LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Holst
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After the lukewarm reception of his choral work The Cloud Messenger in 1912, Holst was again off travelling, financing a trip to Spain with fellow composers Balfour Gardiner and brothers Clifford Bax and Arnold Bax with funds from an anonymous donation. Despite being shy, Holst was fascinated by people and society, and had always believed that the best way to learn about a city was to get lost in it. In Gerona, Catalonia, he often disappeared, only to be found hours later by his friends having abstract debates with local musicians. It was in Spain that Clifford Bax introduced Holst to astrology, a hobby that was to inspire the later Planets suite. He read astrological fortunes until his death, and called his interest in the stars his "pet vice".
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Holst's most important piece, and the one that is most often played, is the orchestral suite The Planets (1914-1917). It is a large-scale, brilliantly orchestrated series of tone poems devoted to seven of the planets: Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. He uses polytonality and polyrhythms and treats the orchestra with great skill and freedom.
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Holst lived to see the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Although it was immediately accepted as a planet, Holst chose not to add Pluto to his suite. He seems to have been vindicated by the 2006 decision by the International Astronomical Union to downgrade Pluto's planetary status to that of dwarf planet. A piece entitled "Pluto: The Renewer" was composed by Colin Matthews in 2000, and it has been occasionally included in performances of The Planets.
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Perhaps the best-known of the movements, Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity, evokes both a sense of fun and, according to Holst, "the more ceremonial type of rejoicing associated with religious or national festivities." Beginning with a vigorous tune against rapidly moving strings and woodwinds, the movement quickly brings forth several celebratory themes. The central section segues into a stately, ceremonial melody reminiscent of Elgar — in fact, Holst ... set this melody as a separate hymn, "I vow to thee my country." The hymn ends on an unresolved chord that is immediately met by the joyous motifs of the first section, drawing to a brilliant finish.
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Holst wonders at the specious arguments of writers who castigate learned women and who refuse to recognize the most prevalent and pernicious causes of child neglect (15). In deconstructing the arguments of male writers who unleash their "ganzen Zorn" on learned rather than on frivolous women, she suggests deeper causes than the male fear that learned women lack femininity (Weiblichkeit). Instead, men fear that "bei einer sich erworbenen höhern Ausbildung es den Weibern auch einmal einfallen möchten, sie wegen der mancherlei Ungerechtigkeiten, die sie erdulden müßen, zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen" (78). Here the term "injustices" hints at rebellion by women who have gained an education. Although to this point Holst has deployed "justice" and "rights" to refer solely to education, her remark here implies other inequities. While she resists any elaboration, the picture of an expanding collectivity of thoroughly educated women that her thesis suggests conveys the potential for rebellion.
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Despite the release of Delacroix’s Faust illustrations, Holst did not abandon his subject completely. Faust [C]ontinued to be the subject of several of his drawings and paintings, including 'Faust and Gretchen in Two Burlesque Scenes'. The ‘burlesque’ style itself is related to the grotesque through its comical and playful nature. The grotesque can be seen as a sub–form of the comic, classed broadly with the burlesque and vulgarly funny. These burlesque scenes differ completely from Delacroix’s gloomy depictions of the scenes, which exhibit all of his tendencies towards the macabre and the daemonic. Holst’s burlesque scenes and picturesque romantic illustrations, as seen in the unfinished Faust and Gretchen in the Garden and Faust and Gretchen are dissimilar in that they are light in their mood and display at times his eccentric sense of humour.
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Holst