Gustav Holst (1874 – 1934) was a British composer active from the late 1913th century to the first third of the XNUMXth century. His most famous work is undoubtedly the orchestral suite "The Planets" (composed in XNUMX). The fourth piece of this suite, "Jupiter", was a hit when sung by Ayaka Hirahara, so even people who only listen to popular music have probably heard of it. I'm sure it was also one of the pieces played in elementary school music classes. I think I first heard it in elementary school music classes. And the prejudice I felt at that time has been dragging me along until now, even though I'm over XNUMX years old.
The prejudice is that it sounds like movie music and is cheesy. However, I wonder if that also led to the success of "Planet", so it's complicated.
What cleared away this prejudice was an article I came across on Facebook. It said, "Classical music beginners may think that a famous orchestra is a good performance, but that's not necessarily the case. The performance by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Colin Davis was terrible. You could sense no respect for the conductor from the orchestra, and it was disjointed." In response to this, I read a comment from the composer saying, "No, it's actually a traditional performance that follows the score." When you see something like that, you want to listen to it, right? So I did.
[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="B00TG0BTXC" title="Holst: Suite "The Planets" Sir Colin Davis, Berlin Philharmonic"]
This is great! It's the kind of feeling that makes you want to slap your knee and say, "Oh, no, that's it." It's a completely different performance from the "normal" performance that emphasizes the strings, with the percussion coming to the forefront, and it feels more like Stravinsky or Schoenberg than film music, which must have been very avant-garde for the time. After doing some research, I found out that this piece was written after the composer was so impressed by the premiere of Schoenberg's "Five Orchestral Pieces" at Queen's Hall that he obtained the score, studied it, and wrote it. The original title was "Seven Orchestral Pieces." It's too cliched to be influenced by that.
Schoenberg's "Five Orchestral Pieces" were composed in 1909.1912November 3stToHenry WoodとQueen's Hall OrchestraThe piece was first performed by, and the third piece, "Colors," in particular,Acoustic CompositionIt is considered historically important as one of the first examples of this style, and was, of course, avant-garde for its time.
"The Planets" was also inspired by this piece, so it is avant-garde after all. Because it is avant-garde, it was difficult to get the whole piece performed. According to Sir Adrian Boult, who premiered it, "The sound is so new that the audience could only stand it for 30 minutes," so four or five of the seven pieces were selected and performed. It was not until September 1918 that the whole piece was finally performed. You can hear the newness of this piece - the influence of Schoenberg and Stravinsky - by listening to the recording conducted by Colin Davis. And the final piece of the suite, "Neptune, the Mystic," introduces a new acoustic element that is often used in modern times. Yes, the "fade out." Here, the female chorus sings with the door open until the last bar in the next interval, and at the last bar, only the female chorus sings, and the phrase is repeated, gradually decreasing in volume, and the door gradually closes quietly, until it can no longer be heard in the distance. It seems to have made a striking impression on the audience at the time, and Holst's daughter, the composer Imogen After hearing the premiere, he commented that the ending was "unforgettable, with the hidden female chorus gradually fading into the distance... until it becomes impossible to distinguish between sound and silence."
Besides being an avant-garde composer, Holst also had a side as a folk musician and folk music collector, though not to the same extent as his colleague Vaughan Williams. In that respect, he is a character close to Bartok and Kodaly. In fact, I think that in "The Planets" one can see the influence of folk music from Algiers, Spain, and even England, where he traveled. And I think that this is well expressed in the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Colin Davis. If you have the chance, please listen to it.
As the title "Seven Orchestral Pieces" suggests, this piece consists of seven pieces.
- Mars: The War Bringer
- Venus: The Peacemaker
- Mercury: The Winged Messenger
- Jupiter: The bringer of pleasure
- Saturn: The bringer of old age
- Uranus: The Magician
- Neptune: The Mystic
Here, the names "Mars" and "Jupiter" are mentioned, but these were added for marketing purposes at the time of the premiere; a little bit of trivia here is that the original score only mentioned "bringer of war" and the like.