Mars: Holst wrote Mars on the eve of WWI. Venus grabs Mars’ arm in Rubens’ painting, but she cannot hold him back. The muscular legs of Mars move forward as relentlessly as the 5/4 ostinato pattern in Holst’s Mars. All the strings in the orchestra march as one, striking their string with the wooden side of the bow. All the heavy artillery comes out, starts rolling. Strings played with wood. Tympani with harder sticks. Gong. Alto flute. Bass oboe. Tenor tuba. Machine guns. Flamethrowers. Mortars. Bigger guns, bigger payloads, greater range. Poison gas, tanks, aircraft, submarines. A lute is crushed in Rubens’ painting. Europe raises its arms to the sky.
Venus: Before the fury Alecto’s torch of darkness pulls Mars inevitably into the repeated anger/madness/chaos of years/decades/centuries, Venus reigned supreme. In Holst’s Planets, she rises softer and softer still in the French horn’s hypnotic, alluring middle register. Four simple steps on her staircase to Mars. Nothing’s this sensual soft, not Rubens’ painted colors blended and stroked on Venus’s flesh. Holst repeats this ascending gesture again. An imagined Venus climbing imagined stairs. And then again the same four imagined steps, two flutes added in as accessories, pearls in each ear. Venus, the Bringer of Peace. Two harps, a glockenspiel, a celeste. Simple up and down movements. A few oscillating chords.
Performance of Holst’s Venus, The Bringer of Peace
Performance of Holst’s Mars, The Bringer of War
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