Yesterday‘s anvil-themed post prompted a person’s comment which introduced me to a piece I’ve never heard before which also features the anvil. And since this week is a brutal one for me (running a 60-kid Choir Camp), I’m going to run with the hard work / anvil theme here!

Despite his very German name, Gustav Holst was very English (in his compositional style). And while his most famous piece is without a doubt The Planets, wind players know and love his suites for band. These, like many of his pieces, use or imitate English folk songs (which was all the rage while he was alive, thanks to Ralph Vaughan Williams).

This video is particularly magnificent because 1) the anvil-player’s (anvilist?) attire 2) the cinematographic zoom-in on the anvilist at the end 3) the awesome, blacksmith-inspired gaze of the anvilist.

Like my March 1 post, today and tomorrow’s music is related to gods and planets.

Today, Jupiter the planet. Well, kind of. Gustav Holst‘s famous suite for orchestra, The Planets, is titled after the heavenly bodies, but the individual movements are subtitled in a manner that makes the orbiting spheres seem more like deities. But don’t be confused; instead, enjoy one of the hilarious things about being human – our ability to reconcile two contradicting ideas. And if nothing else, you gotta love the music.

Jupiter (the planet) doesn’t seem jolly to me, nor does it seem capable of that gorgeous English march in the middle section of this piece. The planet always struck me as very sinister – the Snidely Whiplash of the solar system.

The month of March is named for the Roman god of war – Mars. And of course, Mars is the planet where the aliens in “War of the Worlds” came from. Don’t worry, though, we’ll conquer those aliens and colonize Mars soon enough.

Mars is awesome. There, I said it. Gustav Holst (1874-1934) must have thought so, too, because he wrote a kick-ass piece of music about it. This selection comes from a larger work called “The Planets” (what a bizarre name for a suite of pieces about Roman gods.) Seriously though, despite the astronomical name, the piece is more about astrological matters – think horoscopes. Each planet, er, god, has its own personality.[/twocol_one_last]

And I’m pretty sure that the great composer John Williams stole borrowed from this piece when he wrote the film score to Star Wars.