21 September: Gustav Holst and The Planets

On this date in 1874 Gustav Holst, the composer was born. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets. 10 things you didn't know about The Planets.

1. Gustav Holst was an amateur astrologer whose lifelong hobby was casting astrological charts for his friends. The Planets suite was inspired by Astrology, not astronomy which is why Earth is not included in it.
2. Holst was not altogether happy with the massive popularity of The Planets. He thought it took attention away from his other works, which he believed were much better. This is why, when Pluto was discovered, he had no interest in adding another movement to the work.
3. Saturn was Holst's favourite of the seven movements.
4. That didn't stop other people from trying. In 1972, in the final broadcast of his Young People's Concerts series, conductor Leonard Bernstein replaced the Saturn movement with an improvised performance he called Pluto, the Unpredictable. because he didn't think "Old Age" was a suitable theme for a young people's concert. In 2000, the Hallé Orchestra commissioned the English composer Colin Matthews, an authority on Holst, to write an eighth movement, which he called Pluto, the Renewer. Now that Pluto is no longer considered a planet, presumably the pressure is off.
5. The first public première in September 1918 wasn't really public at all, as it was open only to 250 invited guests. The orchestra only had two hours to rehearse the whole thing. The first few public performances did not include all the movements. One reason was that the conductor, Adrian Boult, did not think the public could cope with more than half an hour of such complicated music! (A typical performance of all seven movements lasts for about fifty minutes). The whole thing wasn't performed for the general public until November 1920. Holst himself did not like incomplete performances, especially if they finished with Jupiter, because real life never ends on a happy note.
6. Holst was a pioneer of the now ubiquitous fade out ending. Neptune ends with the last bar, performed by the chorus, and to achieve the fade out effect the choir had to be in an adjoining room, and as they sang the last bar over and over, the door to that room was slowly closed. Audiences loved it.
7. The suite was originally written for two pianos, except for Neptune, which was scored for a single organ, as Holst believed that the sound of the piano was too percussive for a world as mysterious and distant as Neptune.
8. Much of the original score was dictated, because Holst suffered from neuritis in his right arm, which made writing difficult and painful.
9. Holst denied the speculation that Mars was inspired by the outbreak of World War I. He claimed that he had finished Mars long before this and was actually writing Venus at the time.
10. The Planets has been an inspiration to many modern rock artists, who have adapted parts of it in their own works - including Jeff Wayne and Rick Wakeman, Emerson, Lake and Powell, King Crimson, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Dave Edmunds' band Love Sculpture, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.