Jupiter: A Song History

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"Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" is the fourth of the seven movements in Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets, written between 1914 and 1916 while he was director of music at St Paul's Girls' School.[1] Holst traced the suite to the astrological meaning of each planet, not to the gods of classical myth, and he explained that Jupiter's jollity worked in two senses: everyday merriment, and the grander kind of celebration that belongs to religious and national occasions.[1] He had come across the Essex town of Thaxted on a walking trip in 1913, and from 1914 he and his wife rented a cottage in the nearby hamlet of Monk Street, where much of The Planets was composed.[2] The suite was first heard privately on 29 September 1918 at Queen's Hall in London, when Adrian Boult conducted a performance that Holst's friend Henry Balfour Gardiner gave him as a present.[3][4] The first public performance followed in London on 15 November 1920 under Albert Coates, and "Mars" and "Jupiter" are the movements heard most often.[3][1]

Black-and-white mezzotint of an English summer landscape with a plough team beneath a wide, cloudy sky

David Lucas after John Constable, A Summerland, mezzotint, 1831. An English summer landscape, shown for the English countryside where Holst lived; it has no connection to the music.

In 1921 Holst adapted the broad tune from the middle section of "Jupiter" to fit "I Vow to Thee, My Country," a patriotic poem by Cecil Spring Rice.[5] Spring Rice had been Britain's ambassador in Washington from 1914 until he was abruptly relieved of the post at the end of 1917.[4] Sources differ on when he wrote the poem: one dates it to 1908, while an article in the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland's Bulletin places the verses around 12 January 1918, just before he left Washington, as a reworking of stanzas he had written in Sweden in 1911 or 1912; he died on 14 February 1918.[5][4] The same article says the first hymnal to carry the hymn appears to have been the first edition of Songs of Praise in 1925, with the tune Holst named THAXTED after the place where he had written part of The Planets.[4] It also records that Holst came to regret reusing the melody and would rather have given the words a tune of their own, and that conductors often slowed down at the hymn-tune passage of the movement.[4]

In Britain the hymn is often sung at Remembrance Day services.[5] Lady Diana Spencer chose it for her wedding in 1981, and it was sung again at her funeral in 1997.[5][4] Churches also sing THAXTED to other words, among them Michael Perry's "O God beyond all praising," written for the tune in 1982, and Hymnary.org lists the tune in 96 hymnals.[5][6] Judy House and Kirk House arrange "Jupiter" in five parts in The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Book 2, a book of ensemble arrangements of eleven tunes, each in four or five parts, which they publish themselves.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Jupiter"

Sources

  1. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "The Planets".
  2. Thaxted Parish Council: "Gustav Holst".
  3. National Arts Centre: "Superheroes" program notes by Hannah Chan-Hartley.
  4. Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland: "Treasure No 47: I Vow To Thee My Country".
  5. Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: 'O God Beyond All Praising'".
  6. Hymnary.org: "THAXTED (Holst)".
  7. Judy House And Kirk House: "The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts, Book 2".
  8. Image: David Lucas after John Constable, A Summerland, mezzotint, 1831. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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