Discussion of inversions of the major dominant ninth chord typically stall on Arnold Schoenberg's famous needling of detractors about a fourth inversion chord in his Verklärte Nacht (see my post on several authors' analyses of the passage: link). But now that I am done with that ritual notice, let's move on.
Looking at examples from posts to this blog and from essays published on the TexasScholarworks platform, I found 25 instances, considerably more than I expected, though as we will see I have included a particular type that some readers may not accept as a proper inversion. The numbers were: first inversion 5; second inversion 17; third inversion 2; fourth inversion a questionable 1.
In the graphic below, I have shown G7 and inversions with simple voicing, then the same for G9, whose inversions are labeled a-d.
A weakness of the first inversion is the likelihood of its collapsing into the most commonly used inversion of V7: see (a1) below; a standard resolution to the tonic is at (a2). At (b1) the loss of the root turns the second inversion into viiø6/5. The standard resolution is at (b2) in five voices, at (b3) in four voices; it must be to I6 in order to avoid parallel fifths between the bass and the voice carrying the ninth of the chord. The "particular type" I mentioned earlier is at (b4). Before you complain--as some certainly will--that this doesn't excuse the parallels, let me remind us all of a very common dodge used in Renaissance-era counterpoint: 5-3-5-3, as at (b5). The figure at (b4) is of course a schematic form of the ubiquitous oom-pah bass. Its resolution nicely balances line and bass function; Schenkerians often represent this as shown below.
The third inversion--at (c1) and (c2)--has the smoothest voiceleading of the lot, with a pleasant pair of tenths between the bass and the voice carrying the ninth. At (d1) the fourth inversion collapses into V7; (d2) shows that this inversion leads to I6/4, (d3) that one can avoid the 6/4 with a mediant, but iii is the weakest of the major key's three minor triads and to make things worse is often used functionally as a dominant, which would make the ninth chord resolve internally. We begin with the first inversion. Here is an excerpt from the third waltz in Johann Strauss, jr.'s Künstlerleben [Artist's Life], op. 316:
And here is nearly the same in the trio from his father's Damen-Souvenir Polka, op. 236:Again from Strauss Vater, in the trio of his best-known piece, the Radetzky March:My added unfolding symbols give you the essence of the "particular type": it is ^5 (E2) that moves directly to ^1 (A2) in the bass, but ^7 (G#2) is given such emphasis that it will still be heard as resolving to ^8 (A2). The balance between line and function is perfect.A march by Sousa, "The White Plume":
And finally another from Johann Strauss, sr., the second strain of the second number from Die Sorgenbrecher, op. 230, the most often played (or, at least, recorded) of his waltzes:
I will take up the second inversion examples in another post.
