[Smt-talk] Half diminished seventh as subharmonic seventh?

[Daniel Wolf]

I know of two English language texts which describe the "half diminished  
seventh" chord in terms of a subharmonic sonority (i.e. as the exact  
intervallic inversion of a dominant seventh chord):  Ernst Levy's A Theory  
of Harmony, in which it is observed that the chord is a subdominant whose  
resolution to the tonic precisely mirrors that of the dominant to the  
tonic and a passing mention in Charles Seeger and Edward Griffith  
Stricklen 's Harmonic structure and elementary composition (1916).   Are  
there any earlier English references for this?  From what French or German  
(in the respective cases of Levy and Seeger) theoretical traditions might  
have made such descriptions been drawn?

Daniel Wolf
composer
Frankfurt am Main