“The Planets” by Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

Which is your favourite?

1. Mars, the Bringer of War
2. Venus, the Bringer of Peace
3. Mercury, the Winged Messenger
4. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
5. Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
6. Uranus, the Magician
7. Neptune, the Mystic

Jupiter

Was Holst prescient? There is no Pluto!

You are too clever by a half bear with your Pluto input ... but Walt Disney hadn't by then
come up with Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Pluto.

PS Can't find "precient" in my Chambers dictionary.

haha Pluto wasn't discovered until 1930, so he would have had to have been prescient to include it.

Not surprised! Check the spelling.


Mars was the one which had a big impact on me when I first heard the suite back in my teens. Loved that da-da-da dum dum dit-dit dum rhythm!

Colin Matthews wrote Pluto, the Renewer in 2000 to complete Holst's suite, but since Pluto has since been downgraded to dwarf planet status, Holst's suite was quite prescient!

I like the work, though it is totally atypical of Holst's compositions. Try the Choral Hymns from Rig Veda, or Savitri for something more representative. Holst was a bit of a mystic, and The Planets has a lot of astrological overtones, but since I do not give astrology any credence, I only enjoy the music for what it is: gloriously orchestrated with lots of great tunes.

Thanks for your Mars input currawong.

In my Dent reference book it says

“When Holst was composing this movement,
banging out it’s violent discords on his landlady’s piano,
she remonstrated with him.

“It’s so ugly Gustav!” she said.
‘But war is ugly’ was his response, “‘ugly’ but grand too.
That is how I feel it and that is how I must write it’.”

To our ears today the dissonances may not seem all that alarming but even so the music has an awesome power that can leave us genuinely shaken.”

Here are the lyrics to Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity

"I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
I heard my country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of waters she calls and calls to me.
Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head,
And round her feet are lying the dying and the dead.
I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns,
I haste to thee my mother, a son among thy sons.
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace."

YOU are the one who is too clever and half again, argerichfan!

I don't give it any credence either, but I love that mystical Neptune. Choirs of angels singing unto eternity....

-J

I'll never forget hearing Neptune at a BBC prom concert in the Albert hall when I was a teenager and being completely gobsmacked by the ethereal wispy choir sound as the slowly strolled further and further away - it was amazing.

If limited to a recording though you can't go past mars for impact - and my kids love it!!!

Koji Attwood and Mei Ting Sun playing Holst's 2 piano version of
Mars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saZVLpBW6RU

JUPITER:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO98n0sgFIA

It seems to be missing Earth.

Jupiter for me.

I've found that playing Mars is a great way to hook a classically ignorant (hating?) teen into listening to more classical music.

I like Neptune and Mars, the latter of which I played in an orchestra and is so much fun to play.

Uranus and Neptune.

Pluto is not a planet any more...

Regarding Neptune ... from my Dent Reference by Antony Hopkins

“By any standards this is a quite extraordinary piece of music.
A footnote in the score instructs that the orchestra is to play pp throughout, an exhortation that would seem to invite disaster from the point of view of audience appeal.
Furthermore Holst’s own score has a reminder in pencil —
‘dead tone’, except the clarinet after Fig.5'.Orchestral players do not like to play pianissimo throughout, nor do they appreciate being asked to play with ‘dead’ tone.
As though the sheer size of the orchestra was not obstacle enough to the prospects of performance of the work by a still relatively obscure composer,
Holst required (in this movement only) a six-part chorus of female voices, who he said should be placed in an adjoining room,
the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece,
when it is to be slowly and silently closed.”
That such a requirement substantially reduced the number of Halls in which The Planets could actually be performed, mattered little to Holst, his sole concern was to achieve (albeit by a somewhat crude method)
an effect of sound gradually receding towards the thresholds of inaudibility.”

Sounds pretty daft to me!

I'm with Damon, strange Holst didn't think of Earth as a planet. It would have been interesting to see what he would have done with that. Probably a mindset at the time (and still is for many) that Earth is the center of the universe. However, we are just a "little blue dot".

John Williams clearly felt the same way ...

Heh, I remember the first time it dawned on me that the beginning of the first Star Wars was pretty much Mars. He used a lot of ideas from other composers to great effect.

Another example:


Compare with:

And was not adverse to also stealing from Korngold, Elgar, Orff and Prokofiev.

He knew where to borrow from, and hey!, nothing wrong with that. John Williams, who just turned 80, is a great film composer!

Anecdote:

Erich Korngold ran into Max Steiner in Hollywood.

Steiner: So why is it that my music keeps getting better than yours?

Korngold: Because you have been copying from me, and I have been copying from you!