By Gustav Holst
Holst's The Planets received its first public performance in 1919, and with it Holst achieved the first real success of his career. It is a remarkably effective work, very varied and brilliantly scored for the orchestra, with the chracter of each of the seven movements suggested by the astrological properties given to the various planets of the solar system. The new eighth movement, Pluto, was commissioned from Colin Matthews, as an 'appendix' to the Suite, the planet Pluto having been discovered on a few years before Holst's death. The Mystic Trumpeter is one of the most neglected of Holst's major works. The several influences on the work, notably that of Wagner, are welded by Holst's passionate feeling for Whitman's words into an integrated and convincing whole whose vitality and exuberance have few parallels in British music of the period.