Holst and The Planets: a Suite Born from Astrology
From Mars to Neptune, without the Earth: why Gustav Holst built The Planets on astrological characters rather than astronomy, and how the suite was born.
Listening to the relentless rhythm of Mars or the festive brightness of Jupiter, many people think that Gustav Holst's The Planets is a musical description of the solar system. In reality the English composer, born in Cheltenham in 1874 and dead in London in 1934, drew his inspiration not from astronomy but from astrology. Each movement of the suite, composed between 1914 and 1916, portrays the character that astrological tradition attributed to a planet, not the celestial body itself.
A Journey to Majorca and the Books of Alan Leo
Holst's interest in astrology arose, according to the accounts, during a holiday in Majorca in the spring of 1913, in the company of the writer Clifford Bax, brother of the composer Arnold Bax, who talked to him about it at length. Back in England, Holst read the manuals of the astrologer Alan Leo, widely read in those years in London Theosophical circles, and began casting horoscopes for his friends.
From these books come, in part, the subtitles of the seven movements: Mars, the Bringer of War; Venus, the Bringer of Peace; Mercury, the Winged Messenger; Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age; Uranus, the Magician; Neptune, the Mystic. Holst did not have a narrative programme in mind, but a portrait of moods and psychological forces.
Why the Earth Is Missing
The astrological approach also explains some absences. The Earth does not appear because, in a horoscope, it is the point from which the sky is observed, not one of the planets acting within it. The Sun and the Moon, which astrology regards as luminaries, are also excluded. Pluto, finally, could not be there: it was discovered only in 1930, when the suite was already famous, and Holst showed no interest in adding it.
The order of the movements does not follow distance from the Sun. Holst opens with Mars, written in a rhythm of five beats that gives the march a mechanical, menacing gait, and completed, according to tradition, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Then come the stillness of Venus and the lightness of Mercury, before the great hymn of Jupiter.
Saturn, Uranus and the Chorus of Neptune
Holst considered Saturn the most successful movement. In it he describes the slow approach of old age, with chords swaying like the pendulum of a clock, which finally resolve into a luminous serenity. Uranus, the Magician, is a grotesque scherzo opened by four solemn notes, almost a spell formula. In modern astrological tradition Uranus was associated with sudden events and upheavals.
Neptune, the Mystic, closes the suite with an effect that was new at the time: a wordless female chorus, placed offstage, repeating the same figure while the music slowly fades into silence. The first performance took place privately on 29 September 1918 at the Queen's Hall in London, conducted by Adrian Boult. The complete suite was presented to the public in 1920.
Holst also cultivated a keen interest in Indian spirituality: he studied Sanskrit at University College London and set hymns from the Rig Veda to music. The Planets is the most famous fruit of this curiosity about ancient doctrines, translated into a modern orchestral language that has influenced generations of composers.