In my post about "Georgia on My Mind", I wrote that the plain-vanilla setting was meant for home consumption or as the basis--but only a starting point--for public performance; further, that this was fair in my historical account, but would be a serious shortcoming for any later time if I ignored more complex treatments in publications or recordings, especially of enriched harmonies or what eventually became known as "tensions," the category to which the ninths are nowadays understood to belong (see the comment on Stoyanova & Perry near the end of this post: link). Finally, I intended eventually to write about arranging manuals published in the 1930s and 1940s. I am undertaking same now.
Beyond the documentation, the result will be obvious to anyone who has experience of the era: complex chords saturate both instrumental and vocal music, and, although it does have some specific, mostly traditional roles to play, overall the dominant ninth becomes just another possibility. In other words, the practice nowadays codified pedagogically in these two classes--triads/sevenths; tensions/tall chords--was already essentially in place in musical practice by the early 1930s.
All this being the case, my historical survey will need to stop here, mainly because the role of the dominant major-ninth chord changes, as noted above, but also because I try to respect copyright: things become complicated after the US barrier year and I no longer have the ability to make reliable transcriptions from recordings. What I plan to do now is return to documentation of ^6 and V9 in late 19th and early 20th century music: there is much more to find there.
Here are the four arranging manuals:
Frank Skinner, Frank Skinner's simplified method for modern arranging (New York: Robbins, 1928; 1934).
Norman Ellis, Instrumentation and arranging for the radio and dance orchestra (New York: G. Schirmer, 1937).
Glenn Miller, Glenn Miller's method for orchestral arranging (New York: Mutual Music Society, 1943).
Harry Robert Wilson, Choral arranging for schools, glee clubs and publication; a complete guide for the problems of choral arranging for all types of voice combinations and for all kinds of choral groups in schools, churches, communities, or professional organizations (New York: Robbins, 1949).
Skinner: This comes very early in his career, when he worked with bands in Chicago and before he developed the Hollywood career he's known for. The style reflected in the book is definitely still 1920's but that's useful because it gives us a window into practices before they changed fairly dramatically in the 1930s. In one section, he provides 10 two-stave versions of "Endings for Melody and Hot Numbers"; three of those are mostly V9 chords:
The first of two scripts for arranging exercises below also draws heavily on the chord:
The second is more typical--it wouldn't have been out of place in a Jerome Kern musical ten years earlier:
Ellis: I was unable to find a registration renewal for this book, but have decided on just two short examples with harmonic analysis annotation. The first is a fragment of a ballad setting with a richly colored saxophone section (a definite style definer for the later 1930s and 1940s). The subtle play of Cmadd6 and F9 is of interest.
Again this second example is more typical of harmonic practice than the one above. Note that the dominant ninths are positioned in the cadence.
Miller: This very likely ghost-written book is in the public domain; I take that from the fact it's downloadable as a PDF from the Internet Archive: link. These scripts for close harmony and open harmony in the saxophone section position V9 in idea (Caplin's name for 2-bar units) and phrase endings.
This is a sketch for "full brass": 4 trumpets and 4 trombones. It is described as follows: "This example is intended to display the technique of voicing for eight brass. The voicings are equally effective in all types of music—smooth or rhythmic—slow or fast—loud or soft—open or muted" (p46).
Wilson: I didn't find a renewal listing for this but someone in the family did take care to renew many of Wilson's copyrights in the 1980s and so I'll respect the possibility by not showing examples here. All I intended was to demonstrate that choral writing was often as "smooth" and complex as anything for instruments. (Granted this would be obvious to anyone who knows Disney movies from Snow White and Pinocchio on.) You can find and borrow the book on the Internet Archive: link.
