Published: 2022
Publisher: Print Music Source
Duration: 7:47
Grade: 4
Difficulty: Medium Difficult
Composed by Gustav Holst between 1914 and 1917 while director of music at St. Paul’s Girls School in West London, England, 'The Planets' is a seven movement orchestral suite, and 'Mars, the Bringer of War' is the first one. In ancient Roman religion, Mars was the god of war. Although the Mars movement is often thought to portray the horrors of mechanised warfare, it was actually completed before the First World War started. The premiere of The Planets was at the Queen’s Hall in London on September 29,1918. Mars is marked Allegro and is in a relentless ostinato for most of its duration. It opens quietly and the music builds to a quadruple-forte, dissonant climax. The composer Colin Matthews writes that for Holst, Mars would have been "an experiment in rhythm and clashing keys", and its violence in performance "may have surprised him as much as it galvanised its first audiences".