Foote and Spalding, Modern Harmony (1905) (3)

Here are more of Foote and Spalding's repertoire examples for the dominant ninth chord. These are from p. 160.

The Chopin example comes from the first movement, the second theme in the recapitulation—see the boxes in the third and fourth systems. It is indeed a proper major dominant ninth with a direct resolution (although with octave change). It is also an isolated instance, as nowhere else in the movement, or in the sonata, does the ninth chord play any role. In this theme, the far more prominent feature is the 13th (see arrows), which is a melodic rather than harmonic element but contributes a distinctive sound to the theme and so illustrates that characteristically uncertain positioning of the extended chords between harmonic and linear processes.

Incidentally, the ninth in the example above is not in the second theme in its initial presentation during the exposition:

George W. Chadwick's "Lovely Rosabelle" sets a short ballad from Sir Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.  The form is that of a melodrama—like an operatic szena, alternating dramatic recitative with more formal sections of air or chorus melody. The example comes from near the end, where the chorus repeats several times text including "a dirge for lovely Rosabelle" (who has drowned).

The example isn't very convincing as a ninth chord. There are several better ones earlier in the piece. Throughout the 19th century, the major dominant ninth chord as a harmonic entity was more likely to appear in lyrical, sentimental, or even pastoral movements or passages, as here, with "soft" and "sad." Note especially the contrast between the vigorous, minor-key, martial music and this passage.

Here are two good textbook examples that Foote and Spalding might have used to better effect. Note the direct resolution of the ninth C5 in the soprano.

The ^6-^8 figure in the cadence was a common Scots-Irish touch. We have encountered it before in Macdowell's "To a Wild Rose": link to the blog post.

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.

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) note 1

In the previous post on Foote and Spalding's repertory examples of dominant ninth chords, I included this figure from their page 195:

This excerpt is certainly interesting, especially for its ascending move from the ninth, but Schubert's subsequent treatment of it in this variation movement from the A-minor sonata, D. 845 suggests that he was not thinking of it as a dominant ninth chord—or else we might say that he could have been in sympathy with those theorists who lumped the dominant ninth chord in with the dominant seventh and leading-tone seventh chords, and maybe even the ii chord (that is, any and all tertian entities that can be extracted from the dominant ninth chord).

Here is the context, the opening phrase of the theme's B-section, in which the ninth is part of a short "standing on the dominant" figure (the term is Caplin's; such figures to begin the B-section of a small binary or ternary form were stereotypical).

Already in the first variation, the bass changes the harmony to ii and thus A4 to the consonant fifth.

Variation 2: As in variation 1, but now the dissonance is gone!

Variation 3: G-F against Ab is brought very much into the foreground. The G is so obviously heard as an accented dissonant neighbor that the underlying chord in the first bar must be heard as vii°7.

Variation 4: Here the expressive idea of ascent takes over, but without the simple ^6-^7 figure of the theme. We can certainly hear the first bar as Ab: V9, with indirect resolution of the ninth in both fifth and sixth octaves in bar 2. Schubert continues to make the expressive point with the long scale that closes the phrase and leads to Eb7.

Variation 5: A predecessor to Schoenberg's fourth inversion of the ninth chord in Erklärte Nacht? No, a 2-3 bass suspension, A2-G2 against B3. And of course ^6 goes down, not up as in the theme.

Variation 5, end: As it would seem only Schubert can do, the end of the final variation leading into the coda turns unexpectedly magical. Not at (a), where he changes the mode to minor—but he does introduce a rising-scale figure that reaches Ab5 (note that the accented gesture is G and Ab). There is a source in the theme: the harmony is D minor with A4 at the top at the equivalent point that he reaches Db in this variation, but Schubert makes much more of it here than in the theme or earlier variations. At (b) we reach G5-Ab5 again, but now also get the reverse over dominant harmony. Then suddenly it is off into the sixth octave, A-natural, and a transcendent IV (no need for the triad's fifth; what we hear is without any doubt). Finally, at (d) even higher, but then with firm and continuing, if quiet,  descent into the final tonic.

Coda: Schubert isn't done yet. At (e), the old-fashioned turn to the subdominant in the prolongation of the structural tonic brings ^5-^6-^5 in F and so a little coloration of V9 in that key. At (f), Schubert reminds us of that transcendent IV from (c), again at (g), and even into the final seconds at (h).

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.

Foote and Spalding, Modern Harmony (1905) (1)

With this post, I leap ahead nearly to the end of the long 19th century. The point is to make a quick comparison with the various books up to 1850 discussed so far, before going back to survey the period from 1850-1900.

So far, the dominant ninth chord has been in a strange limbo, "invented" on the one hand as a result of Rameau's sub-posing a third below the fundamental of a seventh chord—as at (a) below—but, on the other hand, in form of the figure "9" at least, well established in thorough-bass (and therefore in the everyday activity of continuo playing)—"9", however, normally meant as at (b) below. The sub-posed third was already abandoned by Sorge in favor of the super-posed third that gave rise to the category of extended chords still found in textbooks today—as at (c), but a peculiar tension remained, given that the V9 chord was not a regular part of compositional practice (before popular genres like dances and dance-songs beginning in the first quarter of the 19th century), so that the viiø7 was recommended as the V9 without its root!—see at (d). The figures at (e1) and (e2) appear regularly in treatises when the dominant ninth chord is introduced, as we have seen, but though well recognized, and usually given its own chapter, the dominant ninth chord is then almost entirely ignored in exercises and assignments. In the few cases where it does show up, it is in form of the internal resolution of (e2), very rarely the fully independent harmony of (e1).

Arthur Foote and Walter Spalding published Modern Harmony in its Theory and Practice in 1905. Both were trained at Harvard. Foote spent his career as an organist in Boston, Spalding spent his as a member of the Harvard faculty.

Foote and Spalding follow the Weber/Richter tradition of Roman numeral labels but, like Richter, use figured bass for exercises. (Indeed, their volume overall shows a considerable debt to Richter's Harmonielehre.) Their employment of Roman numeral labels is exceedingly sparing, however, even in the chapters on modulation and even in analyses. On the dominant ninth chord, we note first of all that they give it considerable attention: a chapter of fifteen pages. (Eleventh and thirteenth chords are given their own chapter of five pages.) The dominant ninth chord is generated by adding a third to the seventh chord. Ninth chords can be built on other scale degrees, but Foote and Spalding dismiss those, saying they are really created by melodic figures such as suspensions (p. 153). "The dominant chord of the ninth is the one chiefly employed, and properly used is productive of admirable results" (p. 154).

Here are their first examples (p. 154). Note that under (1) & (2) they include the borrowed chord viiº7 in the major key (they refer to it as chromatic alteration, not borrowing or modal mixture). Under (3) & (4), they show ascending resolutions of the ninth without comment.

About Example 8, they say only that this resolution happens "not infrequently."

Like those of many other authors, their resolutions are a mixture of internal and external, as for instance in Example 8 above and in nos. 5-7 that precede it:

Foote and Spalding even allow downward leaps away from the ninth, thus showing their familiarity not only with earlier salon music but also with concert waltzes (such as those of the Strausses, Waldteufel, and others), comic opera, and operetta.

Although I have not made much of it in previous posts, all textbook authors give some space to chord voicings, in relation to the positioning of the ninth and usually in the context of discussing inversions. Foote and Spalding's comments are not unusual in this regard—for example, they reject the fourth inversion for the same reasons as earlier authors: the sound is harsh and/or the root of the chord must always be below the ninth. As a footnote, they praise one treatment by Wagner (p. 158):

The entire passage, which the authors call "splendid," is as follows (p. 137). It is meant to illustrate voicing in a sequence of seventh chords. As the boxed bars show, the ninth is internal to chord movements over a sustained cadential dominant.

I will reproduce and comment on additional examples in the next post.

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.