I have never been interested in classical music. Most of it puts me to sleep. I find it boring even if the instruments sound beautiful. You could play it on the most sophisticated audio equipment known to man for me, but it just doesn’t do it for me. I could appreciate it, of course, but I could never really get into it.

I don’t remember how I got a hold of a C/D called, The Planets by Gustav Holst. Maybe my sister, Sans Souci, gave it to me, since she has quite a classical collection. Anyway, I remember the first time I heard it, I felt like I struck gold in a cave.

Since I don’t know a thing about classical music, I’m not going into any boring details about it, but I would like to explain why I feel The Planets is so unique.

In 1913, Holst’s interest in writing a piece on the attributes of the astrological signs was apparently influenced by a visit to his friend, Clifford Bax, who was a writer and avid star-gazer, who noted that Holst was a skilled reader of horoscopes. His daughter, Imogen said, “Once he had taken the underlying idea from astrology, he let the music have its way with him.” Holst’s work on The Planets took about three years to complete.

The characteristics of each planet as Holst conceived them can be found in the book, “What is a horoscope ?” by Alan Leo which Holst had been reading at the time.

These are the movements of The Planets:

Mars – The Bringer of War

Venus, the Bringer of Peace

Mercury, the Winged Messenger

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity

Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age

Uranus, the Magician

Neptune, the Mystic

Venus, the Bringer of Peace, has always been my favorite. This is the track that you hear on my home page.

If you have never been interested in classical music, give The Planets a chance. It might do it for you.

I think I had also subconsciously compared The Planets with Days of Future Passed by The Moody Blues, in which each song referred to a different part of a whole day.

deletereply starfishred wrote on Dec 18, ’07, edited on Dec 18, ’07 interesting maybe i will give him a try although I enjoy classical so much of it is well you know

deletereply laura1may wrote on Dec 18, ’07 It is a great favourite here which we are brought up on. He lived for many years in a remote little village in Essex called Thaxted, which used to be famous for cutlery. It has a wonderful windmill on a hill and multicoloured cottages with embossed plasterwork on the walls. It is said that when he rehearsed Jupiter, the cleaning ladies in the theatre dropped their mops and buckets and danced up and down the aisles for joy. The tune is almost a fourth national anthem after GStQ, Rule Britannia and Jerusalem.