{"id":1348,"date":"2020-06-30T14:59:19","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T13:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/databassist.com\/music\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2020-06-30T15:13:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T14:13:59","slug":"unity-rebranded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/databassist.com\/music\/archives\/1348","title":{"rendered":"Unity rebranded"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

‘Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity’, the fourth movement of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, <\/em>has remained one of the most popular orchestral pieces for the last hundred years and has often been performed by itself without the rest of the suite. That’s not surprising: it is dazzlingly bright, uplifting music, stuffed with big tunes<\/a> — four of them, some heard more than once. Holst himself was guarded about its elusive astrological meanings. In his brief notes for the first public performance of the complete work on 15 November 1920 he wrote: ‘Jupiter brings jollity in the ordinary sense, and also the more ceremonial type of rejoicing associated with religious or national festivities.’ We certainly hear a juxtaposition of the ordinary and the ceremonial, especially when the third tune (from 20:32 in this video), which whirls around like mad dancing, is followed by the serenity of the really big tune (at 21:49). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That much-loved big tune can indeed seem quite incongruous in the middle of this movement because it became so well known as the hymn ‘I vow to thee, my country’, regularly selected for remembrance services, royal weddings and other British ceremonial events (for example, for the centenary in 2017 of the Royal Air Force: watch here<\/a>). Although Holst must have been aware, when composing Jupiter<\/em> in 1914, that he was creating a melody and its harmony in the style of Elgar with a characteristic sound of late-Victorian and Edwardian England, it was at first a wordless conception with no particular meaning or national focus. It was his later decision, in 1921, to adapt it to the poem by the British diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice that saddled the tune with a somewhat controversial religious and patriotic message associated with Britain. The hymn, in its fully harmonized version, was published in 1925 in the Anglican hymnal Songs of Praise<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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