionally ambiguous vagrant harmony, pointing simultaneously away from D minor (deceptive progression) and toward it (note the inverted chaconne-bass figure starting from i 6/4: A2-Bb2-B-nat2-C3-Db/C#3-D3).

Here is still another possibility. At (a) below is Schoenberg's Ex. 267b, the root position of the Ab major ninth chord. At (b) are typical textbook voicings of the first three inversions (I took these specific ones from Catel and Bussler). At (c) is Schoenberg's fourth inversion with a partial resolution into an augmented sixth chord in D minor; note that Ab is enharmonically G#. At (d), an alternative: the same augmented sixth chord in D minor with raised 3 and 5 (D becomes D#; F becomes F#) and a cadential close follows. This is consistent with Schoenberg's strict, even radical, notion of monotonality: all chromatic chords are alterations of diatonic ones (such that even what we now commonly regard as secondary or applied dominants are considered altered chords), and it is also consistent with Schoenberg's notion of vagrant chords, or chords with multiple potential harmonic meanings and therefore potential progressions (these are diminished seventh chords, augmented triads and their derivatives, and the augmented sixths; see 1912/22, 288 ff., especially 296 ff.).

Reference:

• August Halm, Harmonielehre (1900).  Source: IMSLP; digital facsimile of a copy in the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill library.
• Alexander Eaglefield Hull, Modern Harmony: Its Explanation and Application (1915).    Source: Internet Archive; digital facsimile of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. The Halm/Schoenberg example perhaps is a hint of the loose mode of quotation from sources that eventually fueled public complaints of plagiarism.
• David Lewin, "On the 'ninth-chord in fourth inversion' from Verklärte Nacht," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 10/1 (1987): 45-64.
• Arnold Schoenberg, Harmonielehre (1912/1922).   Source: Internet Archive; digital facsimile of a copy of unknown provenance.
• Richard Swift, ‘‘Tonal Relations in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht,’’ 19th Century Music 1/1 (1977): 3-14.