“Who wants to be remembered for an artistic anachronism – no matter how successful?” Delicious mix of old and new Only later did he change the name of his suite to … The Planets.Īnother ‘scandalous’ composition that influenced The Planets – just listen to the thumping irregular rhythms in Mars, The Bringer of War – is Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, which dates from 1912. He liked it so much that he would name one of his next compositions Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra. Holst heard it, enjoyed it and bought the score. In 1909, Schoenberg launched his Fünf Orchesterstücke, one of the first great examples of atonal music. harmonies that helped them to make sense of it all.Critics and public waged fierce battles over compositions that broke with musical laws that had held up for centuries. His main inspiration did come from Germany, but it was a purely musical one.Ī few years before WOI, the musical world was already in turmoil. You would think that such an Armageddon would have influenced his composition, but Holst always denied that. Holst wrote The Planets between 19 – the first two years of the Great War. “The Planets seems to lift you up and transport you to exciting new worlds that are – at the same time – strangely familiar.” Holst: composer in times of war So why was the composer of The Planets later ashamed of it?
#PLANETS COMPOSITIONS FULL#
The idea was that the public wouldn’t be able to handle the full fifty minutes of such challenging music. In fact, during the first performances of The Planets, a few of the seven movements of the suite were always omitted. Its musical forms are unusual, its time signatures often irregular and its instrumental combinations unorthodox.
Holst’s orchestral suite is anything but a cheap crowd pleaser. Unlike the 1812 Overture or Wellingtons Sieg, The Planets is not a god-awful piece of classical music.The Planets is the only composition for which Holst is widely remembered.The fact that The Planets was despised by its composer is strange in two ways: At the very least, its success left him in a permanent state of slight bewilderment. Saint-Saëns hated Le Carnaval des Animaux, Ravel hated Boléro, Tchaikovsky hated the 1812 Overture, Beethoven hated Wellingtons Sieg, …Īnd Gustav Holst (1874-1934) hated The Planets. Second of all: take comfort in the fact that Radiohead is part of a respectable tradition of composers who despised their most beloved compositions. Are you one of those people who gets upset when Radiohead doesn’t play Creep? First of all: get over it.
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