Click the planet to hear a midi of Holst's Mars

In march of 1913, Gustav Holst received an anonymous gift which enabled him to travel to Spain with Clifford Bax, the brother of the composer Arnold Bax. Clifford Bax was an astrologer and introduced the concepts of astrology to Holst. This inspired him to compose the Planets Suite. The traditional order of performance is: Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (Pluto was not discovered until 1930). Holst considered this as a progression analogous to going through life and Mars serves as a rocky and tormenting beginning.

The full horror of mechanised warfare confronts us face to face in this bleakest of all tone poems. Its face is unrepentant, unrelenting and merciless and it offers us no hope of redemption. Thousands of booted feet parade across the landscape, hurrying to their graves. Tanks pound cities into rubble, bullets fly and bombs fall. How surprising it is, that Holst completed this piece long before the opening of the First World War.

“Mars: Bringer of War” immediately establishes its aggressive character through a low, menacing melody. An anxiously repeating pattern in 5/4 time, played on a single note in the strings, evokes the martial rhythm of filed drums - the strings use the technique known as col legno battuto (“tapping with the wood”) to produce the percussive effect. This ostinato rhythm disappears and resurfaces as the music moves through several tableaux, describing a triumphal march, the chaotic heat of battle, the rage of bloodshed. Generous use of brass instruments amplifies the militaristic tone, with high trumpet fanfares rising above exclamations from the lower brass. At the end, the piece dissolves into a tumult of brass and percussion playing blunt, dissonant slabs of sound counterpointed by strings. The planet is the go-getter in Holst’s musical pantheon, the pure, uncomplicated energy that gets things done, the active principle that must find balance in passive Venus: the bringer of peace.

It was first performed in 1918 with Adrian Boult conducting. The premiere was a private affair, a present to the composer from his friend Balfour Gardiner.

Listen to Mars.