Trivia / Gustav Holst

• Creator Backlash: Towards the end of his life, Holst grew to be disillusioned with the popularity of The Planets as he felt it overshadowed his other work, which he felt superseded The Planets. His distaste for the suite got to the point that when Pluto was discovered in 1930, he outright refused to write any music for it. Serendipitous for Holst however, Pluto would eventually be reclassified as a dwarf planet several decades later, making it technically not a planet like Venus or Saturn are.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Disillusionment with the piece aside, Holst personally felt that "Saturn" was his best piece in The Planets, rather than a more popular piece like "Mars, the Bringer of War", "Venus, the Bringer of Peace" or "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity". He also thought that Edgon Heath, a comparatively obscure tone poem dedicated to Thomas Hardy, was his most perfectly realised composition, a sentiment shared by Ralph Vaughan Williams and others.
• Reclusive Artist: The Planets was a huge hit that suddenly pushed him into the spotlight. Holst was always a shy man, preferring walks in the country or teaching young musicians to society events, and really didn't know how to handle his newfound celebrity status.
• Referenced by...:
  • Oscar's Orchestra has an episode revolving around The Planets, with the characters visiting each planet accompanied by the corresponding music and then trying to choose a suitable piece of classical music to serve as a theme for Pluto.
  • Bluey: "Sleepytime" revolves around Bingo dreaming about exploring the solar system, and the soundtrack quotes extensively from The Planets, particularly "Jupiter". Holst is given a composer credit at the end of the episode.
  • Starstuff uses excerpts from The Planets for its opening and closing themes, and all incidental music.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The use of the "Thaxted" tune from "Jupiter" for "I Vow To Thee My Country" mentioned on the main page happened by accident. An overworked Holst was commissioned to set the poem to music, and he was relieved to no end when he realized the words fit the tune perfectly.
• What Could Have Been: Holst originally asked playwright Clifford Bax to write the libretto for opera The Perfect Fool. Holst eventually wrote it himself after Bax declined.

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