“As a rule I only study things that suggest music to me,” Holst once wrote, “recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me.” He was reluctant to speak of this, though he admitted that casting horoscopes for his friends was his “pet vice.” The Planets is an astrological work. Sometime after the turn of the century, Holst came into the thrall of astrology. Between 19 he composed four sets of hymns from those ancient books of knowledge, and his most moving achievement is the opera Savitri, based on an incident in the fourth‑century epic Mahabharata. In his twenties, he became deeply involved in Indian philosophy and religion, and he taught himself Sanskrit to make his own translations of the Rig Veda. There was more to his heaven and earth than what he inherited from his Swedish and English ancestors or what he had learned at the Royal College. He kept the association with Saint Paul’s until his death-the alumnae used to identify themselves to him by naming the Bach cantatas they had sung under his direction-and it was there that he worked on The Planets, in the soundproof room of the new music wing opened in 1913, a paradise where he could be undisturbed and indulge in the near‑crematorial indoor temperatures he favored. He taught most of his adult life, at the James Allen and Saint Paul’s schools for girls, at Morley College for Working Men and Women, and briefly in 1932 at Harvard. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music, London, with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, and it was as a composer and teacher that he really found himself. He played violin and keyboards as a boy, but the neuritis put a stop to both, and other than occasional conducting, his last activity as a performer was as trombone player in the Scottish Orchestra and with the Carl Rosa Opera Company from 1898 until 1903. Much of his life he suffered from neuritis so severe that he had to dictate some of his music, including portions of the densely intricate score of The Planets. His nights alternated between insomnia and nightmares. He was a timid child, so nearsighted that as a grown man he could not, even when wearing spectacles, recognize members of his own family at six yards. Gustav inherited his mother’s overstrung nerves, and later in life he was several times near mental collapse. Gustav’s mother, a sweet lady whose jumpy nerves were upset by music, died young, and Gustav and his brother, Emil Gottfried (later a successful actor under the name of Ernest Cossart), were brought up by their Aunt Nina, who had strewn rose petals for Franz Liszt to walk on. THE BACKSTORY Gustav Holst’s father was a piano teacher whose grandfather had once taught the harp to the Imperial Grand Duchesses in Saint Petersburg, and had emigrated to England from Riga. A hidden 6‑part choir of female voices is introduced in Neptune INSTRUMENTATION: 4 flutes (3rd and 4th doubling piccolo, 4th also doubling alto flute), 3 oboes and English horn (3rd oboe doubling bass oboe), 3 clarinets and bass clarinet, 3 bassoons and contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tenor tuba, bass tuba, 6 timpani (2 players), triangle, snare drum, tambourine, cymbals, bass drum, tam‑tam, chimes, glockenspiel, celesta, xylophone, 2 harps, organ, and strings. MOST RECENT-Edwin Outwater conducted as part of the SFS Summer with the Symphony series US PREMIERE: Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on December 31, 1920 WORLD PREMIERE: The first performance of the complete suite took place under the direction of Albert Coates on November 15, 1920, in London Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, EnglandĬOMPOSED: Holst began writing The Planets between 19, beginning with Mars (but before the outbreak of war that August), continuing with Venus and Jupiter that fall, writing Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in 1915, and finishing with Mercury in 1916 GUSTAV HOLST (Gustavus Theodore von Holst)īORN: September 21, 1874. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.The Planets, Suite for Large Orchestra, Opus 32 If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it.
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