Although some text books (particularly those aimed at guitarists) explain the chords introduced on the previous page in terms of harmony, the reality in most tonal styles is that they are better explained in terms of voice-leading. If your knowledge of appoggiaturas and passing notes is a bit rusty, it is worth looking at the pages on embellishment in the voice-leading section of the toolkit.

Ninths
The ninth chord is the simplest illustration. In the example below, the a1 is an appoggiatura. As a dissonance the a1 is therefore a decoration or embellishment of the following consonant G to which it resolves. While it is therefore true to say that the first chord contains a ninth, this not the whole story.

Composers up until the time of Beethoven and beyond would have understood the example below as containing a melodic embellishment, rather than as G major ninth followed by G. The difference is subtle but important: in the music of these composers, you would not expect to find a ninth chord unless it was part of an embellishment such as in the examples below.

Elevenths
Eleventh chords are commonly found in the Classical style, but again they are best understood in terms of voice-leading. Listen to the following extract from a Haydn string quartet. Although the first chord in the second bar is an eleventh, it is quite dissonant in this tonal style and this dissonance is resolved in the following chord. In the same way that the ninth in the first example was an appoggiatura, this is a sort of triple appoggiatura. The a1, c2 and eb2 are all dissonant to a Bb triad and they all resolve by step onto consonant notes of this chord.

Example a) below shows an eleventh resolving in the same way as in the Haydn, this time onto a C major chord. Example b) shows an alternative resolution. This time the eleventh resolves onto a further double appoggiatura that is even more common in the Classical style: the a cadential six-four.

Thirteenths
The final example shows two contexts in which you might find a thirteenth chord. In the first, the thirteenth resolves very much like the eleventh chords above - as a triple appoggiatura. In the second example, however, the thirteenth resolves as a single arpoggiatura onto a seventh chord. Neither example is a complete thirteenth because including every note creates a chord that is rather dissonant in many tonal styles.

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