The Planets, Op. 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1917. In the last movement the orchestra is joined by a wordless female chorus. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System and reflects its astrological significance.
The premiere of The Planets was at the Queen's Hall, London, on 29 September 1918, conducted by Holst's friend Adrian Boult before an invited audience of about 250 people. Three concerts at which movements from the suite were played were given in 1919 and early 1920. The first complete performance at a public concert was given at the Queen's Hall on 15 November 1920 by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates.
The innovative nature of Holst's music caused some initial hostility among a minority of critics, but the suite quickly became and has remained popular, influential and widely performed. The composer conducted two recordings of the work, and it has been recorded at least 80 times subsequently by conductors, choirs and orchestras from the UK and internationally.
Background and composition
The Planets was composed over nearly three years, between 1914 and 1917. The work had its origins in March and April 1913, when Gustav Holst and his friend and benefactor H. Balfour Gardiner holidayed in Spain with the composer Arnold Bax and his brother, the author Clifford Bax. A discussion about astrology piqued Holst's interest in the subject. Clifford later commented that Holst became "a remarkably skilled interpreter of horoscopes".Short, p. 113 Shortly after the holiday Holst wrote to a friend: "I only study things that suggest music to me. That's why I worried at Sanskrit. Then recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely".Quoted in Holst (1981), p. 48 He told Clifford in 1926 that The Planets:
Imogen Holst, the composer's daughter, wrote that her father had difficulty with large-scale orchestral structures such as symphonies, and the idea of a suite with a separate character for each movement was an inspiration to him.Holst (1986), p. 32 Holst's biographer Michael Short and the musicologist Richard Greene both think it likely that another inspiration for the composer to write a suite for large orchestra was the example of Arnold Schoenberg's Five Pieces for OrchestraShort, p. 119; and Greene, p. 18 – in fact, Holst's original title for his suite was "Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra". That suite had been performed in London in 1912 and again in 1914; Holst was at one of the performances, and he is known to have owned a copy of the score.Lambourn, David. "Henry Wood and Schoenberg", The Musical Times, August 1987, pp. 422–427 ; .
Holst described The Planets as "a series of mood pictures", acting as "foils to one another", with "very little contrast in any one of them".Short, p. 121 Short writes that some of the characteristics the composer attributed to the planets may have been suggested by Alan Leo's booklet What Is a Horoscope?, which he was reading at the time. Holst took the title of two movements – "Mercury, the Winged Messenger" and "Neptune, the Mystic" – from Leo's books.Leo, p. 58; and Head, Raymond. "Holst – Astrology and Modernism in 'The Planets, Tempo, December 1993, pp. 15–22 ; . But although astrology was Holst's starting point, he arranged the planets to suit his own plan:
In an early sketch for the suite Holst listed Mercury as "no. 1", which Greene suggests raises the possibility that the composer's first idea was simply to depict the planets in the obvious order, from nearest the sun to the farthest. "However, opening with the more disturbing character of Mars allows a more dramatic and compelling working out of the musical material".Greene, p. 19 Holst described his composition to a reporter: The pieces were suggested by the astrological significance of the Planets; there is no programme music in them, neither have they any connection with the deities of classical mythology bearing the same names. If any guide to the music is required the sub-title of each piece will be found sufficient, especially if it be used in a broad sense. For instance, Jupiter brings jollity in the ordinary sense, and also the more ceremonial kind of rejoicing associated with religious or national festivities. Saturn brings not only physical decay, but also a vision of fulfilment. Mercury is the symbol of mind.Boston Symphony Orchestra Programme, Forty-Second Season 1922-23, 832, 834.
Holst had a heavy workload as head of music at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith and director of music at Morley College,Warrack, John. "Holst, Gustav Theodore"; , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2021 . and had limited time for composing. Imogen Holst wrote, "Weekends and holidays were the only times when he could really get on with his own work, which is why it took him over two years to finish The Planets. She added that Holst's chronic neuritis in his right arm was troubling him considerably and he would have found it impossible to complete the 198 pages of the large full score without the help of two colleagues at St Paul's, Vally Lasker and Nora Day, whom he called his "scribes".Holst (1981), p. 50
The first movement to be written was Mars in mid-1914, followed by Venus and Jupiter in the latter part of the year, Saturn and Uranus in mid-1915, Neptune later in 1915 and Mercury in early 1916. Holst completed the orchestration during 1917.Greene, p. 27
First performances
The premiere of The Planets, conducted at Holst's request by Adrian Boult, was held at short notice on 29 September 1918, during the last weeks of the First World War, in the Queen's Hall with the financial support of 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 Holst's students at Morley College and St Paul's Girls' School.Holst (1986), p. 159 It was a comparatively intimate affair, attended by around 250 invited associates, 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."
At a Royal Philharmonic Society concert at the Queen's Hall on 27 February 1919 conducted by Boult, five of the seven movements were played in the order Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, and Jupiter."London Concerts", The Musical Times, April 1919, p. 179 It was Boult's decision not to play all seven movements at this concert. Although Holst would have liked the suite to be played complete, Boult's view was that when the public were being presented with a completely new language of this kind, "half an hour of it was as much as they could take in".Kennedy, p. 68 Imogen Holst recalled that her father "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'".Holst (1974), p. 125
At a Queen's Hall concert on 22 November 1919, Holst conducted Venus, Mercury and Jupiter. There was another incomplete public performance, in Birmingham, on 10 October 1920, with five movements (Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter), conducted by the composer."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 The first complete performance of the suite at a public concert was on 15 November 1920; the London Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Albert Coates. The first complete performance conducted by the composer was on 13 October 1923, with the Queen's Hall Orchestra."Winter Concerts: Plan for Season", The Times, 17 September 1923, p. 10; and "Music", The Observer, 14 October 1923, p. 10
Instrumentation The work is scored for a large orchestra. Holst's fellow composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote in 1920, "Holst uses a very large orchestra in the Planets not to make his score look impressive, but because he needs the extra tone colour and knows how to use it".Vaughan Williams, Ralph. "Gustav Holst (Continued)", Music & Letters, October 1920, p. 314 The score calls for the following instrumentation. The movements vary in the combinations of instruments used. Woodwinds: four flutes (third doubling first piccolo and fourth doubling second piccolo and "bass flute in G", actually an alto flute), three oboes (third doubling bass oboe), one cor anglais, three clarinets in B and A, one bass clarinet in B, three bassoons, one contrabassoon Brass: six horns in F, four trumpets in C, two trombones, one bass trombone, one tenor tuba in B (often played on a euphonium), one tuba Percussion: six timpani (two players); triangle, snare drum, tambourine, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, tubular bells, glockenspiel, xylophone Keyboards: organ, celesta Strings: two harps, violins i, ii, violas, cellos, double basses (Low C appears in the score)
In Neptune, two three-part women's choruses (each comprising two soprano sections and one alto section) located in an adjoining room which is to be screened from the audience are added. Source: Published score.Holst (1921), unnumbered introductory page
Structure
I. Mars, the Bringer of War
Mars is marked allegro and is in a relentless ostinato for most of its duration. It opens quietly, the first two bars played by percussion, harp and col legno strings.Holst (1921), pp. 1–2 The music builds to a quadruple-forte, dissonant climax.Holst (1921), p. 29 Although Mars is often thought to portray the horrors of mechanised warfare, it was completed before the First World War started. The composer Colin Matthews writes that for Holst, Mars would have been "an experiment in rhythm and clashing keys", and its violence in performance "may have surprised him as much as it galvanised its first audiences".Matthews, Colin (2011). Notes to Chandos CD CHSA5086 Short comments, "harmonic dissonances abound, often resulting from clashes between moving chords and static pedal-points", which he compares to a similar effect at the end of Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, and adds that "although battle music had been written before, notably by Richard Strauss in Ein Heldenleben, it had never expressed such violence and sheer terror".Short, pp. 123–124
II. Venus, the Bringer of Peace
The second movement begins adagio in .Holst (1921), p. 32 According to Imogen Holst, Venus "has to try and bring the right answer to Mars". The movement opens with a solo horn theme answered quietly by the flutes and oboes. A second theme is given to solo violin. The music proceeds tranquilly with oscillating chords from flutes and harps, with decoration from the celesta.Holst (1986), p. 34 Between the opening adagio and the central largo there is a flowing andante section in with a violin melody (solo then tutti) accompanied by gentle syncopation in the woodwind. The oboe solo in the central largo is one of the last romantic melodies Holst allowed himself before turning to a more austere manner in later works. Leo called the planet "the most fortunate star under which to be born";Greene, p. 47 Short calls Holst's Venus "one of the most sublime evocations of peace in music".Short, p. 126
III. Mercury, the Winged Messenger