User:Simon the Likable/The Hymn of Jesus

The Hymn of Jesus, Op. 37 is a composition for choirs and full orchestra by the British composer Gustav Holst, written in 1917, and held by some to be his masterpiece. The first performance was given by the Royal Philharmonic Society, and took place at the Queen's Hall, London on 25 March, 1920, conducted by the composer.


 * The Hymn of Jesus, for 2 choruses, semi-chorus, and orchestra, Op.37, H.140
 * Year: 1917
 * Pr. Instrument: Chorus/Choir
 * 1.Prelude: Vexilla regis proderunt
 * 2.Hymn: Glory to Thee, Father!
 * 3.Hymn: Fain Would I be Saved
 * 4.Hymn: Divine Grace is Dancing
 * 5.Give Ye Heed Unto My Dancing
 * Performance time: 20 minutes (approx)

In 1917, Holst wrote The Hymn of Jesus based on the Apocryphal gospels. With his usual thoroughness, Holst learnt sufficient Greek to translate the original hymn. He then pondered at length over the meaning of the words so that he could maintain the spirit of the poem as much as possible.

Gustav Holst conducted the first performance of The Hymn of Jesus in 1920. Like The Planets, it was very successful. Life was becoming easier by the end of 1922. Holst found for the first time he had earned more than one thousand pounds in a year. However, he was to have no more major popular successes.

Instrumentation

 * Woodwind: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, an English horn, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons
 * Brass: 4 horns, 2 trumpets, and 3 trombones
 * Keyboards: a celesta, a piano, and an organ
 * Percussion: 2 timpani, a big drum, a side drum, cymbals, and a tambourine (one player only for these last four instruments)
 * Strings: violins one and two, violas, violoncellos, and double basses
 * Voices: two SATB choruses (of equal strength and, if possible, well separated), and a TTA semi-chorus (placed above and well separated, supported, if necessary, by a soft harmonium)

Hymn
Experiment:

The real thing:

Background
The concept of the work is astrological rather than astronomical (which is why Earth is not included): each movement is intended to convey ideas and emotions associated with the influence of the planets on the psyche, not the Roman deities. The idea of the work was suggested to Holst by Clifford Bax, who introduced him to astrology when the two were part of a small group of English artists holidaying in Majorca in the spring of 1913; Holst became quite a devotee of the subject, and liked to cast his friends' horoscopes for fun. Holst also used Alan Leo's book What is a Horoscope? as a springboard for his own ideas, as well as for the subtitles (i.e., "The Bringer of...") for the movements.



The Planets as a work in progress was originally scored for a piano duet, except for "Neptune", which was scored for a single organ, as Holst believed that the sound of the piano was too percussive for a world as mysterious and distant as Neptune. Holst then scored the suite for a large orchestra, and it was in this incarnation that it became enormously popular. Holst's use of orchestration was very imaginative and colourful, showing the influence of Arnold Schoenberg and other continental composers of the day rather than his English predecessors. The influence of Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring is especially notable. These new (at least for British audiences) sonorities helped make the suite an instant success. Although The Planets remains Holst's most popular work, the composer himself did not count it among his best creations and later in life complained that its popularity had completely surpassed his other works. He was, however, partial to his own favourite movement, "Saturn".

Premieres

 * The private orchestral premiere of The Planets suite, conducted at Holst's request by Adrian Boult, was held at rather short notice on 29 September 1918, during the last weeks of World War I, in the Queen's Hall with the financial support of Holst's friend and fellow composer Balfour Gardiner. It was hastily rehearsed; the musicians of the Queen's Hall Orchestra first saw the complicated music only two hours before the performance, and the choir for "Neptune" was recruited from pupils from St Paul's Girls' School (where Holst taught). Despite the auspicious venue, it was a comparably intimate affair, attended by around 250 invited associates.
 * An ecstatically-received public concert was given in London on 27 February 1919 while Holst was overseas, but only five of the seven movements were played (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus).
 * There was an incomplete public performance in Birmingham on 10 October 1920, with five movements (Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter) conducted by Appleby Matthews.
 * The first complete public performance of the suite did not occur until 15 November 1920; the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) was conducted by Albert Coates.

Holst conducted the LSO himself, in two recorded performances of The Planets: the first was an acoustic recording made in sessions between 1922 and 1924 (now available on Pavilion Records' Pearl label); the second was made in 1926, and utilised the then-new electrical recording process (in 2003, this was released on compact disc by IMP and later on Naxos outside the US). Because of the time constraints of the 78rpm format, the tempi are often much faster than is usually the case today.

Instrumentation
The elaborate orchestration of The Planets was possibly influenced by Igor Stravinsky, who used four oboes and four bassoons in his The Rite of Spring (1912–13), and by Schoenberg's 1909 composition Five Pieces for Orchestra.


 * Woodwind: 4 Flutes (3rd doubling 1st Piccolo; 4th doubling 2nd Piccolo and a "Bass Flute in G", actually an Alto flute), 3 Oboes (3rd doubling Bass Oboe), an English Horn, 3 Clarinets in B-flat, a Bass clarinet in B-flat, 3 Bassoons and a Contrabassoon


 * Brass: 6 Horns in F, 4 Trumpets in C, 3 Trombones (2 Tenor and 1 Bass), a Euphonium in B-flat and a Tuba


 * Keyboards: a Celesta, and an Organ


 * Percussion: 6 Timpani (2 players, 3 drums each except in "Uranus" having 4 drums for 1st and 2 drums for 2nd), a Bass Drum, a Snare Drum, Cymbals, a Triangle, a Tam-Tam, a Tambourine, a Glockenspiel, a Xylophone, and Tubular Bells


 * Strings: 2 Harps, Violins One and Two, Violas, Violoncellos, and Double basses


 * Voices: ("Neptune" only), 2 three-part women's choruses (SSA) located in an adjoining room which is to be screened from the audience

Structure
The suite has seven movements, each named after a planet and its corresponding astrological character (see also Planets in astrology):


 * 1) Mars, the Bringer of War
 * 2) Venus, the Bringer of Peace
 * 3) Mercury, the Winged Messenger
 * 4) Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
 * 5) Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
 * 6) Uranus, the Magician
 * 7) Neptune, the Mystic

A typical performance of all seven movements lasts for about 50 minutes. The order of the movements corresponds to increasing distance of their eponymous planets from Earth. Some commentators have suggested that this is intentional, with the anomaly of Mars preceding Venus being a device to make the first four movements match the form of a symphony. An alternative explanation may be the ruling of astrological signs of the zodiac by the planets: if the signs are listed along with their ruling planets in the traditional order starting with Aries, ignoring duplication, Pluto (then undiscovered) and the luminaries (the Sun and Moon), the order of the movements corresponds. Another possibility, this time from an astronomical perspective, is that the first three movements, representing the inner terrestrial planets, are ordered according by decreasing distance from the Sun; the remaining movements, representing the gas giants, are ordered by increasing distance from the Sun. Critic David Hurwitz offers an alternative explanation for the piece's structure: that "Jupiter" is the centrepoint of the suite and that the movements on either side are in mirror images. Thus "Mars" involves motion and "Neptune" is static; "Venus" is sublime while "Uranus" is vulgar, and "Mercury" is light and scherzando while "Saturn" is heavy and plodding. This hypothesis is lent credence by the fact that the two outer movements, "Mars" and "Neptune", are both written in rather unusual quintuple meter.

"Neptune" was the first piece of orchestral music to have a fade-out ending. Holst stipulates that the women's choruses are "to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed", and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) is "to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance". Although commonplace today, the effect bewitched audiences in the era before widespread recorded sound—after the initial 1918 run-through, Holst's daughter Imogen (in addition to watching the charwomen dancing in the aisles during "Jupiter") remarked that the ending was "unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women's voices growing fainter and fainter... until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence".

Pluto
Pluto was discovered in 1930, four years before Holst's death, and was hailed by astronomers as the ninth planet. Holst, however, expressed no interest in writing a movement for the new planet. He had become disillusioned by the popularity of the suite, believing that it took too much attention away from his other works.

Nonetheless, several other composers have written their own Pluto movements, the first apparently being Clive Strutt, who produced his for the Holst centenary in 1974 (though it has never been performed). In 2000, the Hallé Orchestra commissioned the English composer Colin Matthews, an authority on Holst, to write a new eighth movement, which Matthews entitled, "Pluto, the Renewer". Dedicated to the late Imogen Holst, Gustav Holst's daughter, it was first performed in Manchester on 11 May 2000, with Kent Nagano conducting the Hallé Orchestra. Matthews also changed the ending of "Neptune" slightly so that movement would lead directly into "Pluto".

Six years later, in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union promulgated for the very first time a definition of the term "planet", which resulted in Pluto's status being "demoted" from planet to dwarf planet. Consequently, Holst's original work is once again a complete representation of all of the extraterrestrial planets in the Solar System.

Non-orchestral arrangements

 * Piano Duet (four hands) - An engraved copy of Holst's own piano duet arrangement was found by John York.


 * Two pianos (duo) - Holst also created a version for two pianos. When he was composing the duo, he had two of his friends play the four-hands version to aid in the transcription. The two-piano arrangement was published in 1949.  Holst's original manuscripts for it are now in the holdings of the Royal College of Music (Mars, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), Royal Academy of Music (Mercury) and British Library (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus).


 * Organ - Peter Sykes transcribed the Planets for an organ.


 * Brass band - Stephen Roberts, associate conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, transcribed the entire suite for brass band.


 * Marching band - The movements: Mars, Venus and Jupiter, have all been arranged for marching band by Jay Bocook.  Paul Murtha also arranged the chorale section of Jupiter for marching band.


 * Percussion ensemble - James Ancona arranged Mercury for a percussion ensemble. It consisted of 2 glockenspiels, 2 xylophones, 2 vibraphones, 2 marimbas, 5 timpani, a small suspended cymbal, and 2 triangles.


 * Japanese singer Ayaka Hirahara  released a pop version of "Jupiter" in December 2003.  It went to #2 on  the Oricon  charts and sold nearly a million copies, making it the third-best selling  single in the Japanese popular music market for 2004.  It remained on  the charts for over three years.

Hymns
Holst himself adapted the melody of the central section of Jupiter in 1921 to fit the metre of a poem beginning "I vow to thee, my country". As a hymn tune it has the title Thaxted, after the town in Essex where Holst lived for many years, and it has also been used for other hymns, such as "O God beyond all praising".

"I Vow to Thee, My Country" was written between 1908 and 1918 by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice and became known as a response to the human cost of World War I. The hymn was first performed in 1925 and quickly became a patriotic anthem. Although Holst had no such patriotic intentions when he originally composed the music, these adaptations have encouraged others to draw upon the score in similar ways throughout the 20th Century.

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