Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed a large number of other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success. His distinctive compositional style was the product of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. The subsequent inspiration of the English folksong revival of the early 20th century, and the example of such rising modern composers as Maurice Ravel, led Holst to develop and refine an individual style.
The Planets, Op. 32 (1914-1916)
I. Mars, the Bringer of War (1914)
II. Venus, the Bringer of Peace (1914) (6:49)
III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger (1916) (14:22)
IV. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity (1914) (18:28)
V. Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age (1915) (26:38)
VI. Uranus, the Magician (1915) (34:31)
VII. Neptune, the Mystic (1915) (40:07)
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Steinberg
DGG rec. 1971
The suite has seven movements, each named after a planet and its corresponding astrological character.
Holst’s original title, as seen on the handwritten full score, was “Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra”. Holst almost certainly attended an early performance of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra in 1914 (the year he wrote Mars, Venus and Jupiter), and owned a score of it, the only Schoenberg score he ever owned. Each movement of Holst’s work was originally 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 1918, though they were never added to the original score.
One explanation for the suite’s structure, presented by Holst scholar Raymond Head, is 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 and the luminaries (the Sun and Moon), the order of the movements corresponds. 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 meter.
Holst suffered neuritis in his right arm, which caused him to seek help from Vally Lasker and Nora Day, two amanuenses, in scoring The Planets.
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”. 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”