Inversions, part 2

This continues discussion of inversions of the major dominant ninth chord.

Apologies for the overlapping boxes in this graphic of the opening of Franck's Violin Sonata. Boxes 1 and 2 include the second inversion of A: V9, each sandwiched between root position chords. The third "clears out" the chord momentarily by reducing it to a root position B minor triad.

Here is a passage from later on. The sounds over C#3 vary, with C#9 briefly touched in the third bar, though against a dissonant passing tone in the violin. The fourth bar gives us a#ø7, which becomes the upper part of the F#9 a bar later.

Now a secondary dominant ninth in its second inversion (MacDowell, To a Wild Rose). I've added the slurs in the bass to bring out the pattern in the harmonies: consonance to dissonance over the same bass in bars 1-2 & 3-4, then the reverse in bars 5-6 & 7-8.

And two examples of the unfolding bass figure: Sousa, Hail to the Spirit of Liberty, trio; James Scott, Broadway Rag. In the latter the boxes and arrows point to the common parallelism in a figure over V9, then over Iadd6.

For the third inversion, a waltz by Alexis Castillon and the introduction to An der Elbe, op. 477, Johann Strauss, jr.'s last published waltz set. There is expressive emphasis in Castillon's version, but as a harmony it is undercut by its middle position in a dominant.

In the second box below, a clever parallelism with a reversed harmonic progression, because of which the ninth (G5) resolves internally.

The best example for the third inversion, though, is in the "Serenade of the Doll" from Debussy's Children's Corner. Here is the second of three divisions of the B-section; it is made entirely of major dominant ninth chords, 15 of them, 9 of which are third inversions (indicated by asterisks (*)).

By way of a postscript: in the third division of the B-section, the F#9 returns to initiate a traditional cadence progression: E: V9/V drops the sharp to become ii13, then follow V7 and Iadd6:

New publications: Dominant Ninth, 1900-1924, Parts 1 & 2

I have published The Dominant Ninth in Music from 1900 to 1924 on the Texas ScholarWorks platform. Part 1: link.   Part 2: link.

Abstract for Part 1:

By about 1890, the major dominant ninth harmony had become firmly established in compositional and improvisational practice. After 1900, this harmony was routinely used in many musical genres. The two parts of this essay sample a few of these occurrences in repertoires ranging from those that are surprisingly conservative (American marches and ragtime) to those that are remarkably adventurous (French Impressionists and the English and American musicians influenced by them). Composers represented in Part 1 include Costa Nogueras, Friml, Hageman, Herbert, Joplin, Kern, Lehar, Lincke, MacDowell, and Sousa.

Abstract for Part 2:

This continues the study of the major dominant ninth harmony in European and European-influenced music after 1900. Composers represented in Part 2 are Claude Debussy, Lili Boulanger, and Charles Griffes. Scholarship by Taylor Greer, Keith Waters, and Deborah Williamson is summarized and discussed. Composers whose stage works are discussed in the introduction are Herbert, Lehar, Mozart and Wagner.

MacDowell, "Thy Beaming Eyes"

This is a second postscript to the post on Hull's Modern Harmony (1915). Among his examples is an excerpt from Edward MacDowell's "Thy Beaming Eyes," no. 3 in Six Love Songs, Op. 40 (1890). Here that is again:

Hull offers no context and no explanation for the harsh dissonance—arguably, much harsher in this voicing as a first inversion minor dominant ninth than any fourth inversion of the major dominant ninth!—and incongruously setting the word "Paradise." We will explore that here, as the song is rich in its treatment of ninth chords and their inversions.

The poems in Op. 40 are by William Henry Gardner and are largely simple expressions of love in a style that is a restrained version of sentimental songs from the late 1800s. "Thy Beaming Eyes," however, introduces irony. Its text:

Thy beaming eyes,
Are Paradise,
To me, my love, to me.
Thy trembling kiss
Is heavenly bliss,
To me, sweet love. 

But oh, thy heart!
It has no part,
With thee, my dear.
Tis strangely cold
And doth withhold
Its love, I fear. 

Thy beaming eyes,
Are Paradise,
To me, my dear.

The sentimental expression (in the opening at least) helps to account for the ninth chords (I have noted in earlier posts that major dominant ninth chords are more common in lyrical, sentimental genres), and the irony accounts for the increased dissonance.

"Passionately" and "loud" signal something unusual from the start, although one could say that "beaming eyes" and "Paradise" are worthy of intensified expression, the more so for sake of contrast with the familiar soft and sighing notes of the second phrase, "Thy trembling kiss . . .". Here "Paradise" is set to a second-inversion dominant ninth -- at (a). The ninth D5 is duly placed at the top, but the voice then doubles it (as a written D4) and resolves that note upward (while D5 remains in the piano part). That E4 remains in the subsequent A7 over C#.  The phrase ends with a plaintive "to me" on another dominant ninth, this time in root position with the ninth at the top in both voice and piano. With the following second-inversion C7, the ninth disappears more than it can be said to resolve (it's B-natural3 that's readily heard as moving to Bb3, and G—to which the ninth A might resolve—is already stationary in the bass). Whatever the explanations, both major dominant ninth chords here are prominent and striking in their voicings and treatment.

In the second phrase, we find the first hint of trouble: at (c) "kiss" is set to a version of the same dissonance that we saw in Hull's quote. Here it is heard not as a ninth, but as an F# diminished seventh chord with upper neighbor D4. At (d) and (e) the same chord pair as at (b) but now with forceful expression and the C7 in root position. Here the textbook writers' suggestions about the ninth chord as offering intensified expression are certainly realized.

The third phrase brings us to the poem's second verse. Apparently a reprise of the opening in the melody, the music quickly takes another direction, but not before "kiss" has become "heart" set to the same chord in the voicing of Hull's example -- at (f). At (g) I imagine a textbook writer might call this a dominant ninth with its root deleted. This is one of the few places in practice I might find that plausible. Supporting this hearing is the conversion of the ninth chord from (a) to the same half-diminished seventh at (a?).

The second phrase returns with harmonies intact—(b) through (e) below—but "kiss" and "bliss" are now "cold" and "withhold." The singer's final reiteration of the opening, then, is wistful and without much hope. It is here that the irony reaches its natural end-point, as "Paradise" is overtaken by the D minor ninth chord (this is Hull's example).  At the very end, note C9 and C13 in the cadence--at (h1) and (h2).

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.

MacDowell, To a Water Lily

Edward MacDowell, "To a Water Lily" from the Woodland Sketches, op. 51 (1895). Like "To a Wild Rose," this is a simple ternary design—and with a prominent role for a dominant ninth harmony in both A and B sections.

The main theme:

Below is the second part of the B section, as in "To a Wild Rose" an expansion of the dominant, though this time with the pedal bass tone literally sounded. In the midst of this, the V9 chord appears here and there, but the beginning and ending sonorities are the dominant seventh (V7).

In the cadence, the dominant ninth harmony is given considerable attention -- boxed -- and functions as the cadential dominant -- see bar 3.

MacDowell, To a Wild Rose

Edward MacDowell, "To a Wild Rose" from the Woodland Sketches, op. 51 (1895). I have published an essay, with many details about this piece, on the Texas Scholarworks platform: link.

One aspect of "simplicity" in the main theme is the blocking of the chordal accompaniment, which adds a sort of untutored—I am tempted to say "Grandma Moses"—quality to the whole. The system below the theme score reduces the voiceleading to its textbook or classroom version, and there one can see more easily the V9 harmonies. An interesting point about bar 4: a plausible and rare second inversion of the dominant ninth chord (I write about inversions of the "extended" chords in the Gallery essay). In the cadence, we are obliged to imagine the E4 to which the ninth F#4 would resolve, but it's a very easy one in this context.

The design of "To a Wild Rose" is a simple ternary form; the relatively brief B-section is shown below.

Here again a voiceleading reduction is useful, including the addition of an obvious implied dominant pedal point (one is grateful to MacDowell's artistic sense not to ask for this literally).

In the ending, both V9/V and the cadential V9 are no longer present. Instead, we have the more traditional viiø7/V (understood by theorists of the time as the V9 without its root—a bizarre idea if we think about it now, but it made sense at the time, as everyone was attempting to adjust the system of figured bass to the new Ramellian (that's Rameau's) scheme of fundamental bass and three functions, tonic, dominant, and subdominant). Here, MacDowell makes out of the circled chord a wonderfully expressive highpoint, pianissimo.