Download listening guide: holst`s the planets – mars, `the bringer of war`

 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
LISTENING GUIDE:
HOLST'S THE PLANETS – MARS, 'THE BRINGER OF WAR'
Paul Rissmann – Animateur
START OF VIDEO
[Extracts throughout: Holst: The Planets – Mars, 'The Bringer of War']
Paul Rissmann
Hello, I’m Paul Rissmann, and I am going to guide you through the first movement of the planets. We are going to
start with Mars, the Bringer of War.
This is astounding music. It’s exciting, it feels modern, and it sounds so space age – even though it was written almost
100 years ago. Yet musically, Mars is very straightforward.
It’s driven by a single repeating pattern - or ostinato that dominates the entire movement. The music is scored at the
less conventional 5/4 time signature - with five beats in each bar. As Westerners, we seem genetically programmed to
feel four beats in a bar as more natural – so 5/4 immediately puts us on edge. But it is Holst’s singular obsession with
that rhythmic pattern that makes this music so exciting. It’s coloured by a rather mechanical sound in the string
section. Holst creates this by utilising the technique of col legno, which means “with the wood” in Italian.
The musicians strike their instruments using the wood of the bow rather than the horsehair, which gives a wonderfully
percussive sound. On top of that rhythmic ostinato, Holst places a long melodic line in the winds and brass, which
seems to stretch upwards in equally balanced steps like this.
Let’s look closer at how Holst created that melodic line. If we start here, notice that he rises up five notes – we call that
spacing – or interval – a fifth, then falls down a half step – or semitone, then rises up another fifth, and falls down a
semitone. That highly organised shape is preserved throughout the melodic line.
The biggest misconception people have about this music stems from our next example. Holst uses short bursts of
sound, which feel like tiny fanfares and give the music a distinctly military feel. Just take a listen to the winds and
brass.
Mars was written in 1914, it is subtitled “The Bringer of War” – so it’s only natural to assume it was influenced by the
First World War. But actually, it was composed before War had broken out, so unless Holst was really good at
astrology, it seems unlikely that this is a musical premonition of the conflict that would soon rage throughout the
Europe.
Musically, Holst never moves too far away from his rhythmical ostinato. At the very end of the movement, after a
frantic scramble from the winds and strings, the orchestra violently hammers home fragments of the rhythm. And we
are left in no doubt as to the intensity of sound that this huge orchestra is capable of producing.
END OF VIDEO
LISTENING GUIDE: HOLST'S THE PLANETS – MARS, 'THE BRINGER
OF WAR'
Philharmonia Orchestra 2012
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