The Planets: “Neptune, the Mystic”

Main page for Holst’s The Planets

• At the time of composition, Neptune was the most distant known planet in our solar system. Holst suggests otherworldliness with the use of a wordless vocal part for women’s chorus. Holst’s instructions called for the choir to be offstage, and for their singing to be faded out at the end of the piece.¹

“The chorus is to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed. The Chorus, the door, and any Sub-Conductors that may be found necessary, are to be well-screened from the audience.”

Holst’s score instructions for Neptune

• Holst may have gotten the idea for a wordless women’s choir from Debussy’s Nocturnes, mvt. 3 “Sirens.”²
• Adding to the “fade out” effect, Holst marked the final bar thus: “This bar to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance.” ³

1. Gustav Holst, The Planets (London: Boosey & Hawkes, after 1930), 162, IMSLP, accessed October 23, 2019, http://ks.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/5/59/IMSLP05396-Holst_-_THE_PLANETS_-_Suite_for_Large_Orchestra_-_Partitur.pdf.
2. Colin Matthews, “Holst, Gustav(us Theodore von),” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 23, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013252.
3. Holst, The Planets, 187.