The Planets by Gustav Holst; Bernard Herrmann; The London Philharmonic Orchestra London Records (SPC 21049) Publication date 1970

 As a rule, Holst wrote in a letter dated 1914,

‘l only study things that suggest music to me.

That’s why | worried at Sanskrit. Then recently

the character of each planet suggested lots to

me.’ Thus the study of astrology gave him the

incentive to his most popular and most ambitious

orchestral work. It should be stressed that the

astrological significance of each of the seven

planets is sometimes for variance with their

familiar mythological associations. Where this

happens to be, the composer most subtly man-

aged to reconcile both aspects: thus, Venus,

while bringing Peace, is imbued with as much

erotic sensuousness as can be expected from this

most ascetic of composers, while the mystical

female voices in Neptune more than allude to

that God’s maritime realm,

Holst started work on the first piece, Mars, in

the spring of 1914, thus anticipating the outbreak

of World War One by several months. The whole

Suite was not completed until three years later.

Sir Adrian Boult conducted the first (private)

performance in the composer’s presence on

September 29th, 1918, and the infectious

rhythms of Uranus are said to have set the char-

women dancing! The first public performance,

with the same conductor} took place on February

27th, 1919 at a Queen's Hall concert of the Royal

Philharmonic Society. The success was over-

whelming from the start, and has caused The

Planets to overshadow Holst’s other works to

the present day. Much has been said about the

work’s unevenness, about its somewhat square

and casual treatment of formal problems (never

Holst’s strong point anyhow!), about some

patches derivative to the point of actual borrow-

ing, about the brashness or coarseness of some

of the tunes. However, these shortcomings have

been grossly exaggerated, and are of very slight

moment as compared to the outstanding virtues

that have ensured The Planets a permanent and

beloved place in the orchestral repertoire.

Of these, the extraordinarily brilliant and skil-

ful orchestration is the most striking feature. The

scoring of The Planets, though calling for mam-

moth forces (quadruple woodwind, including

such rare guests as the bass flute or bass oboe,

six horns, four trumpets, three trombones,

tenor and bass tuba, six timpani, requiring two

players, a large array of percussion, handled by

three performers, celesta, xylophone, two harps,

organ and a full body of strings) always remain a

model of clarity, economy and transparence, It

stems from the great tradition of Berlioz, whose

Treatise on Instrumentation Holst had absorbed

while still a youth, and while ignoring nothing of

the most recent conquests of Rimsky-Korsakov,

Debussy or Schoenberg, it also manages to dis-

cover sonorities of astounding originality that

are unmistakably the composer’s own. As should

be expected from a trombone player, the brass

writing is peculiarly expert and brilliant. But

music is not made of orchestral sound only, and

Holst’s melodic invention has equally helped The

Planets to gain their permanent status. His gift

for memorable and individual tunes goes along-

side with his innate sense of rhythm, and if some

of his harmonic procedures may sound obvious

to-day, they were quite novel and daring when

they first appeared.

Holst’s tunes never become actual themes, for

he lacked the sense of organic growth indispens-

able for genuine symphonic development. He

| iINWER: SPC 271049

relies upon varied repetition or juxtaposition,

and while some of the pieces (Mars, Mercury) are

set in simple ternary form or (Jupiter) in more

ambitious, but equally symmetric arch-form,

others (Uranus, Neptune), favour cumulative

structures of the ‘open’ type, eschewing any

formal recapitulation. These somewhat crude

and square-cut formal procedures nevertheless

allow each piece to reach the scope of a true

symphonic movement. Thus, Mars has the

weight of a genuine symphonic Allegro, albeit an

unusually taut and unified one; Mercury and

Uranus are widely differing, but equally success-

ful Scherzi, while the concentric Rondo-like

structure of Jupiter, alongside its tonal splendour

and spaciousness, makes it the fitting keystone

of the whole Suite.

The part-writing and scoring of The Planets

definitely belong into the twentieth century.

Holst but seldom indulges in post-romantic har-

monies, and his chords are never cloying. The

orchestral luxuriance remains devoid of any thick-

ness or opacity, and even the ‘impressionistic’

pieces (Saturn and Neptune) achieve their poetical

mystery through remoteness, never through

haziness. The atmosphere is much too clear and

rarefied to allow for any chiaroscuro or sfumato,

and in that sense too, The Planets belong to our

time as genuine ‘space’ music.

In the terrifying toccata of Mars, the Bringer

of War, with its relentless five-four ostinato, the

powerful grip of Le Sacre, then shining in all its

revolutionary novelty, may be felt. But the piece

also looks forward to Vaughan-Williams: to the

second movement of the Sixth Symphony (in the

grinding wailings of the subdued 5/2 episode in

the middle), and to the close of the Fourth (in

the stark, uncompromising ending, with its bare

open fifth). As should be expected, brass domin-

ates in this monstrous unbridling of forces in

which three thematic elements may be distin-

guished: the all-pervading rhythmic pulse, the

mighty blocks of parallel chords moving up-

wards and downwards, the urgent call to arms

by the tenor tuba, answered by the trumpets. At

the piece’s climax, the machine seems to have

gone out of control, and the brief, bewildered

flight of semiquavers is crushed at once by the

cruel and calculated stamping of the last

fortissimo bars.

Venus, the Bringer of Peace fittingly dis-

penses with brass (except the horns) and

percussion, and concentrates on delicate and

lucid tone colours, such as woodwinds, harps,

celesta and solo violin. The cool and aloof atmos-

phere of its opening bars, with their serene

contrary motions, is not maintained, however.

An important accompanying figure of shifting

chords (harps, horns, flutes) is strikingly reminis-

cent of a similar passage in Florent Schmitt's La

Tragedie de Salome. Then the time-signature

changes to three-four, the tempo becomes

slightly faster, and with the entrance of a solo

violin the temperature rises distinctly, while the

harmonies indulge in luscious, somewhat over-

ripe chromaticisms of a quite Scriabinian flavour.

But the piece, in modified rondo form, ends with

an extended conclusion that manages to recap-

ture the opening’s serenity.

Mercury, the Winged Messenger, is one of

the most striking and successful symphonic

Scherzi ever penned, worthy of Berlioz’ Queen

Mab itself. The extraordinary volatile effect of

this shortest and lightest of the seven Planets is

achieved by the bitonal juxtaposition of two

distant keys (B flat and E), an effect that may have

been suggested by the Fugue from Strauss’

Zarathustra, and by the mixture of triple and

duple time. An obstinate tune featuring such

cross-rhythms, first played on a solo violin in

C-major, is built up through an effective orches-

tral progression in what amounts to a Trio

section, the climax underlining its kinship to

Sheherazade quite unabashedly. The whimsical

Coda mixes up all thematic elements and van-

ishes on its tip-toes into nothingness.

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity has been

more violently critized than any other of the

Planets, and it must be admitted that some of the

structural joints are rather awkward, and that

one at least of the tune lacks distinction, But

then, this is a full-blooded, cheerful sort. of a

piece, and a country-bumpkin-like boisterous-

ness belongs to the Jovian picture. The big

hymn-like tune in E-flat that occupies the middle

of it (later set by Holst himself to the words / vow

to thee my country) accounts for the Zeus-like

aspect of the King of Gods’ personality. The

whole piece is dominated by the interval of the

perfect fourth, which pervades it both melodic-

ally (ascending or descending) and harmonically.

The scoring is of astounding brightness and

brilliance. When the opening Allegro giocoso

changes over to an equally fast three-four,

Sheherazade looms once more with the vigorous

tune of the horns. Shortly before the rather

abrupt ending, there is a reminiscence of the big

hymn in the bass (in B-major) under glittering

scales of the woodwinds and harps: this is taken

almost literally from a place in the first move-

ment of d’Indy’s Symphony on a French Mountain

Air. As a whole, Jupiter remains above all a

masterly lesson in orchestration.

On the contrary, Saturn, the Bringer of Old

Age is Holst at his most intensely personal and

deepest. It opens unlimited vistas into those cold

and dreary spaces which he was to feel to be his

own true realm, and which he was to explore to

their remotest recesses right up to the end of his

life, notably in his late masterpiece Egdon Heath.

Again, some foreign influences may be noticed,

but they are completely absorbed into Holst’s

inimitable personality. Thus, the syncopated

oscillations between two dissonant chords right

at the beginning were probably inspired by the

third of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra,

which had been first performed under Sir Henry

Wood in 1912. The slow melody of the double

basses seems to embody senescence itself. Then

Holst’s typical ‘sad procession’ gets under way,

with a solemn tune of the trombones. Next

comes a chorale played by the four flutes in their

lowest register, an effect of livid ghostliness.

While the tension slowly rises in a spine-chilling

crescendo the heavy syncopated treads of the

accompanying chords are the beats of Time itself

that has become sound. With each new chord

we seem to get older. The panic of the whole

orchestra, whose clamour is dominated by the

brazen clangour of knells, is of no avail: nothing

could stop that ruthless chariot of Juggernaut.

The only solution is acceptance, and this is ex-

pressed in the beautiful conclusion of the piece,

when the time-signature changes to 3/2. We are

lifted into a region devoid of any passion or

suffering, and the music, whose magic harmonies

and scoring remind us of the last picture of

Rimsky’s Kitezh, but also of some parts in

Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, dies out peacefully.

Uranus, the Magician blares out his por-

tentous invocation of four notes (G-E flat-A-B)

in the trumpets and trombones twice echoed by

tubas and timpani. The bassoons are first to

respond (as in Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice), at

once establishing the piece’s galumphing six-four

gait. During the various sections the opening

motto is always heard as a comment in short

values, while the other tunes unfold. There are

three in succession, none of which ever reappears

afterwards. The second of them, played pesante

by horns and strings in unison, later found an

echo in Vaughan-Williams’ fob (Satan's Dance of

Triumph). The third is heard over a savage

ostinato of the two timpanists, based upon the

motto, but certainly inspired by Le Sacre. This

builds up toa terrific noise, which nothing seems

able to stop. But at the height of his triumph, the

Wizard suddenly vanishes into nothing on a

sensational glissando of the full organ. To quote

the composer's daughter, we are left ‘in a region

that has never known make-believe, where

magic itself stares down unblinking from a

million miles away.’ A last attempt of the

Magician to recapture his lost power fails to

materialize, and the piece dies out incon-

clusively. It is worth quoting the late Marion

Scott about this extraordinary ending: ‘Accord-

ing to ancient beliefs in the lore of numbers, 16

was called ‘The falling tower’ or ‘Uranus num-

bers’. Its unpleasant property was that just when

everything was going splendidly and seeming on

the point of fulfilment all would be dashed away

and the victim left with nothing but his misery.

Listen to the last bars of Uranus where the old

Magician works up his enchantment into a terrific

chord that blazes through the whole orchestra

and then suddenly collapses into a moan and

nothingness. Surely there is the Uranus number!’

Neptune, the Mystic is the most wonderful

interstellar music of the ‘2001’ type ever penned

by a composer, and its quiet and silvery stream

of sounds unfolds without the slightest accident

or hint at any earthly sentiment. A vision of

remote beauty and of ideal perfection, its intense

spiritual concentration does not stand to be dis-

tracted even by anything as incidental as a theme.

Thus, dispensing with melodic profiles, the piece

only deals with shifting harmonies and magical

tone-colouring. The unseizable tremolo of the

harps, the icy and lucid tinklings of celesta and

glockenspiel, even the totally disembodied

(abstract, as it were) sound of female voices

faintly heard towards the end, all found their

way into Vaughan-Williams’ Sinfornia Antartica

thirty-five years later. The music does not finish:

the two last chords of the unaccompanied voices

continue their gentle rocking, gradually retiring

into the innermost part of the nebula and fading

away into the infinite and eternity . . .

Harry Halbreich.

Producers: Tony D'Amato/Gavin Barrett

Engineer: Arthur Lilley

Recorded at Kingsway Hall, London