jupiter, the bringer of jollity analysis
Indeed, Holst's working title for The Planets on its first publication (along with his name as "von Holst," soon to be changed in deference to anti-German sentiment) was Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra. CM tonality throughout. Sargent salutes the essential clarity of Holst's scoring (derived in part from his admiration for Ravel), and notes that after a score had been written Holst routinely would go through it with an eraser to expunge inessential notes and even entire instrumental lines. Holst's love of English folk song and dance is readily demonstrated here. Hablas espaol? In 1981 Karajan remade The Planets with his Berlin Philharmonic (DG LP and CD) but its slower pace is magnified by the midrange emphasis of the recording's tonal balance, which disserves the gleaming clarity of Holst's multi-faceted orchestration. While taking full responsibility for the musical judgments, I've done no independent research and gratefully acknowledge the following sources for the facts and quotations in this article: Boult, Sir Adrian: notes to his New Philharmonia LP (Angel S 36420, 1967), Crankshaw, Geoffrey: notes to the Marriner/Concertgebouw LP (Philips 950042, 1978), Foreman, Lewis: notes to the Elder/Hall CD (Hyperion CDA 67270, 2001), Freed, Richard: notes to the Susskind/St. Buy Jupiter - Bringer of Jollity by Gustav Holst/arr. 5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings. The first full public performance had to await October 10, 1920. Thus the world was hardly prepared for the innovative and eclectic Planets, which seemingly arose from a near-void and, much to the composer's frustration, despite his variegated output came to define him as a "one-hit wonder.". Jupiter is named after the Roman king of the gods. But is the greater artist the one who briefly astonishes with unlimited resources, or another who extracts amazing things of lasting value from within the limits of the means he has on hand? After the calmness of Venus, we bounce straight into the third movement, Mercury The Winged Messenger, which takes us on an exciting journey, though it is only brief, with this movement being the shortest of the seven. Marketplace. $34.99 Merry-go-round Of Life $24.99 Advanced Orchestral Studies $50.00 Symphony No. The main and hymn-like themes of Jupiter With these new lines of interest, Holst started to learn how each planet bears a different characteristic in terms of astrology, and what this means within the bigger picture. Even within each movement, Holst does not organically develop his themes symphonically, but rather uses them to create a structure suited to the psychological character and associations of each planet. Holst: Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity (from 'The Planets') 22.00 - 28.00. Jupiter is the largest and oldest planet in the solar system, born about 4.5 billion years ago. However dark the underlying topic may be here, the music creates a stunning effect that is mesmerising to hear. Saying this though he was said to have a soft spot for his favourite movement, Saturn. 5. Within the basic tempos Imogen calls his beat "clear and unfussy. Only then did another appear, and from a rather obscure and unlikely source. Jupiter (Bringer of Jollity): Cello Brahms's 1st Symphony, 4th Movement. 4. Why did Holst launch The Planets with Mars? 7. Due to this, the music is very fast-paced with it being much more complex musically than the last two movements. But then a sudden explosion ushers in intense activity that, according to Matthew, uses solar winds as a starting point. Its an amalgamation of the harps, glockenspiel and celeste playing oscillating chords throughout the movement, which give it the hypnotic and mystical sound. With deep roots, both parental and musical, in England and Russia, Coates absorbed the unabashed subjective outlook of his mentor Arthur Nikisch, who reportedly told him to trade his conductor's baton for a whip. You can count four, five or six of them, depending on whether you divide the first two into their component parts - they do behave like independent themes. Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollity is introduced by a genial syncopated dance, appropriately so since a happy and festive mood is maintained throughout this movement. Ive worked out that the first section is in E minor, but after that point is goes between C minor, E major and Db minor. Macmillan is barely mentioned in the standard reference books and seems to have made very few recordings (and of those most were as an accompanist, including spirited Bach and Beethoven concertos with compatriot Glenn Gould), and so we have little basis to generalize his style. Download 'Symphony No.6 in D major (2)' on iTunes, This image appears in the gallery:A beginners guide to Gustav Holsts The Planets Suite. As Holst has not used lots of different themes, more he has stretched and varied a small selection, the excitement from this piece comes from short bursts of sound, which are usually initiated by the brass. That was pretty fun. I have always interpreted this build up section to be like a message between the planets, with the different instruments representing the different characteristics of the planets. Related Items. Jupiter, in particular, careens amid super-charged tempos that the orchestra delivers with electrifying accuracy (but after all, it was used to Toscanini) and Uranus thrills as instruments jostle for attention. While each individual movement has unique and fascinating import, the overall structure is significant as well. The composer, a man of intellect and wide-ranging interests, found musical inspiration in diverse places. Holst's work comprises seven movements, each devoted to a particular planet in our solar system (excluding the earth, the focus of the other planets' influences), beginning with the inner three but in reverse order from their distance from the sun, and then proceeding outwards through the rest. Several commentators trace specific movements of The Planets to emulations of the atmosphere and orchestration in sections of Schoenberg's Pieces. The Planets Op.32 : IV Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity [I Vow to Thee, My Country] . With Mars bringing masculinity and forcefulness to the forefront, Holst was able to paint a really vivid picture of war and the consequences of war. See the full gallery: A beginners guide to Gustav Holsts The Planets Suite, : A beginners guide to Gustav Holsts The Planets Suite, Download 'Symphony No.6 in D major (2)' on iTunes, A beginners guide to Gustav Holsts The Planets Suite. The most widely-mentioned influence, hardly surprising from the very titles of the individual movements, is astrology. Sargent was especially famed for his choral work from religious oratorios to Gilbert and Sullivan and, like Boult, was a lifelong advocate of British music. The opening bars of Saturn are often referred to as a ticking clock. This movement is incredibly exquisite and it ends the suite so delicately and I, as Im sure you all are, full of questions about why it has ended the way it has. In the meantime, between the two Sargent LPs, Stokowski produced the first stereo Planets, as well as the first by non-British forces. By bringing together all the movements with this delicately thought-out movement, I feel that it ends in the best way possible wanting to know more. There is an extensive use of percussion and other less-used instruments such as contrabassoon, euphonium and tuned percussion. 5. Start the wiki Featured On On a holiday in 1913 Holst became enamored of What Is the Horoscope and How Is It Cast, one of several books in which Alan Leo attempted to popularize, modernize and systematize astrology as a scientific practice concerned with the delineation of character rather than prediction. Despite their simultaneous appearance at the dawn of the era of electrical recording (which would seem to suggest a hearty public appetite for more), the Holst and Coates sets appear to have sufficed to sate demand for 16 years. (When he became interested in Hindu literature through translations, he proceeded to learn the original Sanskrit and wrote several Hindu-inspired works including two operas, Sita and Savitri.) Holst writes this movement in 5/4 time, which gives the feeling of uncomfortable movement at times. The last melodic cell is built up throughout different instruments (its repeated 12 times to be precise!) . Rapidly ascending scalar motion. The adjective jovial originally described those born under the planet of Jupiter, reputed to be jolly, optimistic, and buoyant . Burnett James adds that while traditional astrology attempts to predict individual destiny from one's time and place of birth, Holst was more intrigued by the associative emotional connotations of each planet and in particular the psychological attributes that Leo ascribed to each planet (although Leo later would come to consider the sun to be dominant). Fortunately, a broadcast of their February 14, 1943 concert Planets has been preserved (on a Cala CD) that complements the studio version with an altogether more gripping account that wastes no time in staking its claim ignoring Holst's piano dynamic marking, Stokowski plunges into Mars at full boil and never relents, building tension to the breaking point in each of its three sections and then proceeds to inject each of the following movements with heartfelt personal touches. Answer (1 of 3): Another Quorean has already provided a very comprehensive list, including all the ones that I could think of but one film composer in particular comes to mind who has made more use of Holst's work than most: Not only 'Jupiter', but the influence of the whole of 'The Planet Suite'. The Planets is a seven-movement orchestral suits composed by English composer, Gustav Holst (1874-1934). Even so, she did express two reservations: that the end of Neptune is too abrupt (with only a single repetition of the closing bar) and that the final staccato chord in Mercury is much too loud, which she attributed to using too large a gesture in order to avoid a ragged attack, which would have required scrapping the whole side. While such a resource was not entirely novel (Debussy had already used wordless sopranos and altos to conclude his 1901 Sirnes), Holst's haunting indefinite ending was quite innovative. From the Album Gustav Holst: The Planets . While Matthews claims that "in the process I came perhaps closer to Holst than I had expected," to me much of it sounds closer to Charles Ives. James deems the hollow-sounding emptiness as "catching exactly the brutal violence of all fighting" and Denis Stevens as "a premonition of total disaster." I believe the reason it feels more personal is down to the fact that Holst has integrated his first human element to this suite old age. . Others, though, question the semblance of The Planets to prior tone poems, as they note that it is far longer than such typical single-movement works or even Debussy's La Mer or Nocturnes (Matthews), nor a collection of short pieces (like Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition or Elgar's Enigma Variations) (Matthews), and a far less literal depiction than the tone poems of Strauss or Delius (Lee). Musically though the piece is in strange time signatures such as 6/4 and 9/4. He died on 25 May 1934 in Ealing, Middlesex, London, England, UK. What an astonishment the Age of Aquarius would have been to Gustav Holst (1874-1934). (Ian Lane) As with English madrigals and folk songs, Holst was fascinated by the use in Eastern music of non-Western scales, spare textures and unconventional time signatures of 5, 7 and even 21 beats (which he declared were more suitable for setting English words) and incorporated those features into two operas and dozens of settings of Indian religious texts. Just the kind of opening a "bringer of jollity" should have. Jupiter, The Bringer of Jolity from The Planets Gustav Holst Arranged by Sandra Dackow Grade: 4 This full-length arrangement of Jupiter is also on a massive scale, uncut and making every attempt to include all of the elements, if not instrumental colors, of the original. The Planets32 7 . The full orchestra winds up "in a bubbling cauldron of sound" (Crankshaw) only to vanish with a massive pained tutti chord as "a sudden deflated collapse into a dismal heap of nothingness" (James). For me, and for others it seems, this gradual build up paints a picture of time passing by, which directly relates to the characteristic of the planet The Bringer of Old Age. All Rights Reserved. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity. 32, in full The Planets: Suite for Large Orchestra, original name Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra, orchestral suite consisting of seven short tone poems by English composer Gustav Holst. ABRSM Grade 8. In notes to his 1967 recording, Boult expressed the hope that his BBC set "came near the composer's intentions" and that his subsequent recordings, while taking advantage of technical improvements, would "still sound faithful and authentic." (Please understand: I'm not a musical snob beyond my recordings of serious music, I have (and enjoy!) To enjoy Prime Music, go to Your Music Library and transfer your . Look at the detail: the Great Red Spot . Pluto Yet Colin Matthews rose to the task in 2000 on commission from the Hall Orchestra. Whatever path you may take it does not take away from the fact that the music has gone into complete turmoil for a section of this piece. The strings play col legno which means that the players play with the wood of their bow, not the hair. What can we learn from these esteemed messengers? In any event, for a work glorified for its magnificent orchestration it's hard to imagine a more suitable match than the conductor who, more than any other of his generation, reveled in instrumental color and was deeply involved in the recording process and the sheer sound of his records. Along with this rhythmic ambiguity, there is no set key to the piece, you can make a guess of where the tonality may be, but it is quite tricky. Subscribe to Plus. The Planets is best known for his orchestral composition. Throughout this whole movement, the music usually comes back to the first ostinato that was heard, this creates some stability. But perhaps the most remarkable movement is Venus, in which Sargent adds another full minute to others' already sprawling pace to craft a feeling beyond mere wistful dreams to a lush romanticism that one would not have suspected to find within the composer's emotional arsenal. I'm sure there are other good ones, but (unless you're a total hi-fi freak) do bear in mind Raymond Tuttle's admonition: "One senses that record companies are moved to record it again and again not because they feel that their artists have anything important to say about it, but because they want to show off the very latest development in recording technology. I generally disparage those who routinely dismiss acoustical recordings as primitive and unworthy of attention (and thus ignore a crucial slice of our cultural heritage), but in this instance the electrical remake, coming soon after and fundamentally similar in approach, strikes me as superior, not only in terms of sonic fidelity and overcoming most of the compromises required by the tyranny of the earlier mechanism but in the quality of the execution and Holst's more assured leadership (even though, while lacking the skills and experience of a trained conductor, by 1922 he had led The Planets in public many times). He was previously married to Isobel Harrison. All are firmly in modern idioms and (to me, at least) seem to have no discernable connection, musical or otherwise, to the Holst work. A stronger influence perhaps was that of Stravinsky, whose music had greatly impressed Holst before he took on the universe, the effects of which in The Planets can be seen in the very large Firebird and Petrushka kind of orchestration, in insistent rhythms, and also in striding rhythmic shifts. Burnett James paints Holst as a lonely and tragic figure, assailed with agonizing spiritual blight and a bleak despair that enveloped his whole being (and which ultimately led him to increasingly dissociate his later music from emotion). Theme five is an amalgamation of the pesante theme with the fanfare theme, which gradually gets a little faster before we arrive at theme six. In the more climatic section of this movement it becomes an incredibly powerful piece of music that feels rather personal. From that point onwards, he didnt believe in astrology (apart from the odd horoscope reading) which is ironic considering how much joy this piece had brought to others. ; Hatsune Miku has competition with A.A's "VII. Sargent's reading is remarkably potent, from a downright spooky opening as Mars seethes toward a giant climax, to alarmingly loud bells that shake off any sense of torpor in Saturn, and earth-shaking organ pedal points and huge tympani that magnify the drama of Uranus. Jupiter--Bringer of Jollity (from The Planets) By Gustav Holst / arr. It could perhaps represent church bells at a funeral (as tubular bells are used extensively here), or perhaps its alarm bells that death is approaching. Release date from LSO Discography . Perhaps that occasion prompted this recording, which appears to be his only one with the Los Angeles Philharmonic throughout his extraordinarily prolific career. As several commentators have pointed out, while some of the mythological references seem appropriate (Mars, Holst's "Bringer of War," indeed was the Roman god of war), others seem obscure (Neptune, Holst's "Mystic," was merely the sea god). Add to Cart Add to List. The end of the movement is essentially a recap of earlier themes and bringing them together for the climatic end. The Planets is an absolutely remarkable suite of orchestral music. While critics at the time seemed divided along a predictable generational divide, one enthused that: "Holst might have really dug it." Cl. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity English composer Gustav Holst's orchestral suite, The Planets, Op. While Karajan closely follows the score, his tempos are significantly slower than Holst's and portions can seem mechanical, notably a humorless Jupiter in which the gear-shift for a ponderous central hymn seems an incongruous intrusion. Holst's daughter Imogen recalled that while Holst did cast horoscopes for friends, he was less interested in fortune-telling than in understanding human behavior. With the harmonic ostinato (the harmonic intervals being of two half-diminished seventh chords Bdim7 and Adim7) and the oscillating chord changes between the flutes and harps creates a dark image for the listener. As he entered the final third of his life, Gustav Holst (18741934) appeared mired in mediocrity, if not bound for failure, at least by our usual measures for famous composers. While I'm not a fan of his desiccation of the Romantics, I do value the effectiveness of his approach to the impressionists and Viennese moderns, which also works here, where the clarity of execution, crisp accents and meticulous control of dynamics create a striking sense of atmosphere in the slow movements, matched by Decca's gloriously crisp and detailed ffrr recording that highlights some unusual sonorities, including the bass oboe in the opening and husky bells in the climax of Saturn.