Holst, The Planets (1914)

Gustav Holst, The Planets (1914). I am using a solo piano reduction by Sam Lung, Hywie Davies, and Andrew Skirrow (2015).

As David Owen Norris reminds us in the introduction to this edition, Holst was an organist "and organ textures permeate the work, combining two common chords, one in each hand, as it were, with the tune deep down in the bass, like the organ pedals" (5). I admit that The Planets has always sounded to me like a concert organ piece transcribed (very well) for orchestra, and this solo piano version makes that all the more plausible and literally visible. 

The harmonic vocabulary does indeed rely heavily on ostinati, simple sustained pedal points, and juxtaposed, stacked triads and other chords. It is in the context of all this that the dominant major-ninth chord appears occasionally. 

Although those appearances are few, there are some distinctive, significant moments, the first of which occurs in the fanfare section that follows the post-fortissimo break about 1/3 of the way into "Mars." A first brief rise in register goes to an AM7, the second to F9: see the reduction below. 

In "Venus" the main gesture is a wedge that includes Bb9, though not as an initial or goal chord--again see below. After the first two statements of this, an undulating figure begins with Eb9 over Bb (not shown). Once moving small-notes start up nearer the end of the movement, a sequence puts a row of V9s over an Eb pedal point--again see below.

Another undulating figure opens "Saturn" (first example below) with the initial accent going to an F9. The entire collection is 5 notes of a whole-tone or Eb-F-G-A-B, which can sound like an F(#11) or B13(b5)--second example. The V9-chord sound plays out more after about 1 minute--third example--and now it is in a simple functional context. 

In "Uranus," a long coda after the resounding C major triad marked ffff brings F9 and an E-B open fifth into play against one another--fourth example--mostly softly but rising just once to ff.

PS: There are two additional moments in the finale, "Neptune," not described here: they are quite similar to the ones already discussed above.

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Textbook series continued toward the present

 In the latest installment of the textbook series, I wrote:

The recently renewed series on the dominant ninth chord in treatises and textbooks began with comment on six volumes from the early 20th century: link to the first post. I am now leading us toward the present again with two items from the 1960s and 1970s. 

Those were Aldwell & Schachter Tonal Harmony and William Christ et al Materials and Structure of Music. Link to that post. I happened to have early editions as physical copies. 

For the more recent and current ones listed below, I needed a couple trips to a local university library; the second of those was delayed a week till the intense semester-end schedule of classes and performances finished. 

NB: At the moment (12/16/25), I am adding text to this post, after which I will add a final post and this blog will be closed for new content. 

The list is chronological.

Steven G. Laitz, Graduate Review of Tonal Theory (2010)

Miguel Roig-Francoli, Harmony in Context (2011)

This is a comprehensive--nearly 700 page!!--harmony text. It is in two parts, with 31 chapters. The repertoire breadth and theoretical breadth are greater than other textbooks of its type (Laitz, Kostka & Payne, and so on), and I could see students benefiting from the encyclopedic scope in the eBook version, which, unfortunately, is only available as rental, according to the publisher's website.

Ninth chords are stuck in the usual "extra stuff" chapter near the end of the book. Chapter 29 of the 31 (pp. 667-697) is “Expanding Functional Tonality: Extended Tertian Chords; Linear Chromaticism II.” Ninth chords are on 668-670, 11ths & 13ths on 670-673, non-dominant extended tertian chords on 673-75. Linear chromaticism takes up the rest of the chapter. All three types of extended chords are discussed in the one-page introduction and good, if conservative, lists of rules for use are offered. The familiar Franck sonata opening--which after all is an excellent example--shows up, but the only other one for V9 (as Vb9) is a Wolf song in Cb major. A rewrite in B or even transposition to C would have been desirable. Dominant 11ths and 13ths have good examples from Chopin, Alma Mahler, and Hart & Rodgers.

Joseph Straus, Elements of Music. 3d ed. (2012)

As the title suggests, this is an introductory or "foundations" text. The glossary doesn't mention ninths or dominant ninth chords.

Jennifer Snodgrass, Contemporary Musicianship (2015)

As its initial adjective implies, this takes a radically different approach from the traditional harmony texts such as Laitz, Roig-Francoli, Clendenning, and Kostka. It still covers the ground of elementary harmony (chapters are laid out accordingly), but the priorities in repertoire are flipped. As an example, one page of the examples index, "Elgar" to "Loesser," has 38 musicians listed, of which 8 are pre-1900: the majority either recently have been or are now active. And, as "artist" in the subtitle suggests, attention is by no means stuck on the printed scripts of musical scores. I can applaud the latter, but I am not able to make any comments on how effective this pedagogy might be. My guess is that it works best in a specialized curriculum.

My goal here is simply to assess the presence and significance of the dominant ninth in ch 11 "we will learn about them later." [I will add more to this entry after a library visit scheduled for 12/17/25.]

Thomas Benjamin, Techniques and Materials of Music from the Common Practice Period through the Twentieth Century.  7th ed. (2015)

Steven G. Laitz, The Complete Musician: an Integrated Approach to Theory, Analysis, and Listening. 4th ed. (2016) 

I discussed the 2d edition (2008) in these posts: link 1; link 2.

L. Poundie Burstein and Joseph Straus, Concise Introduction to Tonal Harmony (2016)

Traditional organization: 5 parts, 39 chapters total.  Ninth chords are in the usual late-chapter position (32 of 39): “Other chords: Altered, Common-tone Chromatic, and Ninth Chords”. They offer an excuse in the subtitle: "Chords can be altered with chromatic or added dissonant tones." All in all, this ghettoization makes little sense unless one is stuck with a focus on 200-year-old repertoire, but even that doesn't excuse the appearance--after 300 pages--of simple diatonic extensions and some chromatic chords that were already a part of musical practice in the 17th century (+6 and Neapolitans). 

Ninth chords are given a page and a half. Only the major and minor V9s are mentioned, no non-dominant ninths. Two examples are from early Schubert waltzes. They do not include inversions but they do make very concise generalizations about voice-leading and voicing: "The ninth of the V7 is a chordal dissonance that leads down by step (though this resolution is often implied); the chordal ninth should not form a harmonic second or seventh with the root" (305).

Stefan Kostka, Dorothy Payne, and Byron Almén, Tonal Harmony with an Introduction to Post-tonal Music. 8th ed. (2018)

My blog post with comment on the 4th & 8th editions: link. There are no changes to the section on extended chords in the 8th edition

Edward Aldwell, Carl Schachter, and Allen Cadwallader, Harmony & Voice Leading. 5th ed. (2019).  See the original post for an update: Link to that post.

See this post: link.

Ralph Turek, Theory for Today's Musician. 3rd ed. (2019)

Another traditional harmony textbook, this is in 9 parts, with a total of 34 chapters and about 700 pages. Part 7 of the 9 has four chapters: (21) CHECK Advanced chromatic harmony — mixing modes, altered predominants, other [?], (22) modulation II, and (24) harmonic extensions and chromatic techniques. This last is 15 pages--at the far back corner of the pedagogy again, in other words.

Most of the traditional textbooks now make an effort to include a wider variety of repertoire and styles than "Bach-to-Brahms"--or for the 20th century, only concert repertoires--and this seems to me to be the most determined. (Roig-Francoli is close; the others lag far behind.) Standard chord symbols are even provided for some pieces--though the implementation is very inconsistent. Here are the chapter's subheadings:

Triadic Extensions
The Rise of the Ninth
    The Dominant Ninth Chord
        Common Voicings (3 pp)
        Inverted Ninth Chords  (0.2 pp)
    Secondary Dominant Ninth Chords  (2 pp)
    Other Ninth Chords  (2 pp)
        Eleventh Chords  (2 pp)
        Thirteenth Chords  (2 pp)

The extended chords are explained with an historical narrative of "climbing up the overtone ladder" (428).  [I will add more to this entry after a library visit scheduled for 12/17/25.]

Jane Piper Clendinning, The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis. 4th ed. (2021) 

Vessela Stoyanova and Jeff Perry, Berklee Contemporary Music Theory (2024)

This volume was made for a five-week summer workshop and, if it therefore lacks a lot in elaboration, it is admirably concise and its pedagogy is exceptionally clear. Given its student audience, the applicable range of musical styles is large, but the presentation is conservative jazz theory. Thus, the core or ground chords are triads and sevenths (the latter appear in chapter 9 of 28) and ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths are extensions or "tensions" (chapter 10). All the diatonic seventh chords are presented together (48), but the V7 and ø7 are given a paragraph to themselves (49). Cadences are introduced in this chapter; all five types use 7th chords, including what they call a "dominant cadence"--see (a) below. The jazz cadence--at (b)--is the one example for added tensions--see (c) below). (In examples (a) & (b) I have added the bass. I have not included the chord labels from the original.)

 

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To gain some level of control over online material, I focused on a few open access resources from academic institutions and scholar/teachers. Here are comments on three of them:

Open Music Theory. Subtitle: Version 2 by Mark Gotham; Kyle Gullings; Chelsey Hamm; Bryn Hughes; Brian Jarvis; Megan Lavengood; and John Peterson. Edited by Erin K. Maher. Accessed on 24 November 2025, again on 9 December 2025.

Harmony and Musicianship with Solfège: interactive textbook by Laszlo Cser and Daniel Wanner, edited by Jonathan deRoche. Los Angeles City College (LACC). Link. Accessed on 24 November 2025, again on 9 December 2025.

Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom. Accessed on 24 November 2025, again on 9 December 2025.

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Open Music Theory. Subtitle: Version 2 by Mark Gotham; Kyle Gullings; Chelsey Hamm; Bryn Hughes; Brian Jarvis; Megan Lavengood; and John Peterson. Edited by Erin K. Maher. Accessed on 24 November 2025, again on 9 December 2025.

This is presented as "a natively-online open educational resource intended to serve as the primary text and workbook for undergraduate music theory curricula." It looks more like an encyclopedia to me; I suppose the idea is that an instructor would choose the elements they want to create their own textbook. That's certainly possible as the organization is very clear, the index of materials well presented. Along with that comes a level of segregation matching traditional priorities; there are 11 sections plus some appendices: jazz appears in section 6, popular music in section 7, but at least we may note that atonal and 12-tone music, now largely irrelevant to contemporary practice, follow after them.

Extended chords are discussed in section 5, under a heading similar to the one in the large traditional textbooks that lumps together chromatic and extended chords; here is it "altered and extended chords." The chapter on extended chords contains only one altered chord as an example that gets less than a sentence. It might be two if a V(b9) in a major key is included. It's never made much sense to me, and in any case here the examples for the ninth are the usual Schubert waltzes and the inevitable Fauré violin sonata opening.

All this aside, the presentation of the dominant ninth is concise and effective. The term "extensions" is adopted but not exploited.

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Harmony and Musicianship with Solfège: interactive textbook by Laszlo Cser and Daniel Wanner, edited by Jonathan deRoche. Los Angeles City College (LACC).   Link. Accessed on 24 November 2025.

The "blurb" on the main page (table of contents) describes the book's goals and design succinctly: "The textbook adheres to the harmony and musicianship course requirements of college music programs, presenting comprehensive harmony studies and assignments of the Common Practice Period (1600-1900), sight singing and ear training materials, and chapters introducing 20th century music techniques including jazz."

The online format encourages "comprehensive" character: there are nine sections with nearly 100 subheads or chapters ("n"):

Introduction

I. Review: Fundamentals of Music    n = 9

II. Diatonic Harmony    n = 16

III. Diatonic Musicianship    n = 18

IV. Chromatic Harmony   n = 14

V. Chromatic Musicianship    n = 11

VI. Rhythmic Exercises  n = 3

VII. Introduction to 20th Century Music  n = 7

VIII. The Harmonic Structure and Forms of Jazz Standards     n = 12

IX. Appendix     n = 14

[I will add more to this entry after a library visit scheduled for 12/17/25.]

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Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom. Accessed on 24 November 2025, again on 9 December 2025.

Very concise online source that is an expanded glossary, not a course textbook. 35 chapters. The progression of topics is traditional, and chapter 31 "Introduction to Jazz Harmony," where ninths first appear, is well-placed historically. (But note the anomalous intro to strict counterpoint and fugue!)

 

The dominant ninth is not separated out from others.

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Creston saxophone sonata

 Paul Creston, Sonata for Saxophone and Piano (1945).

In the previous post I discussed two compositions in which the dominant major-ninth chord was entirely or almost entirely absent. Creston's sonata, long one of the standards for saxophone students, is quite different. The majority of the harmony would probably be called non-functional, but Creston--in contrast to Muczynski--makes much more use of familiar sonorities and occasionally clear traditional progressions, as the opening bars below demonstrate. Prominent notes in the saxophone melody are in the treble clef; left-hand chords are reduced from the piano part. It's not annotated but the first five chords are whole-tone fragments.

Unambiguous ninth chords aren't common, but they and other tall chords based on dominant sevenths do play a role, especially in quieter sections and lyrical secondary themes, as below:

The highpoint of the lyrical treatment is in the second theme of the finale, the centerpiece of an ABA form scheme. I've supplied the bass for the entire section. Note the appearance of triads (very rare earlier), M7s and M9s at the beginning, then more and more dominant 7ths and ninths later.

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Actively avoiding V9--Schuman, Muczynski

During a recent trip to a university library, I browsed the reductions under the LOC heading M35. From these I picked two: William Schuman, Chester: Variations for Piano based on William Billings' Hymn and Marching Song of the American Revolution (1957; 1989); Gustav Holst, The Planets (1914), solo piano reduction by Sam Lung, Hywie Davies, and Andrew Skirrow (2015). 

I had also planned a quick survey of well-known 20th century American compositions for woodwinds and began with Robert Muczynski's flute sonata (1965) and Paul Creston's saxophone sonata (1945). 

I'll discuss Chester and the flute sonata here and will have something to say about The Planets and Creston's sonata in subsequent posts. 

I ended my one-paragraph history of the dominant major-ninth chord with this: "Although [the Impressionist] style did persist into the 1930s, already by 1920 the dominant major-ninth sound was considered passé by younger concert composers and was often actively avoided" (link to the post).

Here are two examples showing how long this reticence persisted. They are drawn from repertoire quite different from what I had in mind when I wrote that generalization but they certainly fit "actively avoided."

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William Schuman, Chester: Variations for Piano. I am using a piano solo version created by Schuman for the Eighth Van Cliburn Competition in 1989. After the theme in a diatonic triadic setting, a sudden shift--subito Allegro--introduces sharply delineated chords (accented 8th notes shown here in whole-note form) over which the theme sounds (represented here by its prominent note D6). A single B9 chord (not shown) strikes with the opening of the final phrase.

The second variation is entirely in parallel thirds. The third variation offers the melody at the top of soft staccato triads in each hand--see below (core notes in the melody are not included this time). The hexachords formed by the triad pairs are all M9s or, in one case, M13. These are repeated in various forms and transpositions throughout--they even return twice later in the piece.

At the mid-point of the fourth variation is the second verifiable dominant ninth in the piece.

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Robert Muczynski, Sonata for Flute, op. 14 (1965), is an important post-mid-century piece in the flute repertoire. In general with sonatas from perhaps 1920 through this time, you'll see that affects/topics/style/general design are all pretty traditional--and that includes a strong focus on melodic/motivic development--but rhythms and harmonies are more complex. 

Much of the harmony would probably be called non-functional: in a subsequent post, we will see Creston's a little more conservative that way, whereas Muczynski is quite consistent with his particular dissonant vocabulary, and dominant ninth chords have no place in it. See the samples at (a) & (b) below. Nevertheless, the first movement ends, a bit abruptly, with a very clearly defined Fm(add6)--at (c) below.

In the third movement, a few tall chords are built on a V9 base. At (b) the first chord is reduced to a stack of thirds; (b1) pulls out the #9 and compares it to a "split third"; at (b2) is the source F(#11); at (c) is the final chord in the example as thirds stacked.

This is the meager tally of dominant ninths.