One of my all-time favorite pieces of orchestral music that focuses the brass instruments is the music by composer Gustav Holst, "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity," the Fourth Movement of the Suite of The Planets.
This music - and not only Jupiter, but the whole monumental suite of the 'Planets,' - was incredibly popular, and still is today, one of the most performed pieces by symphonies and musicians around the world. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Holst's best friend and fellow composer, once said that The Planets was "the perfect equilibrium" of Holst's nature--the melodic, precise, and structured, combined with the mystic and unexplainable. Ironically, this success was a bane to Holst himself, feeling that it was very atypical of his composition style, and even to his dying day he had a distaste for this piece due to it's great success.
The inspiration for the pieces was based on astrology, rather than astronomy, and this explains the lack of a movement for Earth. When Holst started this composition, he told us where this inspiration was coming from: "As a rule I only study things that suggest music to me...Recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me." ~Holst
To understand the music deeply, please allow me to explain a little about this beautiful piece. The Jupiter planet has the fastest planetary rotation of any in our system of worlds, and Holst exhibited that idea in the first notes. The violin strings were asked to play a tiny 3 note figure in 2/4 time over and over. Listen carefully. Over top of this, you will hear the main theme, syncopated, with 6 horns, and all of the viola and cello sections.
In this piece, Holst orchestrates a completely virtuosic use of the timpani, with two sets of timpani arranged in the composition. You can hear them clearly, each one sharing all the notes for this instrument. The piece explodes with different sections throughout, and just as you get used to one, he changes to another completely different time signature.
There is the most popular section by most people, which was also used in the hymn, "I Vow to Thee My Country," which emphasizes the violin, the pizzicato playing the cello in the background, the harp, and the brass.
I could say for me, it is one of the most exquisite pieces of music ever composed, deeply moving every single time, even if I listen to it over and over and over.
This musical suite was completed in 1916, but the orchestral premiere was not conducted until 1918, during the last weeks of World War I, in the Queen's Hall, in Langham Place, London, which was England's premiere concert venue. It was hastily rehearsed; the musicians of the Queen's Hall Orchestra first saw the complicated music only two hours before the performance with the financial support of Holst's friend and fellow composer H. Balfour Gardiner.
At the request of Gustav Holst, it was conducted by Adrian Boult: "Just before the Armistice, Gustav Holst burst into my office: 'Adrian, the YMCA are sending me to Salonika quite soon and Balfour Gardiner, bless his heart, has given me a parting present consisting of the Queen's Hall, full of the Queen's Hall Orchestra for the whole of a Sunday morning. So we're going to do The Planets, and you've got to conduct.' " ~ Adrian Boult. For the picture for this link, I am showing you the written note of the musical score given to Boult from Gustav Holst himself.
This performance took place at the BBC Prom Festival, which was first created and performed at the same Queen's Hall. Holst's Suite was performed here to commemorate the 75th anniversary of his transition. It features the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by David Atherton. Watch carefully and you will see the many different instruments playing their part in this magnificent piece of music.
28 сен 2024
