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Listening Quest February 2017: The Planets by Holst

Wednesday, February 1, 2017 by Vicki Martin | Listening Quest


Gustav Holst was an English composer and teacher who lived from 1874 to 1934. He was a quiet, shy man, who became famous for writing The Planets, written for orchestra and a little bit of choir with one movement written for each of the planets, not including Earth. Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930, well after the piece was written in 1914-1916, and the work was already popular enough that Holst didn’t bother to add another movement for it. That’s probably good, given that Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf planet now! You may have heard some of this music in film scores before, and Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, is probably the best known, so here goes:
Extra Exploring: Watch all the planets!
Photo by Herbert Lambert (1881–1936) - National Portrait Gallery - Portrait NPGAx7745; Gustav Theodore Holst, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7667183