Gustav Holst — The Planets (1918)

By Rafi Mercer

Some say old music is not good music.

I have never understood that.

Not because all old music is great. It is not. Time does not automatically make a thing better. Some music survives because people keep repeating that it matters. Some music survives because institutions protect it. Some music survives because nobody quite knows how to remove it from the shelf.

But then there is The Planets by Gustav Holst.

This is old music that does not behave like old music. It does not sit politely in the past. It does not ask to be admired because it has survived. It arrives with force, scale, mystery, and danger. It moves the air. It makes the room larger. It reminds you that music was doing extraordinary things long before the modern world found new words for atmosphere, cinema, immersion, and sound design.

For me, this is part of the listening heritage.

Not in a formal way. Not in the sense of knowing every conductor, every edition, every recording, every scholarly argument. I mean heritage in the more private sense. The sounds that formed the rooms inside you. The pieces of music that taught you what scale felt like before you had language for it. The things you heard young, or half-heard somewhere, or returned to later, only to realise they had been sitting quietly behind half your listening life.

The Planets is one of those works.

It is vast without being empty. That is the thing. Plenty of music tries to sound big. Very little music understands what largeness is actually for. Holst does. He does not just make the orchestra louder. He changes the gravity of the listener. He takes the human body and places it somewhere wider, colder, stranger, more beautiful.

There is no Earth in The Planets. That has always mattered to me. We are not safely at the centre, looking out. We are displaced. We are removed from the ordinary view. The music does not flatter us by making humanity the point. It lifts us away from ourselves and lets us feel how small we are, which is sometimes exactly what great listening should do.

“Mars, the Bringer of War” still sounds brutal. Not theatrical. Not decorative. Brutal. It has that grinding rhythm that feels less like an army and more like a machine that has forgotten the value of human life. It does not rush. It advances. There is no romance in it, no noble sadness, no soft-focus heroism. It is force without tenderness. You can hear the shadow it casts over so much later film music, but the original still has a severity that imitation rarely reaches.

Then “Venus, the Bringer of Peace” arrives, and the whole body changes.

This is where the work becomes more than famous. Holst understands that peace is not weak. Peace after violence has its own strength, its own weight, its own discipline. “Venus” does not simply calm the listener down. It restores the possibility of beauty after impact. It lets the air back in.

That movement has always felt important to me. Listening is not only about excitement. It is also about recovery. It is about what happens after the noise. It is about whether you are still able to receive gentleness once the world has hardened you.

“Mercury, the Winged Messenger” flickers and disappears almost as soon as you try to hold it. It is quick thought, quick light, quick movement. Then “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” opens out into one of the great moments in British music. Everyone knows the scale of it, even if they do not know where they first heard it. But what makes “Jupiter” extraordinary is not just its grandeur. It is the ache inside the grandeur. The melody feels public and private at the same time. It can belong to a nation, a ceremony, a memory, a room, or one person sitting alone with the volume slightly too high.

That is why the best old music lasts. Not because it stays preserved, but because it keeps finding new emotional weather to live inside.

“Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” may be the movement I return to most seriously now. When you are younger, perhaps you go first to “Mars” or “Jupiter” because they announce themselves so clearly. But “Saturn” waits. It moves slowly, heavily, patiently. It does not dramatise age as decline. It makes time audible. There is something almost unbearable in its honesty. Not sad exactly. Larger than sad. It is the sound of life becoming aware of its own limits.

And then, after the mischief and strangeness of “Uranus, the Magician,” comes “Neptune, the Mystic,” which does something that still feels radical.

It does not end.

It fades.

The voices drift away until the music seems to leave the room before the listener is ready. Most music wants applause. “Neptune” wants disappearance. It understands that silence can be part of the composition, not simply what happens after it.

That, for me, is why The Planets belongs on Tracks & Tales.

It is listening music in the deepest sense. It asks for attention. It rewards patience. It proves that music does not need to be new to feel alive. It does not need a beat to move the body. It does not need lyrics to carry meaning. It does not need fashion to remain modern.

Some music dates because it was built around the sound of its moment.

Some music lasts because it was built around the size of human feeling.

The Planets is old music, yes. But old is not the same as finished. Old is not the same as tired. Old is not the same as irrelevant. Sometimes old music is the thing still waiting for us to grow into it.

This is the best old music there is because it refuses to become heritage in the dead sense.

It is not a museum piece.

It is not polite culture.

It is not background for people who want to seem serious.

It is alive, frightening, beautiful, strange, and enormous.

And every time I return to it, I hear not the past closing behind me, but the future opening somewhere further away.

Quick Questions

What is The Planets by Gustav Holst?

The Planets is an orchestral suite by British composer Gustav Holst, built around seven movements inspired by the astrological character of the planets.

Why does The Planets still feel so powerful?

Because it does not rely on age, reputation, or tradition to matter. Its force comes from scale, atmosphere, contrast, silence, and the emotional weight of the orchestra.

Which movement from The Planets is the most famous?

“Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” is probably the best known, but “Mars, the Bringer of War” remains one of the most influential pieces of orchestral music in modern listening culture.

How can I join the Tracks & Tales community?

Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.

Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe, or click here to read more.