First the "Seventh" or First the "Ninth"

Dilettante wrote:

Hi, I read somewhere that the diminished seventh would be a ninth chord without the root.

Dlet's say that theoretically it makes sense, but weren't sevenths born before ninths? That is, in the view of enriching harmony by superimposing thirds, I expected the ninth to be a diminished seventh with something extra and not vice versa... I don't know...

Any updates?

I am also waiting for them (because I am not much of a theorist of "seventhology"), but I will tell you, intuitively, how I would interpret the statement (namely that the diminished seventh would be a ninth chord without the root).

If you consider the diminished seventh, the scale degree on which it is normally found (the VII) and how it resolves (to the I), and you try to consider it a dominant ninth without the root, the two chords resolve in the same way (namely to the I degree). "By instinct," I would say that the statement could be read from this perspective, rather than having "chronological" implications...

Dilettante wrote:

in the interest of enriching harmony by superimposing thirds, I expected the ninth to be a diminished seventh with something extra and not vice versa... I don't know...

Are you sure that all types of sevenths were used before the ninth chord?

Misunderstandings are always around the corner

the problem is that you don't know where you read that thing... which, like many things in harmony, is a theory with an author.. Hugo Riemann, a German theorist from the late 1800s, spiritual father of harmonic functionalism, in his identification of the harmonic functions of tonic, dominant, and subdominant, thought to give the leading-tone chord the function of dominant and, therefore, to consider it as a dominant ninth chord lacking the root. But this is IN NO WAY a consideration of a historical nature. Triads and quadriads on the seventh degree have always existed, and as Stufentheorie teaches, the theory of degrees (different from functional theory), chords on the seventh degree are... chords on the seventh degree. The very idea that a chord lacking a root could exist is inconceivable for the harmonic theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

But I'll "argue" in favor of the ninth... the ninth has existed since time immemorial, as a suspension. Ninths exist in counterpoint; it is in harmony that they arrive late (i.e., as ninth chords). If I am not mistaken, De La Motte says that dominant ninths began to be used extensively from Mozart onwards.

I'll just throw it out there, Bach even used ninths and elevenths ... over tonic and dominant pedals. Obviously also diminished sevenths ... which coincidentally, on a pedal, align with the two chords I just mentioned

Dilettante wrote:

Hi, I read somewhere that the diminished seventh would be a ninth chord without the root.

thallo wrote:

the problem is that you don't know where you read that...

"Treatise on Harmony" by A. Schoenberg, p. 242

Eagle wrote:

I'll just throw it out there, Bach even used ninths and elevenths ... over tonic and dominant pedals. Obviously diminished sevenths as well ... which, coincidentally, on a pedal point align with the two chords I just mentioned

Obviously I meant elevenths and thirteenths; of course, ninths too... but I was referring specifically to 11ths and 13ths

Valchiria wrote:

"Theory of Harmony" by A. Schoenberg, p. 242

Indeed Schoenberg dedicates a good paragraph to the subject and an excerpted sentence might not say much either

thallo wrote:

Hugo Riemann, German theorist of the late '800s, spiritual father of harmonic functionalism

Exactly, functional theory owes its birth to Hugo Riemann, but that which is habitually referred to is the result of subsequent revisions, which corrected some rigid settings of the original formulation, adapting it more effectively to musical practice and to the actual and evident characteristics of musical pieces in tonal literature.