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"I’m greatly averse to fixed principles in art and I like everything -- form, melody, harmony, etc. -- to grow out of the original inspiration which latter is one of the mysteries and therefore quite unfit for polite conversation!"1 Holst wrote to his friend W. G. Whittaker after sending him a few movements of his newly written suite The Planets. Both Holst’s humor and love for his work show strongly in his comment. He was a strong proponent of letting the music lead the composer where it wanted to go, and was delighted by the mystery of how a piece would eventually end. Though his first compositions were never overly popular, he never gave up because he felt compelled to compose. Composing was a learning experience for him, as he learned much about himself and the things he composed about through his compositions. One of the best examples of knowledge gained through a composition is the innovative suite The Planets, which was originally based on his interest in astrology and casting horoscopes. Following a human psychological journey, the suite allows the composer and the listener to confront conflicting and sometimes unappealing emotions. Through those confrontations, the participant is able to grow and eventually reach a mystical understanding of the universe as the last choral chords of Neptune fade away. Therefore, although Holst’s interest in astrology provided a basis for the composition of The Planets, the suite actually represents a psychological journey, from the chaos of youth to the mystical unknown of old age and beyond, which coincides with Holst’s development as an artist.
To understand his artistic development that led to a work such as The Planets, one must first understand his early life as composer and teacher. Born on 21 September 1874, under the sign of Virgo and the planet Mercury, Holst was exposed to music from an early age. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all professional musicians, and his father especially hoped that Holst would become a concert pianist. Unfortunately, a bad case of neuritis in his right arm, along with other health problems, prevented Holst from excelling at piano, so in 1892 he spent a few months at Oxford to study composition. By 1893 he had ended up at the Royal College of Music in London with a scholarship. Early in his life and compositional career, Holst was greatly influenced by Edvard Grieg, Arthur Sullivan, and Richard Wagner. These influences are apparent in his early works, which are mostly imitations of the other composers’ styles. Eventually, he collected many of his initial compositions and put them in a box he titled "Early Horrors."2
Throughout his life, Holst believed in the some of the doctrines of Hinduism, including karma, reincarnation, and dharma, which led to his interest in mysticism. He originally learned these beliefs in his youth from his stepmother.3 These beliefs, along with his study of Sanskrit that started in 1899, prompted him to write many compositions based on the themes found in the Bhagavad Gita, the Rig Veda, and the Ramayana, some of the major texts of Hinduism. These compositions included several sets of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, the symphonic poem Indra, and the operas Sita and Savitri, which represent some of his first compositions dealing with mystical and other-worldly ideas.4
Hardly any of these compositions became very popular, perhaps because of their mystical quality and because people who had not studied Hinduism might not be able to readily grasp them. In fact almost all of Holst’s early work, until The Planets, got a mixed reception, so he could not depend on his compositions to provide financial support.
Starting in 1903, Holst began teaching, what he called a "fate which few escape."5 He was a music teacher at several different schools, the main one of which was St. Paul’s Girls’ School where he was the musical director from 1905 until his death in 1934. His hectic teaching schedule made composing difficult, be he rarely complained. In fact, Michael Short, one of Holst’s biographers, believes that "although he first took up teaching as a means of earning a living, it soon became of such importance to him that he came to believe that this must have been his pre-ordained path in life."6 Holst himself even comments on how important teaching is to him. In a letter to Whittaker, he says, "Oh my friend why do we waste our lives trying to teach! (Don’t trouble to answer -- I’ve already thought of several answers)."7 He obviously enjoyed teaching, and definitely enjoyed watching his students succeed. One of his students remarked, "His simple sincerity and deeply imaginative understanding canceled the feeling of distance between his own achievements and the aspirations of the pupil."8
By 1913, Holst’s failures in composition started to become overwhelming to the point that "he was nearly inconsolable." Many of his compositions which he had worked hard on and took pride in, including the opera Savitri, the orchestral suite Phantastes, and the choral work The Cloud Messenger, were being dismissed or not even performed. It was at this point that he took a trip to Spain with his contemporary composers and good friends Clifford Bax, Arnold Bax, and Balfour Gardiner. During the vacation, Holst’s formerly small interest in astrology was rekindled by Clifford Bax who helped Holst to learn more about it.9 As Holst learned the astrological significance of the planets and their influence on human personality traits, The Planets began to form.
At the time of the vacation, Holst was reading Alan Leo’s The Art of Synthesis, a book on astrology and how to cast horoscopes. Casting horoscopes became his "weakness," as he called it when he asked Whittaker for the birth times and places of Whittaker and his family.10 Holst continued to give in to his "weakness" for the rest of his life. But Holst also began to see the human side of astrology and the importance of the planets to human emotions. A year later, after he had started work on Mars, Holst wrote, "As a rule I only study things that suggest music to me. That’s why I worried at Sanskrit. Then recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me."11 However, the finished project of The Planets ended up being so much more than a description of the character of each planet.
Instead of being a defining idea, astrology acted more as a jumping off point for the composition of The Planets. Several aspects of the suite do not coincide with traditional astrology, such as the order of the movements and some of the characteristics of each planet. Holst also did not factor in the influence of the sun and moon. Instead, he used astrology to set the mood and then let some other determining factor take over from there.12
This other determining factor is the ideal psychological journey one aspires to experience throughout his or her life. The order of the movements, starting with Mars, represents what Raymond Head calls "the unfolding experience of life from youth to old age,"13 as well as beyond, to the great unknown that exists as Neptune fades out to nothing. According to Richard Greene in his study on The Planets, the suite’s "emphasis is on human character and the psychological drama within, played out through astrological metaphors." A few years before starting The Planets, Holst had "begun composing in order to express his understanding of the world."14 Therefore, the psychological journey within The Planets can be seen as Holst’s attempt to come to terms with his life, his alternately failing and successful musical career, and the knowledge of his eventual death.
Thomas Moore, in his book about Marsilio Ficino’s thoughts on astrology and psychology, talks about music as being "a quality of the soul itself," which leads the listener "to the contemplation of the qualities of time." As a whole, music is able to "portray the dynamic patterns of life and of the soul" and to "provide a kind of catharsis" for the listener.15 This catharsis is exactly what The Planets provides, when listened to in its entirety as a metaphor for a psychological journey. The listener is confronted with some of the most horrifying music ever written in Mars and eventually goes through each movement of contrasting emotions to find peace and a sense of non-fear of the unknown at the end of Neptune. Within these contrasting emotions, the listener finds representations of all the character traits that exist within him or her -- anger that leads to eruptions like Mars, the joy of Jupiter, hints of insanity that exist in Uranus, and many others. The piece as a whole, which Greene describes as "a single human experience,"16 allows the listener to get a better understanding of him or herself and his or her own emotions.
Starting with Mars, representing "the chaotic energy of youth," the music assaults the listener, with tritones, jolting 5/4 time, and very little sense of a tonic.17 Though this movement was written before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, many of the first audiences saw it as a perfect description of the war the world had just experienced, with its aggression and military march characteristics. Even before the war started, the tension of imminent war existed, so Holst might have drawn on this tension for the movement and on the surface Mars can be seen as a description of war.18 However, Mars goes beyond a mere programmatic piece about a horrifying war, to describe the human personality traits that lead to war and aggression. This movement has to be shocking because many people are not willing to face the less desirable traits within themselves. The movement starts out almost triumphant, which starts the listener identifying with the emotions. As the tonality is lost and replaced by the pure dissonant cadences at the end, the listener realizes how close he or she came to giving in to that aggression and is frightened by the destructive power within.
Leaving the spontaneous and aggressive energy of childhood and youth, Venus comes as a relief to the terror of Mars, though an imperfect one. While it is simpler and uses more conventional harmony, with an "aesthetic sophistication" that contrasts Mars’s "physical ugliness," it is not only about peace. It has a sense of mystical serenity, but also a sense of sensuousness and seduction.19 The peaceful harmonies are a fitting resolution to Mars in the simplest sense, but this is only the second movement, so the psychological journey cannot be completed so quickly. The movement starts with what Head calls "an invocation to peace, showing that in order to achieve peace [people] must desire it."20 Most of the dissonance of Mars is resolved, leaving a sense of perfect beauty and stability. However, within Venus, the listener has to recognize that love and beauty have the same power as hate and aggression when used in the wrong way. So, Venus does provide an answer to Mars, but not necessarily the entirely happy and resolved one that the listener was hoping for.
With a sense of peace and resolution to the conflicts of youth, the listener now turns to Mercury, representative of the mind and flexibility that can now be developed.21 Holst composed this movement last, perhaps because he had been born under the planet Mercury himself and was searching for the perfect way to approach something so personal.22 This movement is also the most programmatic of the suite, suggesting that he did not make it as introspective as he might have hoped, and the shortest. Mercury is a quick scherzo with a lot of syncopation that embodies the cleverness of a newly developed mind. The melody hops between instruments and joyfully bounds through the orchestra. It shows its flexibility and the wonder of finally being free enough to cultivate ideas.
The joy of Jupiter answers the wild exploration of Mercury. So much about Jupiter has been misconstrued since Holst’s conception of it. He deliberately used the word "jollity" in the subtitle instead of "joviality" in order to not make a reference to Jove, another name for the god Jupiter in Roman mythology.23 However, it is still so often seen as a representative of this king of the gods, in its power and nobility. Another point of misconception is the famous Andante maestoso center theme. Several years after the success of The Planets, Holst was asked to set a poem to be a British patriotic song. Holst was so overworked at the time that he was happy to find that the words of I Vow to Thee, My Country fit into the Andante maestoso theme, and since then that theme has been associated with British patriotism and solemnity. His daughter Imogen, however, believes that the theme was meant to be anything but solemn.24
This movement as a whole, in the middle of the suite, represents mid-life and, what Short calls, the "relaxed self-satisfaction" that comes with it. Holst hated partial performances of the suite that ended with Jupiter because he felt it was too happy of an ending.25 Jupiter is the point in life where one has a million responsibilities and is constantly moving quickly, but in the midst of it all that person can step back and truly feel happy. Head suggests it can also be seen as a time when "personal love [Venus] gives way to a joyous service to humanity."26 In a sense, Jupiter is the tonal highlight of the suite, for after Jupiter, the music moves farther and farther into the mystical outer reaches of space. Placed in the center of the suite, with its energy and hope, Jupiter "acts as a slingshot, its festive nature and easy tonality flinging the listener into the further reaches of the outer planets."27
Saturn, Holst’s favorite and the most human of all the movements, plods along slowly with the painful and sad characteristics of old age. After the joy of Jupiter, one starts to realize the coming of old age. Starting slowly, like it is counting each moment in the passing of time, the movement represents the desolation one feels about growing old. Brass fanfares and tritones come in, recalling the military march of Mars -- another battle that one must experience to come to some kind of acceptance.28 As the music progresses toward the end, after going through the ordeal of battle, it approaches tonality, which Imogen Holst sees as representing the "acceptance of [the] human tragedy" of growing old.29 The tolling bells near the end, instead of conveying a sense of doom and death, actually add comfort to the music. All hurt is gone, replaced by a calm acceptance of some kind of faith that something better exists in the outer reaches.
Because the sadness of Saturn has to do with one’s clinging to things such as youth, a person who has moved successfully through Saturn is able to move into the realm of Uranus, the liberated magician who cares nothing for self-consciousness. Head says the eccentric and silly magician shows that "there is more to living than what can just be seen or touched."30 It is time to let go of all convention and just live, because there might not be that much time left. This movement makes fun of all the things that were so serious in previous movements. It is always "on the brink of tonality" but never quite reaches the tonal goals. Ideas that were frightening in Mars and Saturn, like the military march, or noble in Venus, like its depiction of serenity, are now simply comic, a "magician’s child’s play."31 The person who accepted imminent death in Saturn now must be liberated to make the best out of what life is left.
With Neptune comes the mystical serenity that all people hope to achieve by the ends of their lives. Neptune has a complete lack of formal musical language. In fact, unlike all the other movements that had recapitulations of certain themes, the themes of Neptune never repeat -- they just continually move outward into the unknown.32 In Neptune, fragments from all the other movements return, now resolved, with a sense of the inner peace and restfulness of complete fulfillment. Finally, after all the conflicting emotions and sadness, Greene suggests, the person "who has lived purely (or at least sincerely) is thereby launched onto a higher plane of experience."33 The person that has come to terms with all the good and bad personality traits is able to go beyond the experiences of this world into the mystical outer reaches of space. No one knows what exists there, for at the end, the female choir simply fades away with no resolution, but it allows the artist to express things never before heard and dissipates all fear of the unknown.
As a whole, The Planets completely coincides with Holst’s development as an artist, whether he realized it or not. Mars is his early compositions and his struggles to find his voice; Venus and Mercury are his growth that led him to be able to compose The Planets; Jupiter is the popularity surrounding The Planets; and the final three movements are how he dealt with his overwhelming popularity and his compositions after The Planets. He moved on musically, to music influenced by the knowledge he gained from Neptune, and he never had the same kind of popularity again. He finally found the voice he had been struggling to find for his whole life, so now he had to follow where it led instead of just writing more music like The Planets to appease his audience.34 Holst had spent twenty years trying to find the right way to say all he had to say. As he wrote The Planets, and was further encouraged by its success, his daughter says, "he had learned enough grammar to go ahead fearlessly into an unfamiliar region of sound."35
Holst knew he had something important while he was composing the suite. He loved all the movements, sending them to Whittaker for his friend’s approval, "particularly hop[ing] [Whittaker] would like Saturn" and calling the suite "my Planets."36 In a reply, Whittaker congratulated Holst heartily, acknowledging that Holst had "had a rare long time to wait, but at last [Holst was] coming into [his] own."37
The Planets was completed in 1916, however it was not performed in its entirety until 1920 because of World War I. Though partial performances had received mixed reviews, the complete performance was instantly popular. Holst did not let the popularity of The Planets bother him however. In fact, Short says, "he detested all such interviewers and the photographers."38 By the time the suite became popular, he had already moved on to other music, and his new Neptunian outlook probably distanced him from the people who wanted him to give them more music like The Planets. He could not write something with a strict formula, because his "idea of composition [was] to spoil as much MS paper as possible."39 So he could not repeat The Planets anyway -- he just had to follow his inspiration and work from there. But his falling into disfavor with the public did not bother him. The enlightenment he found in the last three planets gave him the courage to keep using his newly found voice, prompting him to say, "If nobody likes your work, you have to go on just for the sake of the work."40
And that is exactly what Holst did -- he kept on going, no matter what other people thought about his compositions. He composed music that he cared about, that touched the mystical outer reaches of melody and harmony, such as Egdon Heath. Short states that had Holst not composed The Planets, he would "doubtless be regarded today as only a minor composer." So, something must have been special about this suite it order for it to grant Holst such popularity, in order to deeply touch the people who had never had a great liking of Holst’s music before. Short suggests that The Planets "enables the mind to acquire some comprehension of the vastness of space where rational understanding fails,"41 therefore giving people a glimpse of eternity and the contentment and comfort that comes with that. His daughter, however, says that The Planets is a culmination of "a twenty years’ search for the right idiom for what he wanted to say."42 Perhaps "what he wanted to say" was to give people the comfort that the unknown is not so terrible, that it is actually liberating and allows more artistic and personal freedom. Of course, because The Planets is a work of art, every person can interpret it so it means something to him or her, and it can mean a great number of different things. Holst would have been proud to see listeners actually paying attention to his deeper message in his suite. By achieving his own personal enlightenment and transforming it into a form he could share with others, he continues, even now almost sixty years after his death, to help others on their own personal journeys toward enlightenment.
Notes
1
Gustav Holst, Letters to W. G. Whittaker, ed. Michael Short (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1974), 23.2
Imogen Holst, The Music of Gustav Holst and Holst’s Music Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 2-4.3
Raymond Head, "Astrology and Modernism in The Planets," Tempo 187 (December 1993) 15.4
I. Holst, 8-9.5
Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Heirs and Rebels: Letters Written to Each Other and Occasional Writings on Music, ed. Imogen Holst and Ursula Vaughan Williams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959) 66.6
Michael Short, Gustav Holst: The Man and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 6.7
G. Holst to WGW, 29.8
Edmund Rubbra, Gustav Holst: Collected Essays, ed. Stephen Lloyd and Edmund Rubbra (London: Triad Press, 1974), 23.9
Head, 16-17.10
G. Holst to WGW, 27, 29.11 I. Holst, 32.
12
Short, 121-122.13
Head, 19.14
Richard Greene, Holst: The Planets (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 44, 12.15
Thomas Moore, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, (Hudson: Lindisfarne Press, 1990), 87-88).16
Greene, 41.17
Head, 19.18
I. Holst, 32-33.19
Greene, 48.20
Head, 19.21
Ibid.22
Greene, 52.23
Ibid., 55.24
I. Holst, 160.25
Short, 127, 178.26
Head, 20.27
Greene, 80.28
Ibid., 58-60.29
I. Holst, 36.30
Head, 20.31
Greene, 63-64.32
Short, 415.33
Greene, 65-67.34
Ibid., 85.35
I. Holst, 32.36
G. Holst to WGW, 22, 44.37
Ibid., 131.38
Short, 190.39
G. Holst to RVW, 80.40
Short, 3.41
Ibid., 343.42
I. Holst, 32.
