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Rating: A subtle and unique thread of fate connects two of the most performed and loved 20th-century symphonic masterpieces by audiences around the world: the splendid suite “The Planets” by Gustav Holst and the even more famous scenic cantata “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff. Both Holst and Orff, despite being excellent educators (Holst was even a teacher of letters in a high school), pursued composition as a profession “a latere” of their teaching activities, using excellent individual compositional techniques, but without managing to find the recognition that their art would have deserved. For both, that deserved fame came when they managed to combine their cultural passions with the art of sounds: Holst for astronomy, Orff for love of antiquity and history.
Thus, the two masterpieces were born, which still give both perpetual and deserved fame today: in 1917 (started in '14) “The Planets,” in 1936 “Carmina Burana.”
Remarkably, Holst's suite turns out to be the most performed English piece in the world, except precisely for Italy, where, for inexplicable reasons, it is still performed relatively little, despite being a piece of incredible sound and color impact, suggestive, spectacular, and orchestrated in a genius way through a gigantic instrumental mass.
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“The Planets” is conceived according to almost relentless rationality: from the "near" Mars, gradually moving away from Earth up to the ineffable Neptune, still shrouded today by the mystery of distance. The planets are seven (Pluto was still unknown and Earth remains excluded), like the seven ages of human existence: from birth, through adolescence, maturity, old age, to death (probably represented by the slow and relentless dissolution of every instrumental and vocal sound at the end of the Suite, until reaching Silence, i.e., Nothingness).
Many other criteria adhere to a structure based on symmetry: one for all, the 5/4 meter opening the Suite with Mars's terrifying war march, closing it with the same rhythm in 5, obviously slowed down, after almost an hour in Neptune’s hypnosis, true “music of the infinite.”
MARS, the bringer of War
Conceived with unsettling foresight in 1914, on the eve of the outbreak of the Great War, Mars opens "The Planets" in a brutal and savage way: the planet of eternal wars is represented, with a language described by critics as “one of the most evil pieces of music ever created,” by an unrelenting 5/4 march, an "ostinato" pounding and obsessive on which there rise, menacing and brutally powerful, effects of explosions, armies ominously approaching, futuristic visions of tanks. A desperate scream closes this barbaric start, in a destructive and upsetting atmosphere. The influence of this piece on today's science fiction film scores is evident!
VENUS, the bringer of Peace
Contrasting the sonic and rhythmic violence of Mars's hate, the crystalline, pure, and serene sounds of the motionless and ethereal Venus, where everything shines with soft and delicate reflections. The orchestration abounds with transparent effects of harps, celesta, and glockenspiel, on the slow and serene movement of "steps towards infinity," iridescent, fascinating, and softly imbued with love.
MERCURY, the winged messenger
A controversial character, often depicted with a dual and ambiguous personality, the "Postman of the Gods" is actually a very fast, very light, and ineffable dragonfly here, elusive and whose ambiguity is brilliantly represented by the continuous alternation of the keys of B-flat major and E major, always in a double-crossing struggle between them. Neither atmosphere prevails until the last line, where E major silently and astutely takes over for the closing chord. Note also the onomatopoeic imitation of the rhythms of the telegraph, humorously representing the sense of "communication" of signals by the Postman.
JUPITER, the bringer of Jollity
Jupiter, a source of immense joy, hedonistic, amusing, lucullan, a fountain of triumphant, but also playful, dancing, dizzying, powerful sounds.
A grand sound impact with joy, the divine joy of the Father of the Gods, revealing his majesty in the imposing and famous central passage, a true hymn of peace and greatness, indeed transformed by Holst a few years later into one of the most celebrated songs of the British tradition: “I vow to thee, my Country,” perhaps the most beloved and respected by the English people after the national anthem. Joy, light, majesty for what remains perhaps to this day the most famous of the seven movements of the Suite.
SATURN, the bringer of Old Age
Holst did not hide his preference for this splendid movement, mysterious, hypnotic, and dark: after the vital fire of Jupiter, the deadly frost of old age, slow, relentless, and heavy of "Saturn the elderly," like the struggle of an aged and wise wanderer who roams toward an uncertain and dark infinity.
Slow and spatial chords symbolize, obsessively and always alike, “the seconds that separate us from death,” while a mysterious melody arises from the planet’s bowels: slowly, the steps grow heavier and immensely so, the dark melody lights up but turns into a terrible tolling of death bells, in a terrifying and icy atmosphere.
In the darkness of desolation and terror, suddenly, a flash of lights, like sudden stars in the surrounding space: lights of hope, the dawn of a new life, symbolized by the final pure and clear C major key.
URANUS, the Magician
The planet of volcanoes, sudden and devastating explosions, dark and menacing mysteries, is represented as a magician, creator of bizarre, malevolent, and crawling creatures, among almost seismic explosions and violence. Everything revolves around four sounds, exposed at the start, and recurring infinite times like a nightmare: the symbol of evil, demonic, destructive, and occult. There is no doubt Holst was inspired by the cavernous dancing atmospheres of Dukas's famed “The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” which unmistakably echoes between the lines of Uranus.
NEPTUNE, the Mystic
The closure of “The Planets” is the mystery, the infinite, the darkness, the hypnosis, the space without boundaries or limits. We are facing what is perhaps the masterpiece: in 1917 harmonies of such vastness, spaciousness, and coldness truly suggest the “music of the future.” An indefinite, faraway sacred procession dissolves into an ocean of elusive, liquid, undefined sounds, icy shivers intersect with one another like trails of infinite comets, which in turn get lost in the darkness of a black and infinite space. The magic of an invisible choir rises, infinitely expanding the sense of space and closes in slow, inexorable, fading towards the void, the nothingness, the silence …
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