This paper has been focused on one of the orchestral works by Gustav Holst(1874-1934), who was an English composer and an educator in the early twenties century. Among his orchestral works, ‘The Planets(1916)’ would be discussed and especially, th...
This paper has been focused on one of the orchestral works by Gustav Holst(1874-1934), who was an English composer and an educator in the early twenties century. Among his orchestral works, ‘The Planets(1916)’ would be discussed and especially, the seventh movement ‘Neptune, the Mystic ’ from this suite has been selected for this analytical paper. Through analyzing this movement, I would like to study and understand his compositional style and musical characteristics better.
‘The Planets, op. 32’ by G. Holst is a large-scale orchestral suite consisting of seven movements. I would like to inform that there are two preceding theses about this work which were focused on the second movement ‘Venus’ and the fifth movement ‘Saturn’. The second movement ‘Venus’ from this work had been already discussed in a paper by Seong-Hyeon Kim. Also, the fifth movement ‘Saturn’ had been presented by Hyeon-Su Lee in a paper for his master's degree. And the last movement would be mentioned through this paper.
It has already been studied from the previous these that the structure of The Planets is based on three parts. In formality, the sonata form is compromised with a ternary form. Various kinds of rhythms like syncopations, other irregular patterns of rhythm and ostinato were introduced in this work. And the melody which repeats theme part of the music is similar to Gregorian Chant.
A number of other percussion and keyboard instruments were used for the independent style of Holst in order to express the distinctive sound from the four-instrument organized orchestra. The seventh movement Neptune is different from other movements in a way of form and structure, harmony and its progression and the musical syntax. The uniqueness of the orchestral timbre, the continuant harmony in the fast passages, and the six-part women's choir without words causing some mysterious atmosphere are the unique traits of Holst's composition.
This paper, hence, has a purpose on understanding the work of Holst through an analytical study of some points like arrangement of instruments, compositional techniques, overall form and structure, melody and scales, harmonic progression and rhythms.