The Planets

Gustav Holst was an experienced composer when his orchestral suite The Planets was completed in 1917, but nothing the 43-year-old had previously written prepared audiences for its epic scope and orchestral mastery. Inspired by Holst’s growing interest in astrology, The Planets is cast in seven movements, each reflecting the character of a particular planet and lasting 50 minutes in total. Holst’s music for the suite is wide-ranging in tone and atmosphere, and much of it is exceptionally well known through frequent use in film and television productions. The opening movement “Mars, the Bringer of War” is one example, its military strut and threatening brass chords building inexorably to a string of bone-crunching climaxes. “Venus”, by contrast, is scored with utmost delicacy, the “Bringer of Peace” represented as alluringly beautiful but fragile in nature. “Mercury, the Winged Messenger” is brilliantly mercurial, while “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” incorporates the tune subsequently repurposed in the patriotic hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country”. The Planets concludes with one of Holst’s most vivid inspirations as “Neptune, the Mystic” gradually fades to black, a choir of wordless women’s voices drifting ethereally into the recesses of outer space.