At some point, someone had to come along and write a piece of music about the planets. As early as the 15th century, the Italian neo-Platonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino devised music appropriate for each of the known planets to attract their salutary influences, and sang the music, accompanying himself on the lira da braccio (a bowed string instrument). Unfortunately, Ficino’s planetary songs have not come down to us. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that someone made the connection between music and the planets explicit in a major composition that we may actually listen to.

Forty-year-old Gustav Holst, who taught music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith near London, had a large number of works in his catalog but had not yet achieved a breakthrough success. Aside from his lifelong friendship with Ralph Vaughan Williams, which dated from their student days, Holst was a rather withdrawn man who suffered from poor health for most of his life. A neuritis in his hands had forced him to give up piano playing while still a young man (for a few years, he was able to make his living playing the trombone). He had to dictate some of his music to two dedicated assistants, Nora Day and Vally Lasker. He spent most of his time directing student performing groups and composing music for them. More serious work had to wait for weekends and summer vacations.

Holst had a long-standing interest in astrology. The writer Clifford Bax reported that the composer was “a skilled reader of horoscopes.” Holst himself declared: “As a rule I only study things which suggest music to me. Recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely.” His daughter Imogen, a noted composer, conductor and writer in her own right, wrote in the book she devoted to her father: “For the first time in his life Holst had said what he wanted to say in a way in which only he could have said it.”

The characters of the planets, and their influences on us, are sufficiently well defined in the astrological tradition. Each planet bears a distinct similarity to the Greco-Roman god whose name it shares, although Holst insisted that his music was inspired by the planets, not the deities.

The suite runs the whole gamut of moods from warlike to lyrical, whimsical, and mysterious. The seven movements cover all the planets in our solar system, except the Earth. (Pluto, which was not discovered until 1930, obviously wasn’t included either, but maybe it’s just as well since Pluto was “demoted” from planet to a mere dwarf planet in 2006, in a move that some astronomers disagreed with. Thus, the decision of British composer Colin Matthews, who in 2000 composed a Pluto movement to go with The Planets, may have been somewhat premature, although the world gained a beautiful new orchestral work in the process. In any case, no one has said that a dwarf planet can’t get an orchestra piece written in its honor.) 

The sequence of Holst’s movements does not follow the order of increasing distance from the sun; instead, Holst started with Mars, moved closer and closer to the sun, and then, jumping to Jupiter, farther and farther away from it. This sequence is actually the same as the order in which the music was written, except for Mercury, which was the last movement to be completed. In the course of the seven movements, we move from the more clear-cut emotions in “Mars,” “Venus,” “Mercury” and “Jupiter” to the more ambiguous and mysterious ones of “Saturn,” “Uranus,” and “Neptune.”

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I. “Mars, the Bringer of War” (Allegro) is a march in the asymmetrical meter of 5/4. As Sir Adrian Boult, the famous conductor, recalled, Holst had insisted that, of all the characteristics of the war, he most wanted to capture its “stupidity.” (This movement was completed shortly before the outbreak of World War I.) The strings, the harps and the timpani start with a brutal ostinato rhythm in 5/4, against which the winds play their menacing themes.

II. “Venus, the Bringer of Peace” is a lyrical Adagio with many prominent instrumental solos (horn, violin, oboe, celesta). It is hard to find more evocative words for this movement than Imogen Holst has done:

The calm notes of the solo horn rise through empty space, and the cool flutes sail down to meet them, blending with the glitter of the oboes and bringing the solace of contrary motion after so much parallel surging up and down. As they draw inwards the listener sighs with relief to hear them come to rest for a while in the safe anchorage of their minor triad. When the air stirs it is with the movement of quietly undulating crotchets that change to and fro over repeated chords on flutes and horns and harps, while a low sustained pedal note stretches out to hold their vibrations.

III. “Mercury, the Winged Messenger” (Vivace) is the scherzo movement of the suite. The constantly changing orchestral colors, the brief motifs and the many unexpected melodic and harmonic turns make this music a perfect illustration of the “mercurial” character.

IV. In “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” (Allegro giocoso), Holst saw (according to Boult) “one of those jolly fat people who enjoy life.” This would appear to contradict Holst’s other statement according to which the movements represent planets, not gods (much less people); however, Jupiter is definitely a bright and benevolent planet according to the astrological tradition,
and what Boult said about one of the themes is true of the movement as a whole: “it reflects the good humour of Jupiter,
no more, no less.”

“Jupiter” is replete with memorable melodies; many of them are given to the brass instruments, in keeping with the majestic character of Jupiter (the largest of the planets, or the most powerful of the gods). In the middle of the movement, we suddenly hear a solemn hymn tune played by the strings (later published, with Holst’s acquiescence if not his wholehearted approval, as a song for chorus in unison with the words “I Vow to Thee, My Country”). Then the “jollier” Jupiter music returns.

V. “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” (Adagio), the darkest movement of the cycle, was Holst’s own favorite. The planet Saturn was thought to have a negative influence on humans: it was frequently associated with demons, and with the sadness and decline of old age. Like “Venus” after “Mars,” “Saturn” after “Jupiter” forms a complete contrast in mood. The immutable parallel chords at the beginning of the movement, played by flutes, bass flute, and harps, seem to express the inevitability of aging; the melody that gradually unfolds in the trombones is nothing if not gloomy and foreboding in character. The melody rises to a full fortissimo (with bells tolling), and then fades away as two solo double basses play it to the accompaniment of muted violins and the harmonics of the harps. The theme last appears in a pentatonic variation (that is, in a form playable on the piano’s black keys), bathed in the lush sonorities of the harps, flutes, horns and a distant echo of the bells heard earlier. One feels the proximity in time of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé (1912).

VI. Once again, the mood changes drastically in “Uranus, the Magician” (Allegro). It is another scherzo movement, but unlike the volatile “Mercury,” “Uranus” evokes an evolution from the grotesque to the supernatural. The trumpets and trombones intone a stentorian four-note motif (based on a segment of the whole-tone scale); this is developed by the bassoons into a lively movement whose rhythm and instrumentation recall Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1897). Adrian Boult asserted, however, that Holst “had never heard Dukas’s work, or even seen the score, when he wrote ’Uranus.’” The music reaches a tremendous climax followed by sudden silence, and then, in Boult’s words: “Harps suggest the four-note figure, another scream from everybody follows, and this chord, reduced to nothing, changes colour several times as a magician might, and the four notes ppp bring us back to silence after six minutes of magical fun.”

VII. In “Neptune, the Mystic” (Andante), as Boult explained,

every instrument is directed to play pianissimo throughout, and the tone is to be “dead,” except for one moment near the end, when the clarinet plays a succession of notes which might almost be called a tune in this otherwise tuneless, expressionless, shapeless succession of cloudy harmonies, suggesting as it does an infinite vision of timeless eternity. We spoke of the end but this is inaccurate, for if it is possible for a piece of music never to finish, this is what happens here. A slow, irregular swing between two distant chords fills nearly every bar of the 3+2 metre, and imperceptibly we become conscious that female voices have joined the orchestra. Soon the instruments gradually melt away, and the voices carry on with the two swaying chords, whose diminuendo is prolonged until we wonder whether we still hear them or only hold then in our memory, swinging backward and forward for all time. 

Notes By Peter Laki