A. E. Hull, Modern Harmony (1915)

Alexander Eaglefield Hull was a prolific writer, biographer, and encyclopedist on musical topics. His Modern Harmony: It Explanation and Application (1915) is atypical of his work in its focus on a technical subject, but its source must certainly lie in biographies of Scriabin and Cyril Scott that Hull was preparing at about that time (and published in 1916 and 1919, respectively).

Hull makes his advocacy of contemporary practices crystal clear at the outset:

The swift current of modern musical art during the past ten or fifteen years seems at first glance to have ruthlessly swept away the whole of the theories of the past. The earnest student may well be excused if he is bewildered completely on rising up fresh from his theoretical treatises to plunge into the music of actual life—of the twentieth-century opera houses, concert-halls, and music-rooms. . . .
      The whole of musical history . . . warns one against the too easy acceptance of the neatly turned epithets of persons who are . . . too indifferent to appreciate a new kind of music which claims at once wide sympathies and considerable powers of concentration. . . . Even on short acquaintance these modern musicians have too much method in their so-called “modernity” to be dismissed thus cursorily. It is the greatest possible mistake to view these modern schools as things separate from the art of the past. Indeed, most, of the new traits are legitimate growths out of the art technique of the acknowledged great masters. It does seem as if there were nothing new under the sun. As the principles of the twentieth-century Cubism in painting were well known some 400 years ago, so the modern methods of part-writing and chord-building all find their prototypes time after time in the pages of the great masters of the past.  (1-2; lightly edited)

Then Hull offers up a complaint frequently heard in the century or so from 1850 to 1950:

So much harmony teaching is founded on mere text-book formalities that there is little, if any, appeal to the evidence of the aural intelligence—the real arbiter in all matters of musical taste. It is the empirical method which makes the theory of the music of [recent] composers so difficult, and we cannot suppose that all of the explanations set down herein were present in the composers’ minds at the time of conception, or that they may even be acceptable always to the composers themselves. The system of teaching harmony by attaching names to the chords often produces an altogether false way of regarding music. No chord in itself conveys any meaning whatsoever. It can give a vague impression. . . , but thought in music can only be transmitted by chordal succession and forward movement, and the chord, however wonderfully arranged, has value only in this light. (4-5; emphasis in original)

Consistent with his approach—which simplifies discussion of harmony largely by removing complex labels—Hull has this to say about the dominant ninth and its inversions:

The unnecessarily forbidden appearance of the root in the inversions of the chord of the ninth tends to cramp part-writing, and the prohibition robs diatonic music of some of its most powerful effects. The root, which merely requires judicious placing and arrangement, may appear above the minor or major ninth with great effect. A wide selection of resolutions should be allowed.
For instance:
    (a) Both the major and minor ninth may fall a tone or semitone.
    (b) The ninth may remain.
    (c) The ninth may rise a chromatic semitone.
The case of (b) will be clearer still when the ninth is prepared, thus appearing as a pedal note. In all cases, so long as the ninth is satisfactorily resolved, the other notes are comparatively free. (18-19)

His example for (a)—see the arrow in the second bar—is from a song by Edward MacDowell, a piece so interesting in its treatment of the ninth that I will devote a separate post to it. For (b), see the beginning of the excerpt from the Verdi Requiem. For (c), look at the first chord pair from August Halm's Harmonielehrebuch [sic].

This last example is not in Halm's book. Hull is quoting from Schoenberg's Harmonielehre (1912), complete with the misspelling "Harmonielehrebuch" (properly it would be "Harmonie-Lehrbuch," although that isn't Halm's title, which is simply Harmonielehre).

Halm's example 97c is this. Schoenberg rewrites the progressions under (c). I will discuss his treatment of ninth chords in a separate post.

Halm's Ex 97c is actually meant as a negative example. He regards the V9 resolving to I (see his first examples under 97) as the only correct use of the ninth chord, in contradistinction to the dominant seventh, which he says has a much "softer" character and can move in almost any tonal direction. The two chord pairs under 97c show that one cannot reasonably apply the same traits to the ninth chord (Halm 1900, 118-119).

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.
• Arnold Schoenberg, Harmonielehre (1912/1922).        Source: Internet Archive; digital facsimile of a copy of unknown provenance.

Foote and Spalding, Modern Harmony (1905) (2) note 2

I have already discussed Amy (Mrs. H. H. A.) Beach's "Fireflies," no. 4 from Four Sketches, op. 15 (1892), in the context of Foote and Spalding's repertoire examples for the dominant ninth chord. "Fireflies" is quite unusual in its motivic treatment of the minor dominant ninth, but isolated, interesting examples can be found in other numbers in the set. The contents are:

1. "In Autumn," Allegro ma non tanto with an epigraph from Lamartine: "Feuillages jaunissants sur les gazons épars" [Yellowing foliage on patchy grass]
2. "Phantoms," Allegretto scherzando with an epigraph from Hugo: "Toutes fragiles fleurs, sitôt que nées" [All fragile flowers, as soon as they are born]
3. "Dreaming," Andante con molto espressione with an epigraph from Hugo: "Tu me parles du fond d'un rêve" [You talk to me from within a dream]
4. "Fireflies," Allegro vivace with an epigraph from Lamartine: "Naître avec le printemps, mourir avec les roses" [To be born with spring, to die with roses]

All but no. 3 belong to the general class of scherzi, or more narrowly comic scherzos, "Mendelssohn scherzos," or even the scherzo mistereuse of theater and film music. In no. 1, the main key is F# minor. The first cadence to the parallel major includes a clearly defined V9/V whose ninth, C#5,  resolves indirectly to the same note over the dominant (perhaps a 13th by the standards of some textbooks).

In no. 2, the main key is A major. The beginning of the B-section, in Db major (enharmonically C# major, or III), carries with it some not-too-faint echoes of the waltz, and those may be responsible for the ninths in the three circled V-I figures.

In the principal cadence of the B-section we find one of those climactic V9/V figures—here, forte and appassionato—that are familiar from Beach's songs and many another 19th century composition. Although the melody leaves the ninth, notice that the left hand maintains it through the bar (see the arrow).

As a postscript, here is an excerpt from Anton Rubenstein's Romanze in Eb major, op. 44n1, as edited by Arthur Foote. The design is a bit unusual: A-B-A'-C, where A' acts equally as reprise and as acceleration toward C, which in its turn is equally thematic and cadence+coda. It is of interest here because it combines the rise to a climax (bar 7) with an anti-climax (sudden drop to pp at the registral highpoint) that is a very clear major dominant ninth chord.

Foote and Spalding, Modern Harmony (1905) (2)

Foote and Spalding's chapter on the ninth chords is distinctive for its generous number of examples from the repertoire, examples that show clearly the range and character of their own stylistic sources and assumptions.* One can see this already in their first page (p. 158). In Lohengrin below, G5 is strongly emphasized by position and duration, achieving the same kind of "climax coloration" that we found in American songs of the same period (see my essay Dominant Ninth Harmonies in American Songs around 1900: link). As with Wagner, Schubert moves the ninth (but ascending) over a stable dominant bass. The two brief excerpts from Beethoven are common instances from the era of the minor dominant ninth.

The next three examples are also concerned with the minor dominant ninth chord.

Amy (Mrs. H. H. A.) Beach's "Fireflies," no. 4 from Four Sketches, op. 15 (1892), has many dominant ninths, both major and minor. This short passage comes less than twenty bars from the end. Something of the flavor of the whole can be gotten by a slightly larger excerpt (see below). "Walküre" is a striking resolution of the minor dominant ninth, with ninth in the alto and fifth moving upward chromatically. "Parsifal" is a passing major ninth within a wedge shape: F-F#-G in the top voice, F-E-Eb in the bass.

Further comment on Amy (Mrs. H. H. A.) Beach, op. 15n4. Below is a slightly larger excerpt (bars -18 to -10). The passage quoted by Foote and Spalding is boxed; instances of the dominant ninth are circled: all but the last are understood as major dominant ninth chords, but see my final comments and the figure below the score. For the moment, notice the strongly marked direct resolution of the ninth in bars -11 to-10. The tonic reached in bar -10 is the final chord, prolonged by figuration to the end.

Here is a reduced view of the harmony and voice leading:

Obviously, this reduction isn't as good as it could be, since the move major-dominant-ninth to minor-triad is problematic. The composer "sneaks in" a minor ninth just before the chord change, and thus it would have been better to notate the entire example as follows:

Beach's "Fireflies" is one of those rare compositions before 1900 in which the dominant ninth is strongly motivic. Here is the opening, the ninth chords marked (minor in bars 1-2, 8; major in 5-6).

And here is a reduction of the harmony and voice leading:

More of Foote and Spalding's repertoire examples will appear in a subsequent post.

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* Such generosity was not typical earlier in the 19th century, but I should point out that by the end of the century multiple examples from the repertoire were commonly used, either for practical compositional or analytical purposes, as with Foote and Spalding, or as examples of historical practices.

Reference:
Arthur Foote and Walter Spalding, Modern Harmony in its Theory and Practice (1905). Source: Internet Archive; digital facsimile of a copy in the UCLA library.