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); 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 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. Note that the hexachords thus formed are all M7s or, in one case, M13. These are repeated in various forms and transpositions throughout--and even return twice later in the piece.
At the mid-point of the fourth variation is the only "verifiable" dominant ninth in the piece.
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Robert Muczynski, Sonata for Flute, op. 14 (1965), an important post-mid-century piece in the flute repertoire. In general with sonatas from perhaps 1920 through this period, 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 there. Nevertheless, the first movement ends, a bit abruptly, with a very clearly defined Fm(add6)--at (c) below.
Here, too, the tally of dominant ninths is meager at best.
