Gustav Holst
1916
Gustav Holst was obsessed with astrology. Not in the way your friend who checks their horoscope is obsessed — Holst learned to cast natal charts, studied Sanskrit to read Vedic astrological texts in the original, and based the entire structure of The Planets on the astrological character of each celestial body rather than its astronomical properties. Mars isn't red and dusty; it's the Bringer of War. Venus isn't a sulfuric hellscape; it's the Bringer of Peace. Jupiter isn't a gas giant; it's the Bringer of Jollity. Scientists were appalled. Concert audiences didn't care.
Jupiter contains what is arguably the most glorious melody of the twentieth century — the broad, hymn-like theme that appears in the middle section. It's so good that the English adopted it as a patriotic anthem, 'I Vow to Thee, My Country,' which was sung at Princess Diana's wedding and later at her funeral. Holst himself set the words, though he wasn't entirely comfortable with the jingoistic lyrics. The tune outlived his reservations by about a century.
Holst was a peculiar man. He was a committed socialist who taught music at a girls' school in Hammersmith. He had neuritis in his right arm that made conducting painful. He hated fame and actively avoided publicity after The Planets made him famous, which is roughly equivalent to a cat disliking attention — technically possible but deeply unconvincing to observers. When the BBC wanted to premiere The Planets on the radio, Holst agreed on the condition that he conduct it himself. The performance was a disaster. He was not a good conductor. The music survived his interpretation.
The Planets was composed between 1914 and 1916, during World War I, which makes Mars — the Bringer of War — less a mythological exercise and more a documentary. The relentless 5/4 rhythm of Mars, the mechanical brutality of the ostinato, captures industrial warfare with an accuracy that Holst, teaching schoolgirls in London while the trenches filled with bodies across the Channel, understood viscerally even from a distance. Jupiter's jollity, heard in that context, isn't naive happiness. It's defiant joy. That's a different thing entirely, and a harder one to sustain.