Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book is the first comprehensive guide to Holst's popular orchestral suite The Planets. It considers the music in detail and places the work in its historical context, describing the circumstances of its composition and its meteoric rise to popular acclaim. Starting with Holst's particular interest in astrology, Professor Greene explores the plotting of the work's central melodic and harmonic gestures to reveal a profound statement of human character and Holst's own psychological journey toward the mystic state. Using parallels in the verbal arts Greene weaves a fascinating tale of musical communication. An understanding of The Planets is crucial to a full appreciation of Holst's profound late works, and Greene's systematic appraisal provides the first revealing light in this direction.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: musical character and a theory of musical rhetoric
• 1 Holst and the two Londons
• 2 Genesis
• 3 Reception
• 4 The character plots (1): Mars to Mercury
• 5 The character plots (2): Jupiter to Neptune
• 6 On becoming The Planets: the overall design
• Epilogue
• Appendices
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Greene's uneven volume disabuses any who persist in thinking Gustav Holst's masterpiece is merely sublime mysticism and nonsense. The author (Loyola College of Music) insists on the obvious: these wonderful pieces, their titles designed only to serve as metaphors inspired by Holst's interest in symbolism and by Alan Leo's What Is a Horoscope and How Is It Cast? (1905), have no "programme." Greene retells the history of the work's composition and first performances, provides a good discussion of its reception and reputation, and charts its mixed reviews from critics either persuaded or alienated by its "non-Germanic" compositional technique. He illuminates Holst's situation in pre- and post-WW I London and suggests, too fleetingly, probable compositional influences (Debussy, Scriabin, some English contemporaries? Strauss?). He reminds the reader that The Planets is but one of Holst's "major" works--here his advocacy of other large-scale pieces seems misplaced. Greene's analyses of the individual pieces and their "character plots" will be helpful to a nonspecialist student first encountering the work; his discussion of the overall design of the work is adequate; his appendixes (listing public performances, 1908-21, and comparing tempi in selected recordings), notes, and select bibliography (sans reference to Leo's book) are marginally useful. Sadly, this book conveys little of the zest, excitement, or spirit of The Planets. Very moderately priced for undergraduate and general-clientele libraries, this is clearly, but not urgently, recommended.