Ninth chord

The pupil will easily find examples in the literature [such as Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and Strauss's opera Salome].

Thus, a Cmaj9 consists of C, E, G, B and D. When the symbol "9" is not preceded by the word "major" or "maj" (e.g., C9), the chord is a dominant ninth.

[5] Example of tonic dominant ninth chords include Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" and Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music".

[9] James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)" features a striking dominant 9th arpeggio played staccato at the end of the opening 12-bar sequence.

Debussy's "Hommage a Rameau", the second of his first Book of Images for piano solo climaxes powerfully on a dominant 9th, expressed both as a chord and as a wide-ranging arpeggio: The starting point of Karlheinz Stockhausen's piece for vocal sextet, Stimmung (1968)[10] is a chord consisting of the notes B♭, F, B♭, D, A♭ and C.[11] According to Nicholas Cook,[12] Stimmung could, in terms of conventional tonal harmony, be viewed as "simply a dominant ninth chord that is subject to timbral variation.

In Schubert's Erlkönig, a terrified child calls out to his father when he sees an apparition of the sinister Elf King.

The dissonant voicing of the dominant minor ninth chord used here (C7♭9) is particularly effective in heightening the drama and sense of threat.

This latter chord, when occasionally changed enharmonically for the purpose of making sudden transitions or modulations into distant keys, gratifies the ear more than any other chord.Writing about this passage, Taruskin (2010, p. 149) remarks on the unprecedented ... level of dissonance at the boy's outcries ...

The result is a virtual 'tone cluster' ... the harmonic logic of these progressions, within the rules of composition Schubert was taught, can certainly be demonstrated.

That logic, however, is not what appeals so strongly to the listener's imagination; rather it is the calculated impression (or illusion) of wild abandon.