The Planets

This article is about the orchestral suite by Gustav Holst. For the celestial body, see Planet. For the planets in our solar system, see Solar System. For other uses, see Planet (disambiguation).

Gustav Holst

The Planets, Op. 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1916. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System and its corresponding astrological character as defined by Holst. With the exception of Earth, which is not observed in astrological practice, all the planets are represented.

From its premiere to the present day, the suite has been enduringly popular, influential, widely performed and the subject of numerous recordings. However, it had a protracted birth. There were four performances between September 1918 and October 1920, but they were all either private (the first performance, in London) or incomplete (two others in London and one in Birmingham). The premiere was at the Queen's Hall on 29 September 1918, conducted by Holst's friend Adrian Boult to an invited audience of about 250 people. The first complete public performance was given in London on 15 November 1920, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates.

Background

The Queen's Hall, where The Planets premiered in 1918

The concept of the work is astrological^[1] rather than astronomical (which is why Earth is not included): each movement is intended to convey ideas and emotions associated with the influence of the planets on the psyche, not the Roman deities. The idea of the work was suggested to Holst by Clifford Bax, who introduced him to astrology when the two were part of a small group of English artists holidaying in Majorca in the spring of 1913; Holst became quite a devotee of the subject, and liked to cast his friends' horoscopes for fun.^[1][2] Holst also used Alan Leo's^[1] book What is a Horoscope? as a springboard for his own ideas, as well as for the subtitles (i.e., "The Bringer of...") for the movements.

The Planets as a work in progress was originally scored for a piano duet, except for "Neptune", which was scored for a single organ, as Holst believed that the sound of the piano was too percussive for a world as mysterious and distant as Neptune. Holst then scored the suite for a large orchestra, and it was in this incarnation that it became enormously popular. Holst's use of orchestration was very imaginative and colourful, showing the influence of Arnold Schoenberg^[1] and other continental composers of the day rather than his English predecessors. The influence of the late Russian romantics such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov is also notable, as it is in Igor Stravinsky's great early ballets. Its novel sonorities helped make the work an immediate success with audiences at home and abroad. Although The Planets remains Holst's most popular work, the composer himself did not count it among his best creations and later in life complained that its popularity had completely surpassed his other works. He was, however, partial to his own favourite movement, "Saturn".^[3]

Premieres

Just before the Armistice, Gustav Holst burst into my office: "Adrian, the YMCA are sending me to Salonika quite soon and Balfour Gardiner, bless his heart, has given me a parting present consisting of the Queen's Hall, full of the Queen's Hall Orchestra for the whole of a Sunday morning. So we're going to do The Planets, and you've got to conduct."

“

”

Adrian Boult ^[4]

The orchestral premiere of The Planets suite, conducted at Holst's request by Adrian Boult, was held at short notice on 29 September 1918, during the last weeks of World War I, in the Queen's Hall with the financial support of Holst's friend and fellow composer Henry Balfour Gardiner. It was hastily rehearsed; the musicians of the Queen's Hall Orchestra first saw the complicated music only two hours before the performance, and the choir for "Neptune" was recruited from pupils from St Paul's Girls' School (where Holst taught). It was a comparatively intimate affair, attended by around 250 invited associates,^[2][5][6] but Holst regarded it as the public premiere, inscribing Boult's copy of the score, "This copy is the property of Adrian Boult who first caused the Planets to shine in public and thereby earned the gratitude of Gustav Holst."^[4]

Holst's inscription on Boult's score

A public concert was given in London under the auspices of the Royal Philharmonic Society on 27 February 1919, conducted by Boult. Five of the seven movements were played in the order Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, and Jupiter.^[7][8]It was Boult's decision not to play all seven movements at this concert. He felt that when the public were being given a totally new language like that, "half an hour of it was as much as they could take in". See Kennedy, p. 68. The anonymous critic in Hazell's Annual called it "an extraordinarily complex and clever suite". ^[9]At a Queen's Hall symphony concert on 22 November of that year, Holst conducted Venus, Mercury and Jupiter (this was the first public performance of Venus).^[10][8] There was another incomplete public performance, in Birmingham, on 10 October 1920, with five movements (Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter). It is not clear whether this performance was conducted by Appleby Matthews^[11] or the composer.^[12] The composer conducted a complete performance for the first time on 13 October 1923, with the Queen's Hall Orchestra at a Promenade Concert. His daughter recalled, " He hated incomplete performances of The Planets, though on several occasions he had to agree to conduct three or four movements at Queen's Hall concerts. He particularly disliked having to finish with Jupiter, to make a 'happy ending', for, as he himself said, 'in the real work the end is not happy at all'".^[13]

The first complete performance of the suite at a public concert did not occur until 15 November 1920; the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) was conducted by Albert Coates. This was the first time the movement "Neptune" had been heard in a public performance, all the other movements having been given earlier public airings.^[14]

Holst conducted the LSO himself, in two recorded performances of The Planets: the first was an acoustic recording made in sessions between 1922 and 1924 (now available on Pavilion Records' Pearl label); the second was made in 1926, and utilised the then-new electrical recording process (in 2003, this was released on compact disc by IMP and later on Naxos outside the United States).^[15] Because of the time constraints of the 78rpm format, the tempi are often much faster than is usually the case today.^[16]

Instrumentation

The work is scored for an extremely large orchestra:

• Woodwind: 4 flutes (3rd doubling 1st piccolo; 4th doubling 2nd piccolo and a "bass flute in G", actually an alto flute), 3 oboes (3rd doubling bass oboe), an English horn, 3 clarinets in B-flat, a bass clarinet in B-flat, 3 bassoons and a contrabassoon

• Brass: 6 horns in F, 4 trumpets in C, 3 trombones (2 tenor and 1 bass), a "tenor tuba" (euphonium in B-flat) and a bass tuba

• Keyboards: a celesta, and an organ

• Percussion: 6 timpani (2 players, 3 drums each except in "Uranus" having 4 drums for 1st and 2 drums for 2nd), a bass drum, a snare drum, cymbals, a triangle, a tam-tam, a tambourine, a glockenspiel, a xylophone, and tubular bells

• Strings: 2 harps, 1st and 2nd violins, violas, violoncellos, and double basses

• Voices: ("Neptune" only), 2 three-part women's choruses (SSA) located in an adjoining room which is to be screened from the audience

Structure

The suite has seven movements, each named after a planet and its corresponding astrological character (see Planets in astrology):

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

Holst's original title (clearly seen on the handwritten full score) was "Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra". The composer's name was given as Gustav von Holst - by the time he wrote "Mercury" in 1916 he had dropped the 'von', for he signed the score of that movement separately as Gustav Holst. The movements were called only by the second part of each title (I "The Bringer of War", II "The Bringer of Peace" and so on). The present titles were added in time for the first (incomplete) public performance in September 1919, though they were never added to the original score..^[17] It is perhaps instructive to realise Holst attended an early performance of Schoenberg's "Five Orchestral Pieces" in 1914 (the year he wrote "Mars", "Venus" and "Jupiter") and owned a score of it.^[18][19]

A typical performance of all seven movements lasts for about fifty minutes. Some commentators have suggested that the ordering is structural, with the anomaly of Mars, Venus, Mercury, instead of the reverse, being a device to make the first four movements match the form of a symphony.^{[citation needed]} An alternative explanation may be the ruling of astrological signs of the zodiac by the planets: if the signs are listed along with their ruling planets in the traditional order starting with Aries, ignoring duplication, Pluto (then undiscovered) and the luminaries (the Sun and Moon), the order of the movements corresponds. Another possibility, this time from an astronomical perspective, is that the first three movements, representing the inner terrestrial planets, are ordered by decreasing distance from the Sun; the remaining movements, representing the gas giants, are ordered by increasing distance from the Sun. Critic David Hurwitz offers an alternative explanation for the piece's structure: that "Jupiter" is the centrepoint of the suite and that the movements on either side are in mirror images. Thus "Mars" involves motion and "Neptune" is static; "Venus" is sublime while "Uranus" is vulgar, and "Mercury" is light and scherzando while "Saturn" is heavy and plodding. This hypothesis is lent credence by the fact that the two outer movements, "Mars" and "Neptune", are both written in rather unusual quintuple metre.

A more prosaic explanation may simply be that Holst wrote the movements in the order they stand, with one exception, and that the only structural change was to place "Mercury" third. "Mars", "Venus" and "Jupiter" were from 1914, "Saturn", "Uranus" and "Neptune" from 1915 and "Mercury" from 1916. It has been speculated that "Mars" was a response to the outbreak of World War I, but Holst denied this, saying that "Mars" was completed before war was expected, and in August 1914 he was half-way through "Venus". Nevertheless, "Mars" is seen as prescient of mechanical warfare, something that was not a reality until after the entire suite was complete. Contrary to what is also sometimes said, Holst was not a pacifist but wanted to enlist as his friend Vaughan Williams did, but he was rejected as unfit: he suffered neuritis in his right arm—something that caused him to seek help from several amanuenses in scoring The Planets. This is clear from the number of different hands apparent in the full score.^[17]

"Neptune" was one of the first pieces of orchestral music to have a fade-out ending, although several composers (including Joseph Haydn in the finale of his Farewell Symphony) had achieved a similar effect by different means. Holst stipulates that the women's choruses are "to 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", and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) is "to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance".^[20] Although commonplace today, the effect bewitched audiences in the era before widespread recorded sound—after the initial 1918 run-through, Holst's daughter Imogen (in addition to watching the charwomen dancing in the aisles during "Jupiter") remarked that the ending was "unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women's voices growing fainter and fainter... until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence".^[2]

See also: Musica universalis

Pluto

Pluto was discovered in 1930, four years before Holst's death, and was hailed by astronomers as the ninth planet. Holst, however, expressed no interest in writing a movement for the new planet. He had become disillusioned by the popularity of the suite, believing that it took too much attention away from his other works.^[21]

In 2000, the Hallé Orchestra commissioned the English composer Colin Matthews, an authority on Holst, to write a new eighth movement, which he called "Pluto, the Renewer". Dedicated to the late Imogen Holst, Gustav Holst's daughter, it was first performed in Manchester on 11 May 2000, with Kent Nagano conducting the Hallé Orchestra. Matthews also changed the ending of "Neptune" slightly so that movement would lead directly into "Pluto".^[22]

Six years later, in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union promulgated for the very first time a definition of the term "planet", which resulted in Pluto's status being demoted from planet to dwarf planet.^[23] Consequently, Holst's original work is once again a complete representation of all of the extraterrestrial planets in the Solar System.

Recordings

Main article: The Planets discography

Adaptations of The Planets

Non-orchestral arrangements

• Organ – Morgan Fisher used the main theme from "Jupiter" for the intro of the song "Nova Solis" in 1972.
• Drum and bugle corps – Several drum and bugle corps have performed The Planets, most notably in 1995 when The Cavaliers won the Drum Corps International world championship.
• Piano duet (four hands) – An engraved copy of Holst's own piano duet arrangement was found by John York.^[24]
• Two pianos (duo) – Holst also created a version for two pianos. When he was composing the duo, he had two friends play the four-hands version to aid in the transcription.^[25] The two-piano arrangement was published in 1949. Holst's original manuscripts for it are now in the holdings of the Royal College of Music ("Mars", "Venus", "Saturn", "Uranus", "Neptune"), Royal Academy of Music ("Mercury") and British Library ("Jupiter", "Saturn", "Uranus").^[26]
• Organ – Peter Sykes transcribed The Planets for organ.^[27]
• Moog – Isao Tomita adapted The Planets for a Moog and other synthesizers and electronic devices.^[28]
• Brass band – Stephen Roberts, associate conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, transcribed the entire suite for brass band.^[29]
• Marching band – The movements "Mars", "Venus", and "Jupiter" have all been arranged for marching band by Jay Bocook.^[30] Paul Murtha also arranged the chorale section of "Jupiter" for marching band.^[31]
• Percussion ensemble – James Ancona arranged Mercury for a percussion ensemble. It consisted of 2 glockenspiels, 2 xylophones, 2 vibraphones, 2 marimbas, 5 timpani, a small suspended cymbal, and 2 triangles.^[32]
• Rock bands – An arrangement of "Mars" by progressive-rock trio Emerson, Lake & Powell appeared on their eponymous album (1985) and was played in their 1985–86 live shows.
  King Crimson, Greg Lake's first successful band performed a rock arrangement of "Mars" live in 1969. This arrangement was issued on their second LP, In the Wake of Poseidon, although for copyright reasons it was renamed "The Devil's Triangle" and Robert Fripp claimed authorship, with Holst receiving no composer credit.
  A third progressive-rock band, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, performed an arrangement of "Jupiter" with lyrics which they entitled "Joybringer".
  Black Metal/Viking Metal band Bathory arranged a section of "Jupiter" as the melody of the song "Hammerheart", from the album Twilight of the Gods. The rock group Sands recorded an abridged version of "Mars" that would dominate the latter half of their 1967 single "Listen to the Sky". Dave Edmunds' band Love Sculpture included the Mars movement on their 1970 album "Forms and Feelings," though this was only included in the U.S. version of the album due to Holst's family preventing worldwide release of the track. Progressive rock band Yes quoted a few sections of "Jupiter" in the song "The Prophet" from their 1970 album "Time and a Word". Death metal band Nile (band)'s track "Ramses Bringer Of War" makes sonic and titular reference to "Mars".
• The War of the Worlds TV series used a variation on "Mars", written by Billy Thorpe, as its Season 1 opening titles music.^[33]
• The BBC Concert Orchestra adapted "Jupiter" as the interval act for the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place in Birmingham's National Indoor Arena. As the theme of the interval act for that year was a celebration of the multi-cultural and multi-ethnicity that is the United Kingdom, the piece was arranged and altered to allow it to be performed in various styles by, amongst others, a Welsh Choir, Irish Harpist, Yorkshire Brass Band, Punjabi Bhangra, Scottish Bagpipers and featured guest performances form Leslie Garrett and Vanessa Mae. It was orchestrated and conducted by Martin Koch.
• Japanese singer Ayaka Hirahara released a pop version of "Jupiter" in December 2003. It went to #2 on the Oricon charts and sold nearly a million copies, making it the third-best-selling single in the Japanese popular music market for 2004. It remained on the charts for over three years.^[34]

Hymns

Main article: Thaxted (tune)

Holst himself adapted the melody of the central section of Jupiter in 1921 to fit the metre of a poem beginning "I vow to thee, my country". As a hymn tune it has the title Thaxted, after the town in Essex where Holst lived for many years, and it has also been used for other hymns, such as "O God beyond all praising".^[35]

"I Vow to Thee, My Country" was written between 1908 and 1918 by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice and became known as a response to the human cost of World War I. The hymn was first performed in 1925 and quickly became a patriotic anthem. Although Holst had no such patriotic intentions when he originally composed the music, these adaptations have encouraged others^[who?] to draw upon the score in similar ways throughout the 20th Century.^{[citation needed]}

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d} "HOLST Suite: The Planets" (compares compositions & history), Len Mullenger, Olton Recorded Music Society, January 2000, webpage: MusicWebUK-Holst: in 1913 Holst went on holiday to Majorca with Balfour Gardiner, Arnold Bax, and his brother Clifford Bax, and who spent the entire holiday discussing astrology.
2. ^ ^{a b c} "The Great Composers and Their Music", Vol. 50, Marshall Cavendish Ltd., London, 1985. I.H. as quoted on p1218
3. ^ Boult, Sir Adrian (1967), Liner note to EMI CD 5 66934 2
4. ^ ^{a b} Boult p. 35
5. ^ "The Definitive CDs" (CD 94), of Holst: The Planets (with Elgar: Enigma Variations), Norman Lebrecht, La Scena Musicale, 1 September 2004, webpage: Scena-Notes-100-CDs.
6. ^ "'Sir Adrian Boult' on divine-art.com". http://www.divine-art.com/AS/boult.htm. 
7. ^ "London Concerts", The Musical Times, April 1919, p. 179 (subscription required).
8. ^ ^{a b} Holst, Imogen, A Thematic Catalogue of Gustav Holst's Music. Faber, 1974
9. ^ Foreman, Lewis, Music in England 1885-1920, Thames Publishing, 1994
10. ^ "London Concerts", The Musical Times, January 1920, p. 32 (subscription required)
11. ^ Greene (1995), p. 89
12. ^ "Music in the Provinces", The Musical Times, 1 November 1920, p. 769; and "Municipal Music in Birmingham", The Manchester Guardian, 11 October 1920, p. 6
13. ^ Holst, Imogen, A Thematic Catalogue of Gustav Holst's Music. Faber, 1974, at page 125
14. ^ "London Concerts"' The Musical Times, December 1920, p. 821 (subscription required)
15. ^ HOLST: Planets (The) (Holst) / VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams) (1926, 1937) at Naxos.com
16. ^ Sanders, Alan, "Gustav Holst Records The Planets", Gramophone, September 1976, p. 34
17. ^ ^{a b} "Collected Facsimile Edition" vol. 3, Faber 1979. Introduction by Imogen Holst
18. ^ ibid.
19. ^ Full score, Bodleian Library MS. Mus.b.18/1-7
20. ^ "The Planets" (full orchestral score): Goodwin & Tabb, Ltd., London, 1921
21. ^ Kemp, Linsay (1996) Liner notes to Decca CD 452-303-2
22. ^ Scott Rohan, Michael, Review, Gramophone, August 2001, p. 50
23. ^ Perlman, David. "Pluto demoted - from 9th planet to just a dwarf", San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2006 (from SFGate website)
24. ^ Notes from Amazon, webpage: amazon.ca/Planets-World-Premiere.
25. ^ Notes to The Planets, Arranged for Two Pianos By The Composer, J. Curwen & Sons, London.
26. ^ Holst: Music for Two Pianos, Naxos catalogue no. 8.554369, About This Recording
27. ^ Peter Sykes. " Holst: The Planets." HB Direct, Released 1996.
28. ^ Isao Tomita. " Tomita's Planets." HB Direct, Released 1976
29. ^ Stephen Roberts at 4barsrest.com
30. ^ http://www.southernmusic.com/marching_band/1998/md.htm
31. ^ http://www.southernmusic.com/marching_band/2002/grade2.htm
32. ^ Tapspace :: Solo & Ensemble :: Mercury (from "The Planets")
33. ^ War Of The Worlds (1988) - Season 1 Opening Credits - YouTube
34. ^ 平原綾香 (Hirahara Ayaka) at last.fm (English)
35. ^ "O God Beyond All Praising". Oremus. http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/o/o153.html. Retrieved 2009-03-01. 

References

• Boult, Adrian (1973). My Own Trumpet. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0241024455. 
• Greene, Richard (1995). Holst: The Planets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45633-9. 
• Kennedy, Michael (1987). Adrian Boult. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0333487524. 

Further reading

• Head, Raymond. Astrology and Modernism in "The Planets", Tempo (Boosey & Hawkes, London, now Cambridge University Press) No 187 December 1993.
• Short, Michael. Gustav Holst: The Man and his Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-19-314154-X
• Reid, James. An Astronomer's Guide to Holst’s The Planets. Sky and Telescope Magazine, January 2011 issue.

External links

• Links to public domain scores of The Planets:
  • The Planets: Suite for Large Orchestra (Score in the Public Domain)
  • The Planets: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project.
  • Thaxted sheet music (PDF)
• Online Recordings:
  • The Planets Suite Op. 32 Live recording by Peabody Concert Orchestra (2002)
  • Free MIDI recordings of "The Planets" (containing some errors, however)
• IMDB entry for the 1983 Ken Russell documentary "The Planets"

Audio clips

• Jupiter performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra with Alexander Gibson in the Henry Wood Hall in Glasgow in July 1979
• Jupiter arranged by Stephen Roberts and performed by the Black Dyke Band