That's one of the reasons that a 9th chord inverted, were the 9th is on the bass, was frowned upon in 19th Century music theory. They argued that the 9th in the

That's one of the reasons that a 9th chord inverted, were the 9th is on the bass, was frowned upon in 19th Century music theory. They argued that the 9th in the bass is a 2nd, not a 9th. To give you an idea of how conservative people were regarding music, even in the beginning of the 20th Century, the Vienna Music Society rejected playing Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht at first on the ground that it had inverted 9th chords [1]. See [2] for an example, it's the first chord in the second bar. [1] See "reception" in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verklärte_Nacht http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verklärte_Nacht [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ic3ZLj5RPw#t=3m12s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ic3ZLj5RPw#t=3m12s